Autor: Murray, John

Buch: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Titel: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Stichwort: Der Gottlose in der Bibel, allgemein; Satre - Absurdität

Kurzinhalt: The Bible clearly locates the ultimate root of atheism not in an erroneous judgment of the mind but in an act of choice

Textausschnitt: 77a I prefer to speak of the godless man rather than of atheism in order to avoid any possible suggestion that the problem is abstract or that it presents an issue only on the level of argument. The suggestion would be entirely false. God is not a proposition but an Existence: "I am he who is." Similarly, godlessness is not a proposition but a state of existence. The knowledge of God is not an affair of affirmation alone; it is a free engagement in a whole style of life. Similarly, ignorance of God is not simply a want of knowledge or even a denial; it, too, is the free choice of a mode of being. All this will appear, I hope, as we go on. The point at the moment is that our present problem, like the problem of God, is concrete. Both problems may indeed be argued, and they must be, but their solution, like their origin, is not in terms of argument but of existence. (Fs) (notabene)
77b The problem of the godless man, like the problem of God, has its biblical form, and there I shall begin. The method will again be historical and descriptive as well as interpretative, that is, directed to an issue of theological understanding. (Fs)

84b This rapid survey of the biblical types of the godless man should serve to make clear the basic question in the matter. In the last analysis, is atheism an intellectual position reached by argument or a total option made by free decision? Is it simply a view of reality or a stance taken toward reality? Surely the biblical answer is unequivocal. The godless man, in any of his forms, is in bad faith (I can use the phrase almost in the sense of Sartre). His existence is not authentic. He refuses to recognize the reality of the human situation by refusing to recognize God, who is present in the situation, constituent of the whole meaning of the situation. The Bible clearly locates the ultimate root of atheism not in an erroneous judgment of the mind but in an act of choice, made somehow in the name of freedom, that launches the project of living the godless life. For this act, man is responsible. The biblical verdict is not doubtful. Thus to choose existence without God is to choose nonexistence. It is to fall into absurdity. (Fs) (notabene)

85a I might simply mention here that this biblical view of atheism has reappeared, with differences, in those post-modern philosophies whose basis is a postulatory atheism. Sartre, for instance, considers atheism to be the radical decision, the fundamental project. It is the original choice of one's self-in-the-world that is at the same time the discovery of the world, for the world from which God is absent reveals itself across the intention that he be absent. It is to the credit of Sartre's perspicacity that he does not even attempt to cast up a rational justification of the decision, the choice, and the ensuing project. They are by definition absurd. The will to be an atheist is the will to be a man, and to be a man is to strive to be God. This, the human project, is absurd, and it is chosen as being absurd. In a strange way, Sartre's view of atheism is hauntingly biblical. But this is to anticipate. (Fs)