Introduction to Christianity Part One: God, Chapter One
Entitled ‘Prolegomena to the Subject of God’ and divided into two parts: The Scope of the Question and The Profession of Faith In The One God. In the first part he asks “Where does this idea of ‘God’ really come from?” and then states ‘So far aas this point is concerned, it could of course be demonstrated that in spite of a confusing appearance of extreme variety the subject exists in only three forms (which occur in a number of different variations, of course) – monotheism, polytheism, and atheism, as one can briefly describe the three main paths taken by human history on the question of God.” (103-104)
Later he writes: “. . . all three paths are convinced of the unity and uniqueness of the absolute; where they differ is only in their notions of the manner in which man has to deal with the absolute or, alternatively, of how the absolute behaves toward him. (109)
The difference between the idea represented by ‘God’ in human history and the idea of the ‘absolute’ here is fairly puzzling, but I think what he’s getting at is the idea that behind all human thought is an aspiration towards unification – an even grander unification theory, maybe. In ancient cultures with polytheistic traditions I wonder if this became apparent only in the development of Greek philosophy: monism as a kind of latent monotheism. Concerning atheism, Ratzinger points out Marxism as its most developed form, in which absolute Being is considered material.
Concerning an ancient a-theistic religion such as Buddhism (which seems to be gaining influence in our own time), Ratzinger is more helpful back in the Preface when he marks out the difference between Buddha and Christ: “Buddha – and in this he is comparable to Socrates – directs the attention of his disciples away from himself: his own person does not matter, but only the path he has pointed out. Someone who finds the way can forget Buddha. But with Jesus, what matters is precisely his Person, Christ himself. When he says, ‘I am he’, we hear the tones of the ‘I am’ on Mount Horeb.” (21)
In ‘The Profession of Faith In the One God,’ the importance of the faith of Israel is identified at the outset: “Yahweh, thy God, is an only God” is the important background to the Creed. “It is not the registration of one view alongside others but an existential decision. As a renunciation of the gods, it also implies the renunciation both of the deification of political powers and of the deification of the cosmic cycle ‘Stirb und werde” (Die and Become).
What exactly did Goethe mean when he wrote ‘Stirb und werde’? Was he identifying what he thought to be an ancient understanding of the cosmic cycle, and/or did he mean to contradict the Christian view of the universe? Can it be said that the cosmic cycle is transformed through Christian faith, rather renounced? It’s safe to assume Ratzinger knows his Goethe, but in ‘Stirb und werde’ I hear something akin to John 12:24: “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” What Ratzinger tries to make clear is the importance of what he terms ‘Christian renunciation,’ and how this ‘No’ (to paganism in particular) is tied to a much more fundamental ‘Yes’.
Later he writes: “. . . all three paths are convinced of the unity and uniqueness of the absolute; where they differ is only in their notions of the manner in which man has to deal with the absolute or, alternatively, of how the absolute behaves toward him. (109)
The difference between the idea represented by ‘God’ in human history and the idea of the ‘absolute’ here is fairly puzzling, but I think what he’s getting at is the idea that behind all human thought is an aspiration towards unification – an even grander unification theory, maybe. In ancient cultures with polytheistic traditions I wonder if this became apparent only in the development of Greek philosophy: monism as a kind of latent monotheism. Concerning atheism, Ratzinger points out Marxism as its most developed form, in which absolute Being is considered material.
Concerning an ancient a-theistic religion such as Buddhism (which seems to be gaining influence in our own time), Ratzinger is more helpful back in the Preface when he marks out the difference between Buddha and Christ: “Buddha – and in this he is comparable to Socrates – directs the attention of his disciples away from himself: his own person does not matter, but only the path he has pointed out. Someone who finds the way can forget Buddha. But with Jesus, what matters is precisely his Person, Christ himself. When he says, ‘I am he’, we hear the tones of the ‘I am’ on Mount Horeb.” (21)
In ‘The Profession of Faith In the One God,’ the importance of the faith of Israel is identified at the outset: “Yahweh, thy God, is an only God” is the important background to the Creed. “It is not the registration of one view alongside others but an existential decision. As a renunciation of the gods, it also implies the renunciation both of the deification of political powers and of the deification of the cosmic cycle ‘Stirb und werde” (Die and Become).
What exactly did Goethe mean when he wrote ‘Stirb und werde’? Was he identifying what he thought to be an ancient understanding of the cosmic cycle, and/or did he mean to contradict the Christian view of the universe? Can it be said that the cosmic cycle is transformed through Christian faith, rather renounced? It’s safe to assume Ratzinger knows his Goethe, but in ‘Stirb und werde’ I hear something akin to John 12:24: “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” What Ratzinger tries to make clear is the importance of what he terms ‘Christian renunciation,’ and how this ‘No’ (to paganism in particular) is tied to a much more fundamental ‘Yes’.
posted by Quin Finnegan at 2:19 PM
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