Quotes of the day

In response to arguments in John A.T. Robinson's Honest to God, Rudolf Bultmann reacted to the question as to whether faith in God is, in light of Robinson's claims, done away with. His simple answer:

"Nein!" (Glaube und Verstehen: Vierter Band, p. 107)

OK, his argument is a little more complex than that. He concludes:

"There is no escape from this world into a beyond but rather God encounters us in this world [im Diesseits]. All that remains is to understand this paradox, something that won't eventually happen in theological reflection but in real life, in der Existenz" (ibid, 112).

This existential matter of embracing a fundamental trust in and through the rough and tumble of our whole lives is a matter that Küng draws attention to in his dialogue with atheism.

"Statements about God and basic existential questions should establish themselves and prove to be true within the experiential horizons of our lives: not in compelling deduction from an apparently evidential experience which would make a human decision superfluous, but rather in clarifying illumination of the always problematic [human] experience, which invites the human to a free decision" (Der Anfang aller Dinge, 99)

I would also refer to Bultmann's essay, 'Der Gottesgedanke und der modern Mensch' in the same volume of Glaube und Verstehen for more on his thoughts on atheism.

Final note for the sake of Jim West:

Tom Wright (peace be upon him) would have put it so much better than Bultmann of course. In fact he did write something better with all that business about distant echoes around a corner, didn't he?

In this picture I want to draw attention to the fact that Bultmann had a considerably smaller head than Wright. Here is the undeniable proof (no adjustments to the scaling have been made - Bultmann had a tiny little head, bless him):

Smaller head = less brains. Nuff said.

I'll post my final in the 'Chris is a lucky git' series tomorrow as I want to quickly and hungrily read some more from Wright (peace be upon him) now...