Gary C. Moore With Richard Sansom

(FROM ATHEISM Part 8)

The Trap of Analogical Thinking as Mere Tautology

QUOTATIONS FROM HEIDEGGER’S ATHEISM:
The Refusal of a Theological Voice
by Laurence Paul Hemming,
University of Notre Dame Press, 2002

Chapter One: Introduction

The Trap of Analogical Thinking

GARY.C.MOORE:
If one takes analogy away from theology, then theology completely collapses as having never held anything but empty air. Aquinas in the Summa Theologica says, “Words are used of God and creatures in an analogical way.” This in itself deflates all abstraction to begin with and bodes ill for further discussion, especially of God. Aquinas says again, “Even if it be granted that everyone understands this name ‘God’ to signify what is said, viz., ‘than that which a greater cannot be thought’, it does not follow that what is signified by the name exists in the nature of things, but only that it exists in the apprehension of the understanding.’

Aquinas also says, “Since we cannot know what God is, but only what he is not, we must consider the ways in which He is not rather than the ways which He is.”

But the logical question arises, If you do not know what something is, how can you possibly tell what it is not? The negative is dependent upon the positive. This has always been so in Aristotlean logic.


RICHARD SANSOM: Religious people do not need nor accurately use “logic.”


GARY.C. MOORE 2: I would disagree. It is exactly like any other human endeavor. A tiny few are very good, a greater number fairly good but showing stress points, one might say, like Hemming who wants to use Heidegger to demonstrate how, in the postmodernist world, one can confront faith with self. He has actually greatly improved the subject by coming straight to the real point: To "believe" in anything, one must first believe in the self. Like God used to be and is still among the fundamentalists, this is almost automatically answered "Of course there's a self! It is utterly ridiculous not to believe in the self. But the self has no more substance or logical identity than God ever did. They are interlinked.


God is necessary or else how was the universe created? Self is necessary A) because something within you must initiate action, and, more to the point, B) something within you MUST yake responsibility for your acts. Both of these so called argument are totally bogus because they are arguments A) introduced after political power has established the validity of a belief, B) they are not real logical arguments but are assertions of force because it is expected no one will contradict them, C) if they are contradicted, it becomes not a rational discussion ON EITHER SIDE since it necessarily must be a situation of (emotional, but not necessarily so: you can get your ass burned . . . as well as everything else . . . still) force against force, and D) it becomes an issue of "Might makes right". The Jehovah's Witnesses stood up to Hitler. They died.

The Baptists and Catholics stood up to Stalin. They died. The Buddhists stood up to the Catholics in Viet-nam. They died. Michael Sevetus told John Calvin God was One. He died. The Lollards wanted to read the BIBLE in English. They died. All these confrontational issues were resolved by greater force, and greater force so completely had its way almost anyone, now, knows of any of these incidents. No one but me knows of all these incidents, and it tells me just one thing. Making a moral stand for self-respecting reasons is clearly and utterly stupid and is religious in its fundamental motivation. One can easily be an atheist and still be completely theological. The CPSU certainly accomplished that with its epithany in Stalin. Hitler certainly accomplished that after he got rid of Rohm. Just the ecstatic, joyful, grateful faces of the Germans lining the street as Hitler slowly drives past shows one that. There was no competitor. There was just one object of attention and everyone thought their lives depended upon paying all their attention on the sacred object.

But Stalin's comrads learned differently. The only thing that works for sure is total, constant fear, fear driven home by factual reality. Or, to actually and unfairly twist what Hemming said, "If Christianity is to speak truly of human being . . . what it speaks of must have a basis in this world. Otherwise the contents of Christian doctrine, having no ontologic basis . . . would simply be an imaginative fancy." The Parousia of Kairological time demonstrated this fully. It combined both tremendous fear and extreme joy. One spied constantly on oneself (for once, since this was sincere, not on others so much) to keep oneself purified in order to receive the real possibility in a short while of divine bliss. David Hume tried to become a sincere Calvinist this way . . . and blew out all his belief . . . in anything . . . like an exploding tire.


