Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T04:49:01.617Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Attack On Christendom in Marx and Kierkegaard

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Duncan B. Forrester
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Our discussion must start from Hegel, because Hegel set the terms of the debate and his shade has haunted the whole controversy we are to consider. His definitions of Christianity and of philosophy were at the heart of the ensuing encounter. Not that Hegel's analysis was accepted: some, like Feuerbach and Marx, modified Hegel more or less drastically while all the time assuming that in essentials, and sometimes in spite of himself, Hegel was right; others, like Kierkegaard, rejected Hegel's whole conception of what Christianity was about and yet still saw the question of what was to be done with the legacy of Hegel as a central issue of the age. And so it is impossible for us to grasp the structure of a still continuing discussion without seeing the pervasive influence of its starting-point.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , May 1972 , pp. 181 - 196
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1972

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 181 note 1 Mackintosh, H. R., Types of Modern Theology (Fontana, London, 1904), p. 106.Google Scholar

page 182 note 1 See Gollwitzer, H., The Christian Faith and the Marxist Criticism of Religion (Edinburgh, 1970), pp. 75–76, 123, 154.Google Scholar

page 183 note 1 Tucker, R., Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1961), p. 46.Google Scholar

page 183 note 2 This is certainly not to agree that the Christian understanding of alienation is ahistorical, as Mészáros suggests (Marx' Theory of Alienation [London, 1970], pp. 36ff)Google Scholar but rather to question the Hegelian-Marxist interpretation of the historicity of alienation.

page 183 note 3 The young Marx was in his most Hegelian mood when he wrote: ‘The more man puts into God, the less he retains in himself’ (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 [Moscow, 1961], p. 70).Google Scholar

page 184 note 1 Wetter, G., Dialectical Materialism (London, 1958), pp. 7–8Google Scholar. An illuminating recent study of the young Hegelian movement is McLellan, David, The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx (London, 1969), see esp. pp. 1–4, 18–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 185 note 1 Tucker, op. cit., p. 73.

page 185 note 2 Avineri, S., The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge, 1968), p. 8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 185 note 3 On Bauer see McLellan, op. cit., pp. 48–81.

page 185 note 4 Lichtheim, George, Marxism (London, 1964), p. 16.Google Scholar

page 185 note 5 Barth, Karl, From Rousseau to Ritschl (S.C.M. Press, London, 1959), chapter IX.Google Scholar

page 186 note 1 Cited in Marcuse, H., Reason and Revolution (New York, 1954), p. 268.Google Scholar

page 186 note 2 H. R. Mackintosh, op. cit., p. 122.

page 186 note 3 Feuerbach, L., Essence of Christianity (Harper Torchbooks, New York, 1957), p. xliv.Google Scholar

page 186 note 4 ibid., p. 274.

page 186 note 5 Feuerbach, L., Sämtliche Werke, VI, p. 325, cited in McLellan, op. cit., p. 90.Google Scholar

page 186 note 6 Cited in Kamenka, E., The Philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach (London, 1970), p. 17.Google Scholar

page 187 note 1 Cited in Wetter, op. cit., p. 12.

page 187 note 2 Tucker, op. cit., p. 86.

page 187 note 3 Feuerbach, op. cit., p. 63.

page 187 note 4 Tucker, op. cit., pp. 2, 79, 96.

page 188 note 1 Cited in Wilson, Edmund, To the Finland Station (Fontana, 1960), p. 192.Google Scholar

page 188 note 2 K. Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, Thesis IV, cited from Marx, K. and Engels, F., On Religion (Moscow, 1957), p. 70.Google Scholar

page 189 note 1 Theses on Feuerbach, II.

page 190 note 1 Marx, and Engels, , The German Ideology (Moscow, 1968), p. 24.Google Scholar

page 190 note 2 Marx, Karl, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel' Philosophy of Right. Cited in: Marx and Engels, On Religion, p. 42.Google Scholar

page 190 note 3 Löwith, Karl, From Hegel to Nietzsche (Constable, London, 1965), pp. 327–328, 371, III.Google Scholar

page 190 note 4 Training in Christianity, trans. Lowrie, Walter (Princeton, 1944), p. 89; cf. pp. 88–90.Google Scholar

page 191 note 1 Cited in Löwith, op. cit., pp. 159–60.

page 192 note 1 SK—The Last Tears: Journals I853–55, ed. and trans. Smith, R. Gregor (London, 1965), p. 30.Google Scholar

page 192 note 2 Lowrie, Walter, Kierkegaard (Harper Torchbooks, New York, 1962), pp. 264–65.Google Scholar

page 192 note 3 Tucker, op. cit., pp. 68–69.

page 192 note 4 Cited in MacIntyre, A. C., Marxism—An Interpretation, p. 28.Google Scholar

page 192 note 5 Kierkegaard, S., Journals, ed. and trans. Drue, A. (Fontana, 1958), p. 98.Google Scholar

page 193 note 1 See Lochman, Jan Milik, Church in a Marxist Society (London, 1970)Google Scholar, and Hromadka, Josef L., Thoughts of a Czech Pastor (London, 1970).Google Scholar

page 194 note 1 Newbigin, Lesslie, Christ our Eternal Contemporary (Madras, 1908), p. 81.Google Scholar

page 195 note 1 See Avineri, op. cit., pp. 65ff, for a penetrating examination of Marx's materialism.

page 195 note 2 cf. Engels: ‘Fortunately it is easy enough to be an atheist today. Atheism is so near to being self-obvious with European working-class parties nowadays. … It can even be said of the German Social-Democratic workers that atheism has already outlived itself with them: this purely negative word no longer has any application as far as they are concerned inasmuch as their opposition to faith in God is no longer one of theory, but one of practice; they have purely and simply finished with God, they live and think in the world of reality and are therefore materialists’ (cited in On Religion, p. 141).

page 195 note 3 Pace Mészarós, op. cit., pp. I66–8.

page 195 note 4 The problem posed by Pannenburg, W. in ‘Can Christianity do without an Eschatology?‘, The Christian Hope (S.P.C.K. Theological Collections, London, 1970), p. 29Google Scholar. Cf. James Klugmann's reply in the same volume, pp. 59–63.

page 196 note 1 e.g. Mézarós, op. cit., pp. 28–33 and 165–73.