RICOEUR, Paul. 14 - The Critique of Religion

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T H E P H I L O S O P H Y OF

Paul Ricoeur

An Anthology of His Work

Edited by Charles E. Reagan & David Stewart

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f||k « f f « B E A C O N PR ESS : B O S T O N



V . R E L I G I O N A N D F A I T H

The first article in this section exam ines the nature o f religion in the aftermath o f its critique by Marx, Nie tzsche , and Freud. Rico eur argues

that their “e xter na l” critique must be m et by an “ interna l” critique,

w hich gives rise to a herm ene utics o f the te xt itself. Interpretation, in

turn, raises the problem o f com mu nication, w hich is the concern o f

the second essay, “ The Language o f Faith. ” The problem o f comm uni-

cating the kerygma is, among other things , that o f overcoming the

cultural distance that separates us fr om the originators o f the text.

R ic oeur explo res this as th e problem o f “ how to restore meaning, how

to return to contemporary discourse a language which does not pertain

to the same cultural circle as mine. ” We fina lly see R icoe ur attempting

to do precisely this by recapturing the meaning o f a biblical te xt in

“ Listening to the Parables o f Jesus. ”

S O U R C E S

“The Critique of Religion” and “The Language of Faith,” translated by R, Brad-

ley DeFord, Union Seminary Quarterly Review 28 (197 3) : 205~12 ; 213 24 , Used

by permission.

“ Listening to the Parables o f Jesus,” Criterion 13 ( 1974} ; 18 22 . Used by permis-

sion.

2 1 2



C H A P T E R 1 4 The Critique of Religion

I. D E M Y S T I F I C A T I O N

Christianity presents itself as a kerygma, that is to say a proclamation,

a discourse addressed to, The Greek word “ kerygm a” has an exact

meaning: announcement, proclamation, message—demystification deal«

precisely with this address, with this discourse addressed to. .. .

received a letter, we discover that it was not sent by whom we beliey

The problem of demystification interests us in this very precise sense

that it is not so muc h a critiqu e o f the co n te n t—it is no t that we hav *

not received the letter—but of the origin: it did not come from whom |

we tho ught.

It is just the pro blem o f an illusion abou t the origin w hich is here

posed; I would enter into this critique by the analysis of the function

I am therefore constrained to speak of the impact, which seems to

me to be irreversible, of thre/masters^of susnicion^Marx. Nietzsche,

and Freud.,,who belong to our culture and with whom we are bound

to converse.

1 wan t to m ake it un dersto od that they make sense on ly if we take

them together, or if we understand them as a unity, for it is at the

moment when their critiques converge that they become significant. If

^he place of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud as phenomena of culture^

as cultural eventsTstilTremains uncertain, itTTbecause they truly have

still not been b roug ht toge ther in their join t im pact on ou r culture.

Taken separately, we cannot really understand them, for we are at once

sensitive to their narrowness, and we miss their significance for us when

We sa y that w e have been vic tim s o f a m ystificatio n w hen , having

o f suspicion, inasmuch as it is tfie critical instrument of demystifica-

tion, a n da ttem pt to understand w hat it signifies at the heart o f our cu l-

ture.



214 Religion and Faith

Marx appears to us at first as a critic of the economic world to

whom we could be in debte d fo r an anato m y and p h ysiolo gy o f capital-

ism in the mid19th century. And we extricate ourselves quickly from

his message by proclaiming this political economics out of date, non

scientific, etc.In the same way, we elude the blow that Nietzsche struck at us when

w e ta ke him by th e lim itation o f the rom anticism o f th e w il l to power

whic h seem s in line w it h th e philosophie s o f li fe ; we sa y, “ This is not

scientific biology any more than Marxism is scientific economics.”

