Review of Elliot R. Wolfson, Giving Beyond the Gift: Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania, New York

Michelle Rebidoux

Elliot Wolfson’s latest publication in the history of philosophy makes a formidable contribution to the contemporary discourse of apophatic theology, and it does so in two ways. Firstly, in a discourse typically focused upon the Christian tradition, Wolfson leads us expertly into somewhat less-explored territory in his engagement of seminal twentieth century Jewish thinkers Cohen, Buber, Rosenzweig, Levinas, Derrida, and Wyschogrod as well as the tradition of Kabbalah. Secondly, Wolfson takes on the discourse’s prominent themes namely, ‘transcendence,’ ‘immanence,’ ‘absence,’ the ‘gift' with a penetrating and relentless spirit of deconstructive vigilance, pushing the language of the discourse to new reaches of phenomenological probity. The core impetus of the book, the author tells us, is “the belief that a theolatrous impulse lingers in the very heart of monotheism” (xiv), and indeed that “the postmodern apophatic theologies that have dominated the marketplace of ideas within the academy [are] still guilty of theomania” (xxiv). His point is that the ‘unseen,’ the ‘inapparent,’ the ‘invisibility’ of God or the divine has become itself a new ‘visible’ or ‘presence’ by virtue of that very absence - or rather, by virtue of a theolatrous phenomenological focusing upon that absence.