Chapter 7 considers how the event has been characterised in philosophy and the implications for theology. Concerned that opposition to it is generated by fear that it simply (re)asserts theistic beliefs, I examine how Marion’s understanding of the event can legitimately engage with the thought of others. Jean Grondin's views illustrate one extreme of that engagement. Caputo's analysis of the opposition between intuition and intention illustrates a need to discern whether a phenomenological approach to the event is being undertaken on the basis of theistic or atheistic beliefs, or whether a point earlier to that distinction is envisaged. Jean-Luc Nancy 's event takes place prepredicatively and it is cast in terms of an empty intentionality of faith. I suggest that this is reminiscent of hyperphasis. I look to Lieven Boeve to see how such a radical apophatics might work theologically. Boeve dialogues with Jean-François Lyotard, who thinks the event in terms of its emptiness and givenness to feeling. I then consider how Claude Romano thinks the event as prepredicative, and I use his criteria to discern whether a philosophical reading of the event would preclude a theological application.

In Chapter 3, I consider several ways in which philosophical discourse has become allergic to the concept of revelation. While Catholic theology is largely dependent on scholastic and, more recently, modern philosophy as it tries to articulate understandings of faith, philosophy has been part of shaping a modern and postmodern culture that is frequently hostile or simply indifferent to religious faith and its notions of divine revelation. Various philosophical approaches seek to exclude theology from the realm of academic discourse, either because revealed religion is seen to be partial and therefore detrimental to the pursuit of universal wisdom, or because it seems to articulate merely its own will to power, using a metaphysics that is oblivious to having founded itself. Bound up in metaphysical systems, all discourse potentially becomes (onto-)theological. 'Religion' has recently returned in philosophy only by means of its transformation: used in Levinas’ sense as the ethical relation with the other, it effects a powerful critique. Yet, excluding the very particularity of religious traditions is a totalitarian and secularising act.