In the same way, we would confine Freud in a purely psychiatric

theory, in order to abandon to him the neurotic or psychotic side of

man; but we then miss his impact on our culture insofar as he insti-

tuted a fundamental critique of modern culture.

w e are to su cce ed in unders ta ndin g as a u n ity th e theory o f id e-ologies in Marx, the genealogies o f ethics in N ietzsche, and the theory

of ideas and illusions in Freud, we will see the configuration of a

problem—hereafter posed before the modern mind—the problem of..,

fa lseconsc iousn es s. Therefore, it is to illuminate this problem of false-

consciousness that we engage in a common rereading of Marx,

Nietzsche, and Freud. The term “ falseconsciousness” appears espe-

cially in Ma rx. But I think tha t it can be app lied usefully to N ietzsche

and Freud, for it is a specific problem. It is a problem which isnot con-

cerned as such only with the individual as if he were in error in a purely

| epistem ologicaT sem i'eroFlaTals l ^ e th ical, sens^ ^tIusIon>is

a cultural structure, a dim ension of our social discou r s e .

/ " F r o m here on, with M arx, Nietzsche, and Freud, a new type o f cri~j^

\ tique of culture appears.

To be sure, Marx could not conceive of this illusion other than as

a reflection of the class struggle. Nietzsche could not grasp false-

consciousness other than as vengeance, or the resentment o f the weak

against the strong. And Freud could not experience this same problem

apart from wh at I w ill call a sem antics o f desire, a history o f human

desire entrapped by cultural prohibitions.

These are the reasons why the approach to the problem of false-

consciousness differs from one to the other; but each of them, disen-

gaged from his narro wn ess, coo pe rat es in a_,gemwLeX£££Jsh&fJ:A 1se

consciousness and belongs by this fact in a hermeneutics, in a t he ory., of

interpretation, und^r the negative form of demvitification/But with

Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, beyond their economism, biologism, and

psychiatrism respectively, demystification is characterized in the first

place as the exe r cisaof ~suspici<xn. I call suspicion the act of dispute

ex actly proportional to the expressions o f falseconsciousness. Theproblem of falseconsciousness is the object, the correlative of the act



215 The Critique of Religion

of suspicion. Out of it is born the quality of doubt, a type of doubt

w h ic h js to ta lly new and differen t from Cartesian doubt.

Cfie$cartg.sMoubts things but leans on the fortress of consciousness,

fdonsciousness is what it is, it is what it says, it says what it is. Con-

sciousness is, therefore, equal to itself. Only things are doubtable, only

things can have appearance dissociated from their reality. It is the very

heart of Cartesian do ub t that the m ore I do ubt things, the more I attest

to the coincidence in being itself which constitutes the very act of

cogito. .

The.problem oyi'alseconsciousnesslcouid only appear by wav of

a critique o f.calm xe w here co nsciou snes s appears in itself as a do ub tful

con sciousne^TITu t^ n cfT h is is a second trait—this dou bt can only w ork

through a totally new technique which is a new method of deciphering

appearances. This deciphering will enable us to grasp what we have to

say on demystification. What distinguishes falseconsciousness from I

error or falsehood, and what motivates a particular type of critique, oif

de nu nc iation , is th e po ssib ility of signif y ing ano ther thing than wh at fji

one Believes was, sig nif ie d, th at is, th e possib ility o f the m asked con 0

sciou sness. The se two w ords , “ false co nsciou sness,’' pertain usually to

Marx. The metaphor of the mask is essentially Nietzschean. Conscious-ness, far from being transparent to itself, is at the same time what

reveals and what conceals; it is this relation of conceal/reveal which

calls for a specific reading, a hermeneutics. The task of hermeneutics

(I will come to this particularly in the second part) has always been to

read a text and to distinguish the true sense from the apparent sense,

to search for the sense under the sense, to search for the intelligible

text under the unintelligible text. There is, then, a proper manner of

uncovering what was covered, o f unveiling what was veiled, o f removingthe mask.

It is with this relation between the concealed and the revealed, the

veiled and the unveiled, thatTaTneth od oi: destructio n^)f a to tall y new

type is built: in this respect, the fundamental contribution of Marx will

not remain his theory of class struggle, but the discernment of the hid1

den relation which connects ideology to the phenomena of JomiriaHon^

TFTs reading orT3eoTogy~aTa~symptom o f the pKenonuma o f dom ina ^

tion will be the durable contribution of Marxism beyond its political

applications. From this point of view Marx does not belong solely to

the Communists. Marxism, let it never be forgotten, appeared in Ger-

many in the middle of the last century at the heart of the departments

o f Pro testant th eo log y. It is, there fore, an_ even t o f western cujture, and

I wou ld even say, o f m estern the ology . .

