Christianity and Existentialism II

Existential Individualization of the Gospel Message

As we have begun to view salvation and all of the theology therein as a key to understanding our individual authentic existences inevitably we have also begun to understand our salvation in far more individualistic terms. Existentialism seldom takes the blame for this, but for the sake of argument we’ll explore how it has likely affected our views of salvation and even holiness.
Look no further than the modern day woman. She is free to forge out her fortunes in the furnace of our modern society. It is a forge that no woman before her has had such open access to. Accordingly, she attends college, gets a job, and perhaps even marries. Eventually she finds herself in crisis. Being another cog in the machinery of modern society no longer satisfies her. Her own materialism and that of her neighbors disgusts her. Even her previously clung to religious notions begin to fade away. To her they now seem too formulaic and stale. She is officially in the midst of a classic “existential crisis.”
For nearly a generation the Church has responded to her situation by informing her that she may find all she needs to understand her existence by looking to Jesus Christ and the scriptures which point to Him. (Thus far they are right.) Yet, as the spiritual guides of the Church begin to lead our young friend they continue to lead her in a manner that only feeds her individual existential crisis. In worship she sings songs about how she feels about God. In the reading of scripture she is encouraged to and often does interpret passages as if they were written to her personally, regardless of context. Not to mention that when she visits her local Christian bookstore she finds an overflowing fountain of literature about how she should engineer and understand her “personal faith journey.” When she finds a sale or gets a parking space she rejoices and thanks God, yet her hunger for spiritual things begins to dull, as God becomes her genie, her pocket Jesus, her best-friend-forever. Her basic existential crisis is not met precisely because the Church has all too often marketed the Christian faith as a service or prescription for her angst rather than the end all and be all of everything’s existence.

Within the framework of her existential understanding that has been now crafted by firstly by the prevailing culture at large and later by the Church, her faith is her own path, sold to her at a price. Hence, as she seeks what the gospel speaks to her own personal existence she feels free to discard doctrines and beliefs that she fails to identify with.

In the end, however, the problem of how the Church has addressed her existential crisis is that it has done so on the culture’s individualistic terms. The prevailing winds of the day that all too often infect the Church would have us believe that every person’s authentic existence is individual and that the answers to every person’s existential questions are unique. As has already been stated, the problem with the evangelism of the Church in recent times has been that it has accepted both of these premises.
The gospel of Jesus Christ, however, does not contain answers specifically for individuals, though there are certainly implications for all individuals. The gospel of Jesus Christ is about stating an answer once and for all for a group (first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles as well).
Hence, when we thunder from our pulpits about “the searching in our society for something to live for” we should rather speak of “the searching of our society for something to live for.”

Did you catch the difference?

Basically existentialism is the search for the meaning to our existence. This has often, both within and outside of the Church, been interpreted as an individual search. Yet, we ought not interpret it as such within the Church any longer. Instead, from now on let us understand the existential search as a collective one. We are one society, one world in search of the meaning to our existence. We are not simply one person sitting in a café mourning the miserable status of our life and its inadequacy. We, rather, are all members of a world that is in the process of responding to the grace of God the Father made evident in Jesus Christ. Some will choose to reject this grace and to choose their own individual path. Make no mistake, however, those who respond obediently to the grace God provides are all discovering an existence that is one and the same for everyone. A communal existential search is about discovering the meaning of existence for humanity as a community.
It is the existence as one body, in one communion, which God intended.
Any thoughts?

Existentialism and Christianity: A Meager Introduction

What follows here is an ankle deep discussion of existentialism, its effects on Christianity, and the implications of a communal response to individual existential issues from a basis of Biblical teaching and Church Tradition. Following is the tenative projected post dates for this.

I. Existentialism and Christianity: A Meager Introduction (Aug 18)
II. Existential Individualization of the Gospel Message (Aug 25)
III. The Communal Existential Question (Sept 1)
IV. Practical Implications (Sept 8)
V. The Eschatological Fulfillment of Communal Existentialism
(Sept 15)

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The New World Dictionary of American English, states that existentialism is: “ a philosophical and literary movement, variously religious and atheistic, stemming from Kierkegaard… based in the doctrine that the concrete existence takes precedence over the abstract.”

Unfortunately for us a dictionary definition of existentialism is as useless as a definition of Christianity would be. A movement, a set of beliefs, such as existentialism has too much depth, breadth, and life to be described in a few sentences. Authors ranging from Hemmingway to Kafka, and philosophers as diverse as Sartre and Tillich, have all been lumped into the camp of thinkers who probed the meaning of man's existence. What is it all about? At its most basic it is about the search for the meaning of our individual existence. It is a movement all about asking the questions most related to the meaning of our existence. Perhaps the questions themselves best describe in a nutshell what existentialism is really about: Why am I here? Who am I? What is life about? What am I supposed to be doing? Is all of this pointless? How am I not myself? How do I become myself? How do I seek a more authentic existence?

It has been nearly a half-century since Western popular culture began to fully adopt the tenets, practices, and questions of existentialism into its mainstream. By the 1960’s the system of thought that had once only been exercised by European philosophers was adopted by the broad counter cultural movement and nearly every college campus in the country. Existentialism it seemed had triumphed, and indeed, it had. A quick survey of today’s world finds a landscape in which nearly every facet of life bears the mark of the early existentialist thinkers and writers. Nowhere is this truer than in the Church.
At first existentialism was basically atheistic. Thinkers such as Sartre openly touted the death or non-existence of God as the essential key to man understanding his own existence. For many of these earlier atheistic thinkers man could only be free to understand his own existence once he had dispensed with the materialistic and pacifying gods of the complacent middle class.* Soon, theistic existentialists picked up on these themes and “baptized” them so to speak. Much of this was the result of theologians who were thinking in the same vein as Martin Heidigger (who rejected the existentialist label) and Rudolf Bultmann. It was in Bultmann’s theological system that the existential terminology we are well acquainted with today took form. Central to most contemporary Christian views of existentialism (and much of contemporary Christianity at large) Bultmann understood Jesus Christ as mattering “decisively for each individual transition from inauthentic to authentic existence.”**

Within no time many more Christians where speaking of the gospel of Christ as “the key to understanding our essence or existence”. The order of salvation slowly shifted from being a plan and formula in the 1950’s and 60’s to being a journey or experience in the 1990’s. As the emergent church grows in strength these attitudes only seem to grow. Now it is utterly uncool to present the way to salvation as a plan displayed on a gospel tract. Rather, it is far more common to understand salvation as “self-discovery” or as “a way to find meaning in life.” All of this is neither inherently good nor ill, it just is, but the influence of existentialism on the Church and the culture in general has had a great impact on where the Church has gone and where it will go in the future. We simply need be aware of why we are heading in the direction we are and how to best speak to the situation. We also need be aware of the extreme dangers posed by evangelistic and theological systems, which rest upon an “individual and existential” framework.

*A Casebook on Existentialism - William V. Spanos
** Companion to Christian Thought

Posting Status

Okay, I can't wait. My first post of the new school year will go up next week. It will be the first in a five part series on existentialism and Christianity.

The History of the farm will be finished once I get the resources I need. Until then, it has its own link on the side of the page.