Volume 55, Issue 4

In his 1821 Lectures on the philosophy of religion, Hegel orders the various forms of religion in an ascending line from religion in the determination of “being” to religion in the determination of “essence”, and from there to religion in the determination of “concept”. These ordering terms echo the main divisions of Hegel’s Science of Logic. The question arises, how this ordering according to logical terms may be linked to the special issue of forms of religion? In this article, I try to answer this question by starting from Hegel’s first definition of religion in general, that is, by taking religion as “the infinite true” or “the infinite truth”. Seen from this angle, there is more to be said about that threefold ordering than some readers of Hegel’s lectures on the philosophy of religion have expected. What at first glance may look like an import from logic that will never be at home in the fields of religion, turns out to be part of the explanatory enterprise in understanding the specific differences between religions. That is, this turns out to be part of the explanatory enterprise in understanding them as systematically interconnected variants of the effort to unfold and to overcome the ambivalence between an abstract and a concrete meaning of “true” and “truth”, an ambivalence that already belongs to the aforesaid first definition of religion in general.

The Radical Orthodoxy movement, which emerged around John Milbank in the 1990s among mostly High Church Anglican theologians, is controversially discussed in the English speaking world. They promote a counter-concept to Western secularization. “Radical” means that it goes to the foundations and is comprehensive; “orthodox” means that it is oriented toward the Church Fathers and scholasticism, including Aquinas. This tradition turns to a creative re-thinking against modernism and postmodernism. One of the key ideas is the attempt to understand God in a way in which He is not (solely) conceived as an infinitely distant being. Another important concept is the understanding of religion as not unnecessary, marginal or arbitrarily adaptable to the needs of a secular society. For this reason the Platonic idea of participation of finite being in the divine being is recovered. I offer critically that secularism is not the only problem for Christianity. Establishing a front only against secularism would lead to theology becoming one-sided. The ontological, scientific and socio-theoretical range of Christianity is indeed explored, but the concrete theological essentials are rather neglected, even the biblical foundation of theology. The Reformation, with its concentration on these essentials, is yet to be taken up by Radical Orthodoxy.

Haydn’s oratorio “The Creation” first performed in 1798 is inspired by the composer’s wish to produce something like Handel’s “Messiah” for the Viennese audience. But the spirit behind the work is quite different from that of Handel’s masterpiece. Above all van Swieten’s libretto uses no doubt Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” However, it omits all references to the fall of Lucifer and the first parents. Instead it praises God’s creation and especially the creation and love of Adam and Eve, thus reflecting the theological shift of the Enlightenment. Presumably van Swieten got the idea for his libretto from Herder who in his commentary “Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts” gave the same interpretation of the biblical story at the beginning of the Genesis.

This paper discusses Kierkegaard’s remarks about music in the first part of his book Either-Or and examines the role of music in the context of the aesthetic view of life. The theme of the musical-erotic is, first of all, related to Kierkegaard’s complete oeuvre as well as to the relevant diary entries. Secondly, the romantic aesthetic of music, as it has influenced Kierkegaard, is illustrated with selected examples. Thirdly, the author interprets the chapter on the musical- erotic in Either-Or. It can be shown that Kierkegaard interprets the seducer Don Juan from a romantic perspective as the embodiment of a sensual-erotic genius and thereby as a figure of unfathomable depth, which is perfectly represented by the music of Mozart's opera Don Juan. No other form of art is better suited for this than music, which Kierkegaard relates as a demonic art to the dark forces within humans. By listening attentively, Kierkegaard can identify the form of human existence that becomes present in music.

The article addresses the relationship between theology and literature with reference to three poems written by the lyricist Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). It shows how Systematic Theology can be enriched by poetic liberty, literary skills and the possibilities of poetic expression. The first poem with the title “Mein Bekenntnis” (My Creed) shows how the poet struggles with the genus of a credo, how he intentionally disappoints the expectation of the reader for concretion and how he refuses to condense his faith in classical and, from his perspective, rigid confessional formulas. The reason behind this refusal becomes clear in the second poem: Rilke fears the too explicit descriptions of religious contents because he regards them as limitations, and not only of one’s own faith but also of the object of faith. The third poem shows finally that Rilke’s refusal is not a principal denial of language or creeds: Here Rilke composes a credo in his own words. The beauty of its language and the force of its expression remind the reader of those which are also found in the Book of Psalms.