Don't put down real use of reason in religious endeavor so readily. we have seen the results in 20th century Christianity. Evangelical Protestantism is either an emotional morass that doesn't even read the BIBLE though they shake it is your face all the time. This certainly makes me appreciate A. E. Housman's acidic calm in dealing with poor textual criticism. Essentially what he is saying is, "So you're going to Cambridge or Oxford. Big deal. If you cannot analyze a text correctly, to put it bluntly but rightly, you simply can't read. Period. Without the use of rational, ent in reading, you are simply illiterate no matter how many books you think you have read." OR evangelical protestantism is tepid and boring and lifeless and one wonders why they pretend. Simply it has become a duty as our great American hero Robert E. Lee said, "It is the most noble word in the English language." Tepid, tepid. It is not better than fanaticism because they not only do nothing to stop it, they seem to either approve or don't think its worth thinking about. Now, with Roman Catholicism, you have a very mixed, treacherous, but different, more interesting, and not tepid story . . . for a tiny few. Most Catholics don't even know how they are really different from Protestants. But the real point is-- Reason. Whether it is used properly or not, reason is given a great deal of respect, some of it grudging, trying to find any way around it they can, others enthusiastic but not quite sure what it is all about. And then you have Aquinas, the Dominicans, the Inquisition. People do not know the real reason the Inquisition was set up.


All they know are Protestant horror stories, many complete fabrications for propaganda purposes. In other words if you believe the Inquisition was really evil, you have converted to the true faith . . . even if one is an atheist. The inquisition was set up IN OPPOSITION TO secular authority that was trying, extremely trying, anyone they wanted to call a heretic almost always--this is plausible since what other motive would secular authority have for 'purifying' the faith--for purely personal reasons or gain. It gave people a legal trial with a chance to speak their own words in court. Now, if you are accused of witchcraft, this doesn't work too well. But if you are accused of being a Cathar, the Church has a strict definition of what a Cathar is, and--normally--it has absolutely nothng to do with how rich the individual is. The Inquisition may very possibly never had the great auto de fes they are accused of in Spain. The actual records during the height of the Inquisition there seem to indicate only about 50 people were accused in a matter of years, most of whom were released because the charges were bogus, some were admonished to mend their ways and let go, repeat offenders--very rare--were given more persuasion to see the light and, it seems, only occassionally burned. Now, historical records are not things that give you the real facts right in your hands. They are just historical accounts. They can both misprepresent a story by accident or intent or by simple omission, silence. But at least the accounts exist. The Protestant propagada was essentially based on nothing OVERALL! That is the real sticking point.

Jud may or may not be aware that the Catholics in England are minimalizing the heresy trials and burnings that ARE FULLY ACCOUNTED FOR. But accounts present specific names, dates, places, trials, all the things David Hume was such a pionneer in digging out of history systematically and CRITICALLY comparing accounts and telling his readers, if they want to read the footnotes, just how reliable his sources are. Hume is truly a role model, a hero, an example to follow. Some have said (Grieg) that he is irrationally harsh toward believers. These are essentially Anglican and Calvinist Christians that have deliberately tried to inflict real harm on him. Of course he was mad. I am mad now. He also condemns the Catholics.


But . . . this situation is very different. First, there is the Irish question, dangerous teriitory to speak one's real mind about. Second, one is EXPECTED to kick Catholic butt because that is what a good Briton does. Kick and kick hard. It's all the stupid Mick bastards understand or they'll think you're getting soft and will treacherously turn on you in an instant. Listen to this shit. But it is real. Hume, though, had one of the most pleasant times in his life arguing with the Jesuits in the same seminary that educated Descartes. Also, when discussing contractual law in the TREATISE, he says it is an imaginary legal act based on faith in material objects blessed by the law just as an image is blessed in a Catholic Church. Now, anyone who knows Hume knows how important he holds contractual law. In essence, he said that that is all that holds England--not so much Scotland--they're something of barbarians--but England together. So . . . if he said all this about contractual law and compared it to the Catholic Church . . . Hume is certainly conscious of the ridiculousness of miracles that holds any faith together.

