From: lmeeks@xxxxxxxxxxx[SMTP:lmeeks@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 19 April 1996 01:13
<<What i find interesting about the discussion of heidegger and Christian
thought is that it generally aviods the question it raises and we wander
the wastelands of tangential thinking --gods, atheism, mysticism, etc. --
rather than the centrality of the question of the Christian faithworld and
its relation to the questions heidegger sought to answer or ask.>>
Hi,
The relation of H.'s thought to 'christian faith world' (as you have called
it) - is extraordinarily complex - both ambiguous at times (eg the very
early 1920's) and also changing over time (eg the change between the very
early 20's and late 20's).
In addition I'm not sure that gods, atheism, mystisicm are tangential to
understanding H. - or at least H.'s development of thought. In one sense -
it is phenomenology of religion which drives on H.'s philosophical quest
and actually moves him towards what he later describes as _his_ question.
<< Of course, for heidegger philosophy is an atheist discipline to the
extent that the economy of its language was driven through greek mythology
rather than the God of the Christian faith (which is, in spite of what all
of our pundits religious or not tell us the god of the Christian
Dogmatists, Jesus of Nazareth). In this manner heidegger could write that
he "could not be a theologian." Yet, he could not be a philosopher either,
he clearly -- in spite of his failings with regard to other human beings --
was a christian doing intellectual work which i think is best described as
a clearing ground.>>
I'm not sure if it is right in any straight forward way to say that H. was
a christian. From the late 20's to mid 40's my sense is that he was very
close to, if not actually, a straight forward atheist. But both before that
and again after that - things are different.
He was buried in the Roman Catholic church of St. Martin in Messkirch as he
had wished. His headstone is decorated with a star but the sign of the
cross on the neighbouring headstones of his parents and brother apparently
appears to be touching H's headstone too (according to Hugo Ott). In the
funeral oration both the ambiguous proximity and distance of H. to the life
of faith are recognised; it was said 'we might hesitate to call his way
'Christian' in the normal sense of the term' however 'he sought the divine
God and his glory with patient expectation...[and] he sought Him also in
the preaching of Jesus'.
But it seems that for many years (presumably the entire 1930's and the war
period) H was totally out of touch with the church he eventually decided to
be buried in. For example it wasn't until 1945 that H. recontacted his
fellow Messkircher in Freiburg - Archbishop Conrad Groeber - after being
out of touch for many years - and then to ask his help in the
denazification process: help which was quickly forthcoming.
<< He was nevertheless a failure. In spite of his attempt at a
phenomenological discussion of Christian time in the course on
Thesselonians -- which i think is central today for the reconstruction or
deconstruction of Church Dogmatics -- he never quite shook off the
metaphysical prejudice which assumes that all thinking must have a ground
in being. His concern for the theologians of the middle ages and the waning
of the parousia in their work overdetermined the problem of time in his
work such that his work concerns being and time and not kerygma and
parousia. His failure, however, outlines the possibility of a work
distanced from the critical discourses in which the truth of the evangelion
may once again be bourne.>>
The question is - in what way can his work, in any way at all, by its
success or failure, create a space in which the Gospel truth may again he
heard. One H. seems to say that God, faith (etc) simply does not fall
within the domain of Being. So the questioning of Being offers nothing that
is pertinent to the life of faith. Faith simply has its own patterns of
grace in Word and sacrament - patterns which the questioning of Being,
insofar as faith is faith and simply lets God be God, cannot speak to.
So, in 1953 in a session of the Evangelical Academy at Hofgeismar H. is
recorded as saying 'At the interior of thought, nothing could be
accomplished that would prepare for or contribute to what happens in faith
and in grace. If faith summoned me in this manner, I would close down shop.
- Of course interior to the dimension of faith one yet continues to think;
but thinking as such no longer has a task.'
But against this - another H. seems to see faith (or at least the religious
life) as simply another domain within Being's gift. A domain which
sometimes he struggles to understand (eg the early 20's courses) -
sometimes hoping that his categorisation of the living springs out of which
faith rises will allow for a renewed and reinvigorated faith language - and
other times to implicitly criticise - in the mythopoetic thought of
darkness and dawn, gods and men, earth and sky (etc) - where his thought is
actually an alternative to faith that has died (death of God).
There isn't any simple resolution to this - there are multiple and
conflicting patterns here - both intense proximity and in a way, a great
distance.
Cheers,
Jacob Knee
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