Revisioning Christian theology in light of Emmanuel Levinas's ethics of responsibility

A revisioning of Christian theology seeks to recover the primacy of the uniqueness and irreplaceability of the individual from the expansive vision of totalizing doctrinal formulations and systems that function, in effect, without reference to the subject. In contributing to such a revisioning, this essay utilizes the thought of Emmanuel Levinas to argue three points: (1) The conceptual unmanageability of the Holocaust renders it unavailable to analysis within a totalizing, ontologically based conceptual framework, especially since such frameworks cannot acknowledge the preeminence of individual inviolability. (2) The post-Holocaust recovery of being and meaning requires an approach that posits the primacy of the ethical relation over the ontological totalization of being that functions without reference to the subject. (3) The site of a post-Holocaust Christian theology is thus the site of the ethical relation itself. A revisioned Christian theology is primordially embodied in the ethically based praxis of merciful and compassionate action in response to the preeminent inviolability of the other.