Subject:

Comments:
: I was just speculating on the Yeshua research being done by the "God is Dead" message. Whatever the symbolic reference to the statement God is Dead, the proclamation is certain: God died, not because of a simple rise of reason, but, according to Nietzsche, because core doctrines in Christianity itself permitted it to fall into nihilism. : God died not because Nietzsche killed Him, but because the effete will of Christian soul and shallow psychology detracted from the pursuit of self-empowerment called the Overman who would strike off an invented soul that made the body sick. : Recall the Name of the Rose, where Umberto Eco places the discussion of laughter in the conflict between William of Baskerville and the venerable Jorge, keeper of the library for decades. Jorge despises the onset of reason in the Christian faith that will destroy it - philosophers cannot promote thoughts that laugh, using metaphors that play with concepts, or using the secrets of Aristotles's Poetics Book II to pursue truth through a distortion of forms - the pursuit of truth can only be done by humility, not empirical fact (recall what Ambrose writes: that the philosopher is not as wise in the matters of faith as the fisherman). : So reason slowly seeps into the Christian palace: Augustine is the austere prophet that fights it, the temptation, the deviation (Confessions); then comes the Pseudo-Areopagite using the Logos of light as the source of Divine inspiration. Slowly but surely, reason becomes central, to the end that God, protected by the faith that distances him from question, is ailed: there is Marsillius, there is the sect of Bentivenga; there is Boethius who game nature an immortal touch by reason, rivalling God; there is Abelard using logic. Some arguments have been made (see for instance W. H. Auden) that the Renaissance was not really a construct of reason but a revolt against the excessive logic of the Middle Ages. Take it if you like that the Renaissance had at its core the rise of such movements as Humanism, when in many ways it also tried to free God from the confines of the syllogism. Christianity, by attempting to become scientific, by attempting to reconcile the forms of universals and particulars, and by incorporating a scientific basis into the God head succeeded in killing Him. Hence Nietzsche’s apt statement.

Optional Link URL:
Link Title:
Optional Image URL: