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THE INCOMMENSURABILITY OF THE GIFT OF GOD TO THE EXPECTATION OFHUMAN: CONCEPT AND FAITH IN THE JOURNEY TO EMMAUS

Damaskinos Elias Issa-Duquesne University

Introduction:

The saturation of saturation –revelation– is for Jean-Luc

Marion the paradigm of saturated phenomena. Saturated phenomena

have an excess of intuition which crashes the receiver, or the

screen, “makes impossible to attain knowledge of an object.”1

Saturated phenomena flood intuition, are unable to be mastered,

and therefore demand infinite hermeneutics. While Marion

frequently talks about givenness, reduction, and the gift in his

phenomenological work, he doesn’t often mention faith in this

regard.

The major topic of this study is Marion’s approach to the

role of faith in the saturated phenomenon in his reading of

Luke’s account of the journey to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35).2 In his

article “They Recognized Him; And He Became Invisible to Them,” Marion

1 Jean-Luc Marion, In Excess: Studies of Saturated Phenomena, in Perspective in Continental Philosophy, 2001, ed. John D. Caputo, trans. Robyn Horner and Vincent Berrand (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), 159.

2 See Appendix I.

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tests the role of faith in revelation and its relationship to the

excessiveness of intuition and the lack of concept. He argues

that on the journey to Emmaus, Jesus gave the two disciples a new

concept. Put another way, the disciples received a new

hermeneutics and faith to compensate for the lack of concept

which they confronted in the crashing intuition of encountering

revelation.

In this paper, I argue that Marion’s proposal is in its

essence an attempt to conceptualize faith. In so doing, Marion on

the one hand contradicts the traditional Christian understanding

of faith while using its text and language. On the other, he

contradicts himself and his own previous thoughts about faith.

Having that in mind, I hope to present how Marion’s thoughts have

shifted from receiving faith as a relational experience to taking

it for granted as conceptual. To accomplish this I will first

present an account of the journey to Emmaus in its broader

biblical context, and follow it with an analysis of Marion’s own

decontextualized reading of the story. Next, I will attempt to

discover the phenomenological background of each of Marion’s

claims in his reading of Emmaus, especially in relation to

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saturation, visibility, concept, intuition, and hermeneutics. And

finally, in presenting Marion’s thoughts on faith in his other

works, I will discuss the main features of the shift that he

makes, arguing that what he describes is a derivative sense of

Christian faith.

1. Marion and the account of Emmaus’ two disciples:

Marion begins his article “They Recognized Him; And He Became

Invisible to Them,”3 by showing what faith is not. Faith in God and

Christ for the majority, as Marion supposes, is to fill “the

deficit of intuition with regard to the proliferation of

concept.”4 On this account, “faith would serve, for better or

worse, to compensate faulty intuition, almost as a means to

verify the concepts experimentally.”5 This tells us that we do

not have the full intuition of God’s presence and that the

3 Jean-Luc Marion, “They Recognized Him; and He Became Invisible to Them,” Modern Theology 18, no.2 (April 2002): 145-152.

4 Ibid, 145.

5 Ibid.

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intuition is limited, thus we need faith to extend this limited

intuition to be adequate for our concepts.

According to Marion, “intuition without concept is as blind

as the concept without intuition is empty.”6 In this case of what

faith is not, the concept is empty because of the lack of intuition.

It follows, then, that the concept needs faith to fill this lack

of intuition. Definitely, Marion considers this view of faith to

be “blasphemous”7 because it calls Revelation into question by

making God and Christ incapable of fulfilling it. Moreover, this

faith for Marion makes God and Christ to become “perverse judges

who, in making themselves, expose me to unbelief by condemning me

to a faith without reason.”8

Marion rejects the inanity of such a definition of faith,

accepting at the same time that faith compensates a lack. But

what kind of lack? It is the lack of concepts in encountering

revelation as a saturated phenomenon. “It might be that we should

6 Robyn Horner, Jean-Luc Marion: A Theo-logical Introduction, (VT: Ashgate, 2005), kindle Location 3146/6387.

7 Marion, “They Recognized Him,” 146.

8 Ibid.

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believe not in order to recapture a lack in intuition, but rather

to confront its excess in relation to a deficiency of statements

and a dearth of concepts.”9 In revelation there is a

superabundant intuition given. For Marion, revelation “is a

phenomenon that is saturated with intuition, and that requires

faith in order to compensate the lack in our conceptual

capacity.”10 This is what Marion intended to show by illustrating

the episode of Emmaus in the Gospel of Luke (24:13-25)11.

The Context of the Emmaus Story:

Although Marion starts directly with the journey to Emmaus,

it is useful to begin by putting the text in its original context

in Luke 24. Luke 24 tells us how three days after Jesus’ death,

the women find the tomb empty and have been told by an angel that

Jesus is risen. Unable to believe this story, Peter, the apostle,

goes to the tomb and finds it empty. The disciples could not

9 Ibid.

10 Shane Mackinlay, “Eyes Wide Shut: A Response to Jean-Luc Marion’s Account of The Journey to Emmaus,” Modern Theology 20, no.3 (July 2004):447-455 at 449. ATLA Religious with ATLASerials. EBSCO. Web. February 1st, 2014.

