Existential Concern Research Articles

Where Do We Go from Here? Scenarios for the Psychology of Religion

As the discipline of psychology has become enormously diversified in this century, a great diversity of psychologies of religion has become possible and up to a point been demonstrated. Even more importantly, one can now see marked differences in the apparent motives and aims whereby psychologies of religion have been produced, with the result that partial, competing, and parochial views abound and a comprehensive psychology of religion is still a long way off. In this situation it is crucial to agree on criteria that guarantee perspectival integrity in the discipline of psychology of religion. Some basic guidelines are offered. In addition, some suggestions are made for needed new studies and approaches, including the developing of heuristically rich typologies, and a concentration on religion in aging persons and the dying, in some of whom dogmatic or ritualistic religiosity may have given way to a non-conflictual atheistic ethical and existential concern.

Modernity and the Problem of Meaning: The Durkheimian Tradition

The rise of modernity signified not only an unprecedented epoch of material progress but evoked a recurring sense of cultural crisis. With the discreditation of the Christian-Aristotelian cosmos, new meaning constellations were necessary to provide cognitive and moral frameworks of order, identity, and purposeful existence. Modern social theory crystallized as an effort to explain but also justify or shape the emerging cultural complex of modernity. In the nineteenth century the dominant perspective on modernity and meaning was the secularization thesis which found its most sophisticated sociological expression in Max Weber and in the Weberians in the twentieth century. I argue that Durkheim, reacting against nineteenth century representatives of the secularization thesis, articulated a contrasting view of modernity and meaning. Furthermore, that the writings of Bellah and Parsons on modernity and meaning fall squarely within this Durkheimian perspective. The great transformation of European societies issued forth problems of meaning as established cultural frameworks securing identity, moral order, and purposeful existence were disrupted. By problems of meaning, I refer, for example, to a pervasive uncertainty regarding ultimate beliefs and values, confusing images of self, society and nature, and the ceaseless conflict over the ends, rules, and norms in terms of which personal and collective life is organized and legitimated. Although these cultural dislocations and problems initially stem from institutional changes linked to the demise of the old order, their more direct and sustaining source lies in the disturbance of the modern cultural configuration accompanying incessant modernization and in the unique cultural logics and dynamics of modernity. In premodern societies the perception of being situated in a sociocultural order expressive of the natural or cosmic order legitimated culturally established patterns of meaning in such an authoritative manner that whatever stirrings of collective existential and moral doubt were felt, they were contained from erupting into a full-blown cultural crisis. If identity, moral coherence, and social integration were experienced as problems in premodern societies, it was either during times of crisis or confined to individuals on the social periphery. The problem of meaning was insinuated into the social center only with the rise of modern society. This is apparent, for example, in the shift in modern philosophical consciousness to the problem of knowledge as well as in the widespread search for secular grounds of belief and morality in the eighteenth century (cf. Crocker, 1959; Lidz, 1979). By the nineteenth century, the problem of meaning was not only expressed as a philosophical problem (grounds of knowledge, being, and morality) and a existential concern with personal meaning and moral coherence (e.g., in Baudelaire, Kierkegaard, or Nietzsche) but, in addition, became a topic of sociological analysis. The sociological tradition emerged, in part, as an attempt to analyze the formation of meaning constellations in modern societies and, at least implicitly, as a form of moral inquiry offering arguments legitimating one or another form of social life (cf. Becker, 1966; Gouldner, 1970:486; Seidman, 1983a).

Experienced Levels of Emptiness and Existential Concern with Different Levels of Emotional Development and Profile of Values

This study explored the relationships of experienced levels of emptiness and existential concern with level of emotional development, as measured by the Definition/Response instrument of Gage, Morse, and Piechowski and profile of values as measured by the Allport, Vernon, and Lindzey Study of Values. 24 respondents completed measures of experienced levels of emptiness and existential concern, the Definition/Response instrument and the Study of Values. Hypotheses were tested using Pearson's r and multiple regression. Experienced level of emptiness was positively correlated with theoretical interest and level of emotional development and was inversely correlated with economic interest. Experienced existential concern was correlated directly with religious interest and with emotional development. These results question hypotheses about emptiness that (a) argue the experience of emptiness results solely from developmental deficits, (b) do not differentiate between “revealed emptiness” and “concealed emptiness,” and (c) neglect to include profile of values in the explanation.

A Scale for Measuring Experienced Levels of Emptiness and Existential Concern

Summary Systematic measures are developed, with 270 Ss, predominantly students, for the concepts of experienced levels of emptiness and existential concern. These measures are then correlated with a measure of depressive affect. The measures were again correlated, this time with a sample of 24, with level of religious interest. Factor analysis demonstrates the two concepts of emptiness and existential concern to be discrete and stable. Experienced level of emptiness correlated highly with level of depressive affect. Existential concern, however, was not correlated with depressive affect, but was correlated with level of religious interest (as measured on the Allport, Vernon, and Lindzey A Study of Values).

