Idealism Vs The Theology of Creation
An excerpt from page 202 of Franz Rosenzweig's The Star of Redemption.
January 20, 2013 - 9:00 am
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If you can’t explain something simply then you are not an expert, as the above passage reveals. Gobbledygook.
The point being made is unintelligible to those complaining about the complexity of the above passage………
Whoever placed this passage for the unsuspecting to read, must have a saddistic streak in himself (oops, or herself). Rosenzweig, extremely well educated within a German context, was just speaking the language of his day which, in turn, has been translated into English-> making all all the more confusing. The second half of the 19th Century in Germany reflects reaction to the first half, i.e., the period of classical German Idealism, culminating, perhaps, in Hegel. From the point of view of my American idealism (influenced by Josiah Royce), Rosenzweig’s critism does not fit per se. What could this “Jewish” thinker be thinking of? I like to think that I have some inklings. Furthermore, I think that my Christian thinking is similar. I will give below a short thumbnail interpretation.
A question of upmost importance to my theological interests is the creative relationship between finitude, particularly that finite creation called “humans”, and God as an actually infinite reality. German idealism had the tendency to conflate the divine with the mundane, i.e., the mundane and its development being the means by which the divine comes to fulfillment. A secularized form of this is at the basis of the young Marx’s thinking with the hellish utopian projects attempted in his name.
I understand the passage as rejecting the failure of (German) idealism to separate sufficiently the created from the creator. Such a distinction I have inherited from Jewish thought, a thinking developped in various manners by Christian theologians. Put simply, perhaps overly so: God creates humankind and redeems humankind, God does not reach his own redemption through humankind. Interpreting Rosenzweig, God is not the “All” that divides itself into endless parts (including humans) so as to reunite and structure them all into the All as a self-contained totality. I do hope I have not been more confusing that the short passage from Rosenzweig.
No, Learned Professor, I think you explain it very well……..