Rousseau on Freedom

"Indeed for Rousseau, we are free, sovereign, and self-legislating only when we join with others to set the terms by which we live together." Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution (Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2015), 95.

Aristotle on Wealth

"there is a bound fixed [for the property needed by the art of household management]. All the instruments needed by all the arts are limited, both in number and size, by the requirements of the arts they serve." Aristotle, The Politics, trans. Ernest Baker (Oxford: Clarendon, 1946), 1.8.15.

Smith, Naturalism, Constructivism, Neoliberalism

"Moreover, the idea and practice of responsibilization - forcing the subject to become a responsible self-investor and self-provider - reconfigures the correct comportment of the subject from one naturally driven by satisfying interests to one forced to engage in a particular form of self-sustenance that meshes with the morality of the state and the health of the economy. Thus, neoliberalism differs from classical economic liberalism not only in that there ceases to be what Adam Smith formulated as an 'invisible hand' forging a common good out of individual, self-interested actions, and not only because the naturalism is replaced by constructivism, although both of these are the case. Equally important, reconciling individual with national or other collective interests is no longer the contemporary problem understood to be solved by markets. Instead, the notion of individuals naturally pursuing their interests has been replaced with the production through governance of responsibilized citizens who appropriately self-invest in a context of macroeconomic vicissitudes and needs that make all of these investments into practices of speculation." Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution (Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2015), 84.

Foucault and Homo Oeconomicus

"In the 1978-79 Collège de France lectures, Foucault describes a shift in homo oeconomicus from classical economic liberalism to neoliberalism wherein an image of man as a creature of needs satisfied through exchange gives way to an image of man as an entrepreneur of himself." Wendy Brown, Undoing The Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution (Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2015), 80.

Karl Barth on Herder

Barth claimed that Herder was, "the man who more than any other deserves to be called the founder of 'historicism' and who has the doubtful distinction of having been denominated by Karl Barth 'the inaugurator of nineteenth-century theology before its actual inauguration by Schleiermacher'".

Boyle, Sacred and Secular Scriptures (2004), 15. Boyle takes the quotation from Barth, Protestantische Theologie (1985), 302: "Wie anders würden alle Dinge aussehen, wenn man von Herder, dem Inaugurator der typischen Theologie des 19. Jahrhunderts vor ihrer Inauguration durch Schleiermacher, auch sagen könnte, daß er verstanden habe, was Kirche und was Gnade ist!".

Joachim Schaper on the Origins of Biblical Theology as an Alternative to Dogmatic Theology

"The tension between dogmatic theology and biblical interpretation did not arise in the eighteenth century, under the impact of the Enlightenment, or in the nineteenth century, when the study of history unleashed its subversive power. Rather, that tension already became palpable when, in the late seventeenth century, the querelle des anciens et des modernes foreshadowed the hsitorians' debates of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries without which the need for concepts like those of a 'biblical theology', as opposed to dogmatic theology, would never have arisen."

Joachim Schaper, "The Question of a 'Biblical Theology' and the Growing Tension between 'Biblical Theology' and a 'History of the Religion of Israel': from Johann Philipp Gabler to Rudolf Smend, Sen." in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, ed. Magne Sæbø, Vol. 3.1 (Bristol, CT: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 629.

Schelling and Religious Myth

Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling interpreted Genesis 3 as a pure philosophical myth - as a reflection on the origins of evil in the world. He defended this view with the assertion that the mythical character of all ancient traditions is grounded in the nature of humanity's childhood. In taking this analysis on to Christianity, he asserted that Christian mythology established a perception of the universe as history and moral kingdom, blending realistic mythology with idealistic morality. In his view, early Christian writings demonstrated the break-up of a dichotomy between realism and idealism.

Jan Rohls, "Historical, Cultural and Philosophical Aspects of the Nineteenth Century" in Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, ed. Magne Sæbø, Vol. 3.1 (Bristol, CT: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 38-39.

Hegel on the Origins of Purposefulness

"It is a simple, natural process of thought to feel, to surmise, to recognize in this <infinitely manifold> harmony of relationships - of inorganic to organic nature and of both to human purposes - a higher, deeper principle, that of wisdom working according to a purpose."

"But this implies that the concept of purpose must have emerged into human self-consciousness. In the Book of Job or the Psalms, for example, it is only the power of God that is especially singled out and lauded in natural phenomena, elementary and organic alike. This more definite awareness of purposive relations we find especially in Socrates; in him this concept has emerged essentially in opposition to the earlier mechanistic view. This principle that he sets against the primordial elements as causes is the good, i.e., what is self-appointed purpose and conforms thereto."