11 Appendix II.

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believe what the women have told them, because they saw Jesus

dead and in the tomb. For them, as for us, the dead are dead,

period. The death of Jesus caused the disciples to stumble,

because they could not understand how Jesus, as the redeemer sent

by God to redeem Israel could die. This is the context in which

the disciples were traveling to Emmaus. On the road travelling

and talking about the exact same thing, Jesus joins them, asking

them about what they are discussing. Astonished “that one could

be ignorant of what everyone knows,”12 they report that Jesus, “a

prophet mighty in deed and in word before God and all the

people,” has been crucified. They share their distress over his

death and bemoan the lost hope of Israel’s redemption. They

conclude with their confusion about the news which they have been

told by the women. Jesus then rebukes them for being “foolish”

and “slow of heart to believe”13 the scripture. Then, he starts to

interpret for them all that has been written about him in the

scriptures. At the end of their walk, the disciples ask Jesus to

stay with them, and at the table, he takes bread and blesses it,

12 Marion, “They Recognized Him,” 146.

13 This is an important quotation from the gospel and it will be part ofthe debate with Marion’s usage of it.

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breaks it and gives it to them, and instantly vanishes from their

sight, right after their eyes were opened. It is at this point

that they finally recognize him. The story ends with the

disciples’ journey back to Jerusalem where they proclaim what has

happened to them.

Marion’s reading of the story:

First and foremost, Marion is reading this story to address

the relationship between faith and revelation. The two disciples

lived through incidents and events that happened “without any

apparent reason, without any foreseeable cause,”14 and the major

event that they discuss is, as Marion stresses, the condemnation

and death of Jesus. Marion considers this “event” as a “fact

guaranteed by an intuition offered to all, to the public, and to

which an entire city can testify.”15 The intuition is complete,

but the disciples were not able to attain it and understand it,

as they lack the adequate concepts. The problem is exactly this

for Marion; the disciples have an abundance of intuition, not

14 Marion, “They Recognized Him,” 146.

15 Ibid.

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just from the event of the crucifixion, but also from their

experience with Jesus during his life and teachings. There is no

lack at all of evidence, but of concepts.

That their eyes did not recognize Jesus seems to be an

interesting detail for Marion. According to his understanding of

concept and intuition, their intuition is now blind because of

their lack of concept. This “blindness of intuition” is an

effective way to communicate the disciples’ intellectual

blindness about the crucifixion. Marion compares this situation

to our situation in dealing with Revelation, and in fact equates

the two. Therefore, “Jesus does not lack visibility, but rather

they [the disciples] lack the capacity to understand what they

see”16 exactly, and, as Marion says, are like the one who sees

nothing in a game of chess and does not know how to play it.17

Marion calls this status “a phenomenon intuitively certified, yet

missed conceptually,”18 and explains that the disciples have

16 Mackinlay, “Eyes Wide,” 450.

17 Marion, “They Recognized Him,” 147. Marion also brings another example of the one who hears just noise in the conversation with a language that he/she does not know.

18 Ibid, 147.

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already encountered such a phenomenon during Jesus’ life, e.g.

transfiguration.

Having said that, Marion observes that the saturated

phenomenon and intuitive manifestation of God, Jesus, has crashed

into the disciples because they are now without any means to

handle this gift. They need to be transformed from the level of

their logoi to the level of Jesus’ logos.19 Marion explains that

this lack of concept is due to the incommensurability of God’s

gift and human expectation. “What is more, the miscomprehension

even appears inevitable—so much does the inadequacy of our

concepts to the factual intuition of Christ result directly from

the incommensurability of the gift of God to the expectation of

men.”20

What is the solution? Marion holds that Jesus gave on the

road a source to provide the disciples with new concepts. These

new concepts, he claims, will in turn be adequate to the

intuition that the disciples received and did not understand. In

19 Marion mentions these two terms frequently in his article.

20 Marion, “They Recognized Him,” 148.

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other words, faith will help in filling the gap of

incommensurability that Marion takes as the reason for the

disciples’ deficiency of concept.

And when the concept at last matches the intuition, thephenomenon bursts forth with its superabundant glory:“Did not our hearts [and thus our minds] burn within uswhile he talked to us on the road in such a way as toopen to us the [concepts of the] Scriptures?” (v. 32).This fervor comes neither from the bare texts, nor fromthe obscured ideas of men, but from the perfectadaptation of the thoughts of God (recorded in theScriptures) to the acts of God (gesta Christi offered toour intuition), which manifest in a perfect phenomenon“the mystery hidden for ages in God […] the manifoldwisdom of God” (Ephesians 3:9–10).

