Autor: Schmitz, Kenneth L.

Buch: The Gift: Creation

Titel: The Gift: Creation

Stichwort: Schöpfung - Geschenk; ex nihilo, Gnade - Aufbegehren dagegen (Comte, Marx, Nietzsche, Sartre: Unglaube als Bedingung für menschl. Wohl; Sünde: Aufbegehren, Verdunkelung d. Verstandes, Untreue

Kurzinhalt: Now what is troublesome about such a situation of absolute inequality is not only his transcendence, but his absoluteness as well ... religion can frame an explanation of its rejection by atheism. (1) Its most immediate interpretation and evaluation ...

Textausschnitt: III
63b What are we to make of this new situation of absolute inequality? It is a situation of which atheistic humanism has made a great deal. If it is understood in terms of the Biblical religions, the traditional believer will undoubtedly concede that God must withhold his full power from creatures lest they perish. "Man cannot see me and live," says the Lord (Ex. 33:19-24); and Jesus says to his disciples: "No one has seen the Father, except he who comes from God." (John 6:46) Indeed, the taboos which function in many religions make a similar point. But the withholding of creative power is itself part of the situation, and so the difficulty remains: In such a structure it seems that the sacred gives what is sacred to the sacred. And if that is the situation, can a human being make any real contribution of his own in such a situation? Can there be any integrity to giving and receiving in such a world? Can religious sacrifice, prayer, offering or the service of God have any significance other than the circle of divinity closing upon itself? And is this what is meant when the Bible says that God created the world in order to manifest his glory? What is human, finite and relative seems overwhelmed by what is sacred, infinite and absolute. The air is as close as an incensed altar. (Fs)

64a As the atheism of the Enlightenment, based upon the alleged self-sufficiency of natural science and mechanism, deepened into the radical atheism of the nineteenth century, based upon the primacy of man, the will to reject such a religious structure expressed itself in a positive demand for unbelief as the condition of human well-being (Comte, Marx, Nietzsche). It was urged, on general grounds and on the basis of criteria external to the religious structure, that religion is really man's concession to his own impotency and that it is merely a fearful and ineffectual hope for security, an illusion in need of therapy, perhaps also a social and political strategy of priestcraft. Within the structure human action would have to be empty, it was alleged, a sham in which a divine self-identity would absorb everything else. (And, indeed, is not the speech of the prophet a heteronomous speech? Does he not utter someone else's word, a strange speech in which what passes between human speaker and human listener is owned by neither? And does not St. Paul boast that he does nothing and that God alone works in him?) Genuine action, including that of giving, seems to require genuine diversity of being, power and will, whereas the structure set out above seems to deny to man his own freedom since it denies to him everything that might be his own work. But even if the structure were not empty, it would be intolerable on its own terms, for even a child can surprise its parents by bringing them something not received from them and which lies outside their power. But within this structure, giving would be both necessary and humiliating. It would be necessary, because the situation of absolute inequality would have to be acknowledged (obligatio, religio); and it would be humiliating, because it would be futile as well as compulsory. The condition of absolute inequality and the divine circularity seem to make any attempt of man to reciprocate to God a vain and empty gesture. Indeed, according to the Christian doctrine of grace the very reception of the original gift is itself first received from God. And indeed, if creation ex nihilo is taken in its radical sense, then not only the endowment but the reception must also be part of the original gift. The case against such a religious situation comes down to this: the radical inequality suffocates man and his possibilities, and the divine circularity empties his giving and all his activity of reality. In denying him creativity, religion becomes man's opium. Unbelief offers itself as the only defence of human autonomy. Indeed, Sartre's characters writhe under the shame of having to receive even from other humans; and Mauriac's Woman of the Pharisees uses her "gifts" to bind everyone to her. How much more would the "gifts" of an absolutely transcendent God bind! (Fs) (notabene)
66a At this point the conception of an absolutely all-powerful God, creator ex nihilo, seems utterly outmoded. Surely progressive man has grown beyond such a primitive notion as he comes of age. Is it not a kindness to put away such an oppressive obstacle to the dignity and freedom that man has already won in any event? It seems only decent, then, to proclaim the death of God. Or, if he is not dead, then at least that he is finite or in process and therefore in mutual interaction with creatures, giving but also receiving from them (W. James, some Whiteheadians). Now what is troublesome about such a situation of absolute inequality is not only his transcendence, but his absoluteness as well. That is why a Hegelian self-developing absolute is not of much help in meeting the atheistic objections. After all, did not Kierkegaard warn us about the danger to the solvency of the individual in an absolute system of the Hegelian sort? (Fs)

66c Of course, traditional Biblical religion can frame an explanation of its rejection by atheism. (1) Its most immediate interpretation and evaluation of the atheistic refusal to accept the religious situation is to understand it as sin, man's turning away from the very conditions of his salvation. (2) Since the refusal is viewed as a failure of knowledge, a darkening of the light, the sin is unbelief. And (3) since it is a breaking of a relationship already given, it is infidelity. On the other hand, in traditional Christianity, the possibility of refusal is seen as the condition for the freedom of accepting the relationship. (Fs)
67a Unbelief sees it differently. We began with a simple situation of giving and receiving and seem to have been caught up into a perverse form of domination. We have extended the category of the gift to a situation of absolute inequality between donor and recipient, and we have done this in order to understand better the meaning of creation ex nihilo; but our strategy seems to have failed, or to have succeeded too well. If man is to communicate with a creator ex nihilo, must he not pay the price of absorption into the circle of the divine creative power? Is not such a God the natural predator of man? Some Christians may throw up their hands and cry out: "But you don't understand the situation! It is not a power-relation at all; it is a love-relation. Our God is a God of Love." But the shift from power to love does not seem, on the face of it as least, to overcome the difficulty. An overwhelming love may be a gentle yoke, yet where in its soft coils is man? To many of our contemporaries there seems no escape but to refuse to respond. Non serviam: I will not give my consent. If God initiates the context and sets the conditions for performance, then man is pressed to play a role that is already determined and not his own. And this evacuation of man seems brought to its extreme by a creation which determines everything about man and the world, even their very possibility. Is it any wonder, then, that Sartre argues more or less as follows: If there were a God worthy of the name, he would have to be all-powerful and free; but then I would not be free; since I will to be free, there is no God?1 Or that Nietzsche writes: If there were gods, how could I endure not to be one; hence there are no gods?2 And a Catholic interpreter even adds, somewhat dramatically perhaps, that Nietzsche here gives expression to a desire for the death of God, a desire rooted in the very condition of being a creature.3 (Fs)

68a The difficulty is neither new nor contrived. Even some Christians find the traditional belief in the absolute transcendent power of God to be an unfortunate bar to the full realization of human freedom and responsibility, dignity and creativity. They also find it to be an impediment to any effective apologia for a contemporary faith. Finally, they find it difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile the appalling evil in the world with the embarrassing claim to God's absolute transcendent power over it. It seems that the "Good News" can survive only if it disengages itself from transcendence, and a fortiori from the most extravagant expression of transcendence, creation ex nihilo. In that survival, however, it is not clear just what survives, since such an immanentized faith will have lost its traditional focus. (Fs)