A difficult proximity: Martin Heidegger and Martin Luther on hope and humility in religious life

In this dissertation, I explain the development of Martin Heidegger's phenomenology of religion between 1917 and 1923. I argue that the trajectory of his thinking on over these seminal years prior to Being and Time is indebted to his reading of Luther's theologia crucis . My thesis is that by retrieving Martin Luther's theology of the cross, Martin Heidegger advanced a phenomenology of originary religious experience, the intentionality of which is structured according to a dialectical affectivity of humility and hope.; In this dissertation, I make four primary claims regarding Heidegger's interpretation of religious life and trace its congruencies with Luther's theology. First, religious life experience entails pre-theoretical and hermeneutical reflection marked by unique affective dispositions toward one's existence. Prior to the speculative thinking of philosophical theology and modern philosophy of religion, the religious individual lives reflectively. Second, humility is a distinctly religious affective disposition and existential concern toward existence that entails an acute inward disposition toward one's alienation from God. Heidegger moves from defending a Eckhartian mystical conception of religious humility to a Lutheran conception which magnifies our dissimilitude from God in order to become receptive to the divine. Third, hope is a second distinctly religious affection directed toward a promised reconciliation with the divine. While joyful, hope trembles before a hidden future that prompts sober self-examination of one's standing before God. Fourth, the affections of humility and hope are experienced dialectically in one religious life. They take two distinct stances towards the divine---one towards magnifying alienation from God, the other toward being receptive to reconciliation with God. The existential difficulty of living between religious humility and hope stimulates a vigilant self-examination that destroys egotistical concern and enables the self's radical receptivity to divine grace.; Uncovering this connection between Luther and Heidegger is timely for its contribution to Heidegger scholarship, phenomenological research and Christian theology. Inspired by the thought of such divergent thinkers as Kierkegaard, Levinas, Derrida, and Marion, contemporary continental thinkers have recast the perennial question of philosophy's relation to theology. This dissertation joins and contributes to this most important debate.