Modernity/Post-Modernity

Heidegger is indebted in a profound fashion to Aristotle. This article employs Heinz Happ's analysis of Aristotle to propose that, whereas Joseph Owens' The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics neglects the Aristotelian "Material-Series" of "many", "other", "unequal" and "unlike", Heidegger neglects the Aristotelian "Form-Series" of "one", "same", "equal", and "similar". This is because Heidegger reads "matter" in the Aristotelian sense not as "stuff" but as "possibility". As a consequence Heidegger stresses the "situatedness" of "thrown Being-in-the-world" as the place where possibilities are experienced to the exclusion of the eidetic of actuality and mere static "presence". Two theological implications are drawn from this analysis: 1) Aristotle's "unification" of the Material and Form-Series in the Unmoved Mover suggests the inseparability of possibility and actuality and allows the contemplation of "God" as possibility above actuality. 2) A theological recovery of the "Form-Series" can aid us in understanding the Pauline Christian notions of "being in Christ" and "possessing the mind of Christ".

Again and again throughout the history of Christian thought theological apologetics has dissolved the great ironic paradox of Jesus Christ into binary oppositions. In these historical contexts cultural relevancy has prevailed, and the underlying philosophical ideology has generated a disastrous subversion of the apologentic formulations of Christology in the New Testament. By calling this dichotomization into question, this essay intends to promote a postmodern hermeneutics that preserves the christological paradox and orients the constituting consciousness of theologians and scholars to both a spirituality of "being-affected by" the biblical witness to Jesus Christ and a faith that will initiate action toward the transformation of society.