Overcoming Onto-Theology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith Book

The hermeneutics of finitude and the hermeneutics of suspicion as found in the works of Augustine, Heidegger, Kant, Nietzsche, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Derrida, and others is brought to bear on theology; specifically, how we know and talk about God. What we're left with is a radical critique of religious and theological arrogance. God's name is not known, it is wondered at. And woe to him who invokes God for his own causes, failing to know that when we speak of God, we speak of One who dwells in unapproachable light, who dwells not in temples made by human hands.

I applaud Westphal's lucid and challenging set of essays. It was a joy to read. And I've never been so impressed with the theological resources to be found in Nietzsche. Westphal proclaims, along with Nietzsche, that "God is dead." Namely, the god of "onto-theology," the god of our making, the god who operates on our human terms. In the place of this death of god, the Wholly Other resurrects; in the place of the death of epistemological certainty, hermeneutics of faith resurrects. As John the Baptist said, He must increase and we must decrease.