G.F.W. Hegel, "Determinite Religion," in "The Lecture of 1821" found in Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, ed. Peter C. Hodgson (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984), 198.

Eco-Theology Sunday

Scriptures:

 

Leviticus 25:23-24

 

“The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants. Throughout the land that you hold, you shall provide for the redemption of the land.”

 

Psalm 24:1

 

“The earth is the LORD’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it”

 

Genesis 2:15

 

“The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.”

 

Sermon:

 

Many of you have heard me talk in the past about some of the early parts of the book of Genesis. Some of you also know that I’m going to be teaching a 9:45am Bible Study on it soon as well. One of the things we’ll study is the things you can notice when you first open up your Bible. For example, please look down in front of you and grab a pew Bible. Now, open it up and turn to the first page – Genesis chapter 1. We all know what’s in Genesis chapter 1 right? Creation! But, let me ask you this, “What’s in chapter 2?” If you look right before the start of chapter 2, you will notice a section heading. That heading says, “Another account of creation.” Wow! Crazy right. Why is there a second account?

 

This boils down to the fact that there are two stories about creation in the first two chapters of Genesis. They’re both there because they both provide different, yet significant insights. I hope that you’ll take this home and look over it for yourself, but I want to briefly highlight some of the differences. In Genesis chapter 1, we learn that the earth is “watery” in chapter 2 we learn that it is “dusty.” In chapter 1 creation happens in 6 days, in chapter 2 it happens in 1 day. In chapter 1 the sequence of creation goes as follows: trees, animals, and humans. In chapter 2 the sequence goes: humans, trees, animals. In Genesis 1, humanity is creation last. In chapter 2, he is created first. In chapter 1, man and woman are created simultaneously, but in chapter 2 the woman is created out of Adam’s rib. Finally, and this is today’s relevant part, in chapter 1 the whole earth is humanity’s domain, but in chapter 2 it’s just the Garden of Eden. 

 

If you take the scriptures a little bit too literally, as in you believe in some sort of hard historical accuracy, you have two options here. You can either say that one story is true and the other false. Or, you can try to wiggle your way out of the problem. This morning I’m going to take these two stories at face value and deal with that tension to some degree. Let’s take a look at these two account’s relationship with the environment. If you look to chapter 1, you’ll find some justification for the entire environmental movement. If plants and animals existed before humanity, then we’re just a small part of a global ecosystem. But, if you take Genesis 2 as your main account then you’ll find that the plants are created entirely and solely for our sustenance. You’ll find something similar with animal rights. The question is, “were animals created to be successful before our existence or were they created to be our playthings?”

 

At this point, many of you may be thinking, “Yay! Let’s go with the first account. Women are even equal, so that’s pretty rad!” The important issue, however, is not just how creation happened, but what it means. It’s a categorical error to think that these stories are meant to inform us of some historical truth. What they’re really concerned with is conceptions of meaning – of what creation means. Sometimes the Bible, like really good literature, uses contradiction to illustrate a larger truth. Sometimes this is referred to as a “dialectic.” This word comes from the root of the word “dialog” and in many ways it refers to that. 

 

Sometimes, when we encounter the tensions of different narratives we may near from the neighbor on our left and the neighbor on our right we may find a better conception of truth. Whoever wrote Genesis decided that it was better to leave both stories in the final product than to leave one out because they both brought something to the table. 

 

This is precisely why we have theology. To give it a brief definition, theology is the study of ideas about God and it often functions in a systematic way. In other words, good theologies often try to form coherent systems of ideas about God. When humans look at a particular passage in the Bible, it doesn’t tell us everything we need to know about life. Instead, we have to come up with ideas of understanding what it is we’re reading and how that relates to things we’ve read elsewhere. Theology is the thing that helps us organize and think about all the things we learn, particularly as they relate to God.

 

We come to subjects like salvation, the afterlife, and the church’s position on women as a collective result of our understandings of scripture. Some of us probably even believe in something called natural theology – which looks at aspects of the divine through things like nature, experience, and reason. And so it is in this way that we should approach a theological topic like the environment – or to put it in nice Christian lingo, “creation.” Eco-theology is a discipline of inquiry into what it means to be human in the midst of this vast creation that God has made. It’s an effort to draw out the things that the scriptures might teach us about creation and our relationship to it. 

