Deus Absconditus Research Articles

The Hidden God in Isaiah 45:15 — A Reflection from Holocaust Theology

‘Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Saviour’ is a verse which has long held a fascination for theologians. Aquinas, Luther, Brunner, and Barth all speak of a deus absconditus. They all, especially Barth, stress that the main characteristic of God is that he reveals himself. His hiddenness is, therefore, only a means to that end. Faith is necessary before anyone can gain knowledge of God. So Ulrich Simon in his commentary on Second Isaiah, a commentary with a markedly Barthian flavour, takes Isaiah 45:15 as the voice of the nations as they experience what he calls ‘Messianic action’. He writes:

"How Are We to Find Holiness?": The Religious Vision of A. R. Ammons

Critical attention to the religious element in the poetry of A. R. has generally subsumed it in an overall argument placing him as modern Romantic visionary poet. Locating in this way has obscured somewhat the extent of his spirituality and its unique emotional tonality. A reading of sensitive to these may find in his development spiritual pilgrimage with distinct phases. His idea of God, clearly present in the early poetry, undergoes period of doubt, reconstruction, and denial in the middle of his career, and after strong negation becomes renewed theme in his later poetry. Meditation on the nature of and interrogation of the visible world for revelation of the Divine occasion some of his most powerful writing. Marius Bewley in an early review first pointed out that is mystical poet in the same sense that Whitman (713). Somewhat later, Hyatt Waggoner discerned that a sense of God's reality, whether as immanent or as deus absconditus, is everywhere present in the poems and should be recognized. . . . is poet of religious (Notes 70), view to which he has held true in subsequent assessments of Ammons's career, although he stresses skeptical as well for whom religious beliefs are like mirages, existing somewhere between fact and delusion (American Poets 617). Helen Vendler has identified one of his greatest poems as a colloquy with God (Music 338), yet elsewhere she qualifies as manifesting no more than belief in Quakerish inner light, and certifies his work as being happily free of disabling religious or ideological nostalgia (Veracity 104, 101).(1) Vendler's uneasiness with Ammons's religiosity, even as her critical acuity registers its existence, indicates the difficulty others have had acknowledging it. The age wants to celebrate the poet, but is uncomfortable with the spiritual commitments that animate his work. Ammons's belief in God's presence in the universe does not arise from allegiance to particular institutional mode of revelation; in fact, while his early work can be quite overtly Christian, his later work includes elements of eastern religion. Furthermore, as both mystic and inheritor of the Williams branch of modernist tradition, he operates under Pound's injunction to make it new, to perceive and to articulate that knowledge without reference to institutions and sacred texts. Yet however syncretic or idiosyncratic his synthesis, there seems little doubt that Ammons, rather than showing characteristic concepts and patterns of Romantic philosophy and literature of displaced and reconstituted theology or . . . secularized form of devotional experience (Abrams 65), instead shows return to mystical devotion and meditation on the works and mind of God. In the criticism of Ammons's work the religious has often been elided into the philosophical or psychological. Favoring the latter was Harold Bloom, who during the period of his own greatest influence was one of the first to champion Ammons. He applied reading which relentlessly psychologizes the poet's work. is Romantic seer whose achievement is the result of creative will to power, continuously threatened by the universe's recalcitrance, and by the poet's awareness of the limits of his own mind. Bloom, like Waggoner, places in visionary company of Strong Romantic Sensibilities, an avatar of his American predecessor Emerson. While philosophical similarities between and Emerson have been often noted, Bloom makes it an issue of filiation and treats the tensions in that relationship as the actual matter of the poetry. Bloom invites us to admire the heroic struggle of doomed subjectivity to establish its vision for time, struggle with the very fact of vision itself, project in which a poem is . . . as much an act of breaking as of making, as much blinding as seeing (A. R. Ammons 156). …

Gottes Reue. Zum theologischen Verständnis Gottes als Subjekt der hebräischen Wurzel <i>nhm<i/>

The Regret of God. On the theological relevance of God as subject of the Hebrew verb nhm Professor JA Heyns and others regard God's 'regret' of His own plans or actions in the Old Testament, expressed by the Hebrew verb nhm, as part of the dogmatic problem of ‘anthropomorphism’ against general presupposition like His immutability. However, an exegetical investigation indicates that this virtual aporia as well as the supposed polysemy of nhm, i.e. ‘regret’ and ‘comfort’, is mainly caused by our own unspoken ‘ontological’ and therefore ‘absolute’ and ‘objective’ view on God. In a non-ontological perspective, focusing on concrete relations, the ‘regret’ of God must on the contrary be seen as expression for the stability and continuity of the deus absconditus towards humankind.

