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Postscript on Credibility
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
The article considers some of the factors relevant to the question of the credibility of Christian faith. It argues that atheism is a product of a certain kind of Western Christianity: when you exceed the boundaries of what can be said about God and create “religion”, at the same time you create the conditions for disbelief in that religion. Nietzsche is a point of reference for various aspects of the question which centres on the status of “God” in relation to religious narratives that have lost power. How might Christians conduct themselves in the “Courtyard of the Gentiles” that Pope Benedict proposes?
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- Copyright © 2013 The Author. New Blackfriars © 2013 The Dominican Council.
References
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9 “Modern atheism has put theology in a difficult position. Of particular importance here is mass atheism, a phenomenon unparalleled in past history; it regards the practical, if not theoretical denial of God or at least indifference to belief in God as being by far the most plausible attitude to take. As a result, theology has been stripped of its power to speak to people and communicate with them. There are now no generally accepted images, symbols, concepts and categories with which it can make itself understood. This crisis arises from the loss of the presuppositions which faith needs if it is to be possible as faith.” (W. Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ, (Crossroad, 1984), p. 41.
10 In many ways, a fusion of Platonism and Stoicism provided the assumptions of European life until fairly recently, forming a pre-evangelisation consonant with what the gospel offered. We no longer have such a portal. Attempts to suggest that postmodernism offers a similar preparatory mise-en scène are unconvincing.
11 Carlo Martini's dialogue with Umberto Eco on the topic of “hope” is a model of modern engagement with non-believers: Martini, C. & Eco, U., Belief or NonBelief?: A Confrontation (Continuum, 2000)Google ScholarPubMed.
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28 Others too present a memory of what God once was to us. Two quotations to ponder: the first is from Julian Barnes: “I don't believe in God, but I miss him”. The second is Beckett's, “He doesn't exist, the bastard!” The traces of the divine are glimpsed by Barnes elegiacally, by Beckett angrily and aggressively: two sides of the unbelieving coin bearing the imprint of loss and pain.
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31 The IVth Lateran Council (1215) laid down the principle that there is no similarity between God and creature without an even greater dissimilarity.