Therefore, this relation between iHeology on the one hand, and

dom ination on the other, and fina lly submission, autho rizes an inter T p



ipretation of the phenomenon ofCiîgionJas a sort of coded language of

/domination and suFmlsôn, Substitute paradise for the submissive,

I i3 lSp i£® ^ Stifi ,cdT85tifkfo1‘ the powerful, and you have a perfectly valid

and legitimate reading of religion and a kind of denunciation of what

religion falsely proclaims in ignorance of its economic motivation.

I insist again on the fact that the critique of Marx is interesting only

in the degree to which it is not the critique of a moralist. Very often

peo ple have tried to retrieve Marx by saying, “ B ut there is a moralist

in him, not simply a scientist.” To my mind, what is interesting in Marx

is neither his science, which seems to me suspect, in any case uncertain,

nor what could remain of moralism, even if it is to see an ethic remi-

niscent o f the Pro ph ets; b ut it isCthis art o f de c ip her m isapp lied to cer-

tain structures. Marx is interesting, not when he accuses the capitalists

as men, but, capital as a structure which.is. ignorant of itself as a false

creation of values. I.t is this history of the great money fetish which is

the most important work of Marx. The denunciation of the religious

implications of the great fetish is the point o f the M arxist critique o f

religionyWe can surely apply this critique to ourselves; we must appro/]

f "' Jpriate it to ourselves as a task o f truth and auth en ticity. _

In the same m anner, the(Niet7.sch£a.aggoiea.lf^ v . o f m oral .4mi 1sr. I

believe, be unders to od as a ce rt a 1ri|he rme jL en lic s jjfOu r wiH fthe will-

ing will that N ietzsche tried to look for behind the “ w illed ” w ill in its

limited objectives. This great deciphering of the will in its significations,

in its projections of value, requires of him also a very particular tech

l nique; this is.more evident in N ietzsche than in Marx. Nietzsch e is a

' f “ herm en eut”) it was he w ho first had the insight that p hilos op hy, a£

•X'" f philo sop hy o f cultur e, wa s a herm ene utics, an analysis of sign ificatio ns.

' Nietzsche was the first to see that hermeneutics is not simply a reflec-

tion on the rules of exegesis—exegesis limited to texts whether the texts

be texts o f classica l antiquity or o f bib lic al antiq u it y—bexause^gyiture

itself is a text; consequently, philosophy is exegetical in tne degree

to w h ic n T f is the deciphering be hind the m asked signs—of the inten-

tions and the implied sign ification s in a strong w ill and in a w eak w ill.

Th at surpasses considerab ly jjhâp pare nt biologism ,

And in ord er to sp eak c(f Freua /in a fe w w ords—I w il l have the occa-

sion of returning to this in treating our second topic—I think he would

be much bett er unders tood if we w ould discern his p lace in a critiq ue

of culture. It is through psychiatry that he exercises his critique, but

at tne bottom it is a critique of the ideals and of the values of this

culture, to the extent that they no longer pertain.XQJijgenealogy of the

wil l, as in Nietzsche<4)ut a genealogy of desire!^The interest of~Freudjis_always to wonder, niced with a cultural phenomenon, hojwthis

c ul tu r, al..p.hen o me non pertains to t he his tory o f hum an de sire /b e j.ta^

a substituted objec t for lost primitive objects, be it as a fa ct o r o f pro ^




hibition, of inhibition, of frustration, of fear. And in this sense, his

cn tl qifeT ff TeTi'g ion is per fec tly legitimate. A n y dispute with this cri-

tique can be made only on its own terms. It is necessary to accept these

terms as they have been designated and marked off in the great books

by Fre ud on th e orig in s o f m ora ls and re ligio n, nam ely , Totem and

Taboo, Moses and Monotheism , and The F uture o f an Illusion, T his j

critique co nc erns religio n as far as it is e ffe ctiv ely fo r us a co m pen sation j w

stemm ing^T ron ffear^ rT substitute for proh ibited pleasu res./1 is obvi '

ously this “ as fa r’as” wh ich will be the object o f our study in the

second essay.

