HEGEL’S NECESSARY JESUS (original) (raw)
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The Incarnate Word, 2023
This article was originally published as Cornelio Fabro, “Hegel e Cristo,” Il Regno 11, no. 1 (1953): 33–38 and republished as Cornelio Fabro, “Hegel e Cristo,” Aquinas 13 (1970): 355–366.
HEGEL AND RELIGION: SOME RECENT WRITINGS*
The Heythrop Journal, 1985
Although frequently pronounced to have no further influence, Hegel, God and religion are alike in that they simply seem unwilling to lie down and accept their fate. It was Hegel who first proclaimed the death of God to the modern world, and some of Hegel's better-known discipleschief among them Feuerbach and Marxwho considered his work to have hastened the demise of religion. God dead, and religion passing, it was not long before Hegel too was largely in eclipse. In this century it is not too unfair to suggest that all three have made something of a come-back. Certainly Hegel has. One hundred and fifty years after his death we are on the crest of a whole 'new wave' of Hegel studies, and, interestingly, a large number of them are concerned with his views on religion and the impact of those views on theology. It is my task here to describe some of the most recent of these books.
Hegel (A Short Introduction for Theologians)
Theology and Philosophy (ed. Oliver Crisp, Gavin D'Costa, Mervyn Davies, Peter Hampson, London: T&T Clark, 2011), 2011
The purpose of this essay is to describe some of the ways in which Hegel’s philosophy can serve contemporary theology. It is not concerned with Hegel’s relations to his own theological tradition, nor with Hegel’s own inventive recasting of central themes in theology, notably the concepts of God, Spirit, Trinity and the idea of evil. These are important, indeed central, topics that any theological account of Hegel must satisfactorily address. What follows is not a theological account of Hegel. I take it as generally agreed by the majority of Hegel’s interpreters that his own theology diverges significantly, but implicitly and probably unintentionally, from orthodox Christian doctrine, and that for this reason his theology (as opposed to the tools his philosophy offers to theology) is less relevant to the concerns displayed in this collection of essays. Those concerns (which Hegel shared too to a degree) presuppose a fidelity to doctrine, conceived within western broadly Catholic and Protestant tradition. The aim here is narrow. I leave to one side evaluations of Hegel’s explicit treatment of doctrinal themes, and present those aspects of his philosophical approach that can serve a doctrinally oriented theology today.
2005
Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion is one of the most important resources from the nineteenth century for theology as it faces the challenges of modernity and postmodernity. A critical edition of these lectures was published in the 1980s, which makes possible a study of the text on a level of accuracy and insight hitherto unattainable. The present book (by the editor and translator of the critical edition) engages the speculative reconstruction of Christian theology that is accomplished by Hegel’s lectures, and it provides a close reading of the text as a whole. The first two chapters argue that Hegel’s philosophy of religion is a philosophical theology focused on the concept of spirit, and they provide an overview of his writings on religion prior to the philosophy of religion. The book analyses Hegel’s conception of the object and purpose of the philosophy of religion, his critique of the theology of his time, his approach to Christianity within the framework of the co...
Hegelian Priorities in Christendom
Philosophy and Theology, 2010
Arguments from the nineteenth century concerning whether Hegel was an atheist or a theist are still ongoing. This paper examines Hegel's philosophical and theological milieu, his influence on the history of philosophy and on politics, his unique interpretation of the unity of theology and philosophy, and his unusually sanguine interpretation of the relationship between church and state, along with special problems he discerned in the emergence of democracies.
Hegelian Priorities in Christendom : A Reconsideration Howard Kainz
2018
Arguments from the nineteenth century concerning whether Hegel was an atheist or a theist are still ongoing. This paper examines Hegel’s philosophical and theological milieu, his influence on the history of philosophy and on politics, his unique interpretation of the unity of theology and philosophy, and his unusually sanguine interpretation of the relationship between church and state, along with special problems he discerned in the emergence of democracies. In graduate courses I have taught on G. W. F. Hegel, I usually start off soliciting opinions from students, to see if they have been affected by any Hegelian prejudgements or stereotypes. The responses I get are varied. Some may have heard of Hegel’s reputation for being difficult or even incomprehensible; some may have come across criticisms of Hegel’s alleged secularism or gnosticism by Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, Karl Löwith, and others; those with a background in Anglo-American analytic philosophy may have an image of Hegel...