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The Paradox of Feuerbach: Luther and Religious Naturalism Christy L Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2009 The Paradox of Feuerbach: Luther and Religious Naturalism Christy L. Flanagan Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES THE PARADOX OF FEUERBACH: LUTHER AND RELIGIOUS NATURALISM By CHRISTY L. FLANAGAN A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2009 The members of the committee approve the dissertation of Christy L. Flanagan defended on July 15, 2009. __________________________________ John Kelsay Professor Directing Dissertation __________________________________ Daniel Maier-Katkin Outside Committee Member __________________________________ Martin Kavka Committee Member __________________________________ Sumner B. Twiss Committee Member __________________________________ Amanda Porterfield Committee Member Approved: _____________________________________ John Corrigan, Chair, Department of Religion _____________________________________ Joseph Travis, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members. ii To Mom and Dad iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are many important people who have helped this project along its way. A special thank you to Professor John Kelsay, the director of the dissertation, who assumed full leadership of the project at a particularly stressful time for me and I very much appreciate his support. I hope a beverage of celebration at Finnegans is forthcoming. Much appreciation also goes to Professors Martin Kavka and Amanda Porterfield for not only serving on the committee but also dancing up a storm at my wedding. I also owe a great debt of appreciation and gratitude to Professors Barney Twiss and Dan Maier-Katkin for their willingness to come on board later in the game and provide helpful comments. I will always look back on my time at Florida State fondly and I appreciate the advisors and fellow students who made that experience possible. There are many friends with whom I have crossed paths in Tallahassee who have taught this girl from Chicago to be a little more Dixie and I am the better for it. I must also thank my friends and family who have always been there when I needed them most. To Amy Gassen and Sarah Wehren Kooiker, thank you for listening and bringing me back to reality in my moments of despair. I miss you both and you must move to warmer climates so we see each other more often. I also thank my friend and brother-in-law, Dustin Feddon, who has also offered many words of encouragement and understanding. Thank you to my husband Derek, who came on to the scene later in the dissertation process but nonetheless learned very quickly of the madness and has been here to help me through. Finally, my deepest thanks go to my mother and father, Judy and Larry Flanagan, whose unwavering love and encouragement undoubtedly and also unwittingly made this project possible. Thank you for simply being who you are. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract.. vii INTRODUCTION .... 1 Methodology and Paradigm of Naturalism . 5 Relationship to Luther and Religious Thought.. 6 1. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS .............................................. 13 1.1 Feuerbach, Luther and Religious Naturalism .......................... 17 1.2 Feuerbach and Hegelianism.. 21 1.2.1 The Early Years . 21 .. Left Hegelianism. 26 1.3 Feuerbach and ‚nthropomorphism.. 31 1.3.1 Guthrie.. 33 1.3.2 Barth ................................................................................... 36 1.3.3 Harvey ............................................................................... 38 1.4 Feuerbach and the Study of Religion ........................................ 48 1.4.1 Phenomenology of Religious Consciousness ............... 49 1.4.2 Pragmatism and Religious Experience ......................... 56 1.4.3 Religious Experience After God .................................... 60 2. HEGELIAN CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE THINKING EGO .... 64 2.1 Kantian Rationalism and German Idealism ............................. 66 2.1.1 Dealing with the Ego: Kant, Fichte, and Schelling ...... 68 2.1.2 Hegel and System ............................................................ 76 2.2 Religion as Representation ......................................................... 80 . Feuerbachs Critique of Hegelian System ................................ 87 3. FEUERBACHS ‚PPRO‚CH TO RELIGION ............................... 99 . The Significance of Feuerbachs Method in Christianity ......... 100 3.1.1 The Dual Nature of Human Self-consciousness .......... 104 3.1.2 Divine Naturalism ........................................................... 109 3.1.3 The Problem of Supranaturalism ............................... 112 3.2 Feuerbach and Theology: Barth and Beyond ........................... 120 .. ‚ Thorn in the Flesh of Modern Theology ............... 122 3.2.2 Feuerbach on Luther ........................................................ 124 v . LUTHERS RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS .................................. 130 4.1 Sin and the Problem of Human Self-consciousness ................ 132 4.1.1 Luthers Theology of the Cross ...................................... 137 4.2 Sin, Existential Faith, and Justification ..................................... 145 4.2.1 Christ: For the Human Being in Isolation ..................... 146 4.2.2 Humanity: As Gods Presence in the World ................ 148 4.3 The Philosophical Implications of Luthers Model ................. 156 4.3.1 Religious Consciousness as Passivity and Feeling ...... 156 4.3.2 Religious Consciousness and Naturalism .................... 160 4.3.3 Different Paradigms of Religious Experience .............. 164 5. FEUERBACH AND RELIGIOUS NATURALISM ......................... 167 5.1 Nature as Self-identity and Epistemological Horizon ............ 171 5.2 Nature as Natural and Divine ............................................ 178 5.3 Naturalism as a Critique of Dualism ........................................ 184 CONCLUSION RECONSIDERING FEUER‛‚CHS LEG‚CY ....... 191 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................. 198 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .................................................................... 204 vi ABSTRACT In this project I call for a reconsideration of Feuerbachs place in philosophy and the study of religion. His name is recognizable in these fields usually as a marginal or bridge figure, facilitating a shift from one thinker to the next. I suggest that the automatic association of Feuerbach with Left Hegelianism and/or psychological interpretations of religion obscure the greater insights of his model of religious consciousness. Feuerbachs desire to revise the anti-natural and speculative tendencies of both philosophy and theology was at the cornerstone of his fundamental project. This effort was first directed towards Hegelian idealism, but grew into a larger critique of Christianity and religious consciousness in general. His criticism of religion is not due to a specific condemnation of the divine, but the extent to which it is born out of speculative presuppositions. This indicates the presence of an important theme in Feuerbachs work outside of Hegel and I argue that naturalism filled this role. Interestingly, this also demonstrates a link between the seemingly disparate goals of Feuerbachs humanism and Luthers theology. Luthers observations of religious consciousness provided a vision of naturalism and passivity in his description of the human beings experience of existing before God. Feuerbach also saw in this a profound paradox regarding the relationship between God and human being. His reflections provide the contemporary theorist with ways to reconcile many of the problematic aspects of the rationalist-dualist model that pervades Western philosophy, particularly in the effort to reconsider the foundations of religious self-identity in the post-metaphysical age. Ultimately this places his project in dialogue more appropriately with contemporary studies in pragmatism and phenomenology rather than Hegelian or Freudian thought. vii INTRODUCTION THE PARADOX OF FEUERBACH: LUTHER AND RELIGIOUS NATURALISM No one among the modern philosophers has been so intensively, so exclusively and precisely occupied with the problem of theology as Feuerbach—although his love was an unhappy one.1 --Karl Barth [My writings] have only one aim, one will, one thought, one theme. This theme is religion and theology and whatever is connected with them.2 --Ludwig Feuerbach Luther’s doctrine is divine, but inhuman, indeed barbaric—a hymn to God, but a lampoon of man. But it is only inhuman at its starting point, in its presuppositions, not in its consequences; in its means, not in its end.3 --Ludwig Feuerbach Ludwig Feuerbach is a name familiar to most in the modern day study of religion, but almost exclusively as a point of reference to another. His most recognizable contribution, the projection theory of God from The Essence of Christianity (1841/3), is almost invariably interpreted in one of two ways. It is either cited in reference to Feuerbachs roots in Hegelianism, or in the context of a psychological- anthropomorphic model of religion. In this project I suggest that both of these approaches take the projection model out of the context of the larger scope of Feuerbachs project.
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