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The Kerygma and the Cuckoo's Nest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Peter Slater
Affiliation:
Department of Religion, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada K1S 5B6

Extract

Influenged by Tillich's so-called method of correlation, theologians in recent decades have been inclined to approach existential situations as if they simply raised questions to which the dogmatic tradition provided answers. Accordingly, in my teaching for example, I have often read Camus's The Plague together with Buber's I and Thou, Tillich's The Courage To Be with Brecht's Mother Courage and so on. However, the effect of such correlations has, as often as not, been to set the questions moving in the other direction. The traditional ‘answers’ of theologians have been challenged by the existential concerns of the secular writers. In particular the very raison d'être of theology, the articulation of the transcendent presence of God in the world, has become problematical.Granted that Buber's I-You relationship correlates with Camus's portrayals of authenticity, for instance, why do we need to mention Buber's ‘Eternal You’? Can we even make sense of such talk? Granted that Tillich's types of anxiety correlate with his sense of faithful courage, must his affirmation of life in spite of the negativities of existence be ontologically rooted in some ‘Ground of Being’? As we ponder such questions the existential contexts discussed seem to have evaporated all content from the theological answers.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1978

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References

page 302 note 1 My primary reference is to Bultmann's, contributions to Kerygma and Myth, ed. Bartsch, H. W., tr. R. H. Fuller (New York: Harper and Row, 2nd ed. 1961)Google Scholar, and Theology of the New Testament, 2 vols., tr. Grobel, K. (New York: Scribners, 1951)Google Scholar. On Heidegger in this context see Macquarrie, J., An Existentialist Theology (London: Student Christian Movement, 1955)Google Scholar. On Bultmann and demythologising see Johnson, Roger A., The Origins of Demythologizing (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974).Google Scholar

page 302 note 2 On the existential moves in question see Utterback, Sylvia Walsh, ‘Kierkegaard's Inverse Dialectic’, in 1976 Proceedings of the American Academy of Religion: Philosophy of Religion and Theology Section, comp. Peter Slater (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1976), pp. 416.Google Scholar

page 303 note 1 See Myers, Lee and Kerr, Hugh T., ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: A Psycho-Symbolic Review’, Theology Today, Vol. XXXIII, No. 3 (Oct. 1976), pp. 285290CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Boyd, George N., ‘Parables of Costly Grace: Flannery O'Connor and Ken Kesey’, Theology Today, Vol. XXIX, No. 2 (July 1972), pp. 161171CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Boyd does not use ‘parables’ in the technical sense defined by Crossan et al..

page 304 note 1 Kesey, Ken, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Signet paperback (New York: Viking Press, 1962)Google Scholar. Page references given hereafter in the text are to this edition. The sense of ‘cosmos’ used here is that found, e.g., in Berger, Peter, The Sacred Canopy, Anchor paperback (New York: Doubleday, 1969).Google Scholar

page 305 note 1 Concerning parables and theology see TeSelle, Sallic, Speaking in Parables: a Study in Metaphor and Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975)Google Scholar, e.g. pp. 2–3, ‘Current scholarship sees the parable as an extended metaphor … In the parabolic tradition people are not asked to be “religious” or taken out of this world; rather, the transcendent comes to ordinary reality and disrupts it.’

page 305 note 2 See Ricoeur, Paul, ‘Biblical Hermeneutics’, Semeia 4 (1975), p. 75fGoogle Scholar. Notice in passing, contra Ricoeur, that in this instance the shift is from a metaphorical to a literal mode, rather than vice versa: what serves the parabolic function of reversing the expectations of the previous speaker is not the use of metaphor as such but the disruptive effect of playing on the shift from literal to metaphorical or metaphorical to literal uses of terms.

page 309 note 1 See Crossan, John Dominic, The Dark Interval: Towards a Theobgy of Story, Argus paperback (1975) (distributed by Scholars Press, Missoula, Montana), p. 56Google Scholar, ‘Parables are fictions, not myths; they are meant to change, not reassure us’. Also p. 60, ‘parable can only subvert the world created in and by myth … It is possible to live in myth and without parable. But it is not possible to live in parable alone.’.

page 310 note 1 For a critique of Bultmann on this point see Soelle, Dorothee, Political Theology, tr. Shelley, John (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974).Google Scholar

page 310 note 2 When Bultmann cites this summary verse in his Theology of the New Testament it is in the context of a discussion of preaching (see Volume One, p. 87). I think he neglects the evangelical significance of Torah for both Jesus and Paul, typically subsuming it under a Lutheran view of Law and obedience (e.g. in Primitive Christianity and Jesus and the Word), and likewise concentrates on demythologising the miraculous elements of the healing stories to the neglect of their other dimensions. But to argue this here would take us too far afield.

page 311 note 1 See Lehmann, Paul, The Transfiguration of Politics (New York: Harper & Row, 1975)Google Scholar. Lehmann emphasises that the Christ story brings the power of the future into the present.

page 313 note 1 See e.g. Rowley, H. H., The Relevance of Apocalyptic (New York: Association Press, 1963), rev. ed.Google Scholar; Via, Dan O. Jr., Kerygma and Comedy in the Mew Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975)Google Scholar, criticises Rowley et al. on pp. 80–1 for allowing too much continuity in apocalyptic thinking between this world and the next.

page 315 note 1 On what constitutes mature moral judgment see the work of Kohlberg, Lawrence, e.g. in Kohlberg, and Turiel, E., Moralization Research, the Cognitive Developmental Approach (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971).Google Scholar

page 315 note 2 A related concept in a different context is that of an alternating model in Gill, Robin, The Social Context of Theology (Oxford: A. R. Mowbray, 1975), ch. 9.Google Scholar

page 316 note 1 On the logic of laughter and the link between humor and creativity see Koestler, Arthur, The Act of Creation (London: Pan Books, 1970).Google Scholar

page 316 note 2 The Myth of Sisyphus, tr. O'Brien, Justin (New York: Vintage Books, 1955), p. 88Google Scholar, ‘To begin with, he is accused of a certain levity in regard to the gods’.

page 316 note 3 See McLelland, Joseph C., The Crown and the Crocodile (Richmond, Va.: John Knox, 1970), ch. 3.Google Scholar

page 316 note 4 On Kierkegaard and irony, to which I allude here, see Thompson, Josiah, ‘The Master of Irony’, in Kierkegaard: a Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Thompson, Josiah, Anchor paperback (New York: Doubleday, 1972)Google Scholar. Thompson, however, tends not to see beyond the pseudonyms.

page 316 note 5 See Goffman, Erving, Asylums, Anchor paperback (New York: Doubleday, 1961), pp. 10f. The concept of total institutions comes from Goffman.Google Scholar

page 317 note 1 I am indebted here to a paper by Rabuzzi, Kathryn A., ‘Beyond Story and Image—The Boring’, presented at the Eastern-International Regional Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Buffalo, N.Y., 2 April 1977.Google Scholar

page 317 note 2 Inner-outer contrasts are no more or less valid than subject-object dichotomies which supposedly permeate I-It thinking. But it is worth remarking that in this instance it is ‘the inner’ which is conformed to the pattern of natural necessity, not ‘the outer’.

page 318 note 1 For a non-Christian reading in this connexion see Lawrence, D. H., Apocalypse (New York: Viking Compass, 1960).Google Scholar