NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion - Volume 39, Issue 1, 1985

Abstract

Politics and Religion

As a historian of religions, I have gradually discovered that my conclusions on the basis of religious facts have been political in nature. For my conclusions, straight-forward and uncontroversial as they seemed to me, always ran into political flack.

Abstract

Since Courcelle’s investigation of the confessions of Augustine, the idea of Augustine representing a neoplatonic Christian in the earliest period after his conversion, has been widely accepted in literature. Courcelle nevertheless did not deal with the relation of credere and intelligere which is a major theme in later work of Augustine. Analysis of the Soliloquia reveals that even in his earliest work, Augustine breaks away from one of the major issues of neoplatonic philosophy: the opposition between lower end higher knowledge. An obtrusive preference for belief over knowledge can be proved to be present in disregard of the opposition mentioned above.

Abstract

This article analyses the nature of atheism in Soviet communist ideology. Soviet atheism is not only a philosophical negation of theism, it is also a far broader rejection of religious values. In giving atheism a firm basis in Soviet ideology, Lenin has played a far more important role than Marx. He also has made communist atheism distinctive from all other forms of atheism in history. The main features of this atheism are the political motivation, the self-understanding as the only true and scientific atheism, the categorical character and the confessional expression in a system of antireligious propaganda. The nature of Soviet ideological atheism becomes evident when compared with the original marxian atheism, with the atheism of 19th century Russian revolutionaries, the atheism of the Jacobines and the ‘bourgeois’ atheism in Western philosophy. Finally, Soviet atheism is compared with modern Western agnosticism. It is concluded that Soviet atheism is an inverted ‘theology’, a dogmatic anti-theology which, however, is less scientific than modern theology.

Abstract

The author puts forward the hypothesis that the Canticle contains a double key for its interpretation. These two main motifs come together so far as they denote that both partners complete each other within the mutual relation. The woman is called Sulammit, ‘The one to be completed’, but in 8,16 she exclaims: ‘In his eyes I am one who has found (and brought) completeness’. The man is meant where she repeats: ‘Do not awaken nor arouse my beloved one’, which shows that he is the one to be awakened. He, too, reaches his destination at the end of the Song (8,5 MT), where the woman puts on record that she aroused her partner under the apricot-tree. In this way the Canticle contains an implied affirmation of the sexes’ fundamental equivalence, while the leading role of the woman produces a polemical overtone which sounds as a kind of discordant note in the prevailing practice.

Abstract

We have only very scanty remains of the corpus of Hellenistic Jewish epic poetry. From the poems of Sosates, ‘the Jewish Homer’, not even one line has been preserved. From Philo Epicus’ On Jerusalem three fragments (23 lines) in obscure Greek are extant, dealing with Gen. 22, the Joseph story, and the water-supply system of Jerusalem. Several haggadic features in the first fragment recur in later intertestamental and rabbinic literature. From Theodotus’ On Shechem (or On the Jews) six fragments (47 lines) are extant. He is not a Samaritan author, as has often been assumed, for, as in other Jewish sources, his rendering of Gen. 34 (the murder of the inhabitants of Shechem) blackens the Shechemites and excuses their murder by Levi and Simeon. It probably served to justify John Hyrcanus’ destruction of Shechem and the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim.

Abstract

In this article the author tries to bring new perspectives into the discussion on Projection as it has been conducted up till now in Holland. He takes his starting point in the consideration that the problem of projection for the theologian is in the first place not a problem of observation, but of motivation: important is to ask why people do project.

Freud and his followers perceive behind projection the need to escape from the suffering and the threat of reality by creating an illusionary ‘Wunsch-Welt’. Closer analysis, however, shows that essential for the religious relation is – with a formulation used by Schillebeeckx – ‘to give credit’. This element becomes visible in the relation with the parents: in a relation of trust the child gives itself to his parents in order to enter on the basis of this life’s reality with an adult ‘courage to be’, (cf. the little monkeys in the experiments of Harlow and the ‘basic trust’ of Erikson). There is a paradox of achieving independence through dependence. The projections of parental images onto God therefore are phenomena at the surface, on a deeper level the ‘basic trust’ is important. Of course there are infantile degenerations of this religious relation, but they do not touch the essence of this argument.

In an ongoing discussion with modern authors like Freud, Fortmann, Schillebeeckx, Vergote, Erikson, Kohut and others the authors develops his thesis.

Abstract

The idea of freedom in Kant reviewed at the suggestion of Karl Barth

In the debate between theology and philosophy, Barth’s dogmatic position may be seen as a polemic stand taken in the modern dispute about the freedom of the autonomous subject. Consequently, he especially joins issue with Kant, for whom, in his own terms, freedom constitutes the keystone of philosophy. Kant appears to secure the freedom of the civil subject in a philosophical discourse, which, as in a lawsuit, should inform those concerned of their cognitive powers, their ability to act and their future expectations. All this considered, this action can only be performed thanks to a confident faith in reason. By virtue of its freedom, the subject is allocated a domain in which it can exercise its rights and discharge its duties in a rational commonwealth, as a master sui generis. It is this ‘domanial autonomy’ which was criticized by Barth.

Abstract

In studying the text of Samuel/Kings and some other O.T. portions the text critic can make use of the text of Chronicles as a witness to basically the same text. In studying the text of Chronicles, however, one should be very cautious in emending the text on the basis of these O.T. books and portions which were used by the Chronicler. The task of the text critic of Chronicles is not to restore the original text of the source the Chronicler used but the original text of the book of Chronicles itself, including erroneous deviations from the source taken over by the Chronicler from his Vorlage or introduced by himself. The only exceptions are those cases where the Chronicler erroneously wrote something different from what he himself must have meant to write.