The Parousia was going to be a miracle. And he never hesitated to deride them theoretically or specifically or in specific people he knew. But that is not all there is to the Roman Catholic Church. Thomas Aquinas is THE Doctor of the Church as pronounced at the Council of Trent that had Protestant observers. He was a formidable presence since he has a profound understanding of Aristotle. And with Aristotle, everything goes back down to basic premises, axioms. These are things you HAVE to accept. But WHY do you have to accept them? These are things each person ON THEIR OWN have to confront. You cannot receive them from other people or it is those people that are then the axioms.

David Hume is by far the nearest thinker to achieve a nearly presuppositionless philosophy. His premisses are few, and APPEAL TO MY FEELINGS as sound. "My feelings" because axioms come BEFORE reason! They are utterly irrational! They can be judged "reasonable" ONLY AFTER ACCEPTING THEM! Each person in their uttermost lonliness has their unique set of axioms. They can only partially be shared in language, and that is probably the least important part. A person IS what they are born as. Only a few later in life for whatever irrational eason achieve critical dustance and . . . sort of . . . make their own decisions. Sort of. That is, you FEEL that you will is free. I suppose a great many people 'feel' their will is NOT free. I would not like that. Anyway, the point is, Aquinas, being the sort of person he was and historically situated did a great job with what he had. HIS WRITINGS CONTRIBUTED GREATLY TO REAL LAW OVERCOMING IRRATIONAL, PERSONALLY MOTIVATED FORCE!

RICHARD SANSOM:
They might claim something like the following: One cannot define love, pain or the color red, but one knows what they are when they encounter them – and (kind of “therefore”) one can know God, though one cannot define him. (an analogy).


GARY.C. MOORE 2:
One has to try to define "love" and "pain" because they strongly motivate action, action that, without any understanding, then does become irrational and disastrous. Even color can be defined by comparison. You're right, this is the way many argue, but, just for that reason, they should be utterely ignored because rational discussion is impossible with them AND they want you to loose control and get emotional.


RICHARD SANSOM:

If the religious stray too far from revelational explanations, they get into trouble and resort to the kinds of strange logic that Aquinas used.


GARY.C.MOORE 2: I would not say his logic was strange, but that his axioms are completely strange to us now. Unfortunately, because Aquinas is not taken as seriously as he should be (for, however, you view it, he is a bedrock of Western culture), many things are accepted unquestioningly in ordinary language that he openly and in great detail examined. Even if we disagree with his premises, TO UNDERSTAND OURSELVES we have to understand why we think the way we do, i. e., "There just has to be a self to take on moral responsibility." But, yet, Aquinas has "revelation" as his premise. But there is a problem with JUST saying that. Premises are always a revelation since they cannot be the product of rational argument. And EVERYONE examines critically their axioms. Its just . . . for most people overall and with everyone in specific matters, this "examination" is never completely carried out in the open so that we all to some degree cannot help but operate on "automatic". If you knew the truth, you probably would not like it.


RICHARD SANSOM:

Aristotle also fell prey to challengeable logic in his unmoved mover, since one can question WHY there must be an end to causality, or WHY the abstraction of “perfect” need be used at all.


GARY.C.MOORE 2: With Aristotle, it was simply a matter of the unchangeable is 'better' than the changeable. We still the same way. We still admire the heavens and get pissed when the car breaks down.

The positive is dependent upon ‘empirical’ experience. I put ‘empirical’ experience in scare quotes because experience can never be in any sense an abstraction. Also, it narrows down “experience”, then, to exactly what it is: Purely personal. You cannot know my experience. Words are only analogical, just as we started above. There are no back doors permitted here for abstraction to slip in. And this is all confirmed again by Aquinas where he is quoted as saying at the end of his life, “All that I have written seems to me like straw compared to what has now been revealed to me,” quotedin J. A. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d’Aquino, pg. 322. Now, Aquinas does not go on to state in words what has been revealed. The experience of whatever is purely private.


