Three Themes in Przywara’s Early Theology

The Thomist 74 (2010): 283-310 THREE THEMES IN PR'.ZYWARA'S EARLY THEOLOGY KENNETH R. OAKES University ofAberdeen Aberdeen, Scotland« Furcht und Liebe >>, wohinein man den Inbegriff des religiosen Verhaltnisses legen kann, ist eben nichts anderes als der religiose Ausdruck der analogia entis: Gott in den Geschopfen und darum Liebe, Gott iiber den Geschopfen und darum Furcht:« Liebende Furcht und filrchtende Liebe » (Augustinus, In Ps 118 s. 22, 6). 1 THE EARLY THOUGHT of the Upper Silesian Erich Przywara (1889-1972) constitutes a rich and largely untilled field of inquiry within English-language scholarship.2 Within the period from the 1917 "Eucharist und Arbeit" to the seminal 1932 Analogia Entis, the basic orientations of Przywara's later thought both were established and underwent several significant shifts. In the early to mid-1920s Przywara elaborated his "philosophy of polarity" that (1) allowed God to be God and creatures to be creatures made in the likeness of God, and (2) accounted for the perpetual rhythms between subject and object, being and becoming, and personality and form within creaturely 1 Erich Przywara, "Weg zu Gott" in idem, Schriften, vol. 2, Religionsphilosophische Schriften (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1962), 3-120. Also in Ringen der Gegenwart. Gesammelte Aufsiitze 1922-1927 [hereafter Ringen der Gegenwart], vol. 1 (Augsburg: Filser Verlag, 1929), 389-539. "'Fear and love,' the quintessence of religious relationships, is nothing other than the religious expression of the analogia entis: God in creation and therefore love, God over creation and therefore fear: a loving fear and a fearing love." 2 I am classifying Przywara's "earlier theology" as the period up until the 1932Analogia Entis (Analogia Entis: Metaphysik. vol. 1, Prinzip [Miinchen: Kosel & Pustet Verlag, 1932]; the locution should be taken in a chronological and heuristic sense, with material issues being bracketed for present purposes. 283 284 KENNETH R. OAKES existence. As the 1920s marched on, this philosophy of polarity was gradually replaced by and absorbed into the analogia entis. It was also during this time period that Przywara wrote some of his more devotional and poetic works on the parables, the ecclesial calendar, love, and lgnatian spirituality, works that Berhard Gertz argues were essential for his later theological and philosophical formation3 and that prefigured his later interactions with Scripture and the lgnatian Exercises.4 Przywara also began to engage the works of Scheler, Simmel, Kierkegaard, Kant, Aquinas, and Newman, formed a friendship with Edith Stein, and offered one of the earliest Roman Catholic responses to the new theologians of crisis. Within the fairly diverse genres exhibited by Przywara's fruhe Werke, there are three interrelated themes that constantly reappear and that can already be seen in this article's epigraph: the God who is in creation and beyond creation, the analogia entis, and a loving fear and a fearing love. This article is a descriptive analysis of these three motifs within Przywara's early thought. I. THE GOD WHO Is IN Us AND BEYOND Us He is ... both interior to every single thing, because in him are all things, and exterior to every single thing, because he is beyond all things.5 In some sense, the doctrine of God beyond and in us was Przywara's preliminary answer to a question he raised in his 1915 work Unsere Kirche: "to understand the 'ultimate' religious relationship between God and creation."6 Przywara's primary 3 Berhard Gertz, Glaubenswelt als Analogie. Die theologische Analogie-Lehre Erich Przywaras und ihr Ort in der Auseindersetzung um die analogia fidei (Diisseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 1969), 122-23, 131-32. Throughout this article I am heavily indebted to Gertz's magnificent work. 4 Erich Przywara, Evangelium. Christentum gemapJohannes (Niirnberg: Glock und Lutz, 1954); idem, Alter und Neuer Bund. Theologie der Stunde (Vienna: Herold, 1956); and idem, Logos-Abendland-Reich-Commercium (Diisseldorf: Patmos, 1964). 5 Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim, 8.26.48. 6 Erich Przywara, Unsere Kirche: Neue religiose Volkslieder (Regensburg: Habbel, 1915), quotd in Przywara, Analogia Entis, vii. PRZ¥WARA'S EARLIER THEOLOGY 285 response to this question is to identify and then avoid the interrelated errors of "theopanism"7 and pantheism. Following Franz Kiefl and Ernst Troeltsch, the Przywara of the 1920s traced theopanism, or "God...