© 2008 The Author Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Philosophy Compass 3/5 (2008): 910–932, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2008.00171.x God in Recent French Phenomenology J. Aaron Simmons* Hendrix College Abstract In this essay, I provide an introduction to the so-called ‘theological turn’ in recent French, ‘new’ phenomenology. I begin by articulating the stakes of excluding God from phenomenology (as advocated by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger) and then move on to a brief consideration of why Dominique Janicaud contends that, by inquiring into the ‘inapparent’, new phenomenology is no longer phenomenological. I then consider the general trajectories of this recent movement and argue that there are five main themes that unite the work of such varied thinkers as Levinas, Derrida, Marion, Henry, Chrétien, Lacoste, and Ricœur. I conclude by outlining points of overlap between new phenome- nology and contemporary analytic philosophy of religion and suggest that the two stand as important resources for each other. 1. Introduction: God . . . Again Considering the fact that Edmund Husserl explicitly excludes God from phenomenology and that Martin Heidegger claims that atheism is required for real philosophical inquiry, it might seem odd that God-talk is experi- encing something of a revival in contemporary phenomenology. Who would have thought that one of the most prominent French philosophers of the early twenty-first century (namely, Jean-Luc Marion) would occasionally write explicitly as a Christian? Indeed, many contemporary French philosophers are not simply talking about God as a philosophical problematic, but they actually believe. Inaugurated by such post-Heidegge- rian French thinkers as Emmanuel Levinas and Michel Henry, continued by the ‘new’ or ‘radical’ phenomenology of such thinkers as Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Yves Lacoste, Jean-Louis Chrétien, and Jacques Derrida, 1 and gaining prominence in the work of many philosophers currently working in America, e.g., Merold Westphal, John Caputo, Jeffrey Bloechl, and Hent de Vries, the ‘theological turn in French phenomenology’ has been touted by some as a crucial step towards being able to really think transcendence and alterity in a postmodern context. Yet, such God-talk faces two main challenges. On the one hand, there are those who see it to be not really a discourse about ‘God’ at all. Critics of Derrida’s ‘religion without religion’ and ‘messianism without a messiah’