 

Like most theological movements, eco-theology has grown out of an experienced need. In many respects, it plays on old themes that one can kind find throughout Christian history, but to new tunes. Just to give you some perspective, in 1996 The Economist reported that The Alliance of Religious Conservation had identified more than 120,000 religiously-based environmental projects around the world. Twenty years later we can still say that a lot probably needs to be done. Surprisingly, seminaries and theologians have not been at the forefront of this. Many have certainly gotten involved in more recent years, but this response has been largely driven by normal people within their churches – it has to a large extent been a bottom up movement, rather than a top down one.

 

Yet, many denominations have offered up catechisms or statements concerning the issue. For example, the Episcopal Church released a Catechism of Creation in 2008 which states,

“A theology of creation presents the Church’s thinking about the relationship between God and the world as it is informed by understandings of Holy Scripture and observations of nature. It seeks to express in human language the mysteries of this relationship. It is not a theory about the universe but a doctrine about the God who creates it.”

The statement reflects one of the best sayings from a theologian I’m not too fond of, Thomas Aquinas, who stated that the, “Sacred writings are bound in two volumes, that of creation and that of holy scripture.” Likewise, the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church stated in 1995 that,

“...[T]o commit a crime against the natural world is a sin. For humans to cause species to become extinct and to destroy the biological diversity of God's creation; for humans to degrade the integrity of Earth by causing changes in its climate, by stripping the Earth of its natural forests, or destroying its wetlands; for humans to injure other humans with disease; for humans to contaminate the Earth's waters, its land, its air, and its life, with poisonous substances; these are sins.”

I mention these quotes not to argue that we should fall in line with natural theology, but to suggest that the Church might be going through another Reformation. One of the old saying of the Reformation was, “Reformed and always reforming.”

 

The Church has to think about the things that happen in the world. That’s what relevance is about. We have to address things like poverty and community, but we also have to think about larger issues and provide people with a sense of hope and meaning. You may have noticed that all of the scriptures we read this morning were rooted in the idea of creation. In Leviticus we heard that we don’t own the land we occupy, but merely act as caretaker’s who work God’s redemption upon it. In Psalm 24:1 we heard that the Cosmos belongs to God, which begs the question, “How should we take care of God’s things?” In Genesis chapter 2, we heard that God put man in the Garden of Eden to till and keep the land.

 

I’d like now to remind you of a couple more passages. In Romans 8:19, Paul writes that “creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.” This statement is loaded with the sense of Shalom – the well-being, peace, and wholeness that of all creation. Somehow our salvation is supposed to be linked with a sense of systematic peace between the different elements of creation. Likewise, in Genesis we have similar messages about our obligations to be good stewards over what God gave us. In Genesis 1:28 we read,

“God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’”

 

Many might believe, at first glance, that this says that we can use creation for our own purposes – without care for things like balance. It has often been seen as a license to dominate and abuse creation. Yet, the meanings we read into words like “subdue” and “dominion” are different than those intended by the Hebrew.

“The command to ‘subdue’ (kabas) Earth focuses particularly on cultivation, a difficult task in ancient days. ‘Subduing’ involves development in the created order. This process offers to the human being the task of intra-creational development, bringing the world along to its fullest possible creational potential. God’s command passes on to humans the responsibility to act on behalf of creation and to work within the boundaries of our humanness, dealing properly with nature in a way that helps bring forth food and values resources. This has nothing to do with abusive control.” Sarah Ann Sharkey, Earth, Our Home: Biblical Witness in Hebrew Scriptures (Boerne, TX: Sor Juana Press, 2004), 34-35.

In other words, it’s a call to bring about a peaceful and well-balanced order. In Isaiah 11:1-9 and in Acts 3:20-21 we hear a similar theme - an emphasis drawn from Genesis. We hear about a hope for the restoration of all things and God’s intention to bring all things back to their right ordering, particularly in regards to all of creation; and humans are invited to participate in that work. Likewise, when we heard earlier that man was placed in the Garden to till and keep it we’re being given the same word that’s used when we hear phrases like “The Lord bless you and keep you.” 

 

I could go on with other scriptures, but I think you get the idea by this point. We are all called to be good stewards over the things that have been entrusted to us. Yes, this includes our money, our families, and our bodies, but it also includes the world that we have been given. We are asked by God to care for the things that we have been entrusted with.