We do not even know if what he experienced was God which would at least for him would have validated, not negated, all that he had written . . . unless . . . but we do not KNOW! C. S. Lewis in The Four loves, chapter 6, paragraph 20, pp. 174-175, says “The humblest of us in a state of Grace, can have some ‘knowledge-by-acquaintance’ (con-naitre), some ‘tasting’, of Love Himself; but man even at his highest sanctity and intelligence has no direct ‘knowledge about’ (savoir) the ultimate Being—only analogies. We cannot see light, though by light we can see things. Statements about God are extrapolations from the knowledge of other things which the divine illumination enables us to know.’ Now, not only does this support what Aquinas said at the end of his life as well as what I said of it, but it shows a circulus vitiosis because the special state of “grace” validates the knowledge of God and then that so validated God through “divine illumination enables us to know” in the first place. Exactly the same thing has happened as Heidegger says happened with Descartes. First, you say “I am”, then and only then are you able to say “God created me so that I can say ‘I am’. And then you can see how drastic it is for theology when Heidegger says “You can only say ‘I am’ because you ‘always already’ exist in a world that has ‘always already’ given you the language by which you can say ‘I am’. If the ‘I’ is put in doubt, then “God” no longer can even be something doubted but has become a completely meaningless word. No wonder modern theologians are resorting to the denials of God’s existence to say there must be ‘something’ existent, an object of some sort, in order for it to be denied, and blasphemy which can only be blasphemy if there is something sacred to be sacrilegious about. But all they have accomplished is to make the circulus vitiosis not vicious at all but just meaningless gibberish.


RICHARD SANSOM:
I wonder if “metaphor” can substitute for “analogy” in much of what you have said above.


GARY.C.MOORE 2: Yes, and I think we need to make up an uncompromising list of terms that have analogous functions, especially keeping an eye out for those that do not seem to be so. But, first, you have the problem that language is wholly analogous. At best, can it only be a situation of "I am aware that I am aware that . . ."? That really would not accomplish much.


RICHARD SANSOM:
In the news lately there is the case of a woman who stoned her two children to death, having been told, by hallucination, to do so by God. She has been deemed to “legally insane.” It seems that certain revelations are OK and some are not. This fact belies the belief those religious folks who depend on revelation for the truth of their Christian faith. In our culture the community is the final legal and moral arbiter. She will be spared the death penalty and perhaps will spend much time in a psychiatric ward purging those Godly voices. If she does finally do this, and is eventually confronted with the reality of the horror of her deed, I wonder what she will feel?

GARY.C.MOORE 2: Why do we have to pay for this? Why does she have to endure all this? Nothing at all be be accomplished. nothing whatsoever. This is not mercy. Nothing whatsoever can be . . . 'corrected'. Kill her. Why are we so idiotic to look for "intent"? If she will never commit the crime again--and, yes, this has at times been very successfully determined--let her go. Her deamons, then, are her matter. But I don't think she qualifies. Very few times can real intent be determined OR IS EVEN RELEVANT!!!! This usually applies to people who killed in a fit of rage and were horrified by what they did. Kill them, or let them go. No one desrves prison . . . or a psychiatric ward.

'Never trust the writer' Gary C. Moore

ATHEISM Part 9 “

Kairological Time and the Parousia”
QUOTATIONS FROM HEIDEGGER’S ATHEISM:
The Refusal of a Theological Voice
by Laurence Paul Hemming,
University of Notre Dame Press,
2002

SECTION A Chapter One: Introduction

38: “This reality of the will to power can be expressed, with Nietzsche, in the proposition ‘God is dead . . . the supersensible world, especially the world of the Christian God, has lost its effective force in history . . .”92 (Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universitat, p. 25 “Diese Wirklichkeit des Willens zur Macht lasst sich im Sinne Nietzsches auch assagen durch den satz: ‘Gott ist todt’ . . . Die ubersinnliche Welt, insbesondere die Welt des christlichen Gottes, hat seine wirkende Kraft in der Geschichte verloren . . .”) “What is essential is that we are in the midst of the fulfillment of mihilism, that God is ‘dead’ and every time-space for godhead is buried”.94 (Das Rektorat, p. 39. “Das Wesentliche isy, dass wir mitten in der Vollendung des Nihilismus stehen, dass Gott ‘todt’ ist und jeder Zeit-Raum fur die Gottheit verschuttet.” What is a time-space? It is the place of being human. God is dead, and so the very place of godhead, being-human, is buried too. That God is dead means that the human being is in some sense also dead to God. Chapter Two: The Basis of Heidegger’s Atheism

