Autor: Murray, John

Buch: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Titel: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Stichwort: Mittelalter; drei Wurzeln des Atheismus; Grund 2; von Augustinus -> Thomas - Aristoteles;

Kurzinhalt: ... in the Middle Ages, there prevailed the robust belief that between the valid conclusions of rational thought and the doctrines of faith no unresolvable clash could or should occur. The betrayal occurred when modernity ...

Textausschnitt: 88a The second medieval event was the Thomist reception of Aristotle. Its effect, in regard of our present matter, was to introduce a view of the universe significantly different from the view fostered by the older Augustinian tradition, in which the universe was regarded chiefly as an arena in which man was to pursue his search for God, in his image and in his vestiges. The universe was aliquid Dei, something of God; its value lay in this alone. In the new Thomist view, the universe was a subsistent order of being, radically distinct from God, endowed with its own proper autonomy. It was therefore to be explored and explained by intelligence in terms of philosophical principles of being and the laws of rational thought. Biblical thought had de-mythologized the universe, expelling from it gods and demons and the whole host of demiurges. Aquinas extended the biblical insight, with the aid of Aristotle's formal materialism (if I may so characterize Aristotelian hylomorphism, the doctrine of the composition of material being out of matter and form). He transformed into systematic philosophical statement the biblical view of the world as an order of reality outside the order of the divine, revealing God indeed but not containing him. As it was itself a profane order, there was no profanation in searching out its secrets. No taboos stood in the way. Moreover, man, the image of God in virtue of his endowment with intelligence, was the appointed master of the world. Here again, however, in the medieval view of the world as the proper object of man's rational understanding, there lurked an invitation to betrayal of the tradition. (Fs) (notabene)

88b Scholasticism in the Thomist style did indeed authorize a mode of rational inquiry, philosophical or scientific, that was methodologically atheist. It did not start with God but only with experience. This inquiry, however, was conducted within the tradition of reason as the School understood it. Therefore, it was not the only mode of inquiry; the kind of truth it sought was not the only kind of truth; its techniques of certification were not the only ones available. Truth was a many-storied edifice. Lest the architectural metaphor be misleading, I should say rather that there was one universe of truth, within which different kinds of truth, and correspondingly different methodologies for their pursuit, existed in distinction and in unity. Moreover, in the Middle Ages, there prevailed the robust belief that between the valid conclusions of rational thought and the doctrines of faith no unresolvable clash could or should occur. The betrayal occurred when modernity, having divorced faith and reason, went on to decide that there is only one form of rational truth, one method for its pursuit, one measure of the certitudes attained. (Fs) (notabene)

90a In this decision, the modern will to atheism is more clearly discernible. Scientism supervened upon rationalism. If scientific methodology is atheist, as it is, and if it is the only methodology, as it is said to be, the mind has no way of reaching transcendental truth. There is, in fact, no transcendental truth. And there is no God. No evidence for his existence can be discerned by the methodology of science. (Fs) (notabene)

90b As long as modernity was faithful to its fundamental will, which was to explain the world without God, it did not greatly object to talk about God, under the proviso that the discussion was held outside the Academy, preferably outside all public places. There remained, however, the problem of explaining why there was such talk. More exactly, the basic modern project of explaining the world without God necessarily entailed the subordinate project of explaining God, who had for so long been associated in men's minds with the world. More bluntly, for the modern will to atheism, the problem was to explain God away. In the logic of modernity this was easily done. Since faith and reason are incompatible realms of the spirit, God can have nothing to do with the order of intelligence. He is therefore to be relegated to the order of fantasy. Religion is the work of imagination. By the nineteenth century, this had become the classic thesis of modernity. It is to be found everywhere in one form or another. As found in Marx, it serves to link this post-modern figure with the modern age. (Fs) (notabene)

Kommentar (10/02/07): Diese Erfahrung einer Welt "ohne Gott" ist ein Nachhall der Erfahrung Israels, dass Gott nicht in den Gestirnen usw. anwest. Und Israel zeigt den Weg einer Lösung.

90c The modern thesis wrought itself out most completely in the school of religious, philosophical, and historical thought that was most aptly christened modernism. The Christian position had been that Christianity is a religion of events; its faith is based on historical happenings. It is also a religion of dogmas; its faith is expressed in affirmations that are true and therefore bear on transcendental reality-on God himself and on his will for man. To the modern anti-intellectual spirit, this could only be pretentious nonsense-what the Marxist would call mystification. (Fs)

91a On grounds of its own postulate, reduced to its logical extreme, modernity was obliged to say that Christianity is a religion of myths. The events on which it takes its stand never happened; they are simply the projection into history of man's experience of himself-in-the-world. As there never was a Sisyphus or any hill or stone, so there never was a Christ or any resurrection from the dead. Both myths fulfill the same function, which is to give an account of man's experience, whether of frustration in this world or of aspiration to a higher life. Both myths embody a sort of truth, but not a truth of the historical order. Neither states a fact; both state only fantasies. Moreover, as the Christian events are myths of no historical truth, so the Christian dogmas are symbols of no ontological truth. By no means do they have the absolute intellectual value of statements about the objective order of being, about God and his will. They have only the relative, pragmatic, emotional value of statements about the subjective order of religious experience. They do not translate into permanently valid affirmations the meaning of God's actions in history: there were no such actions. They merely translate, into some transiently appealing mode of pseudo-philosophical statement, my reactions to myself-in-the-world. These reactions are, in the end, the only religious reality. On both counts, therefore, as a religion of events and as a religion of dogma, Christianity is fantasy, the work of the imagination. To this conclusion, as to its destined end, the modern will to atheism ran. Talk about God, if you will, modernity said, but kindly remember that you are talking only about yourself. (Fs) (notabene)