LOGOS II Benedictine Deconstruction

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BENDICTINE DECONSTRUCTIONS

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LOGOS II BENEDICTINE DECONSTRUCTIONBY

DAVID ARTHUR WLATERS

THE RELATIVELY ABSOLUTE GOD Pope Benedict‟s Regensberg speech came down hard on the side of Reason,

whatever that might mean, and on the side of the mysterious Christened GrecianLogos at that; but in his 1996 Guadalajara address as Cardinal Ratzinger to theCongregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, he posited Faith as the only salvation of “man” from the relativism he identified with “the philosophical foundation of

democracy” a “system of freedom” involving “dialogue,” a systematic “offshoot of the Western world… connected with the philosophical and religious intuitions of Asiaespecially.” Since Marxism, the only modern scientific approach to salvation, hasmiserably failed in its effort to stand the ideal upside down and bring heaven to earthinstead of talk about it, was doomed from the beginning because Marxists tried to doGod‟s work hence became diabolical instead of divine, only nihilism or total relativismcould be justified. And now, “Under the sign of the encounter of cultures, relativism




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appears to be the real philosophy of humanity…. Anyone who resists not only opposes democracy and tolerance – i.e., the basic imperatives of the humancommunity – but also persists obstinately in giving priority to Western culture.”

In retrospect it appears that the cardinal did not think as highly of Westernculture in Mexico as he did more recently as pope in Bavaria, at least not until it isspecifically associated with Catholic culture and becomes, if only Christianity wins out,a world culture. But Western scholars insist that Western culture, whether secular orspiritual, is in fact unavoidably Christian because of Christianity‟s profound historicaleffect on its development ever since Emperor Constantine saw a peculiar cross on thebattlefield and made the Asian religion an imperial religion for good political effect,remaining himself a pagan. The cardinal confessed to the fact that “relativism is atypical offshoot of the Western world,” and as pope he admitted to the beneficialinfluence of Near Eastern Judaism, but he had not been so sanguine in Mexico aboutChristianity‟s “surprising” connection with the religious institutions of the Indian

subcontinent, a connection he believed gave relativism its “particular impulse at thepresent moment.” Hinduism is an umbrella for an incredible variety of religious cults with their respective forms of worship and multiple deities personal and impersonal,accidental and absolute, a pluralism that has no doubt contributed to its stability as theoldest world religion. Notwithstanding the intolerance made most blatant in theCrusades and Inquisitions, the Roman Church went out of its way to incorporateaspects of the various pagan cults it encountered besides the ancient cults it inheritedfrom the Orient and the Occident, but its abstract monotheism ultimately toleratesonly an absolute three-in-one god whose being seems to depend on the existence of his enemy, Satan, the only truly monotheistic creature, the fallen angel who loved God

so much that he refused to love God‟s image; namely, Man. Satan is indubitably responsible for the vain illusions of relativity that distract Man from the worship of the one and only god.

The total relativists, said Cardinal Ratzinger, believe dialogue would ensure thatall the participants in the great relational conversation are equal: How could the truthbe known if impeded by irrational prejudices? “The notion of dialogue,” he said,“which has maintained a position of significant importance in the Platonic andChristian tradition, changes meaning and becomes both the quintessence of therelativist creed and the conversion and the mission. In the relativist meaning, to(engage in) dialogue means to put one‟s own position, i.e., one‟s own faith, on the

same level as the convictions of others without recognizing in principle more truth init that that which is attributed to the opinion of others.”

That is to say that Mr. Ratzinger‟s cardinal complaint is that relativists considertheir faiths on a par with his own self-righteous orthodox („right opinion‟) faith. Atleast he recognizes the relative superiority of his own relative absolute, whereas theliberal relativists seem to be relatively unconscious of their own striving forsuperiority; hence they are unwittingly inconsistent in their arrogant self-ignorance. If




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only they recognized the relativity, which they equate with equality, of their ownstance, then and only then would they be totalitarian relativists; but then nothing

would be worth saying; that is, dictating as authors - authorities. However, one thing that religious relativists or pluralists insist upon, following the lead of AmericanPresbyterian John Hick, whom the cardinal identified as “an eminent representativ e of the religious relativism” rooted in the “Asia‟s negative theology,” is that the Absolutecannot miraculously interject itself into cause-and-effect determined history.

So much for Jesus Christ in the skeptical West, but such a divine incarnation isin fact common under the Hindu umbrella. The relatively determined world of causeand effect is an illusion, a mayic projection, according to the Hindu sages whorecognize avatars. But Cardinal Ratzinger, for whom Jesus the Christ is the only realincarnation of God, implied that the divine incarnations of Hindus arephantasmagoric reflections of abstract absolutes. But never mind the complexity andthe contradictions; his point is this: Religious relativists of the American sort believe

Jesus of Nazareth is no more than a myth, and think that people who do believe thereis some sort of valid binding truth in history‟s span are not only ignorant but areregressive fundamentalists who threaten the Summum Bonum of neoteric man;namely, Liberty, and all she implies – freedom, tolerance, private property, et cetera..

Good point. In the United States of America, said to be the most religiousnation under God in the First World, with liberty and justice for all, a “new paradigm”has come forth to save beleaguered Christianity from the fundamentalism that isdriving enlightened people away from church-attended religion. For example, onOctober 28, 2006 The Miami Herald reported that Marcus Borg, professor of religionand culture at Oregon State University, claimed that mainstream churches have lost 40

percent of their members, in part because mainline religions are not doing enough todraw a line between fact and fiction in the Bible; therefore he is in town to deliver athree-day lecture at the Coral Gables Congregation Church, in hopes of moving thedwindling congregation beyond Bible literalism, which “has become a majorintellectual stumbling block for millions of people.” Asked to describe the so -callednew paradigm of Christian faith, Professor Borg said: “The earlier way of seeing Christianity is literalistic, and the emerging version emphasizes a historical andmetaphorical interpretation of the Bible. It affirms religious pluralism, and it involvesa recovery of Christian spiritual practices such as contemplative prayer andmeditation.” Biblical literalism demands that people believe, for example, in the

factuality of the Creation myth with its talking snake and magic trees. He said 48percent of Americans say they believe the world was created less than 10,000 yearsago, not because they really believe it but because they are supposed to give it ritual lipservice. But such dishonesty shames them, and they eventually leave the churchesdisgraced.

Professor Borg does not believe the seas actually parted for Moses or that Jesus was actually born of a virgin or rose from the dead. His religion is not factual; it is




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metaphorical: “The point of the story of the story of the empty tomb is that you won‟t find Jesus in the land of the dead. He‟s of the present, not of the past…. WhatI‟m emphasizing is taking the Bible seriously, not literally.” As for politicalChristianity, the professor said Jesus‟ criticism of the Christian right would beextreme. He agreed with the sentiment behind evangelist Jim Wallis‟s question: “How did the religion of Jesus become pro-war, pro-rich and only pro-American? Jesus wascrucified or executed by empire, and early Christianity was an anti-imperialmovement.”