43: . . . [T]he ‘kairological time’ of the early Christian communities actually pointed him in the direction of a description of human being which enabled him to develop a critique of Aristotlean ontology.

43/44: . . . [T]he originary Christian experience of history—that history at any moment is subject to its own end . . . enables the earliest Christian communities to have a unique access to the question concerning the meaning of being. [Cardinal K.] Lehmann compares this to the Aristotlean ontology by saying; “The experience of the original Christian understanding of history is . . . the . . . possible . . . ‘standpoint’ from which the limitation of the former ontology in its understanding of the meaning of being and . . . the persistence of this limitation could stand out.” This makes the reference to the forgetfulness of being more prescient—this forgetfulness is not just a feature of time, it is what the history of being is . . . [I]t is a persistent concern with going back into the roots of the Christian experience which provides the basis for a philosophical critique of the whole history of ontology.

44/45/46/47: Ott misses the point of what Heidegger’s atheism is about. This atheism is an address in the wake of Nietzsche’s declaration of the death of God . . . with regard for the whole of western philosophy . . . his address springs from a strictly philosophical motive. Philosophy has nothing to say of the Christian God—which means that heidegger’s discussion of the tradition of western philosophy . . . takes on an interpretive urgency . . . Heidegger’s atheism is a vibrant pedagogy, indicating the extent to which so much which claims to speak of God does not do so . . . For Heidegger, the question is , what is the ontological basis for these ontic descriptions of matters of Christian faith? This is a philosophical question that concerns itself with theology . . . if Christianity is to speak truly of human being . . . what it speaks of must have a basis in the world. Otherwise, the contents of Christian doctrine, having no ontological basis . . . would simply be an imaginative fancy . . . this concern is most centrally located . . . in the working out of the meaning of the ‘I’, the self.

(FROM ATHEISM Part 10)

What Significance of Heidegger’s Quoting SEPTUAGINT?

QUOTATIONS FROM HEIDEGGER’S ATHEISM: The Refusal of a Theological Voice by Laurence Paul Hemming, University of Notre Dame Press, 2002

Chapter Two: The Basis of Heidegger’s Atheism

47: What is the relationship between subjectivity and the ens creatum? . . . Heidegegger always reminds his reader that the Greeks understood the human being uniquely as the zoon logon exon, the being that has language . . . legein which is the basis for human beings’ concern with truth, aletheia. Aletheuein means “to be disclosing, to remove the world from concealedness and coveredness”.23 (Platon: Sophistes (GA19), p. 17. “Aletheuein meint: aufdeckendsein, die Welt aus der Verschlossenheit und Verdecktheit herausnehmen” [author’s italics]) Speaking is concerned with world.

Thgis understanding undergoes a transformation . . . the translation of zoon logon exon from greek thought into Latin mentality which understands human being as antimal rationale means that the original Greek sense is lost. Humanity is now understood strictly in terms of the ratio, reason, rather than speaking.

