God and Being: A Review of Part I of John Macquarrie's Systematic Theology

In Being and Time one finds the question of the relation between being and God, ontology and theology asserting itself again and again, though not explicitly. Heidegger's reopening of the question of being transforms the history of philosophy, and one must wonder what impact it could have on theology given the close relation between the two. Despite Heidegger's warning that he is engaging in a fundamental ontology which must remain separate and prior to any theology, and despite his claim that if he wrote a work on theology it would not contain the word "being", one nevertheless wonders what relation being has to God. Is God what Heidegger calls being? Or does God transcend even being? John Macquarrie's Principles of Christian Theology takes on this question, proving a theological response to (and sometimes an appropriation of) Heidegger's thought.

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