For Marion the fulfillment of the teaching and the axial

point of this text is the hermeneutic that Jesus gave on the

road. What follows is the breaking of the bread, which is for

Marion a signification given by Jesus “that cannot be missed” and

“that will at long last give meaning to all the intuitions that

up to then remained scattered and absurd.”21 This signification

made Jesus’ phenomenon visible. Here, Marion’s focus inexplicably

21 Ibid, 150.

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shifts from Jesus’ crucifixion as a prophet and redeemer to his

Resurrection.

Marion concludes his article with some statements about

faith and the saturated phenomenon of revelation. First, faith is

what we need to understand the saturated phenomenon par

excellence. For Marion, “faith does not compensate, either here

or anywhere else, for a defect of visibility: on the contrary, it

allows reception of the intelligence of the phenomenon and the

strength to bear the glare of its brilliance. Faith does not

manage the de cit of evidence—it alone renders the gaze apt tofi

see the excess of the pre-eminent saturated phenomenon, the

Revelation.”22 Second, faith makes concept adequate to the

intuition, and in the case of the disciples at Emmaus, the

invisible turns to be seen and constituted.

And here, as on the road to Emmaus, the point is to re-place all the intuitions into the signi cations offiGod; for all the intuitions that we receive from thegesta Christi can only be understood according to theirnal intention—“… it is tting to ful ll [plêrôthênai,fi fi fi

to ll, to saturate] everything that is written in thefiLaw of Moses, in the Prophets and in the Psalms—[all ofthis having been written solely in view] of me” (v. 4422 Ibid.

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= v. 27). The opening of the meaning, and thus of themind (for noûs, v. 46, expresses both) is decided inand by “the Scriptures”, taken not as pure letters, butas the recording of signi cations established by Godfiin order to constitute the intuitions of hisincarnation in a full and wholly complete phenomenon ofRevelation.23

The question here is while faith/concept makes the invisible

seen, why did Jesus disappear? Marion obviates this debate by

giving two reasons for Jesus’ disappearance. First, the issue

now is not to see Jesus but to make him be seen, i.e. to preach

his deeds. “In other words, to make it so that all receive the

signi cations that allow them to see that which the intuitionfi

offers, without rendering it manifest again.”24 And second, the

other reason is related intrinsically to the saturated phenomenon

in that it is “pre-eminently saturated, cannot be touched (John

20:17), nor even contemplated in this world which, in this time,

does not ‘have the space’ to contain the signi cations thatfi

would have to be ‘written’ (John 21:25).”25

23 Ibid, 151.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid, 151-2.

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2. Marion Formulates Intuition, Concept, and Faith:

In an attempt to debate with Marion’s article, it seems

enough to present how Marion describes saturated phenomenality.

In his understanding of saturated phenomena, Marion begins, as

Tamsin Jones states26, with the Kantian-Husserlian definition of

phenomenon. This definition depends on the principle of equation,

thus, phenomenon is a “matching or equating (adequatio) between

that which appears and the appearance as such, between one’s

‘concept’ and the fulfilling of ‘intuition’ of it.”27 Intuition

provides data, or “a specific opportunity for cognition”28, while

concept receives the data given by the intuition. The perfect

adequation between concept and intuition will make the truth

achievable.29 It is clear that the primacy is for the intuition

and not for the concept, and here I do not mean a hierarchical

primacy, but one in giving. Marion takes a step further dealing

with concept and intuition in proposing another formula than the26 Tamsin Jones, A Genealogy of Marion’s Philosophy of Religion: Apparent Darkness,

(Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2011), 111.

27 Ibid, 111-12.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

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equation. He proposes the “saturated phenomenon as the ‘paradigm’

of phenomenality, in which intuition supplies more than is needed

to fill a particular concept.”30 This excess of intuition is far

beyond what concepts could receive and organize, making

constitution of the phenomenon as an object impossible. Moreover,

in this excessiveness of intuition, “we experience them

[phenomena] by way of a ‘passive synthesis’ which they impose on

us.”31 This is a reference point for Marion in his account of

Emmaus, where he starts his argument with correction of the

definition of faith and that the lack is a lack of concept in

encountering an excess of intuition.

Mackinlay argues, as Jones, that Marion defines “four ways

in which the phenomena can be saturated”32, and that these four

ways are following a Kantian table of categories: quantity,

quality, relation, and modality. Marion does not limit his

phenomenality to these four categories but rather introduces a

30 Mackinlay, “Eyes Wide,” 448.

31 Jean-Luc Marion, Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, Trans. Jeffrey L. Kosky (California: Stanford University Press, 2002), 226.

32 Mackinlay, “Eyes Wide,” 448, Jones, Genealogy, 112.

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fifth type which is revelation, which he defines as “saturates

phenomenality to the second degree, by saturation of

saturation.”33 This is why in the Emmaus account Marion presents

revelation as having an excess in intuition that crashes into the

disciples.

