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Document Details : Title: Gebeurtenis en geloof Subtitle: Levenshouding in de hedendaagse wijsgerige Pauluslectuur Author(s): VAN DER HEIDEN, Gert-Jan Journal: Tijdschrift voor Theologie Volume: 54 Issue: 3 Date: 2014 Pages: 264-276 DOI: 10.2143/TVT.54.3.3200485 Abstract : De brieven van de apostel Paulus mogen zich vandaag de dag in grote wijsgerige belangstelling verheugen. Wat is de inzet van deze filosofische interpretaties van Paulus? Wat vinden denkers als Martin Heidegger, Jacob Taubes, Alain Badiou en Giorgio Agamben in Paulus’ brieven? In dit artikel zal ik laten zien dat een deel van het antwoord op deze vragen gevonden kan worden wanneer we onze aandacht richten op de messiaanse gebeurtenis die Paulus in zijn brieven verkondigt en de implicaties daarvan voor zijn geloofsopvatting. Daartoe betoog ik eerst dat (in tegenstelling tot sommige andere, recente interpretaties van de hedendaagse wijsgerige Pauluslectuur) de filosofen van vandaag Paulus niet begrijpen als een dualist in de zin van Marcion en Nietzsche, maar dat de begrippen ‘gebeurtenis’ en ‘uitzondering’ het hedendaagse discours over Paulus bepalen. Vervolgens ga ik specifieker in op Heideggers en Badious Paulusinterpretatie om te betogen dat het begrip gebeurtenis direct samenhangt met duiding van geloof als levenshouding en als levensvoltrekking. De vergelijking tussen Heideggers en Badious versie van Paulus geeft tevens inzicht in de verschillende wijzen waarop het begrip gebeurtenis in samenhang met geloof kan worden gedacht. To understand why contemporary philosophers such as Heidegger, Taubes, Badiou and Agamben turn to the letters of Saint Paul, it is crucial to see the importance of the concepts of event and faith in their relatedness. This essay starts by showing in which sense some of the recent literature on the contemporary philosophical readings of Paul’s letters mistakenly attributes either Marcionistic dualism or Nietzschean nihilism to these philosophical readings. Rather than propagating a dualism, the contemporary readings argue that letters of Paul are centered on the idea of a messianic event. Yet, this event is decomposed in two times, as Agamben argues, namely in the time of the resurrection, which implies that the messianic event has already taken place, and in the time of the second coming of Christ (the parousia), which implies that the messianic event has not yet taken place. This paradoxical temporal dimension of the messianic event marks for Paul the present time in which the believer lives. The essay continues to show how this paradoxical temporal dimension of the event corresponds to Paul’s conception of faith as the enactment of this event. To capture what this means, the author explores two different ways of accounting for this notion of faith. First, in relation to Heidegger’s work, it is shown how the structure of the passing of this figure of the world should be understood in light of the second coming of Christ. By placing the figure of the world in light of this transformative, future event, the world is disclosed in its contingent nature. Moreover, the author shows how this attention to contingency corresponds on the level of faith and the way in which the believers (should) live their lives to the comportment of the hōs mē, the ‘as not’: the passing by of the figure of this world is enacted by the hōs mē. Secondly, based on Badiou’s work, another account of this relation between event and faith as the enactment of the event is discussed. For Badiou, the messianic event is first and foremost the new beginning as expressed in Paul’s letters by the resurrection. Yet, also in Badiou’s case, the meaning of this beginning is found in its implications for the present life of the believer who, according to Badiou, is the one who lives his or her life in accordance with this beginning, faithfully enacting the consequences of the event. |
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