48: (Created Creature) Heidegger, ONTOLOGY—THE HERMENEUTICS OF FACTICITY, trans. John van Buren, Indiana, 1999, page 23 : “The position which looked at man with the definition’animal rationale’ as a guide saw him in the sphere of other beings-which-are-there with him in the mode of life . . . a being which has language which addresses and discusses its world—a world there for it in its dealings it goes about in its praxis, concern taken in a broad sense. The later definition “animal rationale’ covered up the intuition which was the soil out of which this definition of human being originally arose. Christian Dasein became the now no longer discussed foundation for the theological definition of the idea of man out of which the idea of person developed (my italics) (rational=is capable of knowing). This theological definition could be actualized only by being cut to the measure of its principleof knowledge, i. e., only with reference to Revelation. The guide taken for this was Genesis

1:26: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” Ontologie (Hermeneutik der Faktizitat) (GA63), p. 27. “Der hinaus entnomene Leitfaden ist Genesis

1:26 – kai eipen o theos, “Poiesomen anthropon kat’ eikona emeteran kai kath’omoioosin”.

kai eiden o qeos oti kala 26  kai eipen o qeos poihswmen anqrwpon kat¢ eikona hmeteran kai kaq¢ omoiwsin . . .


Human being was, in a manner cut to the measure of faith, defined in advance as being-created in the image of God. Apart from the Greek definition it externally adopted and rendered superficial, the Christian definition of the essence of human being is dependent on the idea of God which was added to the Greek definition and made normative for it.”

The effect of this is that the essence of what it is to be human is made entirely dependent on God as such, something which is added to the Greek definition. The meaning of zoon logon exon therefore undergoes a multiplicity of changes while appearing to say the same thing. The ratio of speaking, legein, becomes the ratio Dei of medieval thought. From being determined out of the condition of its being with other beings (that is what speaking is), human being is now determined out of its foundation on God. Heidegger makes the same point in Sein und Zeit, noting, however, that ‘the Christian definition in modern times becomes de-theologized”.26 ([GA2], p. 48. with the same biblical reference [my italics of Hemming’s comment] “Die christliche Definition wurde im Verlauf der Neuzeit enttheologisiert”.)

SECTION B

GARY.C.MOORE: Though I tend to slant Hemmings’ statements toward an almost purely philosophical stance whereas he is wanting-- I think-- to create a time-space where an address of faith of some sort can happen, I think it is an honest supposition that the philosophical structure of what he is saying has been truthfully represented here on his own and, as he has clearly shown, Heidegger’s terms.

“Kairological time”, “the originary Christian experience of history” as the parousia did bring something new upon the Greek philosophical stage. When, in Part 8, I argued against a definition of an experience as an experience of God that could be communicated to others and used, somehow, to ‘identify’ God, I did not argue against the reality of the experience itself—just of ‘what’. But, just as Hume said, experience is just experience until imagination puts words to it, words without any guarantee of infallibility whatsoever. That there is a powerful experience is undoubted. But no one will let the experience “just be’, stand by and as itself. It HAS to point to something—because it is important. In such a context, and thinking in such a way, even an atheist would be thinking theologically. If you feel a drop of water fall on you, does that necessarily mean there is going to be lightning and thunder and great winds, devastation and destruction? Only in your imagination. The o nly thing different between a drop of water falling on you and supposedly experiencing the “numinous” is the degree of feeling, and, great though the difference is, that is all there is and all there can be.

Now, “kairological time”, the coming of the “parousia”, gave an intensely, even overwhelming futural thrust to human consciousness. Something great and powerful and good was going to happen to cleanse the world of all its evil and injustice. Believing this made life feel absolutely wonderful. The whole, of what human being is, is taken away from the dreadful, meaningless, unchangeable now and thrust so far into the future that one could begin to taste the coming of these great changes. One could even hope to change ones self from the horrible disappointment its had become into something completely washed clean, changed, and begun all over again as one has wished all of one’s life. It gave hope REALITY—it was real because the future is the most real tense, the direction toward which, even in the depths of pagan and atheistic depravity, all human effort is still always directed. Hope therefore appropriated the whole of reality. It was unstoppable, unconquerable. Except for one thing. It had a time limit. It had a certain region of time in which to occur. “Parousia” means “presence” from the participle of par-eimi, “to be there”. “Kairos” means “the proper moment”. Parousia was the ultimate statement about a worth-while reality of everlasting life instead of dreary death. “When longed for with love, it effected changes in Christian behavior,” Xavier Leon-Dufour. “For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our lord Jesus Christ at his coming?”, 1 Thessalonians