Professor Borg‟s views obviously clash with Professor Ratzinger‟s, and eventhe more so since the latter became Pope Benedict. The Pope of course would be gladto sit down and have a reasonable dialogue with the likes of Professor Borg instead of heading up a holy war against the infidels of America. We might want him to ask Professor Borg, “What good is Christianity if no person, not even Jesus the Christ,can be in fact actually saved from the determination of facts? Metaphorical salvation

might do as a sop to absorb the guilt of sinners that they might use religion to justify whatever they wanted to do in the first place and even feel good doing it, but feel-good religion is not good enough for us, for we want the real McCoy, or rather, Jesusthe Christ.” But the genuinely faithful are few and far between in this age of gildedindividualism. As a matter of fact, most Americans do not know what to believeanymore when it comes to religion, unless there is money to be had or a war to befought or a prisoner to be executed or an abortion to be prohibited in God‟s name.

“Two years after The Passion of the Christ broke all box office records, religionremains conspicuously absent from most Hollywood films. Why? Even though morethan 90 percent of Americans claim to believe in God, they disagree about the

particulars, so no studio dares commit faith to film,” wrote film critic Peter Debrugein his October 27, 2006 review ( Miami Herald ) of Conversations With God , wherein aman is rendered homeless by a car accident, pathetically struggles to recover, isdirectly spoken to by God, writes a revelatory book and strikes it rich. But asubstantial conversation is not revealed in the movie: the conversations remain a one-sided affair. The film seems to be nothing more than an infomercial for the books

written by the real author, Neale Walsch, therefore the critic flunks the filmadaptation. Unfortunately, he did not briefly speculate on the causes of the popularity of Mel Gibson‟s purportedly anti-Semitic, graphic rendition of the Crucifixion. Hemight have remarked that public executions have always been crowd pleasers, the

more grisly the better. And what could be more fascinating than the torture andcapital punishment of the most innocent lamb in the world? Or was he a traitor to hispeople and to empire? In any event, crime is the price of freedom, and punishmentthe price of crime, and people want plenty of it. Still, we wish that Artemis hadsubstituted a scapegoat at the last moment and had whisked Jesus, the Marginbetween Heaven and Earth, off to some undisclosed planet where he would securethe sacred rites until it was time to return to restore sanity to Earth pursuant to a




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shocking and awesome apocalypse instituted by the Terrorist Almighty. No doubt thehorrific drama would be a really big box office hit – doomsayers would be enraptured.Until then one might ask why the torture of alien prisoners and capital punishment isnot televised where torture and capital punishment is most favored in the free world,in gun-toting United States of America, where murder, rape and mayhem are the usualentertainment fare – perhaps Americans prefer metaphors to experiencing the realthing in their own homes. But let the answer to why we are what we are be secretedby the term of dogma called sin lest ambiguous freedom be lost to the Total.

To return to Cardinal Ratzinger, whose Guadalajara speech is no secret: Although he gives lip-service to the archetypical dialogue of Plato, who twistedSocratic skepticism into faith in absolutes; although he gives lip-service to thescholastic Christian dialogue that allowed for the argument of thesis and antithesis aslong as the incarnated theme of its traditional episteme remained intact; - CardinalRatzinger, where his own religion is at stake, prefers his blessed monologue to

doubting dia-logue, which requires two to tangle. After all, there is only one god, nottwo or more, and rational argument must therefore be employed to the highest use of logic: to persuade oneself and others that the one-god is altogether good despite theappearance of evil in the world. But the relativists insist that the declared divinity of aparticular person is an attempt to mitigate fear, and can only lead to fanaticism whencrucified by doubt – the self-righteous anger may be cloaked in humility and thepilgrims may profess love and even learn to love the enemy of their wantedomnipotence, the external force who holds sway over their mundane existence.

Relativism, then, is a rationalization of tolerance, which is a good thing forpolitics, said Cardinal Ratzinger; but it does not otherwise apply, for there are in fact

certain injustices, such as “killing an innocent person” and “denying an individual andgroups the right to their dignity.” Of course the pontiff, whose very career dependson the reality of his absolutes, which are by definition independent of relativeparticulars, and in particular the reality of his own absolute, which he would have asthe universal scheme or logos of existence, resorts to the customary refutation of so-called total relativism, that all symbolic actions and actual deeds are not equal. Someideas and some works are absolutely good, and some are absolutely evil, as is similarly recognized by all civilized peoples; and if not, should be so recognized. It isreasonable to expect that the Ten Words – the Decalogue or Ten Commandments –

would be accepted by good people everywhere, or that they would at least accept five

or six of them, which would go to show us that, although there are relative differencesbetween cultures, they all have something in common, which disproves the principleof absolute relativism.

Finding a total relativist is of course impossible, for each and every individualnaturally would persist forever if it could, and to do so it would have to forcefully impose its own virtue on others that it not be in itself retrained. The relativists wehear so much about are in fact paper tigers created in selfish defense of one‟s own




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absolute idols or ideals as expressed in words, which themselves are deemed sacredshields, to the end that nominalists are disposed to charge the philosophicallogophiliacs with logolatry or the worship of words in themselves, which results inendless talk about talk and ceaseless logicism because there is nothing outside of thesacred text, nothing outside of the Logos. That is to say, absolute relativists are afearful figment of the human imagination, In addition to the ground beneath our feetthat it relies on, the imaginative power naturally wants some metaphysical ground orimage to stand on to do its work; thus does faith precede works.

The presumably absolute relativism of Plato‟s Protagoras, for example, cannotbe reasonably attributed to the historical Protagoras‟ extant sayings: Plato‟s Protagorasis a fictitious character, the contrary mouthpiece for Plato‟s dialectic, wherein heargued against his own relativism and for the hypostasis or realization of mentalconstructs in order to treat his ideals as real thingies - the archetypes of things real – hence the confusion of realism and idealism, of what is with what we want. Given the

underlying crisis or hypocrisy of humankind, the crisis between the past and presentreality and the ideal future desired, we are all relativists and absolutists at once, and inour logomachy or war of words, we forget that the mote we see in another‟s eye is thereflection of the log in our own. For instance, when the absolutists charge therelativists with inconsistency because they would preserve for themselves the principlethey would deny to others, the absolutists are blind to the fact that they are doing thesame thing, attempting to raise the symbol of their relative position over the rest, thatall might not only tolerate one another, but even love everyone unconditionally, orelse a holocaustic sacrifice of infidels to Moloch.