Bey ond this suspicion, bey on d this w ork o f deciphering, we have /

finally com e to the third trait, to discern a com mon p ow er o f affjr V ^m atio n : we have th us to struggle in ourselves not only with susp icion,

with th is d eciph erin g, but 3Iso with th e aff ir m ation. F or all th ree o f 7

these m en finally, ar^ po sitive thinker^, in the sense that they have / j 4& '

pressed fundamentally for the restoration of rqan’s positivity. L

It is at this po int th at it w ou ld be necessary to relate” these three,

Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, t^Feuerbach^It was Feuerbach in the first

place who said, and saw, that maiTwaTemptying himself into the

|absolute—that the absolute is a loss of substance. The task of man is

||to reap pro p r ia t e his o w n substanc e, to stop this bleeding o f substance

»»into the sacred.

Th is herm ene utics was, as I just described it, a m ove m ent w hich sets

out from an original negation, advances through a work of deciphering

and a struggle against masks, and finally is put in the quest of a new

affirm at ior^ B u t^wh at kind o f affirm ariqn? >

Y o u doubtless kn o w h o w tl^ y o u n p M a jx , when he was more a

philosopher than an economist|1tad"feinterpreted the words of Feuer-

bach. Man , he said, in producin g riches and in reproducin g his exist-

ence, de term ine s man. U 11 im a tg . ai:l^m i.at^n..acxo i:din£jo31 a rx , 1s t his

engendering o f man j>v man thro ugh a b iology o f repro du ction and an

ec on om y o f pro du ctio n . What is at stake, therefore^ 1s t hat man posits

m a n .l t is in this sense t ha,t manis a god for m an> jo tak e a phrase


pr S p in o z a . I think tha t one would understand this discourse o f the ^

yo un g M arx if one could align w ith it the th em es o f th e old Marx,

speaking of the leap from necessity to freedom. This leap from neces-

sity to freed om by the kn ow ledge o f necessity, and by the m astery >•exe rcised on all the alienated forc es, is fin ally the arrival o f the king <.

dom of man. Then man enters into transparency. This is the end of

falseconsciousness—to know the moment when what man says is equal

to what man does, and when his work is truly equal to his being. And

in this kind of equation between being human, doing, praxis, and speak-

ing, there is no longer ideology; such is the eschatology of Marxism, his

true affirmative content




Let us return to this idea of the “ understood nece ssity” ; we w o u ld

do well to reappropriate this positive thrust of Marxism within the same

positive thrusts in Nietzsche and Freud.

I think that one would understand the affirmations of Marxism ifone also understood the affirmation which inhabits the great enter-

prise of Nietzschean destruction. Because the great problem of Nietz-

sche, and in this sense he was less naive than Marx, if I can say so, is

that God is dead, and sing£.Kg Jsjte ad ..cu ltur ally , man cann ot survive.

This is why the problem of Nietzsche concerns itself with the after-

. f man, the superman. And Nietzsche saw very w ell that the great affir

/\ mation , which Marx believed attainable by revolution through a polit-

icalsocial process, demands in truthî veritable new birth of’ m a n V W

can only attain and anticipate this reBirth through three brokthe Superman, the Eternal Return, and Dionysus—triple myths oHffie

futureTncTof the will to power.

