Does God Exist?: An Answer for Today

849 Pages·1991·55.83 MB·English

by  Hans Küng

HANS KUNG
D o es
CJOCI
Exist?
An Answer for Today
SCM PRESS • London
Translated by Edward Quinn from the German
Existiert Gott?, published 1978 by R. Piper & Co. Verlag, Munich
Copyright © 1978 by Hans Kiing
English translation copyright © 1978,1979,1980,
by William Collins Sons & Co., and Doubleday & Company, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written
permission of the copyright owner.
33402518 4
First published 1984
This reissue 1991 by
SCM Press Ltd
26-30 Tottenham Road London Nl 4BZ
Printed in Great Britain
by Billing & Sons Ltd, Worcester
Ad maiorem Dei gloriam
Acknowledgments
This book was originally intended to be complementary to On Being a
Christian. It emerged first of all from the necessity of keeping the earlier
book to a manageable size and then grew in response to the need of enter
ing more deeply into the question of God and of carrying out thoroughly
a discussion with atheism and nihilism. What became increasingly clear
to the author during the long years following his student days is recapit
ulated in the present book.
A number of colleagues have helped me with their advice: this I have
acknowledged in the sections I asked them to read. But I want to thank
Professor Walter Jens, as I did in On Being a Christian, for giving a criti
cal reading also to this manuscript and for his suggestions for its improve
ment. I must likewise thank Professor Ludger Oeing-Hanhoff, whose judg
ment, based on his outstanding knowledge of the history of philosophy,
was of the greatest importance throughout the whole book. I am grateful
also to Frau Gudrun Oeing-Hanhoff for her attention to the emergence of
the manuscript and for her devoted and accurate work on the corrections.
Among my academic assistants, I must first of all thank Dr. Karl-Josef
Kuschel who stood by me with untiring energy, night and day, critically
and loyally. Dr. Hermann Haring deserves gratitude for the way in which
he made time—although fully occupied with the publication of his own
considerable work—to go through the manuscript, scrutinizing it at every
point. Dr. Georg Kraus, in addition to reading the manuscript, undertook
with extraordinary energy the often wearisome task of verifying quota
tions, searching in libraries, assisting in drawing up the bibliography; as
his successor, Dr. Urs Baumann checked the final proofs. The preparation
of the manuscript was once more in the reliable hands of Dr. Margret
Gentner, who—with Frau Ruth Sigrist assisting in the typing in Tubin
gen and Frau Marlis Abendroth-Kniisel in Sursee—spared no effort pa
tiently and expertly to prepare the pages in every chapter, which I had re
peatedly retouched. Not least, however, must I thank Frau Marianne
Saur-Kemmler for her splendid work on a discriminating index of some
sixteen hundred names and whose judgment in reading the various ver
sions of the manuscript was also valuable to me in a different way.
I would not like to miss the opportunity of thanking heartily Frau
Renate Bohme—as representative of many who worked for me with ex-
viii Acknowledgments
traordinary devotion in the Piper-Verlag—for taking care of the produc
tion of the book. Finally, in connection with the fifth centenary celebra
tion of the University of Tubingen, it is appropriate to give a very special
mention to the entire university library, which cannot be too highly
praised and on which I have made frequent demands, this time in areas
far beyond its excellent theological department.
Tubingen, January 1978.
Contents
Abbreviations xix
The aim of this book xxi
A. REASON OR FAITH? 1
1.I think; do I therefore exist? Rene Descartes 3
1. The ideal of mathematical certainty 3
Necessity of an exact method 3
The self-assured individual 7
2. The fundamental certainty of reason 11
In what sense we can doubt everything 11
The Archimedean point 12
3. Reason as basis of faith? 15
From certainty of the self to certainty of God 15
Neither freethinking nor Augustinism 19
Thomistic heritage 20
Clarity as ideal of theology 22
4. Shattered unity 26
Split reality 26
Mathematics as the ideal of truth 29
Consistent mathematics? 31
Conclusive proof of God? 34
Two floors? Aquinas and the consequences 35
II. I believe; do I therefore exist? Blaise Pascal 42
1. The relativity of mathematical certainty 42
Convergences and divergences 42
The logic of the heart 46
Contents
X
2. The fundamental certainty of fdith 51
Man's greatness and wretchedness 52
What cannot be doubted 55
3. Faith as the basis of reason 59
Reasonable reason—credible faith? 59
Neither freethinking nor Thomisitf 63
Augustinian heritage 65
Faith as ground of theology: Augustine and the
consequences 68
Conflict of faith with faith: Jansenism 74
4. Tracks of atheism 81
Questions of morality: humanistic atheism? 81
Questions of politics: political atheism? 83
Questions of science: scientific atheism? 86
III. Against rationalism for rationality 93
1. The epistemological discussion 93
The empirical and the "mystical": Ludwig Wittgenstein 93
Logic and theory of knowledge against metaphysics?
Rudolf Carnap 95
The universal claim of scientific thought?
Karl Popper 101
Scientific revolutions: Thomas S. fCuhn 106
Theology and changes in the world picture 111
2. Interim results I: Theses on modern rationality 115
Correcting course 115
Modern science 119
Relationship of theology to natural science 121
Science and the question of God 122
Complexity and unity of reality 124
B. THE NEW UNDERSTANDING OF GOD 127
I. God in the world: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 129
i. From deism to panentheism 129
Limits of the Enlightenment 130
All in God: Spinoza and his influence 132
2. Atheism? 137
Fichte and the atheism controversy 137
Contents xi
Postatheistism 138
The primacy of God 142
II. God in history 144
1. Phenomenology of spirit 144
The absolute in consciousness 144
Dialectic in God himself , 147
2. System in history 150
The new synthesis 151
The new philosophy of history 154
The new philosophy of religion 156
HI. Secular and historical God 162
1. The irremovable difference 162
Identity of finite and infinite? 162
Everything reasonable? 164
Everything necessary? 166
2. God in coming to be 169
Progress without God? Auguste Comte 169
The God of evolution: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin 171
God in process: Alfred North Whitehead 176
3. Interim results II: Theses on the secularity and
historicity of God 181
Correcting course 181
Secularity of God 184
Historicity of God 186
C. THE CHALLENGE OF ATHEISM 189
I. God—a projection of man? Ludwig Feuerbach 191
1. Anthropological atheism 192
From theologian to atheist 192
Conflict about Hegel: religion preserved or dissolved? 194
Precursor of atheism in Germany: David Friedrich Strauss 196
God as reflection of man 199
The secret of religion: atheism 202
2. Critique of Feuerbach 204
Background of anthropological criticism of religion 204
xii Contents
Infinity of human consciousness? 205
The end of Christianity? 207
God—wish or reality? 208
3. Critique of the critique 210
Atheism—permanent challenge 211
What remains of Feuerbach's critique of religion? 213
God—a consolation serving vested interests? Karl Marx 217
1. Sociopolitical atheism 217
From Jew to atheist 218
From atheist to socialist 221
Dialectical materialism instead of idealism 223
Feuer-bach to Marx 226
Opium of the people 228
Economic justification of atheism 231
Atheism as Weltanschauung: from Engels to Lenin 236
2. Critique of Marx 241
Background of the sociopolitical critique of religion 242
Is religion a human fabrication? 244
Future without religion? 247
Promise without fulfillment? 249
3. Critique of the critique 252
What is left of Marx's critique of religion? 252
Christianity and Marxism 256
Verification in practice 260
. God—an infantile illusion? Sigmund Freud 262
1. Psychoanalytic atheism 263
From natural scientist to atheist 263
From physiology to psychology 268
The realm of concealed wishes 271
What is the source of religion? 275
What is religion? 281
Education for reality 285
2. Critique of Freud 288
Adler and Jung on religion 288
The disputed origins of religion 294
Religion—merely wishful thinking? 299
Contents xiii
Faith in science? 302
Repressed religious feeling? 304
3. Critique of the critique 307
What remains of Freud's critique o£ religion? 307
Importance of psychotherapy for religion 310
Critique and countercritique 312
The importance of religion for Jung, Fromm, Frankl . 316
4. Interim results III: Theses on atheism 323
Correcting course 324
The question of truth 327
Against a theological withdrawal strategy 330
For a serious theology 334
Atheism to be taken seriously 337
D. NIHILISM-CONSEQUENCE OF ATHEISM 341
I. The rise of nihilism: Friedrich Nietzsche 343
1. Critique of culture 343
Darwin's evolutionary thinking 344
Strauss's Philistine optimism 349
Nietzsche's beginnings 352
Schopenhauer's pessimism 356
Nietzsche's own way 363
2. The counterreligion 369
Against inconsequential atheism 370
The superman as antitype 374
The most abysmal thought 376
3. What is nihilism? 380
Descartes, Pascal and the controversy over fundamental
certainty 380
Overcoming morality 384
Origins of nihilism 387
Was Nietzsche a nihilist? 391
II. Conquest of nihilism? 398
1. Critique of Nietzsche 399
Eternal recurrence of the same? 399
Atheism justified?