Visible or apparent:

Visibility in the account of Emmaus plays a central role in

the scene. Marion “the theologian,” argues that the invisibility

of Jesus after the breaking of the bread is a call for mission in

his name. Marion “the philosopher,” however, argues that this is

because the saturated phenomenon is untouchable. This argument is

related to his use of “visibility” as “a quality of the

phenomenon”34 where he always differentiates between visible and

visable.35 The visable is that which can be aimed at or intended. For

example, the empty concept which we can consider visable as it33 Marion, Being Given, 235.

34 Jones, Genealogy, 113.

35 I am in debt to Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012), 9-22 in presenting visable and visible in here.

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finds no adequate match through intuition. On the other hand,

visible or “apparent”36 is to refer to that which is appears through

intuition. For Marion the saturated phenomenon is invisible,

untouchable, unaimable, and irregardable, but nonetheless

apparent, “and therefore describable, albeit…in fragmented and

partial way.”37 Reflecting on this analysis on Marion’s reading

of Emmaus, one can say that the disciples moved from encountering

the visable to be met with the apparent of revelation. This

transformation happened through Jesus’ interpretation and

hermeneutics.

Christ and Saturated phenomenon:

Jesus Christ for Marion is intrinsically attached to

revelation. Mackinlay describes this as: “Marion proposes ‘the

manifestation of Jesus Christ, as it is described in the New

Testament’, as a privileged example and ‘paradigm of the

phenomenon of revelation’. What he says about Christ, then, is

significant not only in itself, but also because of its

36 Jones, Genealogy, 113.

37 Ibid.

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consequences for his understanding of revelation, of saturated

phenomena, and of phenomenality in general.”38 Marion’s

understanding is manifested in Emmaus’ account in considering the

hermeneutics provided by Jesus as the perfect hermeneutics that

gives the disciples the new concepts in interpreting the

excessiveness of intuition. Marion in his stunning book, “Being

Given: Toward Phenomenology of Givenness,” designates Christ as the

example par excellence of a saturated phenomenon, and discusses how

Christ is related to the Kantian four categories:39 a). as the

quantity Christ is unforeseeable. b). With regard to quality

Christ cannot be borne. c). As relation, Christ’s time is not “of

the world” but it is unique. And finally, d). As for modality,

Christ constitutes us as witness, but he himself cannot be

constituted. In relation to this paper, the fourth category seems

applicable for Marion’s reading of the Emmaus account. Christ is

not able to be constituted, so the disciples could not constitute

the revelation at all., Rather, Christ constitutes them as

38 Mackinlay, “Eyes Wide,” 448.

39 I am using Being Given here 236-239.

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witnesses by giving them new concepts –hermeneutics– or, for

Marion, faith.

Witness and hermeneutics:

Tamsin Jones, in “A Genealogy of Marion’s Philosophy of Religion,”

refers to the public discussion with Marion and Richard Kearney

in October 2001.40 The main topic of the debate was the place of

hermeneutics in Marion’s phenomenology. Kearney’s question was

how we place hermeneutics within the method of “reduction to pure

givenness.” Marion’s answer gave a definition of the role of

hermeneutics in the saturated phenomenon and the excessiveness of

intuition. He says: “we need hermeneutics precisely because of

the ‘surplus of intuition.’ [and hermeneutics is] always an

inquiry for further concept, [therefore,] hermeneutics is

generated when we witness an excess rather than a lack of

information [concept].”41 How do we relate this statement to his

understanding of the Emmaus’ account? Since the disciples are

encountering the revelation and the saturated phenomenon

40 Jones, Genealogy, 116-20.

41 Ibid, 117. Jones italicized the text.

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simultaneously, they need to interpret what had happened. Their

interpretation was inadequate to hold the intuition, and so they

needed an adequate hermeneutics and concept. Hence the

hermeneutic is generated and given again by Jesus Christ’s

interpretation, thus they were transformed into witnesses, and

they started with Jesus the endless hermeneutics which

compensates the conceptual deficit.

This role of hermeneutics seems to be identical to the role

and significance of faith in Marion’s article. By faith given to

them through hermeneutics and through the compensation of

concept, they started an endless hermeneutics which manifested in

their journey back to Jerusalem. “The greater the factum the

higher intensity of intuition, the more interpretation is needed,

including a multitude of interpretative voices. Thus, excessive

phenomena require an infinite hermeneutic.”42 Probably, this is

what Marion has in his mind while reading Emmaus. The main

question raised by this reading is whether faith fulfills the

requirement of saturated phenomenon to have an infinite

42 Jones, Genealogy, 120.

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hermeneutic. Is it acceptable to consider faith as a

compensation first, and as a compensation of concepts second?

3. Questioning Marion on the Road to Emmaus:

Having said that, Marion’s article embodies his own

phenomenological proposal, especially in regard to the saturated

phenomenon. Provocatively working on the boundary between

phenomenology and theology, he integrates faith and concept in

such a way that, I believe, creates difficulties and plays a

problematic role in the Christian reception of his reading of the

journey to Emmaus. More broadly, this reading presents some

difficulties for its reception by biblical scholars, theologians,

and phenomenologists. I will try to discuss the difficulties on

the level of the text’s context and translation, concept, and the

proposal of “faith and phenomenon.”