All of the vices including homicide, cannibalism, rape and theft have been

deemed goods at one time or another by various cultures and all sorts of viciousconduct has been provoked and sanctioned by religious sentiment. From our elevatedperspective we may thank Judeo-Christian sentiment for considerable moral progressin the mores of human cultures, for helping to tame the beast; but still, since religiousinstitutions usually supported the political regimes for their own good, and so oftensanctioned whatever the beast within wanted to do, anyway, in accordance with itsinstinctive logos or anarchic faith, we must give much of the credit for humanecivilization to the gradual development of liberal political institutions. That is not tosay that any political regimen or body politic or structure can save humankind fromitself, nor that politicians are better than anyone else; quite to the contrary, thus do

those fanatic fundamentalists who do not understand that political ideologies aretheologies, believe a theocratic would be best, so that the best one-god can be equally imposed on all.

Now the killing of innocent persons and depriving individuals and groups of the right to dignity, which Cardinal Ratzinger mentioned before he was inducted aspope, is a vicious routine deemed a necessary evil to keep the peace; and mass murderand mayhem and destruction of the means of secular life is a common practice in




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times of war, where the deliberate murder of innocents is committed to end wars eventoday, despite all the rhetoric about collateral damage. Moreover, these crimes againsthumanity have been done in the name of gods and often the same god to wash away the blood-guilt – a fundamental raison d‟ être of a number of ancient religions. TheHoly Father, thank God, has objected to the pre-emptive war waged by PresidentBush in the name of the “Father higher than my father,” to make the world safe forhis version of democracy, as well as to the aggression of Israel, its Middle East proxy.President Bush, incidentally, claimed that Jesus Christ is his “political hero.”

We might infer from Cardinal Ratzinger‟s relativistic pronouncement thatkilling guilty people is just, which would certainly deprive them of their social dignity.

An absolute injunction would absolutely prohibit homicide, and it would have to bepolitically enforced: religion, before all, is the worship of absolute Power, whilepolitics appertains to the relative distribution of that Power. Like the relativists of

whom he complains, the cardinal did not see the political plank in his eye, which

further substantiates the creed of cognitive relativism, that thinking in itself, being ahuman activity, is always ambiguous, and if we are what we think we are, the Absolutemay never appear in our language, or for that matter, the history that we have told.

Yet that is anathema for a man of the true Christian faith, for whom the Absoluteappeared in concrete human form as Jesus the Christ, and in effect made history possible, as least according to the calculations of the Common Era calendar.Christians have faith because of this mysterious Punctuation that saved them fromirrational fear, anxiety, superstition, and the degrading and violent practices thatrelieved their boredom. Our faith is not to be placed in the works, but in the Creator

who gave us his only begotten son to murder, the perfect proof that it is better to

suffer an evil than to do one, better to die on the cross at the hands of injustice thanto unsheathe a sword, for it is not true that a life not worth killing for is not worthliving; quite to the contrary: A life one must kill for is not worth living, especially

when the humble and meek who imitate this example are bound to sit beside God when their lives on Earth are wrongfully terminated. But it appears that PopeBenedict does not cotton to that absolute perspective, hence he is himself a relativist,so to speak. HISTORICAL CRITICISM

Throughout history dissident historians not to mention politicians havecriticized dogmatic historical interpretations of past events. The victors tend toexpunge the records of dissent and to sit on their historical laurels, thinking by the

while that their own interpretation of history will endure as long as the stone on which it is chiseled. But the stone is bound to be overturned in time along with itshistory, leaving people who have stones in their heads to bang their heads againstfallen walls and fight each other over the rubble. Somehow, perhaps by Providence,




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the Rock of Peter upon which the Roman Church was built has endured along withits sacred canon carefully culled from a variety of texts and somewhat edited over thecenturies. Peter‟s rock is a modified replica of David‟s keystone; without it, the grandedifice would fall into the abyss – those who would pry up dogma to take a peek atchaos should beware, for they might make a fatal slip and work their own destruction.

A copied-out and illustrated book used to cost more than a large house, and forthe most part poor folk, not to mention numerous nobles, were illiterates. The Bible‟scontents, deemed to communicate the ultimate history of histories, were thereforerelated and interpreted by messengers for the Lord‟s Messenger – the Logos, meaning of course the Son of God. The sacred text was deemed sacrosanct and hereticalcriticism was not appreciated and was severely punished lest there be no metaphysicalRock to stand upon in the City of God. Of course authoritative interpretations werepermissible provided they were apologies for the faith deemed righteous by theadministration; hence certain methods of interpretation became standardized. Thanks

to the Muslims who had preserved ancient Greek texts and had put an alchemical andscientific spin on Aristotle, the Church was confronted with a Greek philosophy apparently hostile to the Catholic faith, but its intellectuals managed to incorporate itsbare bones, the ancient trivium of grammar, logic and rhetoric to Catholic ends – forinstance, the writing of pious letters..

Once the Holy Bible was printed in the vulgar tongue, the authoritativeecclesiastical corporation was challenged not only in Latin by the likes of Erasmus but

was roundly criticized in the vulgar tongue for its seeming misinterpretations of sacredhistory; yet the text itself, which had been deemed the Word by high spiritualauthority, remained sacrosanct to most people. The scientific ray of the

Enlightenment was focused more on the determination of factual events than onelusive abstruse meaning, but of course doubt was cast on miracles and otherdeviations from natural law as well as the substantiation of events with evidence – even the historical existence of Jesus was questioned.

Enlightenment thought and Roman Catholic thought were akin inasmuch asboth rationalized a universal viewpoint or embraced a rational worldview, as if there

were a certain logic or Logos, be it natural or divine law, governing space-timeexistence. Moreover, both envisioned a more or less linear progress to an ideal state.On the other hand, historicism raises history above theology and philosophy,disregards universalistic rationalizations, and seeks to understand past facts and events

as they essentially were in their respective times and circumstances. Historicism is notto be confused with scientism; although its style was influenced by modern science, itshistorians averred that history differs from natural science inasmuch as human history is the creation of the human will, which is notoriously difficult to control short of murder; imprisoned people have the freedom of their private thoughts; given writing instruments, there is no better place to write a revolutionary tract on liberty than inprison.




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History is purportedly then a human enterprise to which all the sciences aresubservient: it cannot be quantified in such a way that the future may be predicted orcontrolled. The theory of probability is helpful in the short run where big numbers areinvolved; even so, every insurance company or organization for human security isbound to eventually fail, and it will do so in short order, now that the pace has pickedup, unless it welcomes and responds fortunately to change. Historicism emphasizedchange, hence was antipathetic to the theories, structures, systems raised by thereligious, philosophical, and natural sciences. Some of the leading lights of classicalhistoricism were profoundly religious men who did in fact have a religious perspectiveon the world; but that spiritual viewpoint was, for the most part, particularistic incomparison to the Catholic; to wit: German Lutheran. For them, only faith is of avail,and then only a few shall be saved no matter what they might do or say. The concrete

works of human hands and the symbolic works of human minds cannot savehumankind from God‟s doom.

