The Phenomenological Challenge of Jean-Luc Marion’s Gift Theology

The tendency in most prayers is to preempt an answer coming from God.  Yet such predetermination often results to a short-sighted vision of God’s action.  The mysterious dimension in this case is subsumed by man’s finite gaze of the divine. Man often “thinks” that what he asks for in prayer elicits an answer from God, in which case the latter has a “duty” to respond to the former. Thus, if man ‘swish is not granted, he tends to doubt the existence of the divine. To counteract such tendency, this paper presents phenomenology as a possible explanation. First, it will analyze the problem through the Husserl Ian method of bracketing one’s biases or preconceived notions of God. The notion of intentionality is given as a probable cause of the usual tendency in prayers where man often “intends” according to  how he perceives the divine. Next, it will apply Jean-Luc Marion’s reverse intentionality which considers that God initiates the dialog. Man’s role is simply to respond to such a call. This paper concludes that prayer or any acts attributed to God should be interpreted within the context of Marion’s reverse intentionality. The one thing that man needs to avoid is the tendency toward predetermination – that is, toward the thinking that man predetermines God’s answer. Intentionality could be a helpful guide in the phenomenological interpretation, but it is limited only to the act of bracketing previously held notions of God. It is precisely the difficulty in seeing the invisible that one needs, at most, a possible phenomenon that allows for the divine to reveal as a gift.

Keywords: phenomenology, Jean-Luc Marion, reverse intentionality, gift theology