Though individuals can undoubtedly possess Christian conviction without metaphysics, it is much more controversial whether theology can stand alone. The history of Christian thinking, especially in theology proper, has often been intertwined with philosophical views of reality and being. As the 20th century dawned, metaphysical questions were broached based on the opposition of logical positivism, the anti-metaphysical leanings of Karl Barth, and renewed attention in Continental philosophy. This led to diversity not only in how philosophers and theologians conceptualized reality but also in the methodologies that they employed in developing such concepts.
Two individuals that investigated the relationship between metaphysics and theology were Martin Heidegger and Austin Farrer. Their significance to the issue lies in their early relationship to Catholic theology that waned as they were more influenced by Protestant perspectives. Heidegger originally planned to enter the priesthood, before abandoning that aspiration to study philosophy. In doing so, he combined his own metaphysical perspective which was developed in Being and Time with a radicalized version of sola scriptura that he was taking up from Lutheran scholarship. Farrer, an Anglican academic, sought in his early career to recast Catholic substance metaphysics in personalist terms with Finite and Infinite. In doing so, he developed a teleological view of metaphysics that stood in contrast to Scholasticism.
This paper will compare Heidegger and Farrer on the role of metaphysics in theology. It will pay special attention to their explicit and implicit contrasts with substance metaphysics, the existential basis for their movement away from Catholic views, and the influence of Reformed theology to their viewpoints. It will be argued that both scholars did not deny the possibility of substance views, but were attracted to the pluriformity of metaphysics that, from their perspectives, more adequately accounted for the multiplicity of entities that were examined in philosophy and theology. The paper will culminate with a constructive proposal to synthesize Heidegger and Farrer’s theories with historical substance views that were significant to the development of post-Nicene Trinitarianism.