Revelation, Christ, and Saturated Phenomenon
Jesus expects the hearer to be a witness, to expose and proclaim what he [the hearer] has seen: the mysterion appearing as such, even and especially when he does not yet understand it. In short, he expects the hearer to cross over the epistemological break by entering into what he does not understand and which nevertheless comprehends him, by exiting from his point of view in order to draw near to the point of view of anamorphosis.
— Jean-Luc Marion, Givenness and Revelation, p. 79–80.
That Christ shows (himself) (as) the gift that the invisible (the Father) gives in a visible icon means, for a man’s gaze, to see oneself seen by the Father, in the gaze of Christ seen visibly and invisibly as the Son. In this way the putting of the Christ into an icon is accomplished, which properly defines the work of the Spirit.
— Jean-Luc Marion, Givenness and Revelation, p. 86.
Such a manifestation ad extra of the Trinity to men (even the non-believing) does not imply any fading of the mysterion into some sort of negativity of spirit or worldly profanation; on the contrary, far from the Trinity being dissolved in exteriority, this manifestation provokes the “crowd,” and especially the disciples, to believe that which shows itself as it gives itself, and therefore to enter into the Trinity.
— Jean-Luc Marion, Givenness and Revelation, p. 88.
The third chapter of Givenness and Revelation, in which Jean-Luc Marion constructed his phenomenological account on revelation through the person of Jesus Christ, might be one of the most difficult theological and philosophical analysis I have ever read. Such construction did not only involve the thoughts of prominent philosophers of phenomenology, such as Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, but also numerous references to the four gospel (mainly Matthew 13:1–23; Mark 4:1–20; Luke 8:4–21; and some verses from John), the corpus Paulinum (notably from 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, and Colossians), a somewhat implied reference to the Dogmatic Constitution of the Council of Chalcedon (see p. 86), and an implied reference to Augustine’s formula of the Trinity (see p. 88). In order to appeal to my implied reader’s convenience, while also deepening my reflection on this chapter, I decided to not linger on these variables and, instead, focus more on the notions which appear most striking to me in my reading. These notions are none other than mysterion, anamorphosis, and the hyperbole of charity.
Marion opened the third chapter of his work by immediately unpacking the concept of mysterion, a term that denotes the mysteriousness of revelation, especially the Kingdom of God, on the foundation of the logic which he already posed in the preceding chapter. Quoting from the three synoptic gospels, which I have mentioned before, the French philosopher argued that mysterion holds within it a paradox, namely, the tension between its secrecy (and to some extent, its unknowability) and its universal givenness as an eschatological event; a unique and unrepeatable phenomenon that breaches through the actual [or, in other words, the immanent] in its impossibility. In response to this paradox, Marion then referred to the corpus Paulinum, which shows that the apostle Paul was able to comprehend and proclaim the mysterion to the Greeks despite its apparent secrecy and unknowability. As the explanation of the corpus went further, Marion proposed the key to the apostle’s capability of understanding and annunciating the unknowable yet universal phenomenon. This key is manifested in the form of an all-too-familiar phrase (for a Christian) that contrasts the “wisdom of God,” through which Paul and the other apostles spoke, to the “wisdom of this world,” through which the Jews and the Greeks apprehended the mysterion (1 Cor. 2:6–7).
Despite its notoriety for being cliché, I argue that the aforementioned phrase plays an important part in Marion’s notion on revelation. I’d even say that the phrase serves as a linchpin that holds Givenness and Revelation together. There are three reasons that support this argument. First, the phrase affirms Marion’s contrarian logic of revelation, which presupposes will and belief instead of direct knowledge and rationalization that constitute the logical foundations of natural knowledge. Second, as a consequence of this affirmation, the phrase indirectly answers the aporia of revelation by implying that revelation, or apokalypsis, is a phenomenon and not a science/knowledge in the natural sense; a phenomenon that has in it a logic which makes it reasonable in the phenomenological fashion instead of the epistemological. Third, the phrase also serves as a basis for anamorphosis — the phenomenological conversion of intentionality from the mind to the [Holy] Spirit, the logos to the Logos, the subject’s point of view to God’s point of view, the masterful mind to that of the witness, metaphysica to apokalypsis — which made the apostles’ proclamation of mysterion possible. Fourth, in relation to the second reason, the phrase serves as a basis for the account of Jesus Christ as saturated phenomenon, which is characterized by the hyperbole of charity.
On first glance, the hyperbole of charity might seem like an insignificant concept. One might also argue that the appearance of the term charity shows a lacuna in Marion’s thinking, that he confused a phenomenological account for an ethical one. However, an in-depth reading of this chapter will show that the term actually stands in relation to Jesus Christ’s act of giving himself, both to the Father (what Marion termed as “perfect inauthenticity”; see Givenness and Revelation, p. 85) and to the world. In giving himself hyperbolically to the Father, Jesus Christ has performed anamorphosis par excellence, an act through which he perfectly took the Father’s point of view and rendered the invisibility of the Father into a visible face. In giving himself hyperbolically to the world, Jesus Christ has shown the Father whom gives himself to the world as mysterion, an event that fills the subject’s visibility to the brim in its impossibility. Therefore, by the means of hyperbolic charity, Jesus Christ has fulfilled his role as the “eikon tou Theou tou auratou” (Col. 1:15), the medium through which God reveals himself as a phenomenon that oversteps the “wisdom of this world,” that is, the wisdom of being (or metaphysica; natural knowledge/science).
Marion’s account on Christ as saturated phenomenon ends in a bridge that connects this chapter to the last, which puts an emphasis on the logic of the Trinity. In retrospect, I’d say that the chapter has done well in tying up loose ends which has made an appearance from the introduction throughout the second chapter. Unfortunately, it also fails to elaborate on the problem of revelation in the reality of religious pluralism, which I have posited in my commentary on the second chapter. While the odds that the final chapter may address such issue seems small, the closure and conclusion that Marion offered to his project remain interesting to be seen.
Works Cited
Marion, Jean-Luc. 2016. Givenness and revelation, trans. Stephen E. Lewis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