The paradox of transcendence and immanence of god in African religions: A socio-historical explanation

The paradox of the transcendence and immanence of God is not peculiar to African religions . Rather, it is one example of what Evans-Pritchard calls `the unresolved paradoxes and ambiguities which are found in different religious systems' . It is a universal human experience, he says, that `Divinity to man is both friend and foe, whom one summons for aid and asks to turn away, seeking at the same time union and separation from him' .' He calls this the paradox of a 'deus absconditus' hidden god, in the sky, and `dens revelatus', revealed god, in human affairs . Different writers in African religion have expressed this paradox in different ways. Among the Nupe, says Nadel, `the most common and most strongly emphasised comment on the nature of the deity is 'Soko Lokpa', God is far away, and yet in a different more mystic sense he is present always and everywhere' .' This is what Taylor called `the dichotomy of primal religion' ; God is said to be withdrawn and far away . He has no temples, sacrifices, and festivals, and yet, he is often in people's lips and thoughts and is invoked and approached for some of the most basic human needs . 3 His immanence is seen in the numerous praise-names, sayings, proverbs, and invocations which express the omnipresence of God and his care for men . Examples of these abound . Some praise-names call him, `He who is everywhere', `Infinity of the forest' . Some proverbs say; `If you would tell God, tell it to the wind' ; `The cattle shelter under the same tree with God' ; `God drives away flies for a tailess cow' . `An enemy may sound the drum of your downfall, but God will not let it sound' . `God is infront, he is at the back' . People pray to God often in times of need . This paper will be discussed in two parts . In the first part, I give summaries of two of the many explanations of the paradox and immanence of God in African religions given by different authors . In the second part, I shall compare the ethnographic data and culture history of two adjacent African

Die hedendaagse wêreldbeeld met toespitsing op Afrika

The author takes issue immediately with the fact that contemporary world views are contrasted, as a matter of course, with Africa. He discusses in detail the development of the contact between Africa and the West, pointing out to what extent and in what ways Western ways of thought have infiltrated into the African psyche. Subsequently he deals with the modern and the post-modern view of the world, pointing out that the post-modern, with its radically new ways of thought (e.g. quantum physics) have implications for Africa as well. After a discussion of the views of the primal nations of Africa, and an evaluation of the sophistication of the cultures in contrast to the stereotyped view of their "primitiveness", he goes on to a discussion of their views of the divine, concluding with the idea that God is not voluntarily Deus Absconditus - God is formally distant, but existentially present.

Biblical Foundations for African Theology

The personal nature of God is important to the African context since traditionally many African religions have posited a Deus absconditus. Rather than a presentation of theology in abstract terms, Professor Tienou stresses the need for an evangelizing message which shows God present and interacting with his people in the world.

The Metaphysical Dimension and Pirandello's Theatre

IN 1955 LUCIEN GOLDMANN devoted a vast work to the analysis of the tragic "vision du monde" (a notion which he distinguishes from that of "Weltanschauung" of the lansenist movement in seventeenth century France. After exploring the religious, institutional and cultural situation of the period from approximately 1636 to 1677, the author dwelt on the crucial importance of the presence of the Deus absconditus in the semantic universes of Pascal's Pensees and Racine's tragedies, two personalities deeply involved, as we know, with the "solitaires" of PortRoyal. Conceiving that presence as the basic structure of the Pensees, Goldmann's interpretation of Pascal's universe becomes fascinating and often enlightening. In the works of Racine, and particularly in Phedre viewed (few would argue) as the culminating point of his art-he conceived the presence of the Deus absconditus as the foundation of their tragic essence: the tragic conflict of Phedre would consist of the "solitary dialogue" entertained by the heroine with "les dieux cache" whose mute and uninterfering presence dominates the unfolding of the dramatic process.

