Hegel: a trinitarian theology of the cross

This extended quote is admittedly rather dense – but it’s a profound passage which, I think, describes one of the deepest fundamental structures of Christian belief: namely, that the death of Jesus is an event in God, and that this event can be understood only if God is the triune God. Here’s the quote:

“The history of the resurrection and ascension of Christ to the right hand of God begins at the point where this history [of Jesus’ death] receives a spiritual interpretation. That is when it came about that the little community achieved the certainty that God has appeared as a human being.

“But this humanity in God ... is natural death. ‘God himself is dead,’ it says in a Lutheran hymn, expressing an awareness that the human, the finite, the fragile, the weak, the negative are themselves ... within God himself, that finitude, negativity, otherness are not outside of God and do not ... hinder unity with God.... [D]eath itself is this negative, the furthest extreme to which humanity as natural existence is exposed; God himself is involved in this.

“... For the community, this is the history of the appearance of God. This history is a divine history, whereby the community has come to the certainty of truth. From it develops the consciousness ... that God is triune. The reconciliation in Christ ... makes no sense if God is not known as the triune God, if it is not recognized that God is, but also is as the other, as self-distinguishing, so that this other is God himself..., and that the sublation of this difference, this otherness, and the return of love, are the Spirit.”

—G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion: The Lectures of 1827, ed. Peter C. Hodgson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 468-69.

Hegel and Rowan Williams

A provocative column by Giles Fraser in The Guardian suggests that Rowan Williams’ Hegelianism is to blame for the current tensions within the Anglican communion: “The Church of England is currently being tortured by a dead German philosopher.”

Unfortunately the writer’s grasp of Hegel is a little doubtful, since he characterises Hegelianism as the view that “all oppositions can be nuanced into resolution.” Still, this is an interesting attempt to explain some of the painful tensions within the Anglican communion today.

Hegel on the Bible and theology

“[A]s soon as religion is no longer simply the reading and repetition of passages, as soon as what is called explanation or interpretation begins, as soon as the attempt is made by inference and exegesis to find out the meaning of the words in the Bible, then we embark upon the process of reasoning, reflection, thinking.... As soon as these thoughts are no longer simply the words of the Bible, their content is given a form, more specifically, a logical form.”

—G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 399.

Theological method

“Methodological questions are admittedly important, but it is imperative that the theologian should not run out of breath when still en route for his goal.”

—Hans Küng, The Incarnation of God: An Introduction to Hegel’s Theological Thought as Prolegomena to a Future Christology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1987), p. 497.

Introducing Hegel

I have mentioned Hegel from time to time on this blog. For those interested in getting acquainted with the great (but painfully difficult) philosopher, there is a new introduction: Frederick Beiser, Hegel (London: Routledge, 2005), 353pp.

I haven’t read this yet myself, but it looks like a very wide-ranging and accessible introduction.

The Death of the Living God

I suggested yesterday that the resurrection of Jesus is the contradiction of death. In the man Jesus, God takes death into his own life and maintains his own life through death. And in this way the reality of death is overturned, so that death ceases to be the end and instead becomes (against its will, so to speak) a new eschatological beginning. This means that death itself is changed by the resurrection of Jesus. Death itself has died. Until the twentieth century, no one had perceived this more sharply than G. W. F. Hegel:

“God has died, God is dead—this is the most appalling thought, that everything eternal and true is not, and that negation itself is in God; bound up with this is the supreme pain, the feeling of the utter absence of deliverance, the surrender of all that is higher. However, the course of events does not grind to a halt here; rather a reversal now comes about, namely, God maintains himself in this process. The latter is but the death of death. God arises again to life.” (Philosophy of Religion, Lasson-Hoffmeister ed., 14:167)

Hegel and Theology

Hegel’s thought has profoundly influenced modern theology. This influence is often only implicit, but several theologians have sought to bring Hegel explicitly into the contemporary theological discussion. The most stimulating studies of this kind include:

Hans Küng, The Incarnation of God: An Introduction to Hegel's Theological Thought as Prolegomena to a Future Christology, trans. J. R. Stephenson (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1987); xv, 601 pp. This profound and wide-ranging exploration of Hegel’s theological thought focuses especially on Hegel’s vision of the historicity of God’s being. You can also find a crisp summary of the book's argument in Hans Küng, Does God Exist? An Answer for Today, trans. Edward Quinn (Garden City: Doubleday, 1980), pp. 127-188.

Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism, trans. Darrell L. Guder (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983); vxi, 414 pp. This brilliant work on the doctrine of God includes a detailed analysis of Hegel’s concept of the “death of God”, and of the significance of this concept for theological reflection.

Peter C. Hodgson, God in History: Shapes of Freedom (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989); 287 pp. This work offers a creative response to postmodern thought through a deep engagement with Hegel’s trinitarian and historical conception of God’s being. Hodgson is a leading authority on Hegel, and has been an editor and translator of Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion.

And for a thorough exposition of Hegel’s theological thought, we now have Hodgson’s important new work: Peter C. Hodgson, Hegel and Christian Theology: A Reading of the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); 318 pp.