Barth consistently comments on Kant’s importance for his early thought in his autobiographical sketches, letters, and even more explicitly in his 1930 lectures on Kant in his Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century. Interestingly, however, little attention has been paid to these latter lectures on Protestant history in the secondary literature. In part, this oversight has been due to the manner in which Barth’s theology has been thought to overcome Kant’s influence much earlier on in his intellectual development. Hence, although commentators such as Merold Westphal, Simon Fisher and Bruce McCormack have developed keen interest in Kant’s influence upon Barth’s early work, even engaging Barth’s Neo-Kantian context in great detail, my contention is that Barth’s later interpretation of Kant is crucial to his intellectual development, and gives further insight into Barth’s legacy for contemporary theology today. My aim in what follows is to refigure the relationship between Barth’s early appropriation and critique of Kant, and the more onto-theological issues at stake in his later Protestant history lectures. In so doing, we can begin to discern in Barth, not an abandonment or disregard for the metaphysical questions of being, but rather, the call to face them all the more rigorously.

In those eight words—“hitler did not change history. hitler WAS history”—it seems to me, Dylan is not saying Hitler’s evil genius was unique, exceptional. He’s saying Hitler represents—embodies—a distillation of all the horrors routinely perpetrated by human civilization… “Our God problem,” I said, was the abject failure of post-Holocaust Jewish theodicy: The attempt to maintain a belief in a God who had given Hitler free rein to murder. For Jewish scholars and theologians, it seemed to me, post-Holocaust theodicy should be the first, if not only, subject of their study.

It seems to me Rosenbaum is right. What’s troubling is how difficult it is to speak adequately about these things, which is the real reason Ron writes. He gave a lecture which fostered a response that haunted him, troubled him to the degree to which he had to respond. He writes, I suppose, what all who ask these questions must write in the end: “I apologize.”

I believe my feelings were as legitimate as his feeling of faithfulness, my anger as legitimate as his desire to continue a lifetime of belief and consolation. But who knows what losses he endured and how he had continued to love God?…

…Hitler is dead, and I had nonetheless hurt the feelings of an undoubtedly good man to make a point about Hitler, God, and Bob Dylan. That wasn’t my purpose, nor is my purpose here to take pride in my newly awakened empathy for my questioner. It’s to register an honest evolution of feeling from an anger that was not sufficiently separated from a desire to hurt those religious figures who assumed some special authority if not holiness, and whom I felt had failed me and their followers. In a place for truth-telling—the academy—I feel remorse for my zeal to make the truth hurt.

And though he and I still may well differ, for that I apologize to him.

Ron Rosenbaum, “The Naked Truth,” The Chronicle - http://bit.ly/IuAvMw

There’s a crucial integration between religion and theology at work in the Archbishop’s speech, which I wanted to flag up. On the one hand, the study of religion includes theological discourse. Religious studies is not limited to social sciences. As the BBC reported: “But he said the ultimate test of Christianity was not whether it was beneficial to the human race, but whether the resurrection of Jesus Christ actually happened.” On the other hand, however, there is an important point to be made about using the broader category of religion to talk about public education today. Religion is used to describe the curriculum because it’s seen as a broader category than theology, and includes a variety of religious traditions beyond Christianity as well as a wider set of methods of approach to religious beliefs, practices, texts, and histories. 

You’d think this understanding of inter-religious theology was an obviously inclusive way to talk about curriculum for multicultural, multi-religious civil societies, and that there would be broad consensus for promoting it across a variety of education sectors. Oxford University has recently agreed to change the name of its Theology Faculty, to the Faculty of Theology and Religion in autumn 2012. So too, prominent seminaries in the US, like Graduate Theological Union, have recently created inter-religious MA programs, and Claremont School of Theology recently merged into an inter-religious institutional configuration, Claremont Lincoln University. 

However, sadly, there are those who fight this integral and inter-religious way to think about theology in the twenty-first century as an aberration, arguing instead for a regressively idiosyncratic and isolationist vision of predominantly Christian theology unwilling to converse with the wider academic study of religions.

The argument goes that the study of religion is methodologically rooted in social sciences (sociology, anthropology, psychology) and therefore needs to be separated from theology in the way it is taught. The problem is that theology has never been strictly limited to humanities, and, at least since Schleiermacher’s speeches to religion’s cultured despisers in the enlightment era in particular, has always maintained keen interest in the meaning and nature of science as such. This explains why, for instance, there are obvious overlaps today as theologians interested in pastoral life engage sociological methods to better understand the church, and, so too, theologians persistently interrogate the very nature of sociology, responding to people like Zygmunt Bauman’s call for a sociology of sociology, or a radical interrogation of what sociology is. The recent appointment of Prof. Alistair Mcgrath (formerly with Luke Bretherton who recently took up a post at Duke Divinity School) in the School of Social Sciences and Public Policy at King’s College London is a key institutional example of this pervasive overlap.

