Acceso usuarios
J. Aaron Simmons
In this essay, I attempt to bring French “new” phenomenology into conversation with global discourses in free will theism, and also debates in analytic philosophy of religion. Specifically, I argue that the theological view known as “open theism” offers profound resources for considering new phenomenological conceptions of God. After laying out the basic commitments of open theism, I outline five characteristics of the open model of God. Then, I turn to the thought of Marion, Chrétien, Levinas, Derrida, and Henry to suggest that they all offer accounts that have striking resonance with these five characteristics. The idea of “openness phenomenology” is not that new phenomenologists were open theists, but simply that if we read their work together with a model of a personal, relational, loving, affective, and noncircumscribable God, then profound spaces emerge for a promising future of religious hospitality, rather than religious power struggles.
