Heidegger and Dasein

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) uses the expression Dasein--a term which refers to a particularize experience that is peculiar to human beings. It is a singular particular atomized existential event. Thus, it is a form of being that has an nano by nano second ongoing awareness that must confront such issues as person-hood, mortality and the dilemma or paradox of living in relationship with other humans while being ultimately alone with oneself.

To me Dasein means "being there" in the moment as we project one moment into the next. Dasein is purposeless yet contingent and responsive within the context of “being there.” The moment, therefore, carries its own purpose. The clock of purposes, however, is disturbed by multitudinous wills, the primary will being God in whom we live and move and have our being. Time is as if we live in a cage, free to move about to the extent in which we have opportunity. Objectivity is only made possible by the creative will—that being, of course, God. This is an implied conclusion, however, not necessarily an ontological one. All creaturely events point to a contingent predecessor. God is not a creature, as the very concept negates that possibility. Nothing can create itself. At best it can procreate, but never create. Creatures can imagine, design, and shape creation, but never create such as such. This I base on the logical of experience, both personal and communal.

For we Christians to insist that we can know God is never predicated on the ability to seize God as an object of possession. It is, however, to experience God in His personhood. That is in His expressions as God.  

Think of it this way. A man walks into the room but says nothing. All you may know about him is that he appears to be like man as we define man, a homosapien in comparison to other objects we perceive. Do we therefore know “this man?”  Or do we know about “this man?” At best we know about this man. His height, weight, color, clothes he wears, and so forth. There is indeed very little that we know. For all we know, we may also be hallucinating. We do however begin to understand the what as a who when the what speaks and begins to act. In these cases, however, we only still know about him until he evokes a certain trust in who he is—once he deviates from that however we are back to square one for all practical purposes. 

When Bultmann speaks of knowing God only through the Word, this is precisely what he means. That is we know God in His personhood, but not Him as an object. To formulate an analogy and then call that form is to make an idol out of the concept of God. God is not a concept. He is a person, the I Am, the only I Am there is, as all other I am-s are contingent I am-s; not so with God, He is the I Am that I Am, unique in His personhood. Man can not say, “I am that I am” since he is self-existent within himself, there is no aseity with man. Man is fully contingent except in relationship with God, who them becomes man’s self-sufficiency by Grace and Grace alone. This is no doubt what is meant by “When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God.” Likeness is always contingent, never unique as such. The pattern is not the original, nor is a painting the actual image of what it represents. When Christ became man, He took on the likeness of Man, made in the image of God, not God made in the image of man since He was already God (2 Corinthians 4:4). There is a subtle but necessary difference here.

Both Heidegger’s and Bultmann’s theology has a tendency to pull you down a stream of logic then abandon you on the shoals of nonsense. This, I mean in the strictest sense of the word, sensuality—that is as in the 5 senses are abandoned in favor of the ethereal world of imagination and the aggrandizement of analogical love, steering us, of course, along the path of dialectical discourse, that is between the subject and the object of concern. The results are really nothing more than an imaginary debate between an elusive but stimulating idea of God possibility—some would say of Anslemic proportions, as if the very thought of God is a sufficient ontology.   

There are, however, some salvageable characteristics, one being a framework for discussion. That I say because on discussion, including debate, can function without a common language, in this case being analogy. The end results of such discourse are not without disappointment, since in essence there is no sensible "there" "there"—that process, understandable, is not in the acceptable sense of the word, since a there must be a "there" "there" in the real sense or all else is nonsense.

A framework for discussion is not enough, however. It is as if a blind man puts together a puzzle using his tactile skills and innate knowledge of space and so-forth only to be told that indeed he has arranged all the pieces perfectly, but the puzzle so arranged is on the table right side down thus obscuring the picture beneath. 

Got it? If not, don't sweat it. Your eternal salvation is much more secure than that.

JimR_/