The views on Existentialism teach us otherwise to be selfish in a subtle way. The first is that Rollins seems to assume, in this book at least, that everyone should be capable of the same intellectual optimism that the philosopher can muster, that structures that help believers to believe are inherently bad. ... On the other hand, a Christian disagrees with existentialism’s spirit of hopelessness. Perhaps the most extensive developments of existentialist themes for Christian theology can be found in the work of Rudolf Bultmann, a theologian who argued that the New Testament conveys a genuinely existentialist message which has been lost and/or covered over through the years. Rollins’s earlier embrace of Eternal Recurrance quickly enough falls away in this section as he holds forth the hope that the same stuff, with the proper social agitation, won’t happen to the next generation as it did to the current one (148), and by the end of the book, Rollins, in his fervor for New-Left protest, seems to make of that group of folks something like a cross between Hegel’s world-historic souls and Plato’s philosopher-kings (174). People come from various backgrounds were religion plays a huge role in who they are. Existentialism Against Christianty? : A Review of Insurrection by Peter Rollins for SpeakEasy Bloggers. In short, nobody gets resurrected for Rollins: some just stop crying out for a life that makes human beings suffer. The second objection is that, with only “nihilism” as a starting point, Rollins makes the same bad-faith move that the New Atheists do, assuming that such a starting point leads naturally and even necessarily into an ethos mainly resembling New-Left movements. I will say that I find apophatic theology in general quite interesting, and I do find some of what Rollins says helpful in regards to actually treating the cross and the separation from God that Jesus felt seriously, and not just short-circuiting the process and going right to Resurrection. Although Bultmann argued that the choice between an authentic and inauthentic existence cannot be made on rational grounds, there there does not seem to be a strong argument for saying that this is somehow analogous to the concept of Christian grace. In a sense, all Western philosophy that is called Existentialism is Christian Existentialism. Such an embrace of power as the core reality of existence rather than a corruption of the same logically leads, as far as I can tell, nowhere in particular: I’ve known Nietzscheans (and Foucaultians, the English department’s version of the same) who were right-wingers and Nietzscheans who were left-wingers. I think Rollins’s project, in the first half of the book, is genuinely interesting in that it locates Ivan in the Christian tradition (as does Dostoevsky, of course, and Dostoevsky does it better, but who’s going to fault Rollins for not being Dostoevsky?) There is some merit to this accusation. A person is autonomous and is fully free to make choices and fully responsible for them, Rational grounds for theology and divine revelation do not exist, True faith transcends rationalism and God’s commandments, The true God is not the God of philosophers or of rationalism, The destruction of wars throughout human history proves there cannot be rational understanding of God or humanity, A Christian must personally resolve within self the content of faith from being a myth or mystery to being realty or truth before they will allow an understanding and acceptance of salvation. The existentialism we see today is rooted most prominently in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard, and as a consequence, it might be argued that modern existentialism started out as being fundamentally Christian in nature, only later diverging into other forms. | Protestant | non-Calvinist. The difference between my own existentialism and Rollins’s is not so much in the content as in the approach to difference, but it’s not unimportant: where his prose tends to treat those who differ as inferior, I’m far more inclined to think that the difference might distinguish different kinds of goodness rather than always between goodness and badness, and furthermore I’m far more suspicious of myself: after all, if there is a distinction to be made between better kinds of being-Christian and worse kinds, I always suspect that mine might be the worse. I just think he could draw attention to this without making the “experiential atheism” of Jesus on the cross central to everything we think (or don’t think) about God. They simply don’t realize that they share more in common with at least some atheists and atheistic existentialists than they realize — a problem that might be corrected if they were to take the time to study the history of existentialism more closely. But, all the above is just my initial reaction to some of what I’ve read of Rollins on his website and elsewhere. So it goes. Existentialism asserts that each person is their own authority concerning truth. In 2009 I started a journey into existentialism, a body of philosophy and literature that I’d heard of in my college days, largely skirted through graduate school, and only returned to because my friend Michial Farmer (you might know him from the podcast) talked me into reading and discussing Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time with him as he prepared for his comprehensive exams. The Christian Humanist Podcast, Episode #67: A Christmas Carol, Christian Humanist Podcast Episode 67.01: Singing Faith, A Primer on Christian Alternative Rock: The Violet Burning, The Christian Humanist Podcast, Episode 301: The Man Who Was Thursday, Christian Feminist Podcast Episode #128: Invisible Women – The Christian Humanist, The Christian Feminist Podcast, Episode #90: Vaccines and Essential Oils, Part 1, Christian Humanist Profiles 195: Recovering From Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, Michial Farmer, David Grubbs, and Nathan Gilmour, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Existentialism believes that existence precedes essence. I did all that reading before 2009, and I taught Brothers Karamazov this spring. The views on Existentialism teach us otherwise to be selfish in a subtle way. Second, existentialism centers on the analysis of individual existence. Such is the main focus of the book’s first part. well that would be a surprise to mulla sadra, who has existence take the primary place before essence. This is not the God of the philosophers or of rationalism, because Barth felt that rationalistic systems of understanding God and humanity had been invalidated by the destruction of the war, but the God of Abraham and Isaac and the God who spoke to the prophets of ancient Israel. By using our Services or clicking I agree, you agree to our use of cookies. Existentialism once again leaves a negative impact on Christianity because it discourages Christians of their faith within their Savior. I tend more towards Plato’s conviction that rhetoric and politics (I’m thinking of the Phaedrus and the Republic here) are precisely those human arts by which the strong help the weak to live good lives, and that rings Pauline to me. I have not read any books of his, so perhaps it would behoove me to actually do so before going too far with this assessment. While the fruits that bear from living and walking in your purpose on earth are spoiled from the ideas of Existentialism constantly. Tillich’s theological message was not about turning our lives over to the will of a divine power but rather that it is possible for us to overcome the apparent meaninglessness and emptiness of our lives. the Wikipedia article on Christian existentialism. Existentialist themes come up very commonly in my own major area of research, Russian Christian thought, where we see it it figures like Dostoevsky, Berdiaev, Shestov, and Rozanov. Paul Tillich was one Christian theologian who made extensive use of existentialist ideas, but in his case he relied more upon Martin Heidegger than Søren Kierkegaard. I’m perfectly willing to accept that I’m simply not versed enough in the language of existentialist philosophy, but it sure seems to me that Rollins operates almost entirely in a world of lofty abstract concepts, and when he does come down from there, it sure seems like nothing more than window dressing for a liberal theology that (in the words of another reviewer of Rollins) “evacuates all meaning” from traditional theological concepts like the Crucifixion and Resurrection, and doesn’t even seem to need any grounding in reality of either event. Part two, labeled “Resurrection,” takes readers past the existential angst of “Eloi Eloi” and into a way of life that Rollins calls Resurrection life but which bears little resemblance to the traditional Christian doctrine of the same name. This may lead them astray and hopeless. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
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