The text as such:

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Any biblical expert knows that Marion cuts Emmaus’ text out

of its original context of Luke 24, which is of course included

in the resurrection narrative in Luke’s gospel. In this way,

Marion lessens some of the text’s value and makes the assumption

that his readers are already familiar with Luke 24 as a whole.

Although he excludes them, verses 24:1-12 have two important

significations, which both would have helped Marion in his

reading. The first is the speech of the “two men in clothes that

gleamed like lightning” inside the tomb, and the reminder about

the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus. If Marion had used

that, it would have established the disciples’ initial

foolishness at Emmaus, and that the intuition was excessive. The

second one is in the apostles’ reaction to the news carried by

the women: “then they came back from the tomb, they told all

these things to the Eleven and to all the others. It was Mary

Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with

them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the

women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.” Marion

could have used this to support the lack of concept that the two

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disciples already carried with them before they started their

journey.

I agree with Mackinlay in his argument that Marion quotes

Jesus rebuking the slowness of understanding of the disciples, and

that Marion makes the text says something that actually it does

not.43 To quote the translation “slow to understand” is to say

that the text alludes directly to the problem of understanding

and the lack of the concept that the disciples had. “Undoubtedly,

the disciples' concepts of Jesus (as prophet or redeemer of

Israel) are inadequate, particularly because their understanding

of him does not include suffering and death. However, the gospel

text does not point to this as the fundamental problem.”44 For

Marion the problem of understanding is essential in the text, and

he conjoins it to faith’s role in revelation at the end of the

argument. “Why do they not understand? Because they do not

recompose the signi cations from the starting point of thefi

Passion as revelation of the charity of God, and thus also of the

43 Mackinlay, “Eyes Wide,” 451.

44 Ibid.

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Resurrection as the ful llment of this very charity.”fi 45 The Greek

text of Luke 24:25 reads “slow of heart to believe,” but to believe

what? To believe what the text, that Marion does not mention,

told them, and what Jesus has been teaching them before his

death. In that the text says “to believe,” the disciples just

“see nothing in the very straightforward sense of believing that

there is nothing more to be seen”46 when Jesus joined them. On

the contrary, for Marion to use the inaccurate rendering, “slow

to understand,” is a transparent attempt to support his examples

about the rules of chess mentioned above, to make the disciples

overwhelmed to the extent that they hear and see nothing, and

therefore, they see nothing because they are dazzled by what they

have seen or heard before.47

It is worth noting that Marion uses the text of Emmaus in

his book “God Without Being” in the section about “the Eucharistic

site of theology,” where he emphasizes that “the word transmits

45 Marion, “They Recognized Him,” 148.

46 Mackinlay, “Eyes Wide,” 451.

47 Ibid.

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through the text the event.”48 On the contrary, Marion there uses

the more precise translation, “slow of heart to believe,” in his

argument to prove how we desire the referent in its very advent,

and “the referent was Christ who disqualifies their [the two

disciples’] hermeneutics.”49

Two Phenomena or One?

It is not clear which phenomenon Marion considers as the

main saturated one that the disciples’ concepts could not be

adequate to its intuition. In presenting the Emmaus example,

Marion posits that the intuition that they could not understand

is how Jesus “a prophet mighty in deed and word before God” was

condemned and crucified by the authorities. Marion stresses that

“here is the accident, the incident, the ‘event’, in short the

fact guaranteed by an intuition offered to all…”50 By contrast,

at the end of the article Marion posits again that the saturated

phenomenon is the Resurrection51 and that is after the breaking

48 Marion, God Without, 144.

49 Marion, “They Recognized Him,” 147.

50 Ibid, 146.

51 Ibid, 150.

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of the bread. The question here, then, is “in what phenomenon

does faith compensate its lack of concept?” Are both phenomena

one, or are they two? For Marion, in the first phenomenon the

interpretation given by Jesus makes “the concept [match] the

intuition.”52 The second phenomenon, however, needed the

signification of the breaking of the bread to become visible.

Marion does not make it clear where exactly faith plays its role

in revelation here. My assessment is that Marion tries to focus

on the first phenomenon because the concept in it could be

conceptualized, which is not a possibility in the second

phenomenon of Jesus’ resurrection. Moreover, Marion in the first

phenomenon echoes Louis-Marie Chauvet in his analysis of Emmaus

in “Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence.”

The radical point for the disciples seems to be a question

related to God and not just to the death of the mighty prophet,

Jesus. Chauvet claims that

[the stumbling block] centered on a more radical point:Could God still be God, our God, the God of ourancestors, it he raised up someone who had been justlycondemned to death for having blasphemed against theLaw of God given to Moses, that is, against God52 Ibid, 149.

