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Book name: ANATHEISM {
Returning to God After God }
Author: RICHARD
KEARNEY
Publisher: COLUMBIA
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Place: NEW YORK
Date: Paperback edition, 2011
Reader: Mr. M.D. Pienaar
Table of
Contents
Self
Between secular and sacred means the two
presuppositions about God's perfection and oneness are
rejected. God is not perfect and God cannot be one person
nor is God oneness of the cosmos. Plato's Forms are
perfect but the Forms are not God.
p.133
'After
our hermeneutic detour through
sacramental poetics we return,
finally, to the question of sacramental ethics. .. what
does it mean to accept the sacred stranger into the secular universe? What is
involved in translating epiphanies of transcendence into immanence of everyday
action? What are the practical implications of moving from
sacred imagination to a sacred praxis of peace and
justice?'
Self
The above objectives
of Kearney explain what he would like to see as the
teleological ends of his anatheism.
Secularisation with a place for the sacred stranger and immanent
actions instead of transcending procrastination is
important to Kearney. Practical peace and justice instead
of sacred imaginations of utopias are espoused by Kearney.
There is not a radical element in
Kearney's wishes except radical hospitality.
His wishes imply a broadening of intellectual and
religious horizons.
p.166
'Anatheism,
I have argued, is not an end but a way. It is a third way
that precedes and exceeds the extremes of dogmatic theism and militant
atheism.'
p.133-134
'TOWARD
AN ETHICS OF KENOSIS
…
<p.134>
a kenotic moment of "nothingness" and "emptiness" resides
at the core of a postmetaphysical faith; but neither sees
this as the last word. Abandonment leads back to action,
surrender resurfaces as service.
Breton
.. claims… faith "must inhabit the world and give back to
God the being he has not." Speaking more specifically of
Christian kenosis,
he talks of a process that follows "the descent of the
divine into a human form, obedience unto death, the
ignominy of the Cross. …"
Self
Using
'he' above does not make sense and it was probably done
because of the presupposition of God as One in Christian
religion, without realising. 'They' would have made more
sense. Breton emphasised welfare work as an important way
of sharing.
p.134
'In the case of the
contemporary thinker and activist Gianni Vattimo, kenosis entails a reading
of 1 Corinthians 12 (on love) that treats the Incarnation
as God's relinquishing of all power so as to turn
everything over to the secular order.'
Self
Gianni
Vattimo envisages cooperation between The-incorporeal part
of God and creaturely humans as part of God.
p.136
John Caputo also
advocates kenotic faith when he says the sacrificial power,
when sacrificing others,
should be left behind and emptied into accepting strangers
and others with love.
"All
these contemporary thinkers contribute, in their distinct
ways, to the anatheist option of a sacredness beyond
sacrifice. … Or as Francis did when he followed the
kenotic way of Christ …"
Self
who
did not start a sacrificial revolution against the Romans
and Greeks who colonized Israel.
p.137
"For
what is God, as Irenaeus put it, if not us
fully alive?
The
acknowledgement of divine kenosis,
.. is by no means confined to Christianity. .. is a
crucial moment of new creation."
Self
If survival is based
on creating as an ethical methodology instead of
sacrificing others as method of
eliminating competition or of appropriating others' assets
and ideas, the above kenotic experience can take place.
p.137-138
'FROM
HOSTILITY TO HOSPITALITY'
'In what follows I
propose to explore how anatheist attitudes might be put
into practice. How may one keep open the space of
hospitality when it is real
strangers knocking at the door, real migrants seeking food
and <p.138> shelter, real adversaries challenging
our way of life—and maybe even our lives? Here then we
return to the ultimate, and unsurpassable dilemma: what is
to be done?
Let
me begin by saying what, in my opinion, is not to be done.
To be avoided, at all costs, is the ruinous temptation to
use religion to dominate politics. … Stalinism and Nazism
were, as Mircea Eliade recognized, examples of perverted
messianism .. and the Middle East .. bear out the sorry
lesson of ongoing religious violence.'
p.139
'SACRED
SECULARITY
…
The task is to reenvision the relationship between the
holy and the profane such that we can pass from theophany to praxis while
avoiding the traps of theocracy and theodicy.'
theophany |θēˈäfənē|
noun ( pl. -nies)
a visible manifestation to humankind of God
or a god.
ORIGIN
Old English , via ecclesiastical Latin from Greek theophaneia,
from theos ‘god’ + phainein ‘to
show.’
theodicy |θēˈädəsē|
noun ( pl. -cies)
the vindication of divine goodness and
providence in view of the existence of evil.
DERIVATIVES
theodicean |-ˌädəˈsēən| adjective
ORIGIN
late 18th cent.: from French Théodicée, the
title of a work by Leibniz, from Greek theos ‘god’
+ dikē ‘justice.’ (New)
Self
Thus
theophany should be allowed
as Jesus told his disciples
by asking them to be God. In a way Kearney is doing the
same as Jesus; the most important difference is that
Kearney is not doing as he is saying because he mostly
refer to the Other whilst excluding
himself. He did however accept his own responsibility on
page 137 where he rhetorically stated: "For what is God,
as Irenaeus put it, if not us
fully alive?"
p.140-141
'Raimon Panikkar is
a contemporary philosopher who proposes the option of a
creative relationship
between the secular and the sacred.
… <p.141> This is not to say the secular and the
sacred are identical. … It is a matter of reciprocal
interdependency rather than one-dimensional conflation.
And this chiasmic coexistence may itself serve as model
for the interanimation of democratic politics and mature
faith: ..'
