Autor: Schmitz, Kenneth L.

Buch: The Gift: Creation

Titel: The Gift: Creation

Stichwort: Schöpfung - Geschenk; ex nihilo; Thomas, Gottesbeweise (2 Gegenpositionen -> wirskam dann im späteren Atheismus); Atheist: ex nihilo als Degradierung d. Menschen (doch woher der Maßstab?; Widerspruch: Erniedrigung (Hegel, d. unglückliche Bewusstsein)

Kurzinhalt: ... the atheist interprets the putative humiliation of being-a-creature in terms of a putative integrity that man would have (really can have?) outside that structure...

Textausschnitt: 69a It is noteworthy that St. Thomas selected only two counterpositions to set against his five ways to the existence of God.1 They are: (1) Theoretically, an appeal to God is not needed in order to explain things, since recourse to the principles of nature, on the one hand, and to the freedom of man, on the other, suffices. And (2) practically, if there were an all-powerful God, he could not have tolerated so much evil in his creation, unless he were himself a monster. The subsequent career of atheism has played out both of these objections. The scientific atheism of the Enlightenment professed disbelief on putative cognitive grounds: God was neither knowable nor needed to explain man and the world. To this Voltaire added his scorn for the reputed benevolence of God. The humanistic atheism of Nietzsche and Sartre professed disbelief the better to defend human freedom, dignity and responsibility. Following Feuerbach, Marx raised human praxis to the first principle of social reconstruction and explanation ("man alone"). So that these later humanistic atheisms are those of will and action.2 They are practical more than theoretical in origin and intent. Nevertheless, the decision of the atheistic humanist to eradicate belief in God is based upon his understanding of the situation in which an allegedly all-powerful God stands over against and above man and his world. (Fs)

70a It seems appropriate, then, to attempt to provide a cognitive solution of the issues raised by the atheist's understanding of creation ex nihilo. These issues arise in the face of the radical inequality that is inseparable from absolute giving and receiving. The contemporary atheist puts them in the form of two objections: (1) A creator ex nihilo would make impossible the ontological otherness of man, his self-subsistence and independence; and (2) it would make impossible man's freedom, his effective agency, autonomy and creativity. In a word, in such a situation man would be robbed of his genuine possibilities and his responsibility. (Fs) (notabene)

70b The atheistic humanist alleges that man would suffer a radical humiliation in such a situation. Now humiliation or indignity is a state of degradation. In its ordinary meaning degradation implies a process from a prior, more worthy state; and in its ordinary meaning a state presupposes a subject. Such a state is posterior to and dependent upon its subject; so that the subject itself bears the capacity for a different and better state. The atheistic humanist, however, raises humiliation to transcendental import. He alleges that if there were a creator ex nihilo, then the human condition would be one of abject and total dependence; so that the only worthy response on man's part would be to abolish the very structure itself through the free production of meaning out of himself. (Hence, Marx's "man alone," and the secular atheisms of Nietzsche and Sartre.) Moreover, the atheist refuses to avoid the problem by relativizing the creator, as though it could become a more or less equal party in interaction with man. In any event such a relativism abandons the issues by abandonning the conception of a creator ex nihilo. The atheist, on the other hand, does not ignore the conception; he seeks to deny its validity. He doesn't want compromise; he wants refutation. (Fs)

71a To attribute humiliation to someone is to measure his present condition by reference to some other condition in which he might have been or could yet be. When the atheist says, therefore, that man is humiliated if he is a creature, he measures his being a creature in comparison with another possibility, viz., that of not being a creature. That is, the atheist interprets the putative humiliation of being-a-creature in terms of a putative integrity that man would have (really can have?) outside that structure. Now this is not to find a defect within the creational structure taken in its own terms. It is to state his own conviction in favour of one structure (non-creational) against another (creational); but it is not to put forth an objection against creation. Instead of making an objection against creation on its own grounds he covertly asserts his own position, viz., that man has an intrinsic dignity only insofar as he is not created. This surreptitious (and perhaps unwitting) transference from one structure to the other is the source of the allegation that creation ex nihilo contradicts itself when it affirms both the integrity of the creature and its absolute dependence. This is certainly an important and legitimate issue: How can a creature be absolutely dependent in its being and also have ontological integrity? Is this a contradiction or is it not? That is a fair question. (Fs) (notabene)

72a The atheistic humanist, for his part, holds that the double assertion is contradictory. But he attempts to show this by absolutizing some form of what Marcel called "the techniques of human degradation."3 Now, any attempt to absolutize them does, indeed, end in contradiction. Suppose that the creator is an absolute tyrant. Then, if the one suffering humiliation (the creature) is in fact a mere shadow, a plaything, simply a puppet without integrity, the humiliation rebounds upon the torturer and verges on self-mutilation. Sadism turns into masochism, and the creator-tyrant is discredited. If, on the other hand, the one suffering humiliation has even a minimal subsistence, if he is even a slight self, then a cry of indignant protest against the torturer rises in our throats: You have no right to the absolute disposal of the sufferer! And once again the creator-tyrant is discredited. Up with the banner of atheistic humanism, down with the dehumanizing belief in a creator ex nihilo! It is true that the attempt to absolutize humiliation bears the contradiction by which the creator-tyrant needs the otherness of the sufferer (the creature) in order simultaneously and in the same process both to obliterate the other (rendering it worthless) and yet to sustain the other (in order to visit the degradation upon it). Long before Sartre and atheistic humanism, Hegel had parlayed the drama of this conflict into the provisional stalemate of the "unhappy consciousness,"4 and had pointed out the contradiction inherent in this state of mind. Moreover, the one-sided nature of the resolution proposed by atheistic humanism is manifest in its anthropocentric weight and the arbitrary restrictions it places upon the central conceptions of freedom and power. Then, too, the purported "objections" against creation ex nihilo are really assertions of a point of view, which imports into the creational structure the very conceptions of autonomy and heteronomy, of power and dependence, that are guaranteed to undermine it. (Fs)