Literature & Religion: Pascal, Gryphius, Lessing, Hölderlin, Novalis, Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Kafka

by Hans Küng, Hans Küng

The great visions of Gryphius, Lessing, Holderlin, and Novalis, visions of peace, freedom, and humanity, have not been refuted. They were simply not realized in the modem era and they point to a different future...the lofty intellectuality and morality of Pascal the Catholic as well as the radical Christianness of Kierkegaard the Protestant have to be taken in here just as much as the mystical depth of Dostoyevsky the Russian and the enigmatic darkness of Kafka the Jew. The eclipse of God, the subsequent twilight of the gods, the downfall of the modem pseudogods can be followed by a new morning in a paradigm of postmodernity (a name for what is as yet unknown). Yes, let us look forward. If I read the signs of the times rightly, toward the end of our century rebellion against the Kafkaesque world is everywhere afoot.... Literature and religion in one: a theme of hope for a new futurean era that can bring forth literature in which great theology and great aesthetics enter once again into an exemplary intimacy. uHans Knng, from Literature and Religion Up until the seventeenth century, Western culture was essentially synonymous with Christian culture. Then, on the very border between the medieval and the modem worlds, this unity of authority and belief began to crumble. For the first time, an intellectual life developed that was independent of the church, and modem, rational man surged toward new models of the world, society, the church, and theology. In Literature and Religion, Hans Knng and Walter Jens survey the complex, vital, and contradictory search for faith over the past three hundred years through the key works of eight great writers. At the dawn of modernity, Blaise Pascal was the prototype of the new modern man, measuring religion against developments in science, technology, and industrialization. Andreas Gryphius records the forces of the German Reformation, while Gotthold Lessing embodies the Enlightenment. Romanticism is represented by works of Ho1derlin and Novalis, and the crisis of the nineteenth century by Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky. Finally, Knng and Jens show the demise of the paradigm of modernity in the extreme distance between God and man in KafkaAEs The Castle. Hans Knng, the renowned theologian, and Walter Jens, a literary specialist, bring contemporary postmodern consciousness to bear on centuries of interwoven poetry and faith. Readers today will find answers to the ongoing dialogue on the possibilities and limits of faith in our fractured age.

308 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Hans Küng was a Swiss Catholic priest, controversial theologian, and prolific author. Since 1995 he had been President of the Foundation for a Global Ethic (Stiftung Weltethos). Küng is "a Catholic priest in good standing," but the Vatican has rescinded his authority to teach Catholic theology. Though he had to leave the Catholic faculty, he remained at the University of Tübingen as a professor of Ecumenical Theology and served as Emeritus Professor since 1996. In spite of not being allowed to teach Catholic theology, neither his bishop nor the Holy See had revoked his priestly faculties.

Reviews

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

KÜNG AND A PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC EXAMINE SEVERAL TEXTS

Hans Küng (born 1928) is a Swiss Catholic priest, theologian, and author, who was famously censured by the Vatican in 1979 (see 'Kung in Conflict,' 'The New Inquisition? The Case of Edward Schillebeeckx and Hans Kung,' 'The Kung Dialogue: Facts and Documents') and declared no longer authorized to teach "Catholic theology," though he remains a priest in good standing. He has written many other books, such as 'On Being a Christian,' 'Does God Exist?: An Answer for Today,' 'Eternal Life?: Life After Death as a Medical, Philosophical and Theological Problem,' etc. At the time this book was published in 1985, Walter Jens was a professor of Rhetoric at the University of Tubingen.

They note in the Preface, "The goal of these essays... is to point to the constants and variants in the great conversation that writers since the seventeenth century have been having about the possibility and limits and faith in an age of enlightenment... What follows ... is designed to show how the monologues of the poets, those exemplary witnesses, have looked, and what sort of dialogues have gone on across the ages... Our aim is to challenge readers to think afresh about literature and religion. At the same time, we wish to invite writers and theologians to look honestly at each other---and to learn."

The works considered are Pascal's 'Pensees'; Gryphius's poems; Lessing's 'Nathan the Wise'; Holderlin's hymns; Novalis's 'Christendom or Europe'; Kierkegaard's 'Training in Christianity'; Dostoyevsky's 'Brothers Karamazov'; and Kafka's 'The Castle.'

Jens asserts, "readers who wish to see 'Nathan' as a philanthropic ballad with a decidedly pro-Jewish slant are wrong. Lessing seeks not to write a pious apologia... but to destroy in exemplary fashion the Christian-derived ideology of election that... would prefer to make 'all people who are not Christians' out to be 'assassins and brigands.'" (Pg. 98)

Jens later observes, "If we count up the names of pastors' sons who contributed to German poetry, we find that the list is long: Gryphius, Gottsched, and Gellert, Wieland, Lichtenberg, Matthias Claudius, Lanz, Jean Paul, and the Schlegels, Gotthelf, and Nietzsche: a powerful pantheon with a distinctly Protestant stamp." (Pg. 128)

Küng notes that "the theologians ignored Kierkegaard the outsider. Instead, it was a handful of writers such as Ibsen, Jacobsen, and Strindberg who listened to his voice." (Pg. 200) Jens adds, "Can we imagine Soren Kierkegaard married, in a comfortable situation, the father of a family? A pedagogue surrounded by his nearest and dearest?... respected as a sort of shining example of bourgeois society? It's unthinkable." (Pg. 210)

Küng comments that "After studying ('The Castle') again and again... I still find nothing religious in it. And this is not just because its general atmosphere is depressing, cheerless, with no promise of salvation. The Castle nowhere lets us glimpse a redemptive way out." (Pg. 263)

For those primarily interested in Küng, this book will not be viewed as anywhere near one of his "major works"; but for those interested in comments on the religious implications of the works discussed, it will be of interest.

[Ephrem Arcement · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two major theologians pull out theological relevance and content from some of the major literary works of the Western world. I wish there were more books like this!