I’ll end with a personal reflection. As some of you know, I worked as a public policy researcher in Princeton for much of my time in Seminary and even some time after. The Bonner Foundation has a bureau called “Policy Options” that coordinates an internal network between a large number of universities, nonprofits, and foundations. I was often assigned to issues of agriculture, climate change, and the environment because my undergraduate thesis related to those fields. To summarize, my thesis argued that the U.S. government should invest in subsidizing an alternative cash crop in Afghanistan because we’d never be able to win the war there if we couldn’t undercut the growth and sale of poppies to the Taliban, who in turn the poppies into opiates. In other words, win over the farmers by giving them a more lucrative crop option – like switchgrass which can be turned into ethanol, something that’s used as fuel – so that their livelihoods aren’t aligned with the Taliban.

 

To get more to the point, we have the technology to not have to use oil-based gasolines and the resources we need are readily available in the mid-West, namely native prairie grasses whose growth is already paid for by you – the taxpayer. Unfortunately, politics and politicians suck. When there’s money to be made, we often find people aren’t paying as much attention to the question, “How can we govern wisely?” The economist Milton Friedman even wrote in his book Capitalism and Freedom, that there are problematic situations where businesses create collective costs through environmental violence, like pollution, that effects many people yet remains difficult to exact compensation for. Actions like this violate his principles of a ‘free exchange’ which constitute the foundation of Friedman’s vision for capitalism - something voluntarily engaged in, which is why he stresses his idea of ‘freedom’ so much.

 

To wrap up this tangent, I’d just like to suggest that there’s always more for us to do. God asks us to be good stewards of what we’re given. That includes the world that we inhabit. So let us strive to better fulfill that calling. Amen.

Individualization and the State in Foucault

"The political, ethical, social, philosophical problem of our days is not to liberate the individual from the State and its institutions, but to liberate ourselves from the State and the type of individualization linked to it."

Foucault, "The Subject and Power," in Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow (eds.), Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 216.

Foucault on the possibility of Individual Freedom

"The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than himself."

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1977, p.30.

John Stuart Mill on the Good Life

"[F]or John Stuart Mill, too, what makes humanity 'a noble and beautiful object of contemplation' is individuality, originality, 'fullness of life,' and above all, cultivation of our 'higher nature.'" Wendy Brown referring to Mill's, On Liberty and Other Writings, pp.59-64.

Marx on Freedom's Relation to Nature

"Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilized man... Freedom in this field can only consist in... the associated produces, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this... under conditions most favorable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end it itself, the true realm of freedom, which however can blossom forth only with the realm of necessity as its basis." Karl Marx, "On the Realm of Necessity and the Realm of Freedom," from Capital, Volume Three, in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: Norton, 1978), p. 441.

Neoliberalism and Humanism

"Thus, in the neoliberal political imaginary that has taken a responsibilized turn, we are no longer creatures of moral autonomy, freedom, or equality. We no longer choose our ends or the means to them. We are no longer even creatures of interest relentlessly seeking to satisfy ourselves. In this respect, the contrual of homo oeconomicus as human capital leaves behind not only homo politicus, but humanism itself." Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution (Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2015), 42.

Economization

"Carl Schmitt argued that liberal democracy was already a form of economizing the state and the political, and for Hannah Arendt and Claude Lefort, the economization of society, politics, and man was a signature of Marxism in theory and practice." Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution (Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2015), 32.

The Oven Bird

The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

~Frost, 1916

Tragedy and the Power of Freedom

"For greatness and force are truly measured only by the greatness and force of the opposition out of which the spirit brings itself back to unity with itself again. The intensity and depth of subjectivity come all the more to light, the more endlessly and tremendously is it divided against itself, and the more lacerating are the contradictions in which it still has to remain firm in itself. In this development alone is preserved the might of the Idea and the Ideal, for might consists only in maintaining oneself within the negative of oneself." G.W.F. Hegel, Aesthetics, Vol. 1, 178.

Hegel and the Suppression of the Cross

"In Hegel's view traditional Christianity suppressed its own tragic vision and thereby suppressed an essential part of Christianity's own story: the suffering, dying God of love. For Nietzsche, 'the very term 'Christianity' is a misunderstanding: in truth there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross. The 'evangel' (good news) died on the cross.'" 

Robert R. Williams, Tragedy, Recognition, and the Death of God: Studies in Hegel and Nietzsche (Oxford University Press, 2012), 2. Citing a quote from Nietzsche's AntiChristian §§39-44.

