| I love Kierkegaard. If you haven't read Denial of Death you might check it out. It is a synthesizing approach to psychology, anthropology and religious thought by Ernst becker, one-time Berkeley prof. Might be a bit dated now. I know I am. Barth was a theologian, but I didn't think an existentialist like Tillich maybe. Barth's responsible for providing the departure point (or point to be reckoned with) for much of the best Christian theology of the 1900s. I agree about the dogmatism. There's too much we don't know, but especially about God and ourselves. That said, it seems to me we want to be responsible for what we do know or "might know." What if it is true, or quite possibly true that, for instance, God did appear in human form in Jesus (an offense to the intelligent)? What do you think if it in fact happened as witnessed to and interpreted by the early followers? This story seems to me to make the most direct claim on our attention. If you decide, Nah, can't be true, then you look for another course to take. You are then responsible for that course of action, and for refusing to accept God's appearance, if it happened. We won't be asked to explain why we didn't understand about the appearance of Alethea on Planet Alpha in the Omega Galaxy. Who knows what went on there? I think other planets are interesting, but not that much of an issue to me. I am confident that if any of this god stuff is true everyone will be treated equally fairly with what they knew and did. It reminds me on a more sophisticated scale of the rejoinder, "What about the distant tribal people who have not heard of Jesus?" Well, that isn't me. I have heard about it. |
