[235] Now here you have in very few words the possibility of philosophy in its contribution to theology. Philosophy^a can formulate---as the arts do, and poetry and theater do---the question which is implied in the human situation, but it cannot give, in terms of arguments, the answer. The answer is ecstatic-revelatory and is given to us by the analysis of the human situation, is a matter of our own awareness. So we can say: natural theology^b is valid insofar as it gives an analysis of the human situation. Natural theology is NOT valid insofar as it gives arguments for the existence of a highest being. This leads, and has led us, to the importance of existentialism^c for theology. Many people would say "existentialism"^d and then think of some existentialists, the most important ones of today, like Heidegger^e and Sartre^f, and would say: Now how can they be allies of that which they deny, namely religion? The answer simply is that here also the FIRST part of what they are doing is decisive, and the second part is open. Decisive is their analysis of the human situation. In this sense they do better than most of their predecessors, the work of natural theology. Natural theology IN THE NEGATIVE FORM: that's existentialism,^g to a great extent. In the moment in which it comes to positive formulations, existentialism cannot do ANYthing of its own. One has wrongly distinguished between theistic and atheistic existentialism---there is no such a thing, neither the one nor the other, but there are different traditions out of which the existentialists ^htook their answers TO the questions which they aroused by the analysis of the human situation. If they came from Augustine,ⁱ they gave answer like Pascal^j; if they came from Lutheran^k pietism, they gave answers like Kierkegaard^l, if they came from French moralism, they gave answers like Sartre^m; if they came from Catholic mysticism, they gave answers like the late[r] Heideggerⁿ; if they came from German classical philosophy, they gave answers like Jaspers^o. Each of these men gave answers out of the tradition in which he lived, from which he came, which he made MEANINGFUL for himself and again others with the help of the existentialist^p