Givenness and Revelation

Givenness and Revelation represents both the unity and the deep continuity of Jean-Luc Marion's thinking over many decades of thought. The scope of this investigation into the origins and evolution of 'givenness' and 'revelation' arises from an initial reappraisal of the tension between 'natural theology' and the 'revealed knowledge of God' or sacra doctrina. Marion draws on the re-definition of the notions of 'possibility' and 'impossibility', thecritique of the reification of the subject, and the unpredictability of the 'event' in its relationship to the phenomenology of the gift. This work begins and ends in the concept of revelation, thus addressing the very heart and soul of Marion's theology, concluding with a phenomenological approach to the Trinity that rests in the Spirit as gift. Givenness and Revelation enhances not only our understanding of religious experience, but enlarges the horizon of possibility of phenomenology itself.