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In this paper, developed with support of the POSDRU project “Innovation and development in structuring and representing knowledge through doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships (IDSRC),” Romanian Academy, Iași Branch, we attempt a reading of Heidegger’s formal indicative interpretations of St. Paul’s Epistles in light of the distinction between Eastern and Western thought. To this end, we suggest that Heidegger’s recourse to the Paulinic texts represents his endeavour to gain access to the original structures of life by circumventing the metaphysical framework of Greek (Plato’s and Aristotle’s) thought. Thus, we argue that by doing this, Heidegger actually approaches the Eastern way of thinking, i.e., a non-metaphysical alternative. In order to better understand what defines Eastern thought, we discuss in some detail Zizioulas’s interpretations of temporality in Eastern Christianity. Along the lines of this different understanding of temporality, the proximity of Heideggerian thought can be seen. Finally, we show that the importance of our argument lies in that it can open a possible research path for what Heidegger in his latter works calls “the other beginning.”

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