Hegel’s critics reject the introduction of negativity into God and the Trinity

Evidence

At the very moment when she shows that according to Hegel, ‘the death of God appears as a moment within God’s Being’ and the ‘advent of the “metaphysics of subjectivity”’ (a proposition which, taken on its own, Heidegger would probably not have repudiated), Malabou follows a path whose very necessity is marked by this reflexivity of the farewell of God to his own self, an infinite reflexivity of the infinite farewell to one’s self which does not by some chance end in finitude, in the ‘situation of an absolute finitude characterized by modern philosophy’. Inasmuch as the death of Christ is the Mittelpunkt around which all turns and according to which begins the ‘conversion of conscience’ and the true ‘faith’ (the ‘apprehension by Spirit, as the spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit’), we arrive at this thought, which is at the same time a philosophical and religious thought: the negation is in God. And more so, fatal doubling, this negation in God passes by the experience of a farewell to salvation, ‘the loss of all salvation’, the ‘feeling of complete irretrievability’, the very salutation to salvation or the farewell to all and any farewell. … God has died (Gott ist gestorben), God is dead (Gott ist tot) – this is the most frightful of all thoughts (der fürchterlichste Gedanke) that everything eternal and true is not, that negation itself is found in God. The deepest anguish, the feeling of complete irretrievability, the annulling that everything that is elevated are bound up with this thought. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 154 (#expands, via linked claim)

Yet even Lutheran theologians would not recognize the validity of such a conception of kenosis. Since it derives its impetus from the energy of the negative and not from the originary superabundance of God, the dialectical Entäußerung contradicts the freedom of the divine. From this vantage point, the sending of the Son would no longer be a gratuitous act, or an act of love. It is on these grounds that Ernst Jüngel, despite his belief in Hegel’s fidelity to the Lutheran doctrine of kenosis, points to a principle of profound dissonance. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 697 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The two confessions of East and West disagree about the Holy Spirit, whether it proceeds from the Father alone, or from the Father and the Son, but not, as Hegel puts it, from either the Son alone or from the Father and the Son. It is an extremely uncommon error for this philosopher. Either it stems from ignorance (Hegel, according to a number of commentators, was only mediocre as a theological scholar), or it is a ‘revealing’ lapsus. It is the second hypothesis which the theologians consider the more plausible. This ‘mistake’ must clearly show that Hegel attempts absolutely to reduce the originary superabundance of God the Father. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 712 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Hegel makes negativity intrinsic to God’s self-production, implying an originary lack; Hegel’s substance-subject rejects both hypostasis and person as trinitarian principles — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 713; Hegel’s dialectical kenosis contradicts Lutheran divine freedom because it runs on negation — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 697 (+5 more)

Related

• For Hegel the death of God lodges negation within God’s own being (similarity 0.92)
• Hegel makes negativity intrinsic to God’s self-production, implying an originary lack (similarity 0.91)
• Hegel’s dialectical kenosis contradicts Lutheran divine freedom because it runs on negation (similarity 0.89)
• Hegel inscribes time, not lack, within God by identifying God with transcendental imagination (similarity 0.88)
• Hegel’s divine self-determination threatens God’s creative freedom for theological readers. (similarity 0.87)
• Christ’s death is the painful negative identification of sensuous existence with divine universality. (similarity 0.87)
• Hegel’s radical divine negativity expresses God’s plasticity, not lack or passivity (similarity 0.86)
• Hegel was the first to philosophize the Death of God as God’s self-negation (similarity 0.86)
• Hegel reversed his early rejection of kenosis into its philosophical necessity (similarity 0.86)
• Hegel uniquely read the Death of God as divine self-negation (similarity 0.86)
• Hegel takes God’s death as the most frightful thought but a necessary philosophical one. (similarity 0.86)
• Falling into negation is God’s highest eminence, not his diminishment (similarity 0.85)
• The Death-of-God theme transferred from theology into modern philosophy’s domain. (similarity 0.85)
• God’s death is the thought that negation strikes the eternal itself. (similarity 0.85)
• Reading Hegel without Luther leaves one blind to the phrase God himself is dead (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• For Hegel the death of God lodges negation within God’s own being #expands (0.85) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 154
• Hegel’s dialectical kenosis contradicts Lutheran divine freedom because it runs on negation #corroborates (0.78) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 697
• Hegel’s theological error reveals his drive to reduce the Father’s originary superabundance #complicates (0.75) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 712