Jean-Baptiste Dupont, organist
SPIEGEL: You write in your memoirs: "My heart aches when I consider all the things I am supposed to give up."
Hans Kung: That's true. I'm not saying goodbye to life because I'm a
misanthropist or disdain this life, but because, for other reasons, it's
time to move on. I am firmly convinced that there is life after death,
not in a primitive sense but as the entry of my completely finite person
into God's infinity, as a transition into another reality beyond the
dimension of space and time that pure reason can neither affirm nor
deny. It's a question of reasonable trust. I have no mathematic and
scientific evidence of this, but I have good reasons to trust in the
message of the Bible, and I believe in being taken in by a merciful God.
SPIEGEL: Do you have a concept of heaven?
Kung: Most ways of speaking about heaven are pure images that cannot be
taken literally. We are far removed from the notions of heaven in the
period before Copernicus. In heaven, however, I hope to learn the
answers to the world's great mysteries, to questions such as: Why is
something something and not nothing? Where do the Big Bang and physical
constants come from? In other words, the question that neither
astrophysics nor philosophy has answers for. At any rate, I'm talking
about a state of eternal peace and eternal happiness.
SPIEGEL: Today, physics can explain the dark cosmos, with its billions
of stars, much better than it could in the past. Has this shaken your
faith?
Kung: When we consider how enormous and dark the universe is, it
certainly doesn't make things easier for faith. When he wrote his Ninth
Symphony, Beethoven could still hope that "above the canopy of stars
must dwell a loving father." We, however, must accept how little we
ultimately know. Ninety-five percent of the universe is unknown to us,
and we know nothing about the 27 percent of dark matter or the 68
percent of dark energy. Physics is getting closer and closer to the
origin, and yet it cannot explain the origin itself.
SPIEGEL: You want your funeral to end with the hymn "Now Thank We All Our God."
Kung: Because it expresses that my life has not perished but has been completed. It's something to be happy about, isn't it?
In the days of my feckless youth I had the occasional opportunity to hear a real organist on a real pipe organ (v. electric ones played by pianists trying not to shock the congregation or get ahead of them on the hymns. That's not a criticism: i had to sub for an organist while leading one service once. I gave up halfway through the service and stuck with just leading worship.). He knew how to play it and he wasn't afraid to.
ReplyDelete50 years on I belatedly realize how fortunate I was, and how fortunate I am to have the memories. Thanks for stirring the ashes of them and finding some sparks still alive beneath the dust and gray.