Abstract This article discusses the notion of confession in Jacques Derrida’s enigmatic text Circumfession (1991). The article develops Derrida’s displacement of the restricted economy of traditional confession in light of his engagement with negative theology in his late authorship. Hereby the notion of confession comes to signify an irreducible relation to alterity. The specific form of apophatic discourse which is connected to the act of confession is further developed through Derrida’s engagement with the name of God in the paradigmatic text Sauf le nom ( Post-Scriptum ) (1995). The article thus develops the interconnection between three related concepts: confession, textuality and the name of God.
Abstract This article examines the sixteenth-century correspondence between the Tübingen Lutheran theologians and Patriarch Jeremiah II of Constantinople on the Filioque in order to advance a constructive proposal for contemporary Orthodox-Lutheran dialogue. It argues that their disagreement was rooted not only in competing doctrinal formulae but in differing metaphysical and methodological presuppositions. The Lutherans interpreted the Spirit’s temporal mission through the Son as evidence of an eternal hypostatic procession from the Son. They grounded this inference in an account of divine simplicity, according to which receiving from another divine person is receiving being, and in an explicitly Augustinian framework. Jeremiah, by contrast, distinguished eternal procession from economic mission, invoked the distinction between the divine essence and its operations, and upheld the Father as sole cause while acknowledging an eternal relation between the Son and the Spirit. Building on this analysis and recent retrievals of the “Greek Filioque ,” the article argues that an eternal, non-causal relation between the Son and the Spirit grounds the Spirit’s mission through the Son without entailing procession from the Son. It then considers whether this model is compatible with Lutheran confessional commitments.
Zusammenfassung Ausgehend von einem Versuch in der jüngeren Kierkegaard-Forschung, einen konstitutiven Gottesbezug der ethischen Existenz geltend zu machen, wirft der Text die Frage auf, worin sich jener der religiösen Existenz dann wesentlich unterscheidet. Indem er bei der Antwort Kierkegaards Rekurs auf die „Möglichkeit des Ärgernisses“ (Forargelsens Mulighed) ins Zentrum setzt, fundiert er nicht nur Kierkegaards Betonung dieses „Scheidewegs“ theoretisch. Er zeigt auch auf, dass diese theoretische Fundierung den Weg zu weiteren theoretischen Pointen Kierkegaards weist. Diese betreffen (je in Kierkegaards Rahmen) a) das Verhältnis von Glauben und praktischen Gründen (und einem praktischen Sich-Gründen), b) die coram-Deo-Beziehung und c) das Verhältnis von Freiheit und Gnade. Machen wir diese Gedankenfigur trotz einer anzuerkennenden Zirkularität groß, dann unterbreitet Kierkegaard den Vorschlag: Was allein durch Gnade gewährt wird, ist uns nur aus Freiheit möglich .
Abstract This article explores the role of irony, humor and intertextual dialogue with Hamann in Kierkegaard’s approach to the Christian paradox in Philosophical Fragments . What kind of irony characterizes the dialogue between the offended understanding and the paradox in “Offense at the Paradox (An Acoustical Illusion)” in Philosophical Fragments ? I argue that the theological and philosophical significance of the paradox is brought out through the paradoxical form of dramatic irony, and I explore how this relates to Hamann. To shed further light on the traces of Hamann, I examine also Kierkegaard’s comments on Hamann, “the greatest humorist,” in journal entries and other writings.