Hegel and the Death of God

“In his Phenomenology, Hegel introduces the figure of the unhappy consciousness and connects it with ancient tragedy, when he shows that it arose historically as a successor to the tragic tradition. The unhappy consciousness is the endgame of tragedy. With the collapse of fundamental values and institutions in the fall of Greek culture and its subjugation to the Roman Empire, tragedy in Hegel’s sense – a conflict of right against right – is no longer possible. The result is dispirited culture – nihilism. To portray this condition, Hegel introduces the term ‘death of God’ as the utterance of the unhappy consciousness that expresses the loss of everything substantial.” 

 

Robert R. Williams, Tragedy, Recognition, and the Death of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 1.

Aristotle and Hegel on Tragedy

"Tragic drama, for Aristotle, reveals the vulnerability of human virtue. It shows how human beings can go wrong, even if they are "like ourselves" and of basically good (if not excellent) character. For Hegel, by contrast, such drama shows us the tragedy inherent in situations that are specific to art. Of course, human life outside art can take on a form meant for art alone and thereby also give rise to tragedy. Such tragedy will not, however, be an irreducible feature of human life as such, but will result from aestheticizing life. Tragic drama thus teaches us not that tragedy is unavoidable, but that it stems from confusing life with art." Stephen Houlgate, "Hegel's Theory of Tragedy."

Hegel on the Conditionality of his own Political Philosophy

"To comprehend what is the task of philosophy, for what is is reason. As far as the individual is concerned, each individual is in any case a child of his time; thus philosophy, too is its own time grasped in thoughts. It is just as foolish to imagine that any philosophy can transcend its contemporary world as that an individual can overleap his own time, or leap over Rhodes." G.W.F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. H.B. Nisbet, ed. A. Wood. (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 21-22.

Etienne Balibar on Democracy

Balibar supplements Rancière's argument by suggesting that the democratic ideals of equality and freedom find manifestation in "the revolt of the excluded." Yet, always then find themselves being "reconstructed by citizens themselves in a process that has no end." Equaliberty: Political Essays, trans. James Ingram (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), 207.

Jacques Rancière on Democracy

For Rancière the demos refers neither to the whole body politic nor the poor. Instead, he argues - though an argument he picks up from Plato's Laws - that the demos refers to those who are unqualified to rule, to the "uncounted." As a result, he conceived of democracy as an eruption of "the part that has no part." Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics (New York: Continuum, 2010), 70.

Giorgio Agamben on Democracy

Agamben sees a persistent ambiguity in the idea of democracy - one that "is no accident." In his mind the demos refers both to the entire political body and to the poor. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 11 and 16.

Wendy Brown on Neoliberalism

"[A]s a normative order of reason developed over three decades into a widely and deeply disseminated governing rationality, neoliberalism transmogrifies every human domain and endeavor, along with humans themselves, according to a specific image of the economic. All conduct is economic conduct; all spheres of existence are framed and measured by economic terms and metrics, even when those spheres are not directly monetized." "Preface" to Undoing the Demos (Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2015), 9-10.

Adorno and Dialectic

"Dialectic thought is an attempt to break through the coercion of logic by its own means. But since it must use these means, it is at every moment in danger of itself acquiring a coercive character: the ruse of reason would like to hold sway over the dialectic too." Adorno, Minima Moralia

Life, Death, Art, and Late Romanticism

"Death, if that is what we want to call this non-actuality, is of all things the most dreadful, and to hold fast to what is dead requires the greatest strength. Lacking strength, Beauty hates the Understanding for asking of her what it cannot do. But the life of the Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself." Hegel, "Preface," Phenomenology of Spirit.

Hegel and Job

"The paradigmatic portrayal of the God of abstract power is found, according to Hegel, in the book of Job. [...] Both Schnurrer and Michaelis stressed the portrayal of divine majesty in Job, and Hegel echoes the inverse of this theme, namely, that divine majesty and inscrutability demand absolute submission on the part of human beings, 'fear of the Lord.' To be sure, God acts to bring souls out from the pit of Sheol (Job 33:18), but this act of justice or mercy is also merely an expression of divine power. In the end, 'submission [to the Lord] restores Job to his former happiness."