The Theological Relevance of the Historical Jesus: A Debate and A Thesis

THE THEOLOGICAL RELEVANCE OF THE HISTORICAL JESUS: A DEBATE AND A THESIS Introduction: The Recent Past as Historical Context for the Question IN AN EARLY STAGE of his theological investigating, Karl Rahner surveyed the state of the then current christology and found cause to bemoan its lack of vitality, using a most interesting standard: " How few really living and passionate controversies there are in Catholic christology today which engage the existential concern of the faithful (is there a single one ?) ." 1 In his judgment, one of the primary reasons for christology's stagnation was the lack of noteworthy influence exercised by modern biblical theology upon the farmer's traditional neo-scholastic structure and content. According to the teaching of the Church, the Scriptures are the inexhaustible source of truth about Christ, but " is this conviction noticeable as an active force and holy disquiet in the ordinary practice of christology today ? " 2 Rather than incorporate the new knowledge surfacing in the biblical :field, dogmatic christology seemed content simply to go on as before, quoting certain Scripture texts which were necessary to prove theses already laid down in advance. Nor was dogmatic christology doing justice to the best of its own tradition as embodied in Aquinas, Suarez, and others, for it showed little interest in Christ's life-his baptism, his prayer, his concrete passion and abandonment by God on the cross, leaving these Scriptural "mysteries" to the considerations of piety. What remained of christology was a pallid version of its former self. 1" Current Problems in Christology," Theological Investigations I, tr. C. Ernst (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1961), 152. 2 Ibid., 155. 1 ELIZABETH A. JOHNSON, c.s.J. Rather than yield to discouragement in the face of such inertia , Rahner committed himself to the hope that Scripture studies could and would contribute renewing power to the prevalent neo-scholastic christology. In an eerily prescient remark he prophesied: Let no one say that nothing more is really possible in this field any longer. Something is possible, because something must be possible, if it is a matter of the inexhaustible riches of God's presence with us ...3 It was not until over a decade later, when Roman Catholic biblical scholarship was firmly validated by the Second Vatican Council (and when among Protestant exegetes the 'new quest' for the historical Jesus was already well launched), that insights and questions from the biblical perspective began to penetrate this quiescent christology.4 The first wave of discussion , generated by recognition of the genuine differences between biblical and prevailing Catholic christology, treated the issue under the rubric of the tension between exegesis and dogmatic theology, the latter understood as the christology of the s Op. cit. 4 For a sketch of the history and for summaries of the major documents of the Roman Catholic Church on biblical study during the last century, see T. A. Collins and R. Brown," Church Pronouncements," Jerome Biblical Commentary II (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1968), 624-632. The classic survey and assessment of the 'old quest' is Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede, tr. W. Montgomery (N.Y.: Macmillan, 1961). The 'new quest ' was intiated by Ernst Kasemann's lecture, "The Problem of the Historical Jesus," Essays on New Testament Themes, tr. Vv. Montague (Naperville , Ill.: Alec. R. Allenson, Inc., 1964), 15-47, and its principles delineated clearly by James Robinson, A New Quest for the Historical Jesiis (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1959). For an eminently readable summary and evaluation of the 'old quest', see James Mackey, Jesus-the Man and the Myth (N.Y.: Paulist Press, 1979), 10-51. For one synopsis of the life of Jesus research, cf. Gustaf Aulen, Jesus in Contemporary Historical Research, tr. I. Hjelm (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976). For an excellent discussion of the whole issue from Reimarus to the new questers (including annotated bibliography ), see Norman Perrin, Rediscovering the '.l'eaching of Jesus (NY.: Harper and Row, 1967), 207-48, 262-66. THE HISTORICAL JESUS 3 manuals." Indeed there was tension, for biblical scholarship, in spite of its variety of approaches and plethora of disputed issues, had enough of...

Religious Orientation and Complexity of Thought about Existential Concerns

Three aspects of Allport's original concept of mature religion appear to be omitted from his later, highly-popular concept of religion as an intrinsic end in itself. These aspects are (a) readiness to face existential questions without reducing their complexity, (b) perception of religious doubts as positive, and (c) openness to future change in one's religious views. Batson and Ventis claim that these three aspects are included in Batson's concept of religion as a quest. Consistent with this claim, evidence is presented which indicates that the quest orientation correlates positively with greater cognitive complexity in dealing with existential concerns, while the intrinsic, end orientation does not.

Christology in the Jewish-Christian Encounter: An Essay-Review of Edward Schillebeeckx Jesuz Het Verhaal van een Levende

Post-Enlightenment critical consciousness, changes in our understanding of man, and strong existential concerns about our own humanity impinge strongly upon any reformulation of christology. One such existential concern is the anti-Semitic roots of Christianity, expressed particularly in christology. Schillebeeckx' book on the formative years of christology is one of the few which takes this problem into consideration. His work is presented as a forum for dealing with anti-Semitism in the christological tradition. Three discussions are presented: Jesus' attitude toward the Torah; models used to interpret Jesus' significance after his death; and the problem of the universality of his message and salvation. Schillebeeckx emphasizes that both Jesus' attitude toward the Torah and the disciples' interpretation of his significance fall within the parameters of Judaism of the time, and that the newness of Christianity results from its selection and combination of Judaic elements available. How is the anti-Semitism to be explained then? The problems of dealing with the anti-Semitism of the Christian tradition are not so much a matter of doctrine (i.e., somehow superseding Jewish tradition) as of how sectarians overemphasize and distort carefully mediated contraries within a tradition. This sectarian distortion had repercussions in eschatological interpretation and in the directions of christological formulations of the ensuing centuries. Undoing the anti-Semitic strands of the Christian tradition will involve ' (Jesus, The Story of One Who Lives) Bloemendaal: Nelisson, 1974. To be published in English translation by Seabury Press. References in parentheses are to Schillebeeckx' book. This essay is based on a paper read in the Jewish-Christian Seminar at the meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Chicago on November 2, 1975. ROBERT SCHREITER (Th. Dr., University of Nijmegen) studied at Nijmegen and Oxford. He is currently Assistant Professor of Doctrinal Studies at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. He also serves on the editorial board of Concilium.