Autor: Murray, John

Buch: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Titel: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Stichwort: Atheismus der Stadt (City); Trennung: Staat - Kirche; totalitäre Demokratie; Syllabus (Pius IX); politischer Atheismus: Folgen

Kurzinhalt: Public life is by definition godless. The concept of a public religion is a contradiction in adiecto. So, too, is the concept of the people of God;

Textausschnitt: 99a Before leaving the modern age I must at least briefly mention another type of atheism that it brought forth. It was an atheism of the City, the political atheism that went under the pseudonym of anticlericalism. It was inherent in the political theory of l'etat laique, which issued from the Enlightenment and the Revolution, though it had roots much farther back. Its twin postulates, the dogma of the indivisibility and omnicompetence of state sovereignty and the dogma of separation of church and state, came to fullest expression in the Third French Republic and the Law of Separation of 1905. The modern will to atheism thus made its way into the City as well as the Academy and the Marketplace. It inspired the politico-religious dogma that was the main structural rib of the laicist state-the dogma that religion is a purely private matter, an affair of the inner forum, a concern of the individual conscience. At best, religion belongs "in the sacristy" (as the phrase went), the ecclesiastical forum that is, by laicist dogmatic definition, a private forum. The dogma decreed that God and religion can claim no public status, no place in the public forum, no function in the public action of the state. Public life is by definition godless. The concept of a public religion is a contradiction in adiecto. So, too, is the concept of the people of God. The people, like the polis, are officially atheist. Atheism is the public philosophy, established by law. The establishment was accomplished by the law of separation of church and state, which was the legal institution that embodied the laicist politico-religious dogma. The law decreed that the church has no public existence within the state. The church is legally not present; it has no existence before the law; it may have no public activity. In effect, there is no church. The Temple of God was overthrown by legal fiat. God might still, if he liked, dwell in the individual heart. He was not to be allowed, however, to dwell in the midst of the people. The people, as such, do not recognize him; they do not acknowledge his presence. They say, "He is not here, in public." (Fs) (notabene)

100a Thus the nineteenth century saw the reappearance in a new form of the biblical phenomenon of "the people who do not know God." This was the atheism of the City against which Pius IX spoke in the Syllabus of Errors and against which Leo XIII directed a long series of encyclical letters. It was a phenomenon of transition. In one sense, it still belonged to the modern age, since its original premise was that the state has no need of God in its public life. God is irrelevant to politics-the assertion is typically modern. In three other senses, however, the political atheism of the French republics and of their continental imitators made a bridge to the postmodern age. (Fs)

100b First, the political will to atheism took the form of a refusal of the God of history, the Political Craftsman who created a people, who dwells in their midst, who rules their destinies as Pantokrator. This was new. The earlier modern refusal had fallen on the God of the world, the Cosmic Craftsman whose work was the heavens and the earth. The new atheism or, more concretely, the new godless people who refuse to recognize the Pantokrator, would be characteristic of the post-modern age. Second, the totalitarian democracy that issued from the Enlightenment and the Revolution as the bearer of a new type of political atheism was, precisely in respect of its atheism, the lineal ancestor of the Communist totalitarian dictatorship that issued from Marxism and the world revolution as the bearer of a messianic atheism such as history had never seen. Third, the atheism of the City that modernity brought into being went beyond modernity in that it was more than a view of reality. Clothed with an armature of power by its incorporation in a state, it was a historical force that powerfully and quite consciously altered not only political reality but also the whole range of reality included in the concept of civilization. This too, would be the characteristic of post-modern atheism on the Marxist model. (Fs)