Pope Benedict speaks well of the Enlightenment provided it is wed to theChristian religion, but a most rational star of the Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant, notto mention Satan, is nonetheless the arch-enemy of Catholic conservatives. ProfessorKant waxed enthusiastic on transcendentalism, but then said that nothing certaincould be divined with transcendental logic. He even scoffed at the notion of transcendent beings – in America, the New England Transcendentalists mistakenly thought that Kant had testified for immediate or intuitive access to the SupremeBeing. His famous “thing -in-itself”, the primordial unknown god we conceive asbeing behind or underneath or above it all, cannot exist, cannot be known – if history be definitely thought, the unthinkable cannot be. That is to say that the Absolute can

never appear to humankind on this plane, hence the notion of its incarnation in a manis absurd, at least according to Professor Kant‟s logic. Furthermore, any dogmaticteaching to the contrary, implied Professor Kant, would be “a crime against humanity because it is the original vocation of humanity to progress the enlightenment in self-impelled knowledge that has cast off the tutelage of external authority.”

On the other hand, Johann Georg Hamann, Kant‟s good friend andphilosophical antagonist, believed that Kant‟s airy castles of reason were crimesagainst humanity, artificial schemes that serve to shield people from the reality of theirGod-given passions and convert them into sleepwalkers if not zombies. Hamann, so-called Magus of the North, was a founder of the romantic „Storm and Stress‟ literary

movement that stressed revolt and personal freedom. A strong defender of Lutheranism, he wanted to kindly wash away the sins of intellectual pride by giving members of the party of reason “curative baths” in his voluminous “tubs” or books – as far as he was concerned, all books are sacred and there is nothing beyond God‟sgreat text simply because that textile comprises everything that can be said and done.One such bath was an essay entitled „Metacritique of Pure Reason,‟ in effect a critiqueof Kant‟s critique, in which he undermined Kant‟s logicism by grounding knowledge




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in experience, the hypostasis or underlying unity of which is God, or so he believed. Analytical reason in effect is disintegrative. All the finite differences or dissimilaritiesbetween things as perceived and conceived are resolved in the One or Absolute; inanother word, if you please: God. This notion was by no means novel in Germanculture: in fact, it came to Nicolas of Cusa, roughly three centuries prior to Hamann,as a “gift from above” in response to his mathematical and philosophical musings.Not only his contradictions, but all contradictions including the logical contradictionsof the three-in-one-god conception, were conveniently resolved in infinity by virtue of a coincidence of so-called opposites. Nicolas, by the way, dropped his support for theradicals who advocated the superiority of a general council over the pope, and insteadsupported the supremacy of the pope over the religion to guarantee the unity of theChurch.

We know finite objects by their similarities and dissimilarities; an apple and anorange are both fruit but differ from one another in kind of fruit; and we know both

kinds of fruit as fruit because fruit, in turn, differs in respect to other kinds of things we know, such as vegetables. But when we ascend the ladder of universals to theBeing of all beings, there is nothing to compare Being with except not-Being, which isnot a feature of anything conceivable; quite to the contrary. That is to say that Being,because it has no known comparable, is inconceivable. God is inaccessible to humanreason. Kant would agree with that much early on in his career, but not with hisfriend Hamann‟s notion that God, the something behind the veil we call reality, isaccessible through natural experience.

Thinking is another passion among several, at least as Hamann passionately thought of it, wherefore thought is as fallible as any human passion, including its

thoughts about its perfection in systematic reasoning. Nature is God‟s speech, and itstrue nature is divined not by systematic reasoning but by the genius of creative people

who are either ignorant of the rules or who know the rules and just refuse, likeSocrates, to play the self-contradictory game of hypocrisy, and admit instead to theirown ignorance.

In Socratic Memorabilia , Hamann reiterated what everyone who knows anything about Socrates must know, that having proved his own ignorance, the great skeptic‟sconversations were intended to defeat the arrogance of the reasoning power, and notto augment the false pride taken in its virtues or to borrow it for religious dogma.Hamann‟s illustrious friend Kant and company, the so-called New Athenians, had

deified Socrates in order to mock Jesus, using dialectical games to deflate histranscendence and make merely a practical man out of him. We note well that PopeBenedict hijacked Socrates, not to confess his own pontifical ignorance but topontificate on the false notions of those who call Christian theosophy false:

“Socrates says,” Pope Benedict declared at Regensburg, “it would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for therest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being – but in this way he would




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be deprived of the truth of existence and suffer a great loss.” But the fact that t ruthneeds falsity on the one to be true on the other does not make falsity right. If someone thinks wrongly long enough, wrong might feel right, but that does not makeit so.

At any rate, we may praise reason to high heaven but to what end? Are we thatmuch wiser than the high priest we would replace? Kant dared his contemporaries tothink, but for what reason? Are we to believe that we are enlightened and to strutabout like peacocks for that very reason? Socrates was the wisest man on earth, andabove all a man should know himself, but when Socrates inquired at length into thematter he found his wisdom in knowing his ignorance, whereas the rest thought they

were wise by virtue of their faulty reasoning.Since Kant is an arch-enemy of the Roman Church, Pope Benedict must

appreciate Hamann‟s attempt to baptize Kant‟s overarching reason hence subject it tofaith, but a Lutheran a Catholic cannot be, so battle-lines must be drawn and quibbled

over – we find the pope‟s logic rather fuzzy lately, and that m ight be a good thing if it were more inclusive or catholic. Hamann was moved to quote the famous battle-cry of the Enlightenment penned by Pierre Bayle, author of the most intriguing dictionary ever written: “Reason is the supreme tribunal, and one which judges in the last resort,and without appeal, everything that is placed before it.” To which Hamannresponded: “What is this reason, with its universality, infallibility, exuberant certainty and obviousness? An ens rationis , a stuffed dummy which the howling superstition of our unreason endows with divine attributes.” Hallelujah! Now to be fair to PierreBayle, a faithful skeptic in his own right, we should point out that he said somewherethat reason is an acid that eats through everything including its base, but that he was

nevertheless not afraid of the bottom falling out on him At least Immanuel Kant did not throw out the howling baby with the

bathwater: He reduced the merit of religion to moral practice, hopefully in accord with his version of the Golden Rule, the ethical imperative that each and every one of us should ask whether or not our reasons for acting should be universal laws. Doing unto others as you would have done to yourself will not do for all if you happen to be,for example, a masochist benevolently inclined to sadism. Good reasons are betterbased on good intentions, but the goodness of those intentions is socially defined interms of their fruits. As for natural law and the science of nature: The law special toMan‟s nature is his ability to reason; in order to effectively reason, he must freely

criticize, as Kant presumed before critiquing reason and finding fault withtranscendental logic – the virtue of logic is that it finds fault with ambiguousreasoning, and its fault is that it proves no affirmation to be true . An abstractargument might be air tight and as empty as a vacuum. There must be someuniversally perceptible evidence of the truth of a statement if it is to be scientific inthe modern sense of science. A more or less scientific methodology of Bible criticismor exegesis was developed, and it was naturally applied to secular histories as well, an




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application that would pose a serious problem to anyone whose faith depended on thetruth or immutability of the concrete facts related by Holy Scripture. Such Biblecriticism fell under the rubric „historical criticism” or the “historical -critical method”of interpretation, a modus operandi for historiography that might confirm as well asdeny the principles of faiths if not the naked facts. Popes and others who need faithsto stand on are not about to have their legs kicked out from under them if they canhelp it.

