'Being Towards Death'

Heidegger and the Orthodox Theology of the East

Sylvie Avakian

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9783110707663
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

This book draws the philosophical contribution of Martin Heidegger together with theological-spiritual insights from the East, especially that of Nikolai Berdyaev. Thus, it brings into dialogue the West with the East, and philosophy with theology. By doing so, it offers Christian theology an existential-spiritual language that is relevant and meaningful for the contemporary reader. In particular, the work explores Heidegger's 'being towards death' ( Sein zum Tode ) as the basis for theological-philosophical thinking. Only the one who embraces 'being towards death' has the courage to think and poetize. This thinking, in turn, makes 'being towards death' possible, and in this circular movement of thinking and being, the mystery of being reveals itself and yet remains hidden.

Since the work aims at demonstrating 'being towards death' through language, it transitions away from the common formulations and traditionally accepted ways of writing (dogmatic) theology towards an original, philosophical reflection on faith and spirituality. At different points, however, the work also retrieves the profound thoughts and theologies of the past, the insightful creativity of which cannot be denied.

1 Openness to the Mystery

“God is not known, not spoken, not named,

not something among beings.”

—Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite—

1.1 The Mystery and its Givenness

1.1.1 Being – or God – as Mystery and the Human Being as the ‘Shepherd’ of Mystery

In these words, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite described the hidden divinity as “beyond every manner of being”:

The indefiniteness beyond being

lies beyond beings.

The unity beyond intellect

lies beyond intellect.

The One beyond thought is

unintelligible to all thinking.

The good beyond logos: [is]

ineffable to all logos

unity unifying every unity

being beyond being

non-intelligible intellect

ineffable logos

non-rationality

non-intelligibility

non-nameability

be-ing according to no being

cause of being to all; but itself: [is] non-be-ing,

as it is beyond every being, and

So, that it would properly and knowingly

manifest itself about itself.¹

In a similar connotation, Berdyaev perceived God, life and the whole universe as surrounded by mystery and, hence, mysticism as the profoundest form of human consciousness.² He elaborated that true theology is mystical and apophatic, as it is about the spiritual perception of divine Mystery.³

So-called apophatic theology has been upheld by the greatest thinkers, and it is founded on an eternal truth. This eternal truth is the acknowledgement of the Divine mystery inherent in the innermost depth of being. It is an ultimate mystery revealed in existence—a mystery to which no rational concept, no rationalization of being, is applicable.⁴

God is beyond all objectification and, yet, God reveals Godself in the world and through the world, taking the human reality upon Godself. This is the highest paradox, namely the coming together of divinity and humanity; a paradox which is resolved only in the notion of ‘divine mystery’. “God is mystery and freedom”, explained Berdyaev.⁵ Thus, there is need to free the idea of God from the erroneous anthropomorphism of the past, which has confined the idea of God to the limited images of human thought and speculation. This is the negative approach in theology—i. e. the method of negativity or apophaticism—that maintains the ineffability and the unknowability of God. It maintains that God is not ‘necessity’, not ‘determinism’ and not a ‘determining cause’.⁶ There is, however, also need to ‘humanize’ God, as long as humanity is perceived also to be divine, and revelation as being inclusive of the human. “Not only is man made in the image and likeness of God, but God also is made in the image and likeness of man”,⁷ wrote Berdyaev. The humanity addressed here, however, is the humanity with its ‘divine depth’, rather than the humanity of the ‘empirical man’ with ‘his’ obsequious boundedness.⁸ The human being, made in the image of God, thus participates in the infinite divine Mystery, and any belittling of the human reality is a belittling of the divine.

This apophatic-mystical approach of Eastern theology is comparable to Heidegger’s critique of some abstract structures of human thought maintained in both philosophy and theology. Heidegger also opted for the incomprehensible nature of being as such, as the human being remains incapable of any knowledge of its essence, maintaining that the true path [der wahre Weg, ὁδὸς αληθής] is a mystical path [μῦθος ὁδοῖο].⁹ Heidegger referred to being as such as “the destiny of being” and as Mystery. The Mystery (or the destiny) of being is not confined to the human being, rather it is beyond him/her. “Human beings do not decide whether and how beings appear, whether and how God and the gods or history and nature come forward into the clearing of being, come to presence and depart.”¹⁰ Nevertheless, human beings need to correspond and adjust themselves to the truth of being, by which they become the guards of being as such. Being is “further than all beings and is yet nearer to the human being than every being”.¹¹

Through the words of the mystical poet, Heidegger pointed to the inaccessible nature of divine ‘cause’ that is beyond human intellect and thought:

—The rose is without why; it blooms because it blooms,

it cares not for itself; asks not if it’s seen.—¹²

Heidegger conceived of the rose as an ideal for the human soul to imitate, and thereby to be free of the concerns of searching for reasons and grounds. Human beings truly are only when “in their own way they are like the rose—without why.”¹³ Thus, far from representational thinking, Heidegger pointed to a realm free of the search for verifications and justifications. It is the realm where the human being encounters being and dwells in it. In this sense it would be possible—and perhaps most faithful—to perceive being as such, or God, as Mystery; a Mystery that manifests itself through the presencing of all particular beings. This further implies that the human being is the shepherd of the Mystery, since he/she is the one concerned about the Mystery, and even the one who speaks or acts on behalf of it. Thus, the human being in his/her essence is more than merely human, that is, more than a rational creature, as the human being has traditionally been conceived. On the other hand, the human being is not the master of beings, as subjectivist metaphysics maintains. Contrary to this, the human being is the ‘poor’ shepherd of being. By being the shepherd, or the guard, of being, the human subject is disposed toward his/her essential being, namely toward the truth of being. Furthermore, the human being him/herself is a mystery that is a part, or a particle, of the one Mystery. By the way of analogy, the human being remains the shepherd not only of Mystery as being as such, or God, but also of the whole cosmos, as he/she plays a mediating role in bringing the cosmos to self-fulfillment. Thus, the human being carries within him/herself, beside the human, both the divine and the cosmic, which are interiorly bound, with the three together constituting the one Mystery, a kind of threefold unity that is revealed through a circulatory relationship. The cosmos needs the human being and the human being longs for the divine.¹⁴ This short introduction on the notion of ‘mystery’ sets at once several Christian doctrines—such as creation, incarnation, salvation, death and resurrection—within the realm of the Mystery.

The perception of God as Mystery indicates the improbability of conceiving God—or being as such—in abstraction as an entity apart from existing beings. Being is the being of whatever is. It approaches the human subject through all that exists. It is part of every self-comportment, even toward the self, though it is best described in terms of an enigma rather than through any categorical or scientific definitions. Being emerges through the openness and the receptivity of the human being, manifesting itself, constantly anew, in its very individual and genuine particularity on the path of thought, yet simultaneously concealing itself. Thus, being is not readily available to thinking, and the path to being as such—or the path to God—is arduous and hard, since modern human thought is not trained in such thinking. Heidegger maintained that it would not be possible for the contemporary human being to inquire about God without taking the rigorous task of thinking—namely opening the self to being or God—upon oneself.¹⁵ Hence, the sole concern of thinking is to bring to language the advent of the Mystery of being. This is why pure thinking always says the same, though in different words and terms as the advent of the Mystery differs from one situation to another. This, however, needs vigilance and heedfulness in order to say what is original and not to comply with the banality of one’s everydayness.

Heidegger quoted the words of Parmenides (6 – 5^th cen. BCE): “ἔστι γὰρ εἶναι” [“for there is being”], perceiving beings as indicating the primordial Mystery of being, in which relation alone could ‘is’ be appropriately used.¹⁶ This also denoted that being occurs primordially through time and space, causing or giving being through its own be-ing, without, however, resulting in its restriction or localization by or in any particular being. Being, rather, always manifests itself anew. Hence, no matter how near one could come to being there would always be some more distance, a further of the path that one would need to walk. The time would never come when the human subject would be able to say that he/she knows God or grasps being completely. On the other hand, modern science and metaphysics fail to perceive the manifestations of being in and through the innumerable presencing of all particular beings. They attempt to represent nature, beings and reality through their own delineations and classifications, objectifying and dominating them and making them conform to their own conceptions and representations. Heidegger contrasted this modern craving to control and master everything with the openness and responsiveness of the ancient Greeks to the utterance of being. Nevertheless, Heidegger indicated the nearness of being to modern science and technology in the same manner as he did concerning its immanency to early Greek thought. Thus, being as Mystery approaches us but nevertheless remains hidden. Though being reveals itself, or as Heidegger puts it ‘casts’ itself, again and again, toward the human being, nevertheless one always abandons it by attempting an investigation or an interpretation of being. Being, whenever interpreted, turns into a being and, hence, being as such is cast away. “Being has already cast itself over us and toward us. Being: casting itself toward us and cast away by us.”¹⁷ Being confronts human thought with an impasse, which is the very character and essence of being as such. Hence, instead of speculating and endeavoring to find possible ways of discerning being, one is first to be at home in that impassable abode without questioning it, as questioning is applicable and relevant to beings and not to being as such. In that impassable abode the human being is rightly at home since his/her very essence belongs to that abode.¹⁸

This impassable abode to which the human being belongs corresponds to the ecstatic union of the human being with the divine darkness maintained by the negative theology of Orthodoxy. Such unity necessitates the denial of all reference to beings, and requires the abandonment of affirmative theology, which describes the divinity in the light of beings in terms of both their sameness and difference. This is to say that negative theology denies that the divinity acts as cause in relation to beings.¹⁹ Furthermore, the notion of ‘the mystical [or spiritual] journey’ in the mystical tradition of both the East and the West is comparable to Heidegger’s notion of essential thinking—or pure thinking. Through both spiritual journey and essential thinking, the human being lays aside all that belongs to the exterior world and delves into the inner self where God, or being as such, and with it the true self of the person, comes to manifestation. Heidegger found in the tradition of the mystics something like ‘thinking’ [Denken]. Thus, referring to the medieval mystic and theologian Meister Eckhart, he wrote:

… [O]ne is inclined to get the idea that the most extreme sharpness and depth of thought belong to the genuine and great mystics. This is also true. Meister Eckhart proves it.²⁰

Heidegger mainta...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• A Word of Thanks
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Openness to the Mystery
• 2 The Human Reality – Its Worldliness and Transcendence
• 3 The Human Spirit and the Divine
• 4 Christianity as Authenticity
• 5 Temporality and Eternity
• Conclusion
• Subject Index
• Author Index