The point is that when the Archbishop speaks of religion in education today, he does not revert to a regressive view of theology in the public schools, but rather, speaks broadly of the need people have to understand religious beliefs, values, texts, histories, and practices in their public lives. They may never attend a church, but they will come across people who do. If they are nurses, doctors, police officers, social workers, civil servants, journalists, teachers, business managers, and on and on to include anything but monks living in caves, they will come across citizens whose primary identification is, “I’m a Christian,” or “I’m a Muslim,” or, “I’m an Orthodox Jew,” or “I’m Hindu,” or “I’m a Buddhist.”

It is precisely for the sake of religious freedom that the Archbishop speaks out for religious education in as broad and multi-disciplinary way as possible today. However, such education must, of necessity include theology, in order to really understand what, for instance, Christianity is really about. It is not a social organization, but deeply shaped by a belief in the resurrection of Jesus.

This past March, Prof. Marion Maddox (Macquarrie University) gave a talk for the Group for Religious and Intellectual Traditions, on “How Powerful Is the Christian Right?” She was looking at Australia in particular, and spoke specifically on her recent Australian Research Council Future Fellowship, which is a four year project looking at religious education in Europe, the US and Australia. She is Australia’s foremost scholar on religion and politics in Australia, and the talk was recorded and posted on Youtube (see below). Just as in the UK, this is a crucial part of our debate about religion and theology in Newcastle and Australia as well. 

On the one hand, I wanted to affirm that these traditions are rooted in unique cosmologies and beliefs about the nature of reality. They fast for different reasons and in nuanced and different ways as a result.  

I’d therefore disagree with a few early twentieth century studies of religion such as E.B. Tylor’s Religion in Primitive Culture, or Edward Westermarck’s The Principles of Fasting, which linked the practice to “artificial ecstasy.” These kinds of primitivist views of the origins of all religion haven’t weathered well over the past hundred years as post-colonialist and post-enlightenment critiques have changed how we study religion today.

However, this is not to say that we can’t find honest and productive ways to talk about some of the commonalities and overlaps in fasting practices in different traditions. One way to do this, is to look at the question of embodied human life that religious traditions address. The generality of this problem is helpfully illustrated in a recent Coke Zero advertisement (see the youtube below).

The ad starts with a little kid being handed an ice-cream cone. Before receiving it, he asks, “And?” The vendor quickly adds sprinkles and a cherry. Time flips ahead and the boy is now in a job interview and having just been offered the job he replies, “And?” The boss goes on to add stock options. The story flips ahead to a lunch with friends. The man opens a bottle of Coke Zero and takes a sip. A palpable expectation of dissatisfaction subsumes the restaurant. Instead, he reads the label, which says “AND zero calories.” He finally responds, “Thank you.”

Why is it so hard to be satisfied with what we are given? We always seem to want more. Life is haunted by the spectre of this “And!?” Consumer culture sells us satisfaction, (with zero calories so you can still fit into your skinny jeans), but we’re acutely aware that this doesn’t last. One widget follows another in a dizzying parade of promised digital paradises. This is what makes Slavoj Zizek’s various comments on capitalist culture’s super-ego injunction to enjoy so interesting to me. His own post-marxist response merges pscyho-analysis with various theological accounts of desire and suffering in a way that points us back to the wisdom of religious traditions.

I think it’s interesting to look at fasting in light of this strange human paradox. The more we get, the more the “And?” interrupts our enjoyment. The ever open possibility of something better refuses contentment and satisfaction. However, if you deny your body completely, you starve and die. Fasting embraces a rather counterintuitive way to deal with the basic problem of spiritual life as an embodied creature. If you deny yourself a little, you can accept what you do receive more graciously, more thankfully, and with greater contentment.

So, let’s look at different fasting practices in a little more detail:

Buddhists fast, but not to foster ecstatic states, or mortification of the body. Their middle way between pleasure and total self denial is to fast only enough to foster the acceptance of reality as gift. This can be seen in the practice of alms. That is, the Buddhist’s aim is to awaken to the reality that all of life is already connected and fulfilled. There is no need to desire food, to want after it or any-thing else. All is already provided and sustained. As the Buddha touched the earth under the Bodhi tree, the earth was his witness to this. However, precisely to continue to pursue enlightenment, he recognized that human beings must eat. 

If we turn to monotheistic traditions, fasting in Islam, Judaism and Christianity is encouraged to varying degrees, and is usually connected to thankful reception of God’s gift of creation. 

