Fackenheim launched his career as a theologian by confronting the modern crisis of faith, which he regarded as the most urgent matter both for philosophy attuned to religion, and for committed religious thought. He believed that this is a crisis not only for Judaism, but for all modern religious thought, because modern philosophy has done as much as possible to make even the most basic religious faith questionable, if not untenable, to modern man, for it assaults the basic belief that God makes himself manifest through “personal” converse with human beings. For Fackenheim, this crisis of faith arises not so much over whether God exists, but over whether God can communicate with man directly. Fackenheim thinks that genuine faith in God’s existence, whether religious or secular, will endure through and beyond all critique.