"The Jewish cultus, in Hegel's view, is a fundamental expression of the servile consciousness and of the master-servant relationship. When God is comprehended only under the abstract category of the One, and not as dialectically self-mediated, then 'this human lack of freedom' is the result, and 'humanity's relationship to God takes the form of a heavy yoke, of onerous service. True liberation is to be found in Christianity, in the Trinity.' The condition of servitude is to have one's self-consciousness solely in the other and on behalf of the other.'Fear of the Lord is the absolute religious duty, to regard myself as nothing, to know myself only as absolutely dependent - the consciousness of the servant vis-à-vis the master.' What God demands is that his people should have 'the basic feeling of their dependence.' Here we encounter the first of Hegel's several allusions in the Ms. to Schleiermacher's just-published Glaubenslehre, and it is noteworthy that he regards Schleiermacher's famous description of religious consciousness as an expression of Jewish (and later of Roman) rather than Christian piety."

"If one has one's self-consciousness only in and through absolute dependence on the Lord, then there is also a sense in which one is absolutely reestablished in relationship to the Lord - a relationship that is singular, unique, and exclusive. Hegel thinks this is the source of Jewish 'obstinacy' and 'particularity,' the conviction that the Jewish people alone are God's people, and that he alone is their God. While in this sense Judaism is a national or ethnic religion, it is not the case that this people can lay claim to the land they inhabit; it is rather solely the gift of God, who can take it from them and restore it to them."

"This portrayal of Judaism still shares the interpretative perspective of the Early Theological Writings and the Phenomenology of Spirit, even though new categories and themes have appeared. As Leuze suggests, Hegel has placed a different valuation on essentially the same characterization of Judaism. While the master-servant relationship was earlier viewed as a primary instance of human self-alienation (although necessary to the emergence of self-consciousness), it is now seen as implicit in the concept of God as abstract power (which entails alienation). And a basis is laid for the quite different interpretation of Judaism that makes its appearance in the 1824 lectures. For already, in the Ms. Hegel alludes to the fact that the power of the Lord is wisdom, and he recognizes that a reconstitution of the self in the One occurs through 'fear of the Lord.'"

Peter Hodgson, "Introduction" to Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 19-21.


"Infinite faith is also the theme of the book of Job. Rather than interpreting Job as the portrayal of abstract divine power, as in the Ms., Hegel now stresses the divine wisdom. As over and against the juridical morality of Job and his comforters, which presumes that the righteous will be rewarded and the wicked punished, the wisdom of God is revealed (by the voice from the whirlwind) to be infinitely higher and incalculable. Only when Job submits to this wisdom is he restored. Thus a reconstitution of human being occurs in this absolute relation to the absolute, a theme already sounded in the Ms. God's covenant with his people is a symbol of this reconstitution. Positively the covenant gives possession (not ownership) of the land; negatively it entails service to the Lord through obedience to the law and commandments. Hegel considers only the legal, not the prophetic understanding of the covenant; in this and other respects his approach is skewed by the narrow range of biblical literature that he consults."

This a comment regarding the metamorphosis Hegel's views on Judaism go through in 1824. "the fundamentally negative cast of the treatment just three years earlier [...] is replaced by a more balanced and fully developed assessment. The introduction of the categories of wisdom and purpose, mandated by the general reconception of the religions of spiritual individuality in the 1824 lectures, has something to do with this reinterpretation, but basically it seems to be the result of a deeper and more appreciative evaluation of the literature of the Old Testament on Hegel's part."

Peter Hodgson, "Introduction" to Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 51 and 49.

Hegel and the Book of Job

"Hegel saw Job as one who brought his discontent 'under the control of pure and absolute confidence' in the harmony of God's power, despite his awareness of the contradiction between his innocence and the injustice of his suffering. Hegel took Job 42:6 to be a key text, for here one sees the man from Uz subordinating his subjective perception to his recognition of divine power. And even though no recompense was owed Job, he was nevertheless graced with restoration." C.L. Seow, Job 1-21: Interpretation and Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2013), 225.

Kant and the Book of Job

"To Kant, the modern attempts at the justification of divine goodness in the face of evil are no different from what Job's friends tried to do, whereas it is the honesty of Job that earned him God's recognition. In the end, the problem of evil cannot be resolved through rationalistic explanations, Kant maintained, for humans can only stand before the Sublime and accept divine goodness on a faith that recognizes the limits of reason. This, to Kant, is 'authentic theodicy.'" C.L. Seow, Job 1-21: Interpretation and Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2013), 225.

Hegel on Fear

“What a man has really to fear is not an external power and oppression by it, but the might of the ethical order which is one determinant of his own free reason and is at the same time that eternal and inviolable something which he summons up against himself if once he turns against it.” Aesthetics, 1198.