The ontological argument in the narrative theology of E. Jüngel and in the transcendentalism of B. Vysheslavtsev

Within the framework of the problem of thinking about the being and faith of Revelation in German-language theology and Russian religious philosophy, this article compares the logic of the ontological proof of God’s existence in the Barthian tradition, as exemplified by Karl Barth and Erich Jüngel, and by the Russian philosopher Boris Vysheslavtsev. Unlike Karl Barth, Jüngel’s ontological proof of God’s existence eliminates the emphasis on God’s name. For Karl Barth, God’s name functions as an event, while for Jüngel, the event of God becomes a narrative. Barth’s ontological argument is a movement of believing thought, clarifying the impossibility of God’s nonexistence in the name-event. Jüngel replaces the question of the impossibility of God’s nonexistence with the question of meaningful speech about God in the linguistic event of a unique narrative (the Gospel parable). Transcendence in Karl Barth’s ontological argument is verified through the principle of analogia fidei, the transformation of the Platonic model of time, the neo-Kantian concept of Ursprung, and the theological interpretation of S. Kierkegaard’s dialectic of faith. Jüngel integrates the model of transcendence into the linguistic uniqueness of parable, relying on the concepts of metaphor and catachresis. Karl Barth directs the efforts of believing thought toward a discursive form of elucidating the impossibility of the non-existence of the event of God’s Word. Jüngel introduces the believing subject to the linguistic event through parable narrativization. It is worth noting the fundamental differences in the principles of understanding the ontological argument between Jüngel and Vysheslavtsev. Cartesian metaphysics, according to Jüngel, is not the revelation of the obviousness of the absolute in human consciousness (as in Frank and Vysheslavtsev), but the discovery of the self-evidence of the human self. Both Jüngel and Vysheslavtsev transcend the boundaries of metaphysics in proving God’s existence: into the narrative of the Gospel parable (Jungel), into the irrational absolute given in the experience of freedom (Vysheslavtsev). The question, according to both Jüngel and Vysheslavtsev, is not so much about the existence of God as about one’s relationship to him. (For Vysheslavtsev, this is the axiom of dependence. For Jüngel, it is not the presence or absence of God, but the linguistic event of His Revelation in the Word here and now.) Vysheslavtsev creatively develops Frank’s concept of the ontological argument beyond the boundaries of philosophical systems. Jüngel, in turn, based on K. Barth’s work on Anselm, introduces the proof of God’s existence into the sphere of E. Fuchs’s new hermeneutics and M. Heidegger’s fundamental ontology.

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