Abstract

The New Testament editions of Erwin Nestle and Kurt Aland (N¹³-N²⁶) make mention of the fact that according to Rodrigues vss 15-16 in 1 Thess.2 were an interpolation and therefore should be eliminated. Who was this Rodrigues? It turns out that he was a Jewish author, who wrote several books on the New Testament and early Christianity. In one of these books (Les seconds chrétiens – Saint Paul, Paris 1876) there is a chapter (V=pp.225-236) on what he calls ‘The Interpolation’, in which he suggests that vss. 14-15 (and 16?) were a late insertion (after 135 A.D.) of an anti-judaic ‘Johannine’ type. The apparatus of N²⁶ therefore should be emended at this place (ad 1 Thess.2,16c). My suggestion is to leave him out and to keep only the name of Ritschl (16c as an interpolation) in the apparatus criticus.

Abstract

Recent research on the homilies preached by John Chrysostom at Antioch in 386 and 387¹ which are known as the Logoi kata loudaiōn, is dominated by the studies of Marcel Simon, Fred Allen Grissom and Robert L. Wilken.

Abstract

Attention is drawn to a cultural function of psychoanalysis which around the turn of the century has appealed to many intellectuals: that of being ‘griefwork’ over the collapse of the traditional idealized view of man and reality. Nietzsche has aptly styled this momentous change in our culture ‘the death of God’, meaning the death of the God of metaphysics.

For the idealized ‘narcissistic’ image of man Freud substituted the conception of the human person as a being of flesh and blood, whose ‘higher’ aspirations are limited by legitimate claims of the body. Psychoanalysis taught people to accept their limitations without resentment. From the point of view of cultural history, therefore, psychoanalysis can be interpreted as a form of collective griefwork.

In the article, expressions of grief over the death of God experienced by people of the latter part of the 19th century are analysed; then responses on the part of several Dutch psychiatrists are examined from this point of view.

In our own time, the ‘me-decade’, we have again become unrealistic about ourselves, imagining that we somehow can shape the world according to our desires. And again we are becoming disillusioned, as it becomes clearer every day that such utopian thinking and acting does the world more harm than good. Perhaps psychoanalysis could again help us to come to terms with our grief over the loss of ous feelings of omnipotence.

Abstract

This article appears at the end of a six-year period of renewed intensive occupation with the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs following on the publication of a new critical edition of the Greek text of this document in 1978

. In this period H. W. Hollander and the present author prepared The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. A Commentary (SVTP 8), Leiden 1985, incorporating the results of earlier and recent research on the subject. The present paper attempts to explain these results concentrating on a few main issues. In particular, it will deal with the problem whether the Testaments are Jewish or Christian – a question hotly debated during the past hundred years.

Abstract

In this article three examples of hermeneutical approaches to sacred scriptures are described. Two of them are related to the Bhagavadgītā (the Bicentenary of the first English translation of which is being memorated this year), namely those of M. K. Gandhi and G. S. Khair. The third, that of the Dutch Old Testament scholar, H. E. J. Renckens, is related to the Bible. Making use of the concepts homology and hierophany these approaches are analysed with a view to the question as to what they have considered to be ‘sacred’ in these scriptures. All three approaches may be characterized as ‘authorizing hermeneutics’. This means a. that the authority of the sacred scripture is sought in the experience of its authors in order b. to enable the contemporary reader to follow in the footsteps of these authors. The mentioned exegetes clearly distinguish this hermeneutical approach from a ‘fundamentalistic’ exegesis, for which the text of the scriptures forms the sacred authority. This was the way Gandhi’s murderer, Godse, understood the Bhagavadgītā. Authorizing hermeneutics is said to obviate the scientific and even ethical problems which arise when authority is connected directly with the text. Moreover, it appears possible, via this hermeneutic, to discover a striking similarity between the essential message of the Bhagavadgītā and that of the Bible. However, in consequence of the anachronistic way in which the author of the past is dealt with, authorizing hermeneutics offers no more reasonable a solution to the problems of interpretation mentioned above than does the so-called fundamentalistic approach.

Abstract

In 1929-1931 Heinrich Scholz and Karl Barth debated the scientific status of theology. The present article examines their discussion and corrects the common misunderstanding that Scholz defended a kind of ‘unified science’ or wanted (systematic) theology to be built up along the lines of an axiomatic-deductive system. Further, it is argued that Barth comes to his disapproval of Scholz’s ‘pagan’ understanding of science on the basis of his view on theology as a ‘Glaubenswissenschaft’: The Word of God cannot be measured by human scientific standards. Pannenberg, who accepts Scholz’s ‘minimal’-view on science, rightly criticizes Barth: one cannot claim theology to be a science and at the same time reject the common scientific standards.

Abstract

‘If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple’ (Luke 14:26). Of all the uncomfortable words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels, these must be some of the most difficult to reconcile with his teaching of human worth and divine compassion, and many a sermon has been preached to mitigate the apparent harshness. Yet in the Christian mystical tradition we find teaching which seems to take these words of Jesus at face value as a model for the attitudes which the soul intent on perfection must adopt even toward its nearest and dearest. Teresa of Avila and Clare of Assisi are only two of the best known among the countless tales of young women fleeing secretly from their parental homes to take up a monastic vocation against their parents’ wishes. More worrying are stories like that of the twelfth century English woman, Christina of Markyate, who escaped from her bridal chamber on her wedding night to seek shelter with the hermit of St. Alban’s, protesting that married love was incompatible with her love for her heavenly bridegroom

The frustrated young husband was eventually permitted to marry somebody else; but while that might help resolve the pity we would feel for him, it hardly resolves our disquiet at the idea that love for God is at odds with love for fellow humans.