The For-saken Man

Premises for a renewed anthropology, in dialogo with K. Hemmerle

Abstract

The final term of metaphysics is a fact, which it is necessary to recognize and which calls for a renewed ontology, that gives an account of God’s absence from the world. This new ontology must be rooted in the trinitarian revelation that took place in Jesus. Indeed, as Klaus Hemmerle wrote, only Jesus in the moment of his forsakenness makes definitively clear the character of God’s Being. Abandoned by the Father, Jesus shows that God is manifested in what is contrary to God. God’s absence, therefore, can be seen as another modality of God’s presence. As Chiara Lubich writes, God is Being that contains “at its very heart non-being as the gift of self”; that is, God-Love revealed by the forsaken Jesus. Sharing in God’s absence, people can rediscover their unity, and generate again, in this way, the God’s presence in the world.