There are many ways to skin a cat. Rudolf Bultmann, a Neo-Kantian whobelieved the unavoidable external world is produced by the human mind and is a flow of sin, wanted to correct the vices of Protestant exegesis because he believed itshistorical critical method had disposed of the saving love of Jesus. There is no usetrying to repudiate the critical method, he thought, for we are stuck in this sinful

world, from which there is no absolute escape but in the existential impact of Scripture preached as the Logos – the Word of God. Revelation or the awakening

comes in the form of divine lightning while we are rooted to the sinful world.Mr. Bultmann‟s most gifted student, Henrich Schlier, practiced a Gnostic sortof historical criticism, yet he eventually fell in love with the Roman Church, much tothe dismay of his colleagues. His “impartial historical criticism‟ of the New Testamentled him to believe that “Christ‟s free giving of himself through the Holy Spirit in theChurch is in „principle‟ captured and „documented‟; that is to say, we find its originand beginning there.” That is to say, the Church embodies the Jesus tradition. And

what is that? “One can only understand it as the „self -exegesis of the Logos, JesusChrist himself through the Holy Spirit through the faith of the Church. This isparticularly obvious in the Fourth Gospel.” One should be careful of the subject he

would criticize because he would have to learn it to do so, and might fall for it. Anatheist might even become a man of the cloth, and that is why committed atheistsrefuse to argue about the subject they believe does not exist.

But it is the possibility of denial of faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ if not hisactual existence by historical criticism that is the rub: Pope Benedict among otherconservative or fundamentalist religious believe historical criticism should be confinedto the secular or satanic realm, and bona fide religious history left to God and hismessengers. An historian true to historical-critical methodology should set aside herreligion and consider the source documents scientifically without subtext, as if it werea secular text in the contexts of the times of its writing, instead of approaching it with

prejudicial absolutes; in other words, to be more objective, s/he had better approachthe sacred text scientifically or atheistically; i.e., relativistically.

Cardinal Ratzinger, destined to be Pope Benedict anon, had divined something absolute and eternal from sacred scripture and had in fact apotheosized his ownfavorite particular. He turned on relativism in his Guadalajara address; but heparadoxically charged critical historians, who are supposedly relativists, with doing thesame thing; that is, with being absolutists – at least their absolutism could be




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dismissed as trivial because it was merely secular. He admitted that the historical-critical method “is an excellent instrument for reading historical sources andinterpreting texts. But it contains its own philosophy in general… (which) is hardly important….” He summarily dismissed the narrated facts of the past, because all itcan tell us is what has passed and nothing more; and even those tales are tainted by the prejudices of the critical historian. After all, the absolute and eternal transcendstime, and in any case we might presume that true Christians always look ahead untoDoomsday for the coming of their messiah.

The cardinal named an American Presbyterian, John Hick, as the “eminentrepresentative of religious relativism,” adding that “there is a strange closenessbetween Europe‟s post-metaphysical philosophy and Asia‟s negative theology. For thelatter, the divine can never enter unveiled into the world of appearances in which welive; it always manifests itself in relative reflections and remains beyond all worlds andnotions in an absolute transcendency.” Although Kant thought that the notion of

transcendent beings was laughable, Mr. Hick is careful to make the Kantiandistinction, that our truths are conditioned by our capacities, hence we do not see the world as it is, so to speak, but as we see it through our lenses. The Absolute cannotenter into our history; Jesus of Nazareth‟s posture as Son of God is a myth, and faithin his divinity alone will lead to fanaticism.

Other critical historians, such as the ex-priest Paul Knitter, try to effect a new synthesis of Asian and European religions, joining pluralist religion with liberationtheology, and emphasizing practice over theory. But the cardinal will have none of that, for “Putting praxis above knowledge in this way is also a clearly a Marxistinheritance…,” declared Cardinal Ratzinger. Where do I find a just action if I cannot

know what is just in an absolute way?” Marxist theology is no theology at all becauseit renounces metaphysics – that apparently led to its miserable demise, just as any godless political system is bound to fail. In any event, as conservative Christians havepointed out time and time again, God‟s revelatory cataclysms or dooms (judgments)have taught us that systems do not save men and women; only God can do that, andthen the men and women might save the system.

ALL SYSTEMS ARE DOOMED BY GOD The point that all systems are doomed is especially well made just after a

catastrophe. Herbert Butterfield made it after the world wars, in Christianity and History (1949). Humankind‟s relative prosperity and rationalism did no t save it from disaster,and war got way out of hand, as if to teach a lesson to all who waged it, that they wereconfronting the iron rod of the Lord‟s wrath.

“It is a dangerous illusion to imagine that if Germany can be proved to havesinned, those who fighting against her may be assumed to have been righteous,”penned Mr. Butterfield. When the historian sees old orders crumbing, he “can hardly




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avoid the conclusion that moral defects have something to do with the catastrophesthat take place. The processes of time have a curious way of bringing out thefaultiness concealed in a system which at first view seems to be satisfactory.”Moreover, “Sometimes… it is only by a cataclysm that man can make his escape fromthe net which he has taken so much trouble to weave around himself; and that is why the judgments of God so often appear to be remedial to the future historian….”Every systematic order relied upon for salvation is doomed: “If we were to establishan ideal state of unconditioned freedom in society, we all know that within a shorteror longer period the result would be an alarming scene of license.” When Amos

warned that the day of the Lord awaited upon by all was not a triumphant day but wasrather doomsday, a terribly dark day of reckoning. “Where the greater prophets of theOld Testament extend their survey beyond their own country and pronounce a doomupon many nations for rearing themselves up like gods, the analogies with the moderndeification of the state seem to me to be very remarkable indeed.”

As Jeremiah once said so well, “Thine own wickedness shall correct thee.” Mr.Butterfield the historian posits propounds a judgment embedded in the complexfabric of history, a doom that shall fall heaviest on people who think they are godsand who “put their trust in man-made systems and worship the work of their ownhands, and who say that the strength of their own right arm gave them the victory.”Moreover, “One of the most dangerous things in life is to subordinate humanpersonality to production, to the state, even to civilization itself, to anything but theglory of God.” If all that be true and forthcoming, prophetic critical historians mightsuppose that not shall be the United States of America and its allies doomed in shortorder. But the history of Israel teaches us that the Remnant shall survive to enjoy the

Kingdom of God: “Even if the Remnant were only a handful it would inherit thefullness of the Promise.”