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himself? Could God contradict himself?...[f]or the twodisciples it is a question of accepting the possibilitythat the word of God, according to scriptures, has cometo “deconstruct” their best established evidence concerning the“reality” of God.53

I believe that if Marion explicitly used Chauvet here, he

could have built a stronger case to discuss faith. Marion’s

concept of “faith” here could have been deeper than

conceptualizing some events, but rather it would be another

discussion about the reality of God. Faith, in my own belief, is

not dealing just with “event” revealed in a supernatural or

natural way, but rather it opens the question toward the reality

of the subject of faith. I stress here that reality does not have

anything to do with “Being” but the relational reality of God to

the people summoned to faith.

Which Faith?

Although I agree totally with Marion about the deficit of

concepts that the disciples, and we, have, it’s still difficult

to go so far with Marion in considering faith as restricted to

53 Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence, trans. Patrick Madigan, S.J., and Madeleine Beaumont (Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1995), 168. (emphasis is from the original text)

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the concepts that they –the disciples– lack. This specific text

and other resurrection narratives throughout the New Testament do

not support Marion’s proposal. If we assume, as Marion proposes,

that faith is the compensation of the lack of concept, why did

the disciples not know Jesus and receive the revelation fully on

the road, after Jesus’ interpretation? Why did they need a

signification and the act of breaking bread to recognize Jesus,

and to recognize that their “hearts were burning” while he was

talking to them? If we accept Marion’s proposal, one could ask,

what concept did Mary Magdalene lack? What was the concept that

Jesus gave to her when he called her “Mary” and immediately she

knew him John 20:11-16?54 How is faith, in Mary’s case, a

compensation for a deficiency of concept?

54 11 but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent overto look into the tomb 12 and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' bodyhad been, one at the head and the other at the foot. 13 They asked her, "Woman, why are you crying?" "They have taken my Lord away," she said, "and I don't know where they have put him." 14 At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. 15 "Woman," he said, "why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?" Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him." 16 Jesus said to her, "Mary." She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means Teacher). John 20:11-16 (NKJ).

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Another example is the story of Thomas the disciple (John

20:24-29)55 who did not believe that Jesus came to the other

apostles after his resurrection. Thomas said that unless he

touched the wounds of Jesus he was not going to believe. But as

soon as he saw Jesus he cried: My Lord and My God. What concept

did he lack? How did the appearance of Jesus fulfill his lack of

concept? These are all cases and questions which make Marion’s

proposal of conceptual faith questionable. Further, if one admits

with Marion the interpretation that Jesus gave the disciples the

new concepts that they needed, why was the role of faith not

fully active in grasping the excess of the phenomenon after the

interpretation was given? Mackinlay refers to this as a weakness

in Marion’s argument56 and states that “there is no evidence that

55 24 Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came.25 So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!" But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it." 26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomaswas with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" 27 Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubtingand believe." 28 Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!" John 20:24-29 (NKJ).

56 Mackinlay, “Eyes Wide,” 455.

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the new concepts Jesus gives them are adequate to make sense of

this [grasping the excess of the phenomenon].”57

It is fitting here to define the term “faith” in Marion’s

philosophy in order to bring a fair criticism to his approach

toward the Emmaus account. It seems that faith is not Marion’s

favorite topic in his main works as Mackinlay says “[Marion] does

not even mention faith in his main works.”58 Nonetheless,

Marion’s “Prolegomena to Charity”59 deals with the issue of faith. The

chapter about “Evidence and Bedazzlement” discusses how apologetic

theology does not conduct faith through its methodology, and thus

faith appears as not evidential, but rather an issue of will60 and

conviction. Marion refers to the failure of apologetic

methodology that uses reason to conduct faith.

57 Ibid, 451.

58 Ibid, 447.

59 Jean-Luc Marion, Prolegomena of Charity, in Perspective in Continental Philosophy 1998, trans. Stephen E. Lewis (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002).

60 Marion stresses that “will” is conceived not in metaphysical concept.“Will here indicates less a faculty, an attribute, or a power of existential decision making than the compelling cause about which Pascal says that “the will naturally loves…” Ibid, 59. (Emphasis added).

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Apologetics, in using reasons alone, can, in the bestof cases, constrain reason; but even in this event, itwill not for all that convince the will, and will failin its duty at the precise moment when it believes itis fulfilling it…In clearly distinguishing constraintfrom conviction, apologetics runs up against itsoriginality and its distinction: it becomes possible assuch only in admitting the impossibility of a necessarysuccess.61

Therefore, if faith in this case is not evidential, what

should it be? For Marion it is important “to know the truth not

only by reason but also by heart,”62 which alone “can reach the

ultimate truth.”63 The ultimate truth for Marion is definitely

charity. This is intrinsic in proving that reasons can reach

nothing when the fact of truth, charity, is the goal to reach.

Given that, Marion claims that “the will passes beyond reason

constrained by reasons only insofar as the order of charity

infinitely, supernaturally transcends the order of minds.”64

61 Ibid, 58.

62 Ibid, 59.

63 Ibid.

64 Ibid, 60.

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Depending on this statement, Marion announces love as the only

way to reach God.