The Solution as Problem: Beckett's Waiting for Godot

The Solution as Problem: Beckett's Waiting for Godot* ROLF BREUER • WAITING FOR GODOT (written in 1948, first published in 1952)1 is Beckett's most popular work. Most popular not only among th~ wider audience of theatergoers but also among professional critics - as the amount of scholarly attention shows. Besides sociological, Marxist, existentialist , and even biographical interpretations, there are, above all, religious readings where the famous Mr. Godot who never shows up in the play is understood to be a deus absconditus. Taking this line of interpretation as a starting point, the following is an analysis of the structure of Waiting for Godot in light of concepts developed by Bertrand Russell, Alfred Tarski, and Ludwig Wittgenstein (the distinction of logical levels) which were recently applied by a group of psychiatrists at Palo Alto to explain certain anomalies and paradoxes in schizophrenic as well as everyday communication. Furthermore, I shall refer to Beckett's other works as they help us to better understand the problems which arise in Godot.2 In rather striking contrast to the basic idea of Aristotelian drama (drama meaning "action" in Greek), the main plot in Waiting for Godot stresses the inert waiting of the two characters, Vladimir and Estragon; and, indeed , Beckett's first title for the play was simply En attendant, "waiting." In terms of physical space, this waiting is the attitude of "stay, wait and *Mr. Beckett has read this article and has given his permission to add a line of dedication, "To Samuel Beckett for his seventieth birthday." R.B. 225 226 ROLF BREUER see"; on the other hand, at a spiritual level, it is "expectation." Therefore , the two tramps know that no change in location will solve their problems: VLADIMIR. We've nothing more to do here. ESTRAGON. Nor anywhere else. (p. 134) Similarly, in Texts for Nothing (1950) one finds: "Where would I go, if I could go ... 1"3 Thus, the attitude of waiting becomes an inevitable lifestyle and an end in itselfas is explicitly stated by the narrator in the novel Malone Dies (1948, written after Godot): ... he who has waited long enough will wait forever. And there comes the hour when nothing more can happen and nobody more can come and all is ended but the waiting that knows itself in vain.4 In Malone Dies and in the other novels of the trilogy (Molloy and The Unnamable) it becomes evident that any quest (or waiting) is eo ipso doomed to failure - not only because the goal is unattainable but even more so because of the reflexive structure of the quest. Stasis as the principle of Waiting for Godot is especially obvious at the ends of both acts where the tramps~ words contradict the stage directions : ESTRAGON. Well, shall we go? VLADIMIR. Yes, let's go. They do not move. (p. 138) These lines are repeated, only with the speakers exchanged, at the end of the second act. (p. 232) This inability to move is not the sign of a superior peace of mind but rather an indication of resignation and weakness while the tramps retain their yearnings and illusions. Gunter Anders correctly characterizes the behavior of the two by saying that their guiding principle seems to be '''We are waiting, thus we must have something to wait for."'5 For, although we have noticed that their waiting is largely devoid of content, as an attitude it nevertheless has clear religious overtones and is similar to a vaguely defined Christian expectation of salvation. In other words, many of the Christian interpretations are to an extent valid and certainly touch upon a central point of the play.6 On the surface Beckett seems to resemble Camus' religiously tinged existentialism, but from the thematic similarities of the play to his earlier novel Watt (1943-45) it is apparent that Beckett is much more rigorous and ascetic than the author of, for example, La Peste. In Watt, Beckett uses the paradoxical method of having Mr. Knott ("naught") appear in order to show what does not exist, that is, the purpose is to show that the problem of the novel is a question which, first of all, has to be posed...

The Solution as Problem: Beckett's Waiting for Godot

WAITING FOR GODOT (written in 1948, first published in 1952) is Beckett's most popular work. Most popular not only among the wider audience of theatergoers but also among professional critics — as the amount of scholarly attention shows. Besides sociological, Marxist, existentialist, and even biographical interpretations, there are, above all, religious readings where the famous Mr. Godot who never shows up in the play is understood to be a deus absconditus. Taking this line of interpretation as a starting point, the following is an analysis of the structure of Waiting for Godot in light of concepts developed by Bertrand Russell, Alfred Tarski, and Ludwig Wittgenstein (the distinction of logical levels) which were recently applied by a group of psychiatrists at Palo Alto to explain certain anomalies and paradoxes in schizophrenic as well as everyday communication. Furthermore, I shall refer to Beckett's other works as they help us to better understand the problems which arise in Godot.

Modernity and Evil: Some Sociological Reflections On the Problem of Meaning

It is often said that religious disaffection is largely the result, not so much of intellectual doubts, as of the experiential sense of the world's suffering and injustice. Much of the Enlightenment polemic revolved around the problem of the theodicy and, according to a survey of the attitudes of German proletarians in 1906, the majority's religious disbelief appeared to stem from the failure of religious systems to cope adequately with the “‘injustice’ of the order of the world.”In the same essay, however, Weber distinguishes three radical attempts to answer the problems posed by the world's imperfections. These, he claimed, “...give rationally satisfying answers for the basis of the incongruity between destiny and merit, the Indian doctrine of Kharma, Zoroastrian dualism, the predestination decree of the deus absconditus. These solutions are rationally closed; in pure form, they are found only as exceptions.”

God Hidden and Revealed. The Interpretation of Luther's Deus Absconditus and its Significance for Religious Thought. By John Dillenberger. Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1953. xxiv and 193 pages. $2.50.

God Hidden and Revealed. The Interpretation of Luther's Deus Absconditus and its Significance for Religious Thought. By John Dillenberger. Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1953. xxiv and 193 pages. $2.50. - Volume 22 Issue 4