Jews expect the Messiah to come someday, and this notion secularized rendersus confident of our progress towards an ever-receding, glorious political future. As weknow, the Jewish messiah is a temporal king, and Jewish salvation, unlike that of thefrustrated Jews who call themselves Christians, does not call for the perdition of everyone who does not convert to the tribal religion, for all tribes shall be ruled by Israel, and the redeemed shall inhabit this Earth, not some other world. HerbertButterfield cannot help but to marvel at the great historical contribution of such asmall nation. He does not mention the contributions of the Greek city-states,

England, Portugal, Holland, or the Italian city-states, for their contributions to worldhistory apparently pale in comparison to the boon provided by the ancient Hebrews

who “by virtue of inner resources and unparalleled leadership, turned their tragedy,turned their very helplessness, into one of the half-dozen creative moments in worldhistory.” Therefore, “one of clearest and most concrete facts of history is the fact thatmen of spiritual resources may not only redeem history, but turn it into a grandcreative moment.” We might add history is redeemed to be redoomed, or judged to




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be judged, time and time again, despite the notion of linear progress, which advancesinfinitely until its end meets its origin in an infinitely vicious or virtuous cycle – its

virtue or vice depends on pessimistic or optimistic sentiment. And sometimes whenman is judged by the highest power, wrote Mr. Butterfield, supra-personal edificesassociated with progress, such as state, culture, capitalism, and liberalism, areforthwith shattered. However, we note that Christian history apparently does not callfor the shattering of the Christian historian‟s Christian church, which handed over itssword to the dominant political authorities long ago, that the factions might fight inthe same name of the multifaceted being whose determinations often appear to be atthe fanciful leisure of fickle Lady Luck than at the will of seriously disposed DivineProvidence..

“When men used to talk of making the world safe for democracy,” hecontinued, “one suspected that one heard half an echo of a satirical laugh…. Afterthat, statesmen became still more presumptuous and promised by victory in war they

would secure the world „freedom from fear.‟” And may the multiform Judeo-Christiantribal deity forgive our sinful cynicism in respect to the Judeo-Christian edifice reliedon today by the leader of the super-powerful leader of Western civilization, who inthe name of his god embarked the nation on a crusade to make the world safe for his

version of democracy, whether the world wants it or not, over the dead bodies of countless noncombatants whose hellish circumstances under their new democracy make the tortured life of imprisoned combatants a cakewalk. The neo-barbarianChristian leaders have effected the death of more than a million Iraqis, more than thedespot they overthrew, but they are to be forgiven because they had good intentionsand the casualties were collateral damage or a necessary evil. At least Pope Benedict,

who is naturally well-versed in the Christian conception of just war, has condemnedthe pre-emptive or unjust war, although he has of late cast a jaundiced and wary eyeon Islam, which Islamic terrorism defames in his eyes by begging Allah to fatally differ

with the Great Satan, the West the pontiff lauds for its Christian inspiration. GERMANIC HISTORICISM

The accursed relativists, pluralists, deconstructionists, multiculturalists andpostmodernists object: It is not God who in his capacity as Terrorist Almighty doomsthe differences and destroys the world to achieve a consensus of terror or unity in

death, but rather the absolutists who have created Him to condone their relativeinjustice and authorize further brutality. But to do the relativists justice, are not they and their kith and kin absolutists in their own right? Cardinal Ratzinger implied, whileimpugning its relativism, that the strain of historicism called the “critical historical”method by Biblicists is really another form of frustrated absolutism: “It supposes thathistory is, in principle, uniform, therefore, man with all his differences and the world

with all its distinctions are determined by the same laws and limitations so that I can




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eliminate whatever is impossible. What cannot happen to day in any way could nothappen yesterday nor will it happen tomorrow.”

Now classical historicism holds that truth is relative to given moments inhistory; hence truth is in effect constantly changing; therefore, no one truth isabsolute or more important than the truths corresponding to any other moments of history. History does not repeat itself: What‟s done is done and won‟t happen again.Relativistic reasoning on history gave priority to the notion of change and rejected thetranscendent religious norms handed down by medieval Christianity as well as therational structures devised and other idols embraced during the Enlightenment – during the Revolution, images of Reason and natural scenes replaced sacred images inchurches; and if a priest mentioned God, guffaws could be heard all around.

Of course the notion that singular historical truth is absolute belies or makes amyth of the birth and death and resurrection of god incarnate, a miraculouspunctuation that historicism would fain deny until scientifically proven – miracles

assume divine intervention by an unknown being in contradiction to natural law; thusfar none have been proven to the satisfaction of objective observers.But that is not to say there is no principle of unity nor design, meaning, or

purpose underlying history. An historian and other authors might believe in theexistence of some form of providence, but be unable to explain it adequately fromtheir perspective in the historical complex. The school of so-called New Historicism

would examine the historical text or testimony in the light of the social circumstancesof its time, which presumably determine the author‟s opinions. Therefore the author‟spersonal authority is diminished while the context of his work is emphasized, insteadof idolizing the authors whose subservient perspectives have been sanctioned as

authoritative by the power elite – what then, of the Supreme Authority, the Author of the Universe?

So-called classical historicism, we should note well, was an ethnocentricphenomenon that arose out of the struggle for the unification of a particularisticGermany. The Germanic peoples, particularly the ones in the north, had good causeto reject the principles of the French Enlightenment and Revolution and to getFrance off their backs. Historicism used careful historical research as a tool to thatend, for much can be found in the archives that can be used to deconstruct theabstractions of theological, political, and economic authority, and, if writing one‟s ownhistory, to assert one‟s own unique cause and genius instead.

“I see the time coming,” predicted Professor Leopold von Ranke in his history of Germany in the Reformation (1839), “when we will base modern history no longeron secondhand reports, or even on contemporary historians, save where they havedirect knowledge, and still less on works more distant from the period; but rather oneyewitness accounts and on the most genuine, the most immediate, sources.”Notwithstanding an apocalypse that destroys the world, a school of historicism threecenturies hence would no doubt be bewildered when they look back on today‟s




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records in hopes of ascertaining the way our period essentially was so that theparticular genius or spirit of our age could be described. Future historians will nodoubt approach our complexity with preconceived notions or concepts already

worked out by certain varying schools of thought under development today andhanded down by historians closer to the period under study. No doubt such traditions

will be defied. But let us return to classical German historicism, which arose out of the need to reassess the political and cultural traditions of Germany and somehow restore the integrity of its adolescent unity after its humiliating defeat in the Great

War. Whereas prominent critical historians of England and France still believed in a

common rational standard for institutions anywhere, the German historicists weremore narrow-minded, insisting that universal standards did not apply to their uniquenational culture let alone any foreign culture; unless, of course, the culture is violently imposed wherever might can make right. They emphasized the cultivation of the

individual in is place and time while playing down the notion of universal politicalliberty; as we know, this attitude led to a militantly organized, authoritarian state, andthe conception of the folk-nation as a paranoid individual defending its parochialinterests against the encroachments of Western European models of parliamentary republicanism and constitutional democracy. Germany, perhaps rightly convinced thatthe world was out to get it, assuming that it was in fact the particularly superiorculture of the world, reacted to its “delusions” of persecution and grandeur with pre -emptive attacks, taking the war to the enemy instead of waiting for the enemy toarrive.