In Judaism, for instance, fasting is linked to eating and drinking in a law-ful, kosher way. This can be seen in key Jewish fasts, such as Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, as well as in paradigmatic figures such as Moses, who fasts before receiving the Law on Mount Sinai. Jewish fasting is integral to the way the Torah structures daily existence in terms of the Creator’s provisions. Isaiah 58 makes this explicit with regard to fasting and the wider issue of social justice, and we might also consider the Talmudic call to tikkun olam, or to repair the world, as well as later commentators such as Moses Maimonides’s 12th c. Guide for the Perplexed, which linked fasting to the wider Jewish food laws and the manner in which all of life should foster morality and wisdom.

In Islam, the prophet exhorts Muslims to fast just as those who have come before have done (i.e. Jews and Christians). Again, however, in Islam, fasting fits within a wider set of food laws about what is halal or permitted and the Muslim’s wider participation in the umma, or community. For instance, the muslim butcher must thank Allah before the killing of an animal as an acknowledgement of his provision of all life. So too, the fourth pillar of Islam, fasting at Ramadan, celebrates the prophet’s reception of the Qur’an. During Ramadan, the entire Qur’an is usually read during evening prayers, and, Muslims are encouraged to meditate upon the scriptures in submission to Allah. Again, though, the emphasis is not upon mortification and denial of the body, but devotion to God. The day’s fast is followed by a more festive evening meal which is eaten together with friends and family. Like the hajj pilgrimage, Ramadan affirms the unity and equality of the umma, the Muslim community’s solidarity as a people who all participate together.  

When we turn to Christianity, it is interesting to note again that fasting is often linked with a meal. Christianity begins in Judaism, but re-interprets its food laws precisely through the bread and wine, understood as the body and blood of Jesus. One way to think about fasting in the various Christian traditions is as a response to the grace of God in Christ’s atoning death. Just as Jews fast on the Day of Atonement, Christians echo this in their fasting before the Eucharist and in preparation for their Day of Atonement, Good Friday. It’s indicative here that Eucharist means thanksgiving.

The question is how should Christians give thanks? It’s a matter of emphasis and degree, but I’d suggest that Roman Catholic tradition has focused more on the Christian’s preparation for grace. Lent is discussed in the Vatican II documents as including forms of penance to prepare for the arrival of Easter. Palm Sunday is a ritual re-enactment of Jesus entering Jerusalem in the Gospel narratives. Catholics are encouraged to prepare themselves to receive God’s grace with contrition and in thanksgiving.

With the reformation period, Calvin and Luther both tended to focus on the reception of grace as gift received by faith. However, they then went on to emphasize that the response to this grace must be good works. So, fasting should be done by Christians, but not to prepare for a grace that was already given. Rather, it was linked more to disciplining the self to worship God and live in a Christian way indicative of their thankfulness. Calvin encouraged frugality as a matter of such disciplined Christian life, and Max Weber later linked this hard working frugality to the origins of modern capitalism as such. We could say much more here on the modern political emphasis on discipline over against punishment, and Michel Foucault would likely be of some help. We might also want to say something about obesity rates in countries with Protestant roots, UK, Australia, US, and the rather portly dispositions of the reformers, Luther, King Henry VIII, and the de-emphasis on the practice of fasting overall (now consider those French and Italian formerly Roman Catholic countries and our recent infatuation with French and Mediterranean diets).

Again, I want to avoid trying to reduce these various religious forms of fasting to any common denominator as some past studies have tried to do. Why people fast in different traditions is unique and nuanced in each, and the specific theological techniques and beliefs which orient fasting practices differ greatly. But, if the answers and approaches differ, I do think it is possible to discern a common deeply human disposition that they may share, and here I want to return to the “And?” of the Coca-Cola advertisement mentioned above.

Why is it so hard to be satisfied with what we are given? What’s the solution to our endless dissatisfaction? These questions were at the heart of the Buddha’s pursuit of enlightenment and liberation from suffering. They are also at the heart of the Jewish and Muslim law codes, which give thanks to the creator and follow his laws in pursuit of social justice. So too, these kinds of questions are at heart of the eucharistic event of thanksgiving in Christian worship.

St. Augustine, the 5th c. Bishop of Hippo, sums up the question of embodied spiritual life in his City of God. In brief, he asks what do we love? Do we love temporal things, or eternal things? He argues that temporal things don’t last, are scarce, and lead to strife and restlessness. Loving eternal things leads to fulfillment, peace and satisfaction. For Augustine, if you direct yourself to God, then it becomes possible to enjoy temporal things as well. This is his vision of the city of God he hopes for. 

I wonder if part of the broad appeal to fasting in different traditions is that when we refuse something as basic as food for an hour, a day, or over longer periods of time, we’re reminded that there is a self there who is not limited to bread alone (Matt 4.4, Deut 8.3). Having said that, none of the fasting practices described above deny life, or lived experience. Rather, they’re all aimed at true fulfillment, satisfaction, and happiness. This may be why fasting is often linked to feasts (except in most forms of Buddhism). It seems that a little self-denial goes a long way at helping people sit down to eat with friends and family and genuinely be able to say, “Thank you.”