Abstract

The phenomenological project of Jean-Luc Marion’s Being Given should be distinguished from the theological project of his God without Being. In freeing phenomenological possibility to the self-giving of all phenomena, and in proposing a new figure of the subject who receives phenomena, Marion’s phenomenology provides the conceptual means for a philosophy of religion that admits the phenomenonality of unconditional revelation. And yet, thereremain striking parallels between the unconditional, self-giving phenomenon as it is described in the phenomenology of Being Given and the unconditional, self-giving God of the theological God without Being. This essay concludes by offering a framework for interpreting these parallels without claiming that the saturated phenomenon transforms phenomenology into theology and without claiming that phenomenological givenness limits revelation to its philosophical possibility.