Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 26:2 (May 1964)
Article: The Later Heidegger and Theology
Author: Cornelius Van Til

WTJ 26:2 (May 64) p. 121

The Later Heidegger and Theology

Cornelius Van Til

The series of books to be published under the title New Frontiers in Theology promises to be of unusual interest and value.

This series is to consist of discussions between German and American theologians. These discussions are to differ from preceding ones by the fact that they will “identify future trends at the germinal stage of programmatic essays”. (p. vii). The editors explain this point as follows: “Accordingly, each volume will present in translation such a programmatic essay, introduced by Professor Robinson with an analysis of the German situation in which it emerged and in terms of which it has its significance. This will be followed by constructive and critical contributions to the issue by American theologians of promise. Finally, reappraisals of the issue in the light of these American contributions will be presented both by Professor Cobb and by the German author of the essay under analysis” (idem).

We now center our attention on the subject discussed in the first volume.1 In this first volume the “later Heidegger” is to pass back and forth across the Atlantic.

It is well known that Martin Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit (Erste HÄlfte), published in 1927, has greatly influenced the thinking of Rudolf Bultmann and his followers. But what of Heidegger’s later works?

The answer given is as follows. In 1953 theologians began to speak of a turn in Heidegger’s thought. But it was not till 1959 that the “explosive potentialities of ‘the later Heidegger’ for theology became evident” (p. 5). At that time “a young Privat-Dozent at Basel, Heinrich Ott, presented a monograph arguing that the later Heidegger shows us that the philosophy

WTJ 26:2 (May 64) p. 122

of Heidegger as a whole is more compatible with Barthian theology than with Bultmannian theology. The significance of this monograph was enhanced by Heidegger’s positive appraisal of it” (idem). At this news lightning flashed all over the theological sky, in America as well as in Germany.

Here is Heidegger, by many thought to be the most profound thinker among modern philosophers. And here is Karl Barth, the greatest of modern theologians. Have they not always been going in opposite directions? Has not Heidegger’s famous book, Sein und Zeit, been called a “‘gott-loses’ Buch” (Walter Schulz, Der Gott der neuzeitlichen Metaphysik, p. 46)? Did not Heidegger himself set his philosophy over against the Christian religion? And did not Barth set his theology over against Heidegger as well as over against p...