Therefore we have in recent history a most egregious example, if Pope

Benedict and other staunch anti-relativists or absolutists are correct, of the hypocrisy or self-inconsistency of relativism, inasmuch as one set of relativists may believe theirown relatives are better than the others, and roll over the world in an effort to maketheir particularity absolute. Still, we should keep in mind that historicism is a vagueterm, that it had its own historical development, wherefore not all historians whoembraced German historicism have been alike, and that the ideal of cultural relativismtoday is tolerance if not acceptance – perhaps all cultures might happily consume the

world providing that it is rationalized into a gigantic shopping center protected by theNew World Order. The most intelligent cultural relativists do not ask us to take their

word for anything or to impose the culture they comply with on anyone – we need

cultures to survive - but to suspend value judgments and conduct rational inquiriesinto the nature of things. That suspension is in itself a value judgment that posits the

very human freedom from worldly systems postulated by churches as they capitulateto those systems in order to endure, and put their own flock under the thumb of church politics. If we did not have the freedom to rise above all cultures to examinethem, we would be prisoners of our respective cultures, and even less than that, we

would zombies, unconscious of the nature of our own thoughts. In the final analysis,




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the only absolute the cultural relativist might uphold is humanity, and its supreme value its universal self-love. But this is anathema to those who put the love of God atthe head of the commandments and place murder sixth on the list, so that hate-others-based love, such as that inspired by the Crusades and jihads, may persist.

Wherefore unruly youth, confirmed ruffians, and noble knights are united in hate;eager to conduct legalized crimes against humanity in the name of God, for Man‟smoral improvement, of course.

Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803), a friend of Johann Goerg Hamannand Immanuel Kant, is a most prominent founding father of classical historicism. Hetried, like other German philosophers of his day, to reconcile the Enlightenment withChristianity. That effort is well represented today by our German pope, whom webelieve would get along famously with Herder due to their common interests; notonly in God and scholarship but in their opposition to the glorification of nations,military conflict, imperialistic exploitation and the like. But Herder was not a Holy

Roman Empire type of authoritarian: he was a liberal thinker who had studied withImmanuel Kant, taught school, wrote provocative essays and profound tomes in acasual manner that they might be more accessible to readers, and among other things,served as General Superintendent of the Lutheran Clergy in Weimar. He was acosmopolitan committed to republicanism and egalitarian democracy. He had anantiauthoritarian temperament and he was skeptical of traditional metaphysics,including metaphysical religious or theological systems. Herder approached historicalcriticism systematically, but he abhorred system-building because buildings inhibitinquiry outside their framework. Pope Benedict embraces a final solution to existentialdoubt, a solution systematically expressed under its god‟s dome or doo m in Catholic

creed and dogma. Herder would undoubtedly object to the pontiff‟s approach, notsimply because Herder was to some extent an irrational Lutheran, but because of theabsolute rigidity of conservative papal pronouncements. He believed that the searchfor truth entailed testing of opposing positions until the best one won out.Fundamentalists of course know in advance which historical article of faith must win,and can barely tolerate any opposition to it although other historical criticism will beentertained.

Thought depends on language for its expression. We have enough difficulty saying what we think as it is without using our language to stifle our thinking. Herderfirmly opposed using language to imprison thought and torture its creative inclination.

As for theology or thinking about deities, it appears to this author that too much fussis made over words, and at the vulgar level, we have too much killing over quibbling about terms that refer, if there really is one deity, as so many people suppose, to thesame ineffable One. However that might be, Herder believed that God has being, as adivine unifying force, and not in physical form – an existential extension that wouldresult in the dualism of deity set apart from the world. And he claimed that Godthinks and has purposes. Yet Herder championed a strictly secular approach to




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interpretation of scripture. As far as he was concerned, biblical texts, no matter how holy they are deemed to be, are human works, wherefore religious assumptions mustnot interfere with their interpretation; excepting the allegories set down in the New

Testament, the historian should not interpret scripture allegorically. In the finalanalysis, human sentiments and not cold reasoning determines morality – good moralsdepend on good examples, and history has the task of bringing those examplesforward. Concepts are based on perceptions; conversely, beliefs are influenced by andcharacter partly determined by concepts. Despite his historical relativism, he did notinsist that secular history is purposeless or meaningless; he insisted that history isgoverned by efficient causation and does have an overall purpose in the advance of “humanity” and “reason,” but the subject is so complex that he doubted whether itcan be explained adequately enough to control and predict the future.

In any case, it appears to us that historicism‟s truth, if there is any absolutetruth to historicism, conditioned by historical circumstances as it is, is simply another

relative truth, of little importance, really, in comparison to the absolute unmitigatedtruth embraced by the likes of the Holy Father in the Vatican, provided that such an Absolute, who is intimate with every hair on our heads, is really real, in which case itsappearance in history would in cause and effect be the beginning and end and all of human history.

As Professor Ranke put it, “I would maintain that every epoch is immediate toGod, and that its value in now way depends on what may have eventuated from it, butrather in its existence alone, its own unique particularity.” Professor Ranke was apious Lutheran. He looked for the “Holy Hieroglyph” that is God‟s Hand everywherein history. His careful research into its unique particulars discovered in original source

documents, led him to reformulate the absolute conception in his words: “Truth canbe but One.” But our faithful pioneer of historicism, who was loyal to Prussia andrejected the French revolutionary ideals, did not say that historical moments orperiods were of equal value simply because they were are equidistant to God; quite tothe contrary, the Prussian state with its perfect Christian religion was morally superiorto all others. God gives each state a special moral idea to attend to. The power of astate is derived from its spiritual nature, a power that naturally would be extended by military means so that culture and state might rest on the strongest possiblefoundations. The son of God might have humiliated his body for our sake, and thencried out in agony, “My Power, my Power, why hast thou forsaken me?” But an

eternal god does not forfeit his godhood nor forsake his power for he is god thepower. At the end of the history of development is a totalitarian state of voluntary obedience, for our freedom, as Saint Augustine recognized at one point, is thefreedom to sin. If only we knew the Logos, how could we disobey? But ProfessorRanke, although his relativism is tainted by absolutism, does not speak in that manner.

As a matter of fact, states, as Professor Ranke conceived them, were integratedpersonalities, absolute persons presiding over the particular conflicts within their




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organisms. In other words, the ontic state is a concrete universal, a generalizedindividual and an anthropomorphic creature – a person is a human – a transcendentalperson who does not appear on Earth as a man, as did Jesus the Christ, but whonevertheless is a being – thus did the this historicist embrace the metaphysical notionsthat other historicists would repudiate in favor of their own ontologies; for example,“social wholes” became the beings in question instead of individuals. Furthermore,Professor Ranke believed that if the historian suspended judgment when he peered athistory the way it really was, certain “spiritual substances” and “moral energies”besides the states that are “thoughts of god”, would manifest themselves. It appearsthat this founding father of the classical historicism that branched off into the sort of postmodern historical-critical method that Pope Benedict dislikes not only believed inLogos but also had his logii or lesser holy ghosts to boot. It is virtually impossible totake the god out of man no matter how fond he is of the daily news. Yet the RomanCatholic Church would not give him access to the Vatican archives to research his

History of the Popes During the 16 th

and 17 th

Centuries . Why not? He was a Protestant. TheChurch denounced the book. Today Pope Benedict, as we can see from hisRegensburg speech, at least shares his historical view that the Catholic Crusadesunited Christians and produced modern European civilization.

Adherents to historicism cannot help but to believe in a nature common tohumanity; otherwise their research into past events would be futile because nothing

within its span could be understood by the human historian. If God were not real,humankind or its Man would have to be the absolute god of his kind, whom he hasand is and needs to fashion his perception of the similarities and differences heperceives in the world, that he might grasp and control his circumstances and

therefore succeed with his survival project. David Hume, notoriously skeptical of theabsolute spinning of his time, once said, “Mankind are so much the same in all timesand places that history informs us of nothing new or strange.” Herder claimedHume‟s statement was false because his own historical studies of original sources hadconvinced him that the perceptions and conceptions of peoples within differenthistorical periods and cultures differ radically, and radical differences even existamong individuals of different societies. Those differences make interpretation of historical sources extremely difficult, for the historian himself is bound to differ fromthe subjects of his study and hence to share the same inexplicable gulf that may neverbe adequately justified by an abstract reconciliation. No mere word can possibly

suffice to absolve the radical differences. The particular conceptions of differentpeople at differing times should not be confused with circular talk about talk or theusage of common nouns claiming to denote universals in common that do not exist infact. In any case the circumstances and human events of a certain period of time may differ from other periods; indeed, they must differ to be perceived, for if everything inthe historical world were of the same cloth and color, nothing at all would bedistinguished.




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ABSOLUTELY SPEAKING Abstractly speaking, what historical periods have most in common, no matter

how those periods are determined by the historian, are the differences apparently dueto the human determinative process that dooms or judges them differently. Thoseabstract determinations, although they may be convenient to the purposes of a time,may not be the best ones nor may they apply to other circumstances; wherefore to setthem in stone as concrete absolutes to be instantiated as the bedrock of every circumstance may be counterproductive and destructive. Fear of the unknownnaturally causes us to cling to what we know; many hold back to secure the groundalready claimed, a few take the fatal leap forward into unfamiliar territory with theireyes wide open, willing to amend or replace any hypotheses contrived beforehand tosuit the purpose. Those few are more interested in becoming than in being. Their

urgent endeavors have always fascinated those whom they leave behind to experiencetheir adventures vicariously. The path cleared by the pioneers had broadenedconsiderably over time; given the progress of Lady Liberty, who has increased theopportunities available to each and every liberal-minded person, sometimes even themajority of our contemporaries are heroically inclined, so to speak. They suspect they are nobodies, and they want to become somebody.

The late Paul Tillich could not think without absolutes – come to think of it,neither can anyone else. In his essay, my search for absolutes, he observed that “there is afascination in this view of being as becoming for many of our contemporaries…. It isthis fascination which contributes most to the victory of relativism of our times.” But

if we look at what is going on, wrote Professor Tillich, we discover that ourknowledge of becoming stands steady above the flow, and that “the power of knowing is an absolute.” Absolutes are indispensable, he thinks, because without abackground to relativity, the mind could not maintain its “centeredness.” As fortheories, such as the theory of relativity, an underlying structure makes them possible:

We presuppose that there exists a logical mental process which enables a theory to do what we expect it to do. It is our very power of abstraction that “liberates us frombondage to the particular by giving us the power to create universals.” “Abstractiongives us the power of language, language gives us freedom of choice, and freedom of choice gives us the possibility of infinite technical production.”

Applying a single name to diverse things might be a violent act as far as somepostmodernist thinkers are concerned, especially if those names are imposed by the

West, but how could we otherwise be human beings and get things done? “It isinteresting that in the symbolic story of the Paradise, as told in Genesis, language (thenaming of animals and plants) is combined with technical activity (the cultivation of the garden). All this would be impossible without the absolutes we call essences….




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Certainly there is a universal essence „man,‟ usually referred to as „human nature,‟ which makes it possible for us to have this word „man; and to recognize men as men.”

Of course Professor Tillich makes his claim without mentioning that theabstracting process makes us so giddy that we develop a dogmatic tendency to pinthings down by converting a particular perspective into a universal entity and thusunjustly doom all those who differ. We would name presumably essential qualities of things or the existential quality of everything as if the respective qualities had someindependent existence as beings or as Supreme Being, and thus delude ourselves intobelieving our actions are justified by the names. We might turn figments of ourimagination into facts and run amok. If we are rash, we might become so intoxicatedby the thinning air of abstraction as we approach the point where nothing is left of the world we have abstracted from that we do not realize that we have in the processdoomed our world, and that the faith we fall back on is a reversion to primitivemotivation – we can only hope that our instincts or drives or spirits or gods or

whatever we might call them have their own beneficial logos.In any event, for the sake of dramatic effect it would seem that the“postmodern relativists,” who either wittingly or unwittingly celebrate the death of thelast god who died, or who favor plural gods or no god or gods, and who in theory transcend good and evil although they vehemently protest against the commission of evils they are prejudiced against, are regressing the world to its beginning in chaos,laying the highest civilization, the Christian-inspired West, to ruin along with its cultof gilded individualism guided by the Invisible Hand. Everyone wants to work forherself or himself nowadays, not for the Man, and public works are roundly denounced because the tax detracts from the personal yield. For most people, those

who work for others, work is a demoralizing grind, but they have to work and areconvinced work shall save them, although they hate it. Faith in the absolute does nothave a chance in the workaday world where everyone must make a living. The faiththat all will be well in the end if everybody overcharges everybody now does not holdup for long. But give faith a chance, declared Cardinal Ratzinger at Guadalajara:

“Why, in brief, does faith still have a chance? I would say the following:because it is in harmony with what man is…. In man, there is an inextinguishableyearning for the infinite. None of the answers attempted are sufficient. Only the Godhimself who became finite in order to open our finitely and lead us to the breadth of his infiniteness responds to the question for our being. For this reason, the Christianfaith finds man today too.”

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LOGOS II Benedictine Deconstruction