2:19 [17] Hêmeis de, adelphoi, aporphanisthentes aph' humôn pros kairon hôras, prosôpôi ou kardiai, perissoterôs espoudasamen to prosôpon humôn idein en pollêi epithumiai. [18] dioti êthelêsamen elthein r<*s humas, egô men Paulos kai hapax kai dis, [19] kai e<*ekopsen hêmas ho Satanas, tis gar hêmôn elpis ê chara ê stephanos kauchêseôs-- ê ouchi kai humeis-- emprosthen tou kuriou hêmôn Iêsou en têi [20] autou parousiai; humeis gar este hê doxa hêmôn kai hê chara. “For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep”, Ibid 4:15. [15] Touto gar humin legomen en logôi kuriou, hoti hêmeis hoi zôntes hoi perileipomenoi eis tên parousian tou kuriou ou mê phthasômen tous koimêthentas: hoti autos ho kurios en keleusmati, [16] en phônêi archangelou kai en salpingi theou, katabêsetai ap' ouranou, kai hoi nekroi en Christôi anastêsontai prôton, [17] epeita hêmeis hoi zôntes hoi perileipomenoi hama sun autois harpagêsometha en nephelais eis apantêsin tou kuriou eis aera: kai houtôs pantote sun kuriôi esometha.

As Theodore Kisiel expresses it, “The facticity of a Christian, the way she finds herself and habitually comports herself, is receptively wrapped in dread and joy . . . With this reception, we enter into the operative context of God, in a working relation in His presence. To receive is to change before God’, THE GENESIS OF HEIDEGGER’S BEING AND TIME, University of California Press, 1993, page 183. But Kisiel begins immediately to philosophize this into abstract “decision” before an absent God. John van Buren says, “The Coming will arrive only in the Kairos, the moment, ‘the fullness of time”. The time and content of this arrival are not objectively available in advance to be expected (erwartet ), represented, and calculated, but rather are to be determined only out of the Kairos itself, which will happen with a ‘suddenness’ and in ‘the twinkling of an eye’ (1 Corinthians 15:52: “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the d ead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.’ [50] Touto de phêmi, adelphoi, hoti sarx kai haima basileian theou klêronomêsai ou dunatai, oude hê phthora tên aphtharsian klêronomei. [51] idou mustêrion humin legô: pantes ou koimêthêsometha pantes de allagêsometha, en atomôi, [52] en rhipêi ophthalmou, en têi eschatêi salpingi: salpisei gar, kai hoi nekroi egerthêsontai aphthartoi, kai hêmeis allagêsometha. [53] dei gar to phtharton touto endusasthai aphtharsian kai to thnêton touto endusasthai atha nasian. [54] hotan de to thnêton touto endusêtai [tên] athanasian, tote genêsetai ho logos ho gegrammenos Katepothê ho thanatos eis nikos. [55] pou xou, thanate, to nikos; pou sou, [56] thanate, to kentron; to de kentron tou thanatou hê hamartia, hê de dunamis tês hamartias ho [57] nomos: tôi de theôi charis tôi didonti hêmin to nikos dia tou kuriou hêmôn Iêsou Christou. [58] Hôste, adelphoi mou agapêtoi, hedraioi ginesthe, ametakinêtoi, perisseuontes en tôi ergôi tou k uriou pantote, eidotes hoti ho kopos humôn ouk estin kenos en kuriôi.) John van Buren continues, “The original Christians live in “a constant, essential, and necessary insecurity . . . a context of enacting one’s life in uncertainty before the unseen God,” in “daily doing and suffering.” The temporal enactment of this fluid situation means a resolute and open wachsam sein, being wakeful for the incalculable Coming within the moment”, THE YOUNG HEIDEGGER, Indiana, 1994, pages 190-191. This is closer to the mark that Paul’s language really evokes: a physical tension, nothing at all abstract.

