Christian Dogmatics: Volume 2

4. Secular Options

4 Secular Options The Christian hope must be delineated in constant reference to secular varieties of hope. Insofar as secular options consciously acknowledge their limitation to finitude, they can provide an accurate analysis of the human condition and its potential for improvement . If they deny their limitation to finitude, they deny the eschatological proviso and provide an overly optimistic version of human hope. We will discuss three movements: secular existentialism , Marxism, and secular humanism. SECULAR EXISTENTIALISM S0ren Kierkegaard, the spiritual ancestor of modern existentialism, considered life a venture in which we are sustained by our trust in a gracious God. Presentday existentialists, especially of the secular variety, have largely abandoned such a metaphysical reference point and view life simply within the limits of this world. This becomes immediately evident with Martin Heidegger, the most prominent representative of contemporary existentialism. In his historymaking work, Being and Time} Heidegger attempts to understand time as the possible horizon for our understanding of Being. Since Being-there {Dasein) means being in the world, and since Being-there is always temporal, there is undeniably a constant lack of totality that finds its end in death. Something is still missing and outstanding in our earthly existence. We are thrown into this world and are in danger of losing ourselves in the groundlessness and nullity of inauthentic existence. This everyday existence is characterized by idle talk that is shallow and does not get to the roots of things, by curiosity that jumps from one novelty to another, and by ambiguity that assumes it has solved everything. Heidegger claims that through this state of mind one is subject only to temptation, tranquilizing, alienation , and entanglement. Heidegger recognizes that we cannot escape from our everyday existence, but he urges us to opt for a different way of looking at our existence, a mode he calls authentic existence. The reason for Heidegger's appeal to authentic existence is evident: "If existence is definitive for Dasein's Being and if its essence is constituted in part 541 1 2 / ESCHATOLOGY by potentiality-for-Being, then, as long as Dasein exists, it must in each case, as such a potentiality, not yet be something."2 Being-there, as we experience and conduct it, is therefore determined by inauthentic existence, inauthentic because it is always less than the whole. Thus only authentic existence brings into focus the totality of existence by considering Dasein as Being-towarddeath . This can lead to inauthentic existence too if we speak in such abstract terms as "they die" or "one dies." For authentic Being-toward-death "can not evade its own most non-relational possibility, or cover up this possibility by thus fleeing from it, or give a new explanation for it to accord with the common sense of the 'they.' "3 Without fleeing it or covering it up, we must exist toward death as a distinctive possibility oi Dasein itself. Heidegger does not want us to brood over the possibility of death, but to anticipate the possibility of the impossibility of any existence at all. Death is Dasein'% own possibility. Being towards this possibility discloses to Dasein its own potentiality-for-Being, in which its very Being is the issue."4 When Heidegger finally concludes that the existential-ontological constitution of Dasein''s totality is grounded in temporality, it becomes evident that Heidegger describes existence as appearing strictly within this world. We live in this world surrounded by the possibility of death, facing an end at which our very existence is threatened by annihilation. Heidegger even calls for authentic existence, by which he means not covering up the possibility of annihilation by relying on how others face it. Humanity is described as existing in solitude at the brink of its very destruction. While Heidegger leaves open the possibility of God and immortality, he makes no assertions about them. They do not come into focus for someone restricted to the analysis of this life. Heidegger, therefore, does not consider the possibility that our understanding of this life might be decisively shaped by God's promise of the completion of our life in the hereafter. While Heidegger perceives the world that surrounds us in almost neutral colors, the picture has changed for the French existentialist, Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre presented his main system in a book bearing the characteristic title Being and Nothingness (1943), in which, similar to Heidegger, he distinguishes Being-in-itself (nonconscious Being) from Being-for-itself (conscious Being). Again, any metaphysical reference point is excluded...