To tell the truth, and Nietzsche knew it well, we do not have, we no

longer have, we do not yet have the key to decipher this new myth, But

perhaps this is tR em yth o f m odernjtyjpaTexcellence. M odernity is be-

coming its own myth. What Marx called “understood necessity” moving

,jto the transparency o f consciousness to itself, becom es w ith N ietzsche

i thednnocence o f becoming ^ Unschuld des Werdensj this innocence p i

" I becoming would ultimately be the kingdom of necessity having become^ f r ee do m ^

Such is the key also to the work of Freud. You know how at the end

of his life preuB had remythologized, remythized all of his work; the

in effe ct, is to ,pass.iro m th^ plea sur e principle)

into the^reafity pr incipient he reb y m ak ing th e sa crifice and' be rea vem ent

o f mfantlTFHe sire/But this kingdo m o f necessity, this ananke as it is

called in his last wrork s, can be unde rsto od o nly in the stru ggle betw een

Eros and dâth, between the life and death instincts. One would under-

stand the one work by the other if one could understand that this re-lat ion , this vâeex. fox.E ros.. against Th an ato s, has with Fre ud the same

me aning as the^myth o f D ion ysusi.o.r. ilxci.ate ’NleTzscKe71" is di fficult

tollfidersfand fully these three myths of the classless society or the

understood necessity, of the eternal return, and of the reality principle.

/What theyhjayein^cQ m m on, perhaps, is a certain way of ble ssingj:gality\

\^for what it is. a sort of celebration of the liberating power of necessity,. /

It is necessary to go this far in order to understand fundamental

acquisitions that I have just placed under the theme of demystification.

It is at this point that we can appropriate w hat Jaspers called combjj:of lovers. It is a battle of lovers that we must mediate, not simply with

the brute negations o f one or the othe r, but rather w ith th eir enterprise

of deciphering, and finally with their fundamental affirmation, If we

can follow them this far, we will understand the_positive function of




the dispute w ith religion b y all three. Because w hat they have in com -

mon first o f all is icon oclasm , the fight against idols, that is, against the

gods or the God of men.

1 try to sh ow in th e ne xt essay tha t to smash the idols is also to

let symbols speak/But today I do not wish to assure a good outcome in

tKFTaceoTso great and respectable a critique. I think with Bojolyeffer.

and others, that hereafter a critique of religion, nourished by FeuerBach

and these masters of suspicion pertains to the mature faith of modern

man. In this sense, o n e an say that this atheism concerning the gods of

men, perta ins h er ^ ^ ^ ia» ai i5 L i^ s^ !£ ,5iu ^ W h at we "have therefore

appropriated to ourselves is firstjthe critique afreligion as a mask) a

mask of fear, a mask of domingjioiL a mask of hate. A Marxist critique

oTIdeoiogy , a Nietzschean critique of resentment and a Freudian cri-tique of infantile distress, are hereafter the views through which any

kind of mediation of faith must pass.

I I . D E M Y T H O L O G I Z A T I O N

In this second part, I want to show how we can extend this external

critique o f religion into an internal critique; in the same way that I

have tried to locate the place of demystification in a modern hermeneu-

tics, I want to situate demythologization. W hate ver w e m ay thin k o f Bultm ann’s solu tion to th e herm eneutical

problem, his question is in any case unavoidable and urgent.

Th e q ue stion w h ich CBultmanr^has posed from the interior is for me

only completely understood when it is placed in relation with the quesf

tion posed from the exterio r by Feu erbach, M arx, N ietzsche, etc.: th a t/ Sj

of our ruhuml eatranvement. o f the c ultural distance be tw een ,,on, the( g.

one hand , o ur ..world and o ur discourse o f mo dern m an and, on the J

other,,,th.exultur.al_exgr&gsifi.n s a n d the cultural wo rld o f the G osp el/

In order to understand this problem adequately, it is necessary to

understand the paradoxical relationship, from the beginning of preach-

ing, between the kernel of the preaching of the Gospel and the culture.

This relationship, it seems to me, is a dou ble on e. On the o ne side, j t

is certain that the kerygma, the primitive proclamation, performs a sort

o f rup tu re jn the d iscourse o f ancient m an/T h e preach ing o f the Cross,

as St. Paul said, is a folly for the world (we who have read Marx and

Nietzsche understand better now the notion of folly). It is a folly in

this sense—and here I feel m y self tho rou gh ly faith ful to Karl B arth—

that this preaching is not fundