Often Christ's parables are a response to a question he is asked. After he tells the parable, he returns the question to the individual who originally asked it. Often we see a person asking a speculative question involving one's duty before God, and Christ's response is more or less the same question—but as God would ask that individual. For example, in the Gospel of Luke ( 10:25), a teacher of the law asks Jesus what it means to love one's neighbor as oneself. Jesus replies by telling the story of the Good Samaritan. In the story a man is beaten by thieves. A priest and a Levite pass him by, but a Samaritan takes pity on him and generously sets him up at an inn—paying his tab in advance. Then Jesus returns the question, "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?". Jesus does not answer the question because he requires the individual to answer it, and thus to understand existence in the Bible, one must recognize who that passage is speaking to in particular. To Kierkegaard, it is the individual hearing the passage.
A good example of indirect communication in the Old Testament is the story of David and Nathan in 2 Samuel 12:1-14. David had committed adultery with a woman, Bathsheba, which resulted in her pregnancy. He then ordered her husband, Uriah, to come home from a war front so that he might sleep with his wife, thus making it appear as if Uriah had in fact conceived with Bathsheba. Instead, Uriah would not break faith with his fellow soldiers still on the battlefield and refused to sleep with her. David then ordered him back out to the battlefront where he would surely die, thus making Bathsheba a widow and available for marriage, which David soon arranged. David initially thought he had gotten away with murder, until Nathan arrived to tell him a story about two men, one rich and the other poor. The poor man was a shepherd with only one lamb, which he raised with his family. The lamb ate at his table and slept in his arms. One day a traveler came to visit the rich man; instead of taking one of his own sheep, the rich man seized the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for his guest. When Nathan finished his story, David burned with anger and said (among other things): "As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die!". Nathan responded by saying "You are the man!". Realizing his guilt, David becomes filled with terror and remorse, tearfully repenting of his evil deed.
An existential reading of the Bible demands that the reader recognize that he is an existing subject, studying the words that God communicates to him personally. This is in contrast to looking at a collection of "truths" which are outside and unrelated to the reader.[6] Such a reader is not obligated to follow the commandments as if an external agent is forcing them upon him, but as though they are inside him and guiding him internally. This is the task Kierkegaard takes up when he asks: "Who has the more difficult task: the teacher who lectures on earnest things a meteor's distance from everyday life, or the learner who should put it to use?"[7] Existentially speaking, the Bible doesn't become an authority in a person's life until they permit the Bible to be their personal authority.
Notable Christian existentialists
Christian existentialists include German Protestant theologians Paul Tillich and Rudolph Bultmann, British Anglican theologian John Macquarrie, American theologian Lincoln Swain,[8] American philosopher Clifford Williams, European philosophers Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, Emmanuel Mounier, Miguel de Unamuno and Pierre Boutang, and Russian philosophers Nikolai Berdyaev and Lev Shestov. Karl Barth added to Kierkegaard's ideas the notion that existential despair leads an individual to an awareness of God's infinite nature. Some ideas in the works of Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky could arguably be placed within the tradition of Christian existentialism.
The roots of existentialism have been traced back as far as St Augustine.[9][10][11] Some of the most striking passages in Pascal's Pensées, including the famous section on the Wager, deal with existentialist themes.[12][13][14][15] Jacques Maritain, in Existence and the Existent: An Essay on Christian Existentialism,[16] finds the core of true existentialism in the thought of Thomas Aquinas.
See also
References
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^ M.J. Eliade & C.J. Adams (1987). Encyclopedia of Religion (v.5). Macmillan Publishing Company.
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^ Søren Kierkegaard (1846). Concluding Unscientific Postscript, authored pseudonymously as Johannes Climacus.
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^ Søren Kierkegaard (1849). The Sickness Unto Death Trans. Alastair Hannay (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), 14.
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^ Søren Kierkegaard (1849). The Sickness Unto Death Trans. Alastair Hannay (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), 24.
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^ Donald D. Palmer (1996). Kierkegaard For Beginners. London, England: Writers And Readers Limited. p. 25.
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^ Howard V. Hong (1983). "Historical Introduction" to Fear and Trembling. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, p. x.
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^ Søren Kierkegaard (1847). Works of Love. Harper & Row, Publishers. New York, N.Y. 1962. p. 62.
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^ Lincoln Swain (2005). Five Articles, Soma: A Review of Religion and Culture.
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^ Gordon R. Lewis (Winter 1965). "Augustine and Existentialism". Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 8,1, pp. 13–22.
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^ Michial Farmer (6 July 2010). "A Primer on Religious Existentialism, Pt. 4: Augustine". christianhumanist.org
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^ Craig J. N. de Paulo, ed. (2006). The Influence of Augustine on Heidegger: The Emergence of An Augustinian Phenomenology. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press.
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^ Desmond Clarke (2011). "Blaise Pascal", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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^ Clifford Williams (July 3, 2005). "Pascal". cliffordwilliams.net
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^ Michial Farmer (20 July 2010). "A Primer on Religious Existentialism, Pt. 5: Blaise Pascal". christianhumanist.org
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^ Michial Farmer (27 July 2010). "A Primer on Religious Existentialism, Pt. 6: Apologetics". christianhumanist.org
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^ Jacques Maritain (1947). Existence and the Existent: An Essay on Christian Existentialism (Court traité de l'existence et de l'existent), translated by Lewis Galantiere and Gerald B. Phelan. New York: Pantheon Books, 1948.
External links
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A website that explores the existential teachings of Jesus, with references to Kierkegaard and Tillich