Lecture on Existentialism by Mark Pursley Existentialism is a philosophical movement that emerged on the European continent in the 19thcentury.It was a reaction against the rationalist movement, which culminated with Hegel.Some have described existentialists as disappointed rationalists.When the rationalists couldn’t deliver on their promise to prove the existence of God and an eternal soul, people began whining about the absence of meaning and the inevitability of death.In any event, the movement was popular in Europe and America up through the 1960s. Existentialism comes in an atheistic form and a Christian form.We begin our discussion with the great Christian existentialist, the Danish theologian, Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855).In the 1830’s, David Friedrich Strauss had published his monumental work, The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined.Strauss’ detailed analysis of the four gospels showed that they were not likely to be historical works.He showed how the gospel writers used material from the Old Testament to present Jesus as the new, Moses and the new Elijah.The gospels were likely to be a mixture of historical memory and Christian myth. A prominent German author, playwright, librarian, and theologian named G.E. Lessing (1729- 1781) was another important influence on Kierkegaard.Lessing had been exposed, by a family friend, to the unpublished manuscript of the first great New Testament scholar to employ the historical critical method to the study of New Testament texts,Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768).Like Strauss, Reimarus argued that the early Christian community had distorted the actual message of Jesus, who never saw himself as a divine savior.What Lessing famously argued is that historical claims about events reported to have happened 1700 years earlier cannot be the basis of our belief that God exists and that the soul will survive death.There is a big gap in the argument from, “there are reports of a man rising from the dead a long time ago” to “I will survive death and live with God in heaven.”He describes that gap in the argument as an “ugly ditch:”That, then, is the ugly great ditch which I cannot cross, however often and however earnestly I have tried to make that leap. Kierkegaard would argue that that leap can be made by faith; there is no need for historical evidence to support claims about the miracles of Jesus, including the miracle of the resurrection.The truth that matters is not based on what might have happened, but on the subjective experience of the individual believer. Here is such a definition of truth: An objective uncertainty held fast in an approximation process of the most passionate inwardness is the truth, the highest truth attainable for an existing individual.At the point where the way swings off (and where that is cannot be specified objectively, since it is a matter of subjectivity), there objective knowledge is placed in abeyance.
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