Costly Giving: On Jean‐Luc Marion's Theology of the Gift

Extract

“(A)ll that a man...discourseth in his spirit is nothing but merchandise”

John Wheeler, A Treatise of Commerce [1601]

In a recent review of Jean-Luc Marion’s God Without Being: Hors-Texte (Chicago, 1991), Graham Ward comments: ‘It is possibly presumptuous at this point to say whether Marion’s theological argument for a God without Being succeeds. This book will need considerably more digesting by theologians before a judgment can be made about its success.’ It is a point well made, and the argument I will make in this article is intended only as a further contribution to the appropriation of Marion’s work in a theological climate that remains famously resistant to the roots of his work. That this is an important, indeed even seminal book for Theology should, it seems to me, be granted. And even if it is to be branded ‘postmodern’—which is itself very debatable judgement—it most certainly does not exhibit any of ‘the enthusiastic naivete’ that has marked so much of this expanding genre. Rigorous, even orthodox it may be, but still new.

Ward depicts Marion’s ‘odyssey’ as a ‘relentless foray into sophisticated, abstract thinking’, which is true enough. But this should not allow us to dismiss it to the rarefied stratosphere inhabited by Parisian intellectuals. As I read it, its concerns are real and immediate, and by way of illustration of this fact I will begin with a brief anecdote.