Becoming Present: An Inquiry Into the Christian Sense of the Presence of God

Ingolf U. Dalferth

Peeters Publishers, 2006 - Philosophical theology - 291 pages

Safeguarding the distinction between God and world has always been a basic interest of negative theology. But sometimes it has overemphasized divine transcendence in a way that made it difficult to account for the sense of God's present activity and experienced actuality. Deconstructivist criticisms of the Western metaphysics of presence have made this even more difficult to conceive. On the other hand, there has been a widespread attempt in recent years to base all theology on (religious) experience; the Christian church celebrates God's presence in its central sacraments of baptism and Eucharist; and recent process thought has re-conceptualised God's presence in panentheistic terms. This is the background against which this book outlines a theology of the Christian sense of the presence of God. The first chapter traces the rise and fall of rational religion in Modernity and argues that we should replace philosophical theism not by a unspecified religious sense of the whole but by a specific sense of the presence of God. The second chapter analyses the notion of divine presence and outlines different ways of understanding the real presence of God. The third chapter discusses the problem of whether and how God's presence can be discerned - given the fact that there is no presence of God that is not tinged by God's absence. Chapter four distinguishes various modes of divine presence with their corresponding modes of (human) apprehension. Chapter five takes up the charge that presence is an impossibility in a critical discussion of the debate between Derrida and Marion about the (im)possibility of gift. Chapter six asks how God's presence is conceived and communicated, looking in particular to music as a means of representing and communicating the awareness of God's presence. The final chapter outlines how the sense of the presence of God can be presented and defended in a world of many religions and cultures with their often conflicting religious convictions and representations.

Contents

• FROM THE SENSE OF THE WHOLE: 1
• Rationality and Religious Belief: 10
• The Myth of the Sense of the Whole: 19
• Wholes and Horizons: 25
• REAL PRESENCE: 33
• Steiners Wager on: 43
• Presence in Analytical Theories of Time: 52
• Presence as SelfPresence: 64
• Gods Presence: 75
• Real Presence as Salvific Presence: 85
• DISCERNING GODS PRESENCE: 95
• A Presence Felt?: 108
• Limits of What We Can Discern: 111
• Experiential and Intellectual Modes of Apprehension: 116
• Perceiving God?: 120
• Can We Discern Gods Presence?: 126
• Discerning God: 129
• Discerning the Difference: 132
• MODES OF DIVINE PRESENCE: 137
• Gods Twofold Presence and Activity: 140
• Modes of Divine Activity: 145
• Modes of Divine Presence: 152
• Gods Creative Presence: 157
• Divine Omnipresence and Omniscience: 164
• Divine Love and Omnipotence: 166
• THE GIFT OF GODS PRESENCE: 169
• The Impossibility of the Gift: 173
• The Unavoidability of the Gift: 176
• Save the Phenomena or Phenomenology?: 179
• The Interference of the World: 182
• Beyond the World of Phenomenal: 183
• Gifts as Social Phenomena: 188
• Gifts as Hermeneutical Phenomena: 190
• Gifts as LifeWorld Phenomena: 192
• Being Given: 195
• Basic Passivity: 198
• REPRESENTING GODS PRESENCE: 211
• Religious Communication: 242
• VII: 253
• 19: 262
• 28: 268
• Bibliography: 273
• 333: 280
• 36: 287

Bibliographic information

• Title: Becoming Present: An Inquiry Into the Christian Sense of the Presence of God; Volume 30 of Studies in philosophical theology, ISSN 1381-2025
• Author: Ingolf U. Dalferth
• Publisher: Peeters Publishers, 2006
• ISBN: 904291727X, 9789042917279
• Length: 291 pages