Post-WW2 Demythologizing Weltanschaaungs

Those Germans have a good word for a lot of things. Weltanschaaung is really just worldview. I love the sound of it.

There were many good psycho-theologians/philosophers after the 2nd WW who were so horrified by what happened in Germany that they started to rethink and restructure the underpinnings of Christian theology. It made many a thinking person question the foundations of the Christian belief system.

Demythologizing was a term that encompassed a new methodology for these alternate interpretations of key Christian presuppositions. It all focused on revising the Christian relationship with the Bible by initially arguing a rereading of the four gospels that tell the stories about Jesus. It meant simply that we needed to take the myth out of Christ and go back to the original stories about Jesus. For example, this meant taking the four gospels and breaking them down into their literary forms. This led to form criticism, rhetorical criticism, literary criticism, oral history criticism, etc. - a whole new ballgame for Christian scholars!! This did have an practical impact. The United Church of Canada, the tradition that I grew up in, came out with a new curriculum in the 1960s that was revolutionary - it went as far as stating that you didn't have to believe that Jesus was God to be a Christian; that the idea that Jesus was God was a creation of later thinkers and that there is no indication that Jesus ever saw himself as God in the gospels. To say that it was radical is an understatement and it caused a raging furor at the time.

Rollo May (mentioned in the comment on the previous blog) was a humanistic thinker and his ideas have some merit. However, I wondered when I first read them how much practical use they could have. I am always about the use that some of these revisionings of Christian doctrines can have for the person in the pew. And Rollo May was a close friend of Paul Tillich, for what that's worth.

Existential theology was all the rage, as well in the post-WW2 world of theology. It certainly was part of my journey. However, one day I read Paul Tillich's The Courage to Be (the bible of existential theology) and I threw it across the room. I no longer remember what was so stupid about the book, but I knew that it was crap. So endeth my foray into existentialist theology. It did not surprise me a few years later when his widow [Hannah Tillich, From Time to Time (New York: Stein and Day, 1973)] wrote a scathing analysis of Tillich, who it turns out, seduced every married women he could get his hands on, watched pornography with religious themes, had affairs with students, etc. In the 80s, when I was discussing Tillich, one of my male profs said, "But surely you can't believe that his personal life had anything to do with his theology?" Typical!!!! Of course it did. Human beings cannot create anything ex nihilo (out of nothing). Everything that we think and do comes out of our experience (For some of mine, go to the blog So They Think We're Crazy - that's me). The theologies and the worlds we create come from our journeys and our attempts to deal with the lives that are thrust upon us when we are born. We can do nothing about the place and to whom and into what, we were born. Some are lucky, some are not. Some of us will always rail against injustices when we see them. And it is only those that have injustices in their personal past who truly understand how badly those injustices hurt. However, there are myriads of ways to deal with our pasts. Tillich's was to try to escape his through theology - he couldn't let go of his god, so he had to redefine that God in order to allow him (Tillich) to exist - but he hurt many many people and his theology was devoid of true compassion for other human beings, just as his personal life was.

To not see the personal in the "abstract", is to buy into the idea that there is true "objectivity". This is not possible for humans. Even scientific endeavours are fraught with some worldview - we need to try as hard as possible to remove those biases, but always remembering that someone else may bring another viewpoint to the table. And another viewpoint is always worth looking at - it then becomes part of our personal experience to accept, integrate or reject.

From that point on, I moved to Erich Fromm. From my view today, he kept a little too much Freudianism & Marxism, although his work contains a major critique of Freud & Marx, but his writings were a hell of a lot more compassionate. There is always a reason to go back and read Escape from Freedom, Man for Himself, Beyond the Chains of Illusion, Psychoanalysis and Religion, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, etc. Those books changed my life. Sometimes I forget how important Fromm was to saving my soul at a time when I was desperately in need of hope. (Thanks Ray, for bringing up Rollo May - it led me to remembering Fromm). That led me to the Frankfurt School and Theodor Adorno whose Minima Moralia: Reflections from a Damaged Life is one of my bedside reading books.

Jewish scholars also did much rethinking - but they begin from different presuppositions. They have a long, long tradition of questioning god and interpreting and reinterpreting the words of their scripture (Tanakh: the Teachings [the Torah], the Prophets & the Writings). One of the latest in this line is David Blumenthal's Facing the Abusing God: A Theology of Protest. There is also a long tradition of getting really pissed off at God. Just read the book of Job.

The latest in this genre is the Cohen brothers new film, A Serious Man, which seems to be a modern retelling of the story of Job right down to the tornado at the end of the movie - Hashem's way of saying "How dare you question me?" If you know the Book of Job, then you know that everything will come out right in the end. Hashem (God) has lost his temper once more, Job gets the point (we assume), and the Serious Man will live happily ever after. This film made me laugh and laugh. The different rabbis explaining how he had to see things differently (reinterpretation), or just accept that it's a mystery was a scream. There were lots of times in my life that I wished that I had been born Jewish (not that that is necessarily an easy road for women - but at least they had positive role models for women and a necessary role for women in their religious structures). But that is an entirely different post.

The trailer for A Serious Man - apparently it is now out on DVD.



What does all this have to do with an atheist's blog. Well, it goes to the point that there are myriads of ways of trying to solve how humans relate to one another and how to solve humanity's problems. The caring for one another. How to create that "which fosters and enhances human life". We don't need to reinvent the wheel if at all possible.

Enough for today.