ludger hagedorn
Like the old gods, the Christian God, too, is dependent on men, that
is what Eckhart, that is what the German idealists were trying to say,
the Christian mystics, too. The history of Christianity is the entry of
the Suffering God into History, of His unique triumphal march and of
His withdrawal in a world incapable of transformation.^19This is maybe more of a systematic account of Christianity than a
historic one: its “entry” into the world being as necessary as its
“withdrawal.”
III. Religion’s Twofold Potential
Religion might be said to harbor a twofold potential for shaping our
encounters with otherness and, hence, with the other of reason in
general. One potential of religion is its tendency to auto-immunity. In
the attempt to protect its view of reality, it seeks, as an integral and
constitutive part of its own identity, to escape from encountering
otherness. The result is not just a deformation of its own character. It
includes, as well, the possibility of an “immunizing” reaction to such
otherness. Religion’s second, positive potential consists in its capacity
to transcend the relative autonomy of pre-given meanings. Here, it
allows the shaking of our pre-given interpretations of the world by
accepting otherness as an integral and irreducible part of its own iden-
tity. We believe that unless we address both these potentials, as well
as their dialectical relationship, the basic phenomena of religion will
remain unintelligible. The negative potential of religion can be put in
terms of its ability to one-sidedly restrict our openness to transcend-
ence, and, hence, to bind us to a potentially universal point of refer-
ence for integrating the relativity of mundane meanings. But when we
analyze the bond between selfhood, sovereign identification, and the
exclusion of otherness, the second, positive potential of religion is
uncovered, namely that of offering “invitations to tran scendence.” It
does so by offering us a standpoint beyond the “economy” of the
world.
- Translated from the German original in Péče o duši III, Collected Works vol. 3,
Praha, 2002, 452.