Self
In other words the
secular needs the
creativities of creators and creatures need networks of
secularism.
p.141
'To
collapse politics and religion into one leads, as history
shows, to holy war, theocracy, and ecclesial imperialism.'
p.142
'..
Panikkar coins the word cosmotheandrism to connote the creative cohabiting of the
human (anthropos)
and divine (theos)
in the lived ecological world (cosmos). …
The
secular entails a radical reorienting of our
attention away from the old God of death and fear,
for without such con-version we could not rediscover the
God of life at the heart of our incarnate temporal
existence.'
Self
Kearney
writes about the old devil, which sacrificed and caused
fear when Kearney writes about the old God of death and
fear.
p.143-149
'ISLAMIC
QUESTIONING'
Kearney hopes that
Islamic law will change to include democratic systems with
Sufi Islam at the lead.
He often quotes ibn-Rushd who is also called Averroës.
Self
Democratisation is
taking place in some Islamic countries. It seems Sufi Islamic groups
have been targeted by the old tutelary powers of Islamic
states in for example Egypt. (From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufism
on 15 May 2013)
p.149
'EXTENDING
THE CIRCLE
'What
then of non-Abrahamic religions? … Central to anatheism is the freedom to
converse with those who remain alien to one's own faith. …
This question of inclusive hospitality to "other Others"
seems to be particularly crucial in an age when we are
increasingly aware, through global communications, of just
how many others there are in the
world. … This question of religious difference, on a gobal
scale, cannot be avoided if anatheism is to be true to its
intentions of radical hospitality. And I
say this for practical as well as theoretical concerns:
the wager of welcoming or refusing the stranger is often a matter
of war or peace.
…
It is not simply a categorical imperative of moral reason
(à la Kant)'
Self
Kant refined Jesus's
wish that we will treat others the way we want to
be treated when Kant promoted universality of actions. Kant
wrote we should ask ourselves what the world would be like
if all act like selves do. If the envisaged impact to the
world will be negative if all act the specific way, which
is questioned, the action is wrong. If we all throw papers
in the street and not in dustbins, our streets will be a
mess, therefore it is wrong and no one should throw papers
in the street. If we all start sacrificing oppositions,
the world will digress into a state of nature, which we do
not want, therefore it was wrong when devils sacrificed
their oppositions for example Jesus.
p.150
'..
here is a sample of typical formulations concerning
compassion for the other adduced in a wide variety of
religions:
Zoroastrianism:
"Do not do unto others whatever is
injurious to yourself" (Sahyast-na-Shayast, 13:29)
Buddhism:
"Treat not others in ways that you
yourself would find hurtful" (Udana-Varga 5:18)
Jainism:
"One should treat all creatures in the world as
one would like to be treated" (Mahavira, Sutrakrtanga).
Confucianism:
"One word that sums up the basis of all good conduct …
loving kindness. Do not do to others what you do not
want done to yourself" (Confucius, Analects 15:23).
Hinduism:
"This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause
pain if done to you" (Mahabharata 5:1517)
Self
It can be noted that
the three Magi who arrived in Israel to give gifts of
incense and gold to support Jesus's
foreign spirit came from Iran where Zoroastrianism was
founded. Zoroastrianism[1]
and Jesus influenced Nietzsche when he wrote
Zarathustra. Nietzsche did not overcome the false
presupposition of a singular God, which is present in his
Zarathustra.
p.150
'Such
exchangeability between different spiritual traditions of
the planet captures one of the essential points of
interreligious dialogue: namely,
the commonality of all religions across confessional
differences. Hence the claim that when you reach through
creedal distinctions to a shared praxis and mystical
communion, you realize, as the ancients say "we are all
one." … But anatheistic hospitality toward the
stranger is, as noted, not
just the recognition of the other as the same as
ourselves (though this is crucial to any global
ethic of peace). It also entails recognizing the other as different to
ourselves, as radically strange and irreducible to
our familiar horizons.
p.151
'..
as divine as the universality of Golden Rules. …
The readiness to translate back and forth between
ourselves and strangers—without collapsing the distinction
between host and guest languages—is, I submit, one of the
best recipes to promote nonviolence and prevent war.'
p.182
'The glory of God is each and every one of US
[own capitals]
fully alive.
--Irenaeus, AD 185'
'But
i [own non-capital
letter] am talking here of a transcendence in and through
immanence,
which, far from diminishing humanity, amplifies it. If the
divine stranger does not enhance
one's humanity, inviting it to better things, that is, to
a more just, loving, and creative manner of being,
then it is not worthy of the name divine.
New Oxford American Dictionary (Version 2.1
(80), Copyright © 2005–2009 Apple Inc.)
A
anatheism · 2, 7
anthropos · 6
atheism · 2
C
creation · 4
creative · 5, 6, 10
creatures · 6, 8
G
God of death and
fear · 6
Golden Rules · 9
H
hermeneutic · 2
hospitality · 2, 4,
7, 9
I
immanence · 2, 9
interreligious · 9
Irenaeus · 4, 5, 9
J
Jesus · 5, 7, 8
K
Kant · 7
kenosis · 2, 3, 4
N
Nietzsche · 8
O
Other · 5
others · 3, 4, 7, 8
P
power · 3
R
radical · 2, 6, 7
S
sacramental · 2
sacred · 1, 2, 5
secular · 1, 2, 3,
5, 6
stranger · 2, 7, 9
Sufi · 7
T
theism · 2
theophany · 5
transcendence · 2, 9
U
universality · 7, 9