No doubt there are gods that love does not essentiallycharacterize, and of which it is only a matter ofknowing. Such gnosis perhaps suits the “God of thephilosophers and learned men,” but in mattersconcerning the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” whoreveals himself in Jesus Christ as love, love alone issuitable for reaching him… [i]n Knowing God by lovingact of the will, man imitates God in his highest name,and becomes, by the grace of love, himself God.65

The key term here is the “loving act of will,” which leads

Marion to define faith as a decision made by the will to love or

not to love the Love. “Faith neither compensates for the lack of

evidence nor resolves itself in arguments, but decides by the

will for or against the love of Love.”66 Nevertheless, the

question remains, “where does this faith appear in Marion’s

account of Emmaus?” Actually it does not appear at all like this

in his article, which makes his proposal of faith in Emmaus’

story more problematic. Even though the breaking of the bread

could help in relating the Eucharistic experience of love and

65 Ibid, 61.

66 Ibid, 62.

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service to faith, Marion receives this event of breaking the

bread in this article as the “words” of Jesus. “Indeed, they [the

two disciples] will not truly recognize him until his ‘words’,

and thus his own significations and concepts allow them at last to

constitute the intuition, maddening for as long as it remained

bare, into a complete phenomenon.”67 There is a shift or

aberration in Marion’s thought about faith in the Emmaus story,

where faith plays a role in revelation to “allow reception of the

intelligence of the phenomenon…and renders the gaze apt to see

the excess of the pre-eminent saturated phenomenon.”68

Marion provides difficulties in his reading of faith of the

two disciples, and he contradicts his own approach and

definitions of faith. This paradox pushes Mackinlay, as Horner69

quotes him, to declare that “Marion goes against his own

methodology, since his argument results in the saturated

67 Marion, “They Recognized Him,” 151. Emphasis added.

68 Ibid, 150.

69 Robyn Horner, “On Faith: Relation to an Infinite Passing,” Australian eJournal of Theology 13, no.1 (2009), 1-21, accessed April 30, 2014, http:// http://aejt.com.au/2009/issue_13/?article=158324. She mentions that Marion “offers the least [compering with Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy] explicit commentaryon faith but is situated within a context of Christian commitment.” 1.

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phenomenon of Christ becoming quite ordinary once its saturation

is neutralized by concepts in the disciples moment of insight.”70

I believe that Marion diverges from his earlier approach to faith

in this article especially in the sense of the relationship

between love, and will. Instead, he offers another approach of

intuition, concept and faith. Therefore, Marion’s emphasis on

that “faith [as] the knowledge arrived at by way of love, a love

that wills to believe,”71 is now shifted to faith as a

compensation of concepts completed by the signification in order

to constitute the intuition of the revelation.

4. Compensate Marion’s faith in Emmaus:

Let us use Marion’s approach of faith, will, and love in an

attempt to apply it to the Emmaus story. The disciples had not

just a lack of concept but actually a lack of faith itself, which

was caused by the unbearable phenomenon of Jesus’ death and

70 Ibid, 10.

71 This is what Horner presents about Marion in her article “The weight of Love” in Counter-Experiences: Reading Jean-Luc Marion. Robyn Horner, “The weight of Love,” in Counter-Experience: Reading Jean-Luc Marion 2007, ed. Kevin Hart (Indiana: Notre Dame, 2007), 235-252.

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resurrection. With Jesus’ interpretation on the road, their will

surpasses the reason by reason given in Jesus’ interpretation and

their shift of understanding manifested in their invitation to

Jesus to stay with them. It is unusual to invite “a stranger” to

stay with you, especially if that stranger pretended that he was

going far, and that he rebuked you a bit ago. Therefore, there is

an insistence in this invitation. The breaking of the bread is a

signification but not of words as Marion suggested, but rather a

manifestation of “the presence of the risen Jesus to them because

of its connection with the Last Supper.”72 The key is the Last

Supper where the whole kenosis of Jesus is manifested in his

actions of love. First and foremost, we see his washing of the

disciples’ feet, and giving of his own body and blood. In other

words, Jesus gives himself to those who believe in him. These

actions of love were handed to the disciples as a means to keep

Jesus’ remembrance, and they were asked to observe love, to

accept love, and to direct their will toward Love. Confronting

the first phenomenon that Marion presents in his article – the

suffering and the death of Christ– the disciples suffered from

72 Mackinlay, “Eyes Wide,” 451.

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the lack of concept, that has been compensated on the road by

Jesus. By contrast, in front of the second phenomenon – the

Resurrection- the disciples received the breaking of the bread as

a reminder of love. “They receive again the personal offer of

love and preparedness to suffer that Jesus made at the Last

Supper.”73 Their faith now, according to Marion in “Prolegomena of

Charity,” decides by the will to be with Love, to be open to love,

and therefore to trust in Jesus’ commands to love and to give

themselves in love. Marion totally ignores the element of

acceptance in his reading of Emmaus, and the consequences were

manifested in considering faith as compensation for the lack of

the concepts and therefore, taking it as a conceptual

understanding.

Assuming that Marion is right in considering that faith has

only a conceptual component, it is completely adequate to name

“dogma” as faith. Further, faith would be merely “dogma.” If this

was right, any two people traveling to Emmaus, outside the

disciples’ circle, could have believed in Jesus after his

explanation of “dogma.” This conceptual faith in Jesus Christ73 Ibid, 452.

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will not be the factor to differentiate between believer and

unbeliever, and in this Marion contradicts his statement:

“nothing separates the believer from the unbeliever, except

faith, which plays out over nothing: nothing, which is here a way

to say the oscillation of the will in front of Love.”74

Moreover, according to Marion, the dogma of the church’s

councils would have to be the sole source of faith, which is

given to passive recipients. On the contrary in this case, the

dogma conceptualized by the councils, while it sought to preserve

Jesus’ teaching, also caused conflicts and tribulation, at times

reaching the stage of war and murder. Marion misses a fundamental

face of faith, which is the “openness to receiving revelation, as

acceptance of the claims made in revelation, as trust in what is

given, and as preparedness to make a personal commitment in

response.”75 In restricting faith to concept, Marion eliminates

the relational nature of faith. Faith is constituted on trust and

relationship to God (as we are talking about Christian faith)76,

74 Marion, Prolegomena, 64.

75 Mackinlay, “Eyes Wide,” 453.76 The Church’s Creed started “I believe in One God…” and actually this

translation does not give the core meaning of the Greek phrase “πιστεύω εἰς ἕνα Θεὸν” which means I put my trust into one God, and not just ‘Believe’ and

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in other words, faith in front of the saturated phenomenon of

revelation needs the will and the activity of the believer in

order to give openness to God. Ironically, this is what Marion

argues in “Prolegomena of Charity” which is quoted above. There is an

existential sense of faith, which is to be expressed within a

community77 in the Christian understanding of faith. This

existential relational faith is clear in the journey back to

Jerusalem where the disciples seek to share the faith and their

experience of seeing Jesus with their fellow disciples.

5. Conclusion:

The role of faith in revelation proposed by Marion in his

article on the journey to Emmaus is intrinsically related to his

understanding of the excessiveness of saturated phenomena.

Positing faith as a compensation for a lack of concept

conceptualizes and constitutes it. In other words, Marion’s

approach makes the saturated phenomenon graspable with theso accept the intellectual proposition that there is one God. This supports that faith in the Creed is received as relational and not just a set of concept about God.

77 Mackinlay mentions in his footnote that the complex of relationships is never private, but belongs at least in part to a community. Ibid, 456n18.

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breaking of the bread. Here we see a problematic dichotomy in

understandings of faith which is on the one hand supported by

Marion’s notion of saturated phenomenon, and on the other refuted

by his assessment of faith elsewhere.

According to this study, Marion could have enriched his

article by using the full context of Luke 24, and by deferring to

his own approach to faith in apophatic and apologetic theology.

Revelation is not imposed on passive people who do not understand

it and then interpret it using new concept. Rather, revelation

is conceivable as relational and a decision to trust made by the

will. Marion uses this story out of its context, and without

attending to the other resurrection narratives, which weakens his

argument.

Faith, as an openness to receive revelation and as a

relationship of trust which manifests the synergy of God and

human beings, is a transformational faith. Marion relates faith

to concept in order to reach an endless hermeneutics, and as I

mentioned above, quoting Marion, this kind of faith helped the

disciples to constitute the phenomenon. It seems that Marion is

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implying that although the phenomenon of Jesus’ crucifixion,

death and Resurrection was excessive, with faith, it became seen

and constituted, which in turn implies that it was constituted as

an object. On the contrary, faith as openness and trust is at

work in its recipients, transforming them into l’addoné. To be

l’addoné properly situates faith as a willful relationship of

trust., This relationship can enable the recipients of revelation

to bear the incommensurability of the gift of God to the

expectation of human beings, by its very openness to receive the

gift of charity.

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––––––––––––. “The weight of Love.” In Counter-Experience: Reading Jean-Luc Marion, edited by Kevin Hart, 235-252. Indiana: Notre Dame, 2007.

––––––––––––. Jean-Luc Marion: A Theo-logical Introduction. VT: Ashgate, 2005. [Kindle Edition]

Jones, Tamsin, A Genealogy of Marion’s Philosophy of Religion: Apparent Darkness. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2011.

Mackinlay, Shane. “Eyes Wide Shut: A Response to Jean-Luc Marion’s Account of The Journey to Emmaus,” Modern Theology 20, no.3 (July 2004):447-455 ATLA Religious with ATLASerials. EBSCO. Web. February 1st, 2014.

Marion, Jean-Luc. “They Recognized Him; and He Became Invisible to Them,” Modern Theology 18, no.2 (April 2002): 145-152.

––––––––––––––. Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness. Translated by Jeffrey L. Kosky. California: Stanford University Press, 2002.

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––––––––––––––. God Without Being. Translated by Thomas A. Carlson. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012.