Christian existentialism
Explanation
Christian existentialism is a twentieth-century current that applies existentialist categories (anguish, freedom, decision, authenticity, existence as project) to the realm of Christian faith. Its nineteenth-century precursor is the Dane Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), considered the father of existentialism, who reacted against the impersonal dialectic of Hegel and against the lukewarm Christendom of his time. His work (Fear and Trembling, The Sickness unto Death, The Concept of Anxiety) has marked all subsequent theology.
For Kierkegaard, the existing individual (the concrete I existing here and now) is the fundamental category, not the abstractions of the System. Faith is not intellectual assent to dogmas but a risky leap, a paradox that surpasses reason. Christ is the absolute absurd (God incarnate) accessed only by passionate faith. The authentic human being passes through three stages: aesthetic (immediate pleasure, e.g. Don Juan), ethical (universal, Kantian duty), religious (individual, absolute, faith in the impossible).
In the twentieth century, Christian existentialist theologians developed and applied these intuitions. Rudolf Bultmann proposed the demythologisation of the New Testament: biblical myths must be reinterpreted in existential (Heideggerian) categories to speak to modern man. Paul Tillich spoke of God as the ground of being (not a being among others) and of faith as ultimate concern, that which concerns us unconditionally and defines our existence.
Gabriel Marcel, French Catholic philosopher, developed a Christian existentialism different from Sartre's, centred on the mystery of being, on the I-Thou relation, on hope, fidelity, love, availability (disponibilité). He distinguished between problem (what is before me and which I can resolve objectively) and mystery (what includes me and in which I am implicated, such as love, death, God).
Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, although not strictly existentialists, dialogued intensely with these categories. Bonhoeffer, Lutheran pastor who resisted Nazism and was executed in 1945, spoke in his prison letters (Letters and Papers from Prison) of an adult faith and a Christianity without religion for a world come of age, anticipating later debates on faith in a secular context.
For the theory of consciousness, Christian existentialism emphasises the decisional, dramatic and subjective dimension of religious experience: faith is not a neutral datum of knowledge but a choice that engages the whole of existence, transforms the way of living and of being conscious. Authentic religious consciousness is that of one who has had to face the anguish of the abyss, the nausea of finitude, the mystery of evil, and has decisively leapt toward a trust without guarantees. This tradition continues to influence contemporary theologians such as John Caputo, Richard Kearney, Jean-Luc Marion, and maintains a fruitful dialogue with the philosophy of mind on the phenomenology of religious experience.
Strengths
- Profound articulation of existential subjectivity.
- Powerful critique of systematic rationalism.
- Influence on humanistic and existential psychology.
- Fruitful dialogue with theology and phenomenology.
Main critiques
- Specific religious commitments limit universal reach.
- Passionate subjectivity resistant to formalisation.
- Tension with scientific programmes of consciousness.