If I were still to write a theology — which at times tempts me — then the word “Being” would not occur in it.
Faith has no need of the thinking of Being. If it requires that, then it is already no longer faith. Luther understood this. Even in his own church this seems to have been forgotten. I think very modestly concerning Being with respect to its suitability for thinking the essence of God theologically. Nothing can be accomplished here with Being. I believe that Being can never be thought as the ground and essence of God, but that nevertheless the experience of God and of His revealedness (insofar as it encounters the human being) occurs within the dimension of Being, which by no means implies that Being could count as a possible predicate of God. Entirely new distinctions and delimitations are required here.
FOURTH QUESTION: What do you think about logistics [symbolic logic]?
HEIDEGGER: Logistics has nothing to do with philosophy. It is pure calculation, a higher level of mathematics; it is the mathematization of all representing, applicable to every possible thing. It is universally valid and therefore takes itself to be true. It plays a great role in mathematical work. It belongs to Europeanization that logistics is taken for philosophy, that one believes formulas can say even the slightest thing about the essence of a matter. Logistics has developed in such a way that in mathematical research (calculating and thinking machines) it plays an uncanny role, that is to say, what began with Descartes unfolds here in an uncanny manner, such that today China will probably, in the coming decades or perhaps centuries, exist in a European way, just as Japan already does. This is Europeanization, namely, that the essence of modern thinking determines humanity as a whole, not merely through machines but through the mode of technology itself, through this fundamental relation to Being.