How did a new beginning come about after such a disastrous end? How did this Jesus movement come into existence after Jesus' death, with such important consequences for the further destiny of the world? How did a community emerge in the name of a crucified man, how did that community take shape as a Christian "Church"?
Those three questions precede an entire page of related questions in Hans Kung's On Being A Christian, hard questions that I doubt any skeptical scholar could exceed in exigency. And the way Hans Kung deals with those questions is as exacting as the questions, themselves. I'm going to go through his response to those questions over a few days.
In a word then, we are faced with the historical enigma of the emergence, the beginning, the origin of Christianity. How different this was from the gradual, peaceful propagation of the teachings of the successful sages, Buddha and Confucius, how different also from the largely violent propagation of the teachings of the victorious Muhammad. And all this was within the lifetime of the founders. How different, after a complete failure and a shameful death, were the spontaneous emergence and almost explosive propagation of this message and community i the very name of the defeated leader. After the disastrous outcome of this life, what gave the initial impetus to that unique world-historical development: a truly world-transforming religion emerging from the gallows where a man was hanged in shame?
Psychology can explain a great deal in the world, but not everything. Nor do the prevailing conditions explain everything. In any case, if we want to interpret psychologically the initial stages of Christianity, we may not merely presume, postulate, postulate, work out ingenious hypotheses, but we must consult without prejudice those who initiated the movement and whose most important testimonies have been preserved for us. From the latter it becomes clear that this Passion story with its disastrous outcome - why should it ever have entered into the memory of mankind? - was transmitted only because there was also an Easter story which made the Passion story (and the story of the action lying behind it) appear in a completely different light.
But, far from ceasing, the difficulties only really begin at this point. For if someone wants to accept what are known as the resurrection or Easter stories literally with simple faith, instead of trying to find a psychological explanation, that will not be the end of it. A little reflection, any kind of reasoning, will bring him up against almost unsurmoutable obstacles. Historical critical exegesis only increases the embarrassment, as it has done ever since the most acute polemicist of classical German literature - Gotthold Ephraim Lessing - two hundred years ago brought to the notice of a bewildered public those "Fragments by an Anonymous Person" (the Hamburg rationalist H. S. Riemarus, died 1768) among which were "The Aims of Jesus and His Disciples" and "Concerning the Story of the Resurrection." If, as men of the twentieth century, we went to believe in some sort of resurrection not only halfheartedly, with a bad conscience, but honestly and with conviction, the difficulties must be faced squarely and without prejudices of faith or unbelief. But it is just at this point that the reverse side of the difficulty is revealed. These are surmountable difficulties.
I will be going through the difficulties one after another as both a demonstration of what I said about the depth of honesty, intellectual integrity and good faith of Hans Kung and as a demonstration of one valid avenue into one of the most difficult aspects of Christian faith. As I pointed out, Kung's investigation of the central aspect of Christianity is more stringent than the flippant stuff of current scientistic atheism. Kung's theological scholarly method can be summed up in his requirement stated in this passage, that all questions are to be, "faced squarely and without prejudices of faith or unbelief." It's one of the weaknesses of every bit of atheist handling of this question that they almost never face the claims or arguments of serious religious believers and they never approach the task without prejudices of unbelief.
No comments:
Post a Comment