But it is Baron von Hugel writing to Norman Kemp Smith that completely de-mystifies something Even Heidegger is trying, in a limited way, to appropriate for philosophy. Speaking of 20th century Christians von Hugel says, “It was this proximateness, this suddenness of the Parousia, of the New Heaven and the New Earth, which these friends thought themselves to be quite simply reaffirming. Yet this their thinking is demonstrably mistaken—they do not reproduce that primitive Christian mentality at all. The Parousia was indeed, between say A. D. 30 and A. D. 90, conceived as proximate and sudden; and men were indeed appealed to most strongly with regard to it, in this its proximateness and suddenness. But stronger again, was the conviction and teaching, that the Parousia itself, that this new order of things, was not the work of men, whether slow or gradual, or quick and hic et nunc; but that was the pure work, the sheer gift, of God. Men could not produce it, work they never so h ard; they could not even hasten this work of God’s event. Men could only prepare themselves to be awake and not unworthy of it, whensoever it might come. –Thus it is a profound travesty of the Parousia doctrine and temper, to take the element of proximity and suddenness, and to use this element as part of a scheme of human effort and human productivity, in lieu of the original scheme of divine action and human passivity. The original scheme is profoundly pessimistic in its man-ward side; this other scheme is enthusiastically optimistic (i. e. shallow) in its man-ward side. The original scheme is deeply religious; the new scheme is a sort of fanatical moralism,” THE LETTERS OF BARON FRIEDRICH VON HUGEL AND PROFESSOR NORMAN KEMP SMITH, edited by Lawrence F. Barmann, Fordham University Press, 1981, pages

24-25, 19th April 1919.

Von Hugel’s point is that these “primitive Christians” were really expecting to experience and know God within their lifetimes hic et nunc. It was really going to happen as reality, as much of a reality, and much more, as waking up in the morning and going to work and wishing you were already dead. This has nothing to do with philosophy and has to do with factual history as Paul wrote it down where the very heart of Christianity lived intensely for a while, and then utterly failed since it was a real and literal expectation, not a philosophical and abstract one, and from whence could only pretend to believe, going back to the duplicitous and hypocritical behavior that was then the only way for a Christian to act and which David Hume stated was the outstanding feature of a ‘true believer’: They said one thing and did the complete opposite. The only time Christianity was ever sincere was during kairological time and the parousia.

 EN PASSANT:

RICHARD SANSOM:

In the news lately there is the case of a woman who stoned her two children to death, having been told, by hallucination, to do so by God. She has been deemed to “legally insane.” It seems that certain revelations are OK and some are not. This fact belies the belief those religious folks who depend on revelation for the truth of their Christian faith. In our culture the community is the final legal and moral arbiter. She will be spared the death penalty and perhaps will spend much time in a psychiatric ward purging those Godly voices. If she does finally do this, and is eventually confronted with the reality of the horror of her deed, I wonder what she will feel?

GARY.C. MOORE

Why do we have to pay for this? Why does she have to endure all this? Nothing at all be be accomplished. nothing whatso ever. This is not mercy. Nothing whatsoever can be . . . 'corrected'. Kill her. Why are we so idiotic to look for "intent"? If she will never commit the crime again--and, yes, this has at times been very successfully determined--let her go. Her deamons, then, are her matter. But I don't think she qualifies. This usually applies to people who killed in a fit of rage and were horrified by what they did. Kill them, or let them go. No one desrves prison . . . or a psychiatric ward.

RICHARD SANSOM:

“Kill her.” Yes, sometimes I have the same opinion regarding an especially horrific crime, but the death penalty sticks violently in my craw. As for “intent” being the determining factor, what factor would you use in its place? The foundation of capital law IS intent; accidental killing, self defense, protection of the home, killings of enemies during war, killing when deranged, etc. are all in a different moral category from many other forms of killing. You say you don’t think she qualifies, and this is your opinion, but just maybe she does. In any case, my solution to the death penalty for those convicted of heinous crimes is to find an island, from which escape is impossible and dump them all, let them fend for themselves, commit suicide or kill one another. For me, when the state kills it is the most rank form of premeditation, and there is no going back if later evidence proves innocence. Of course I must admit that if I was the father of those children I might be more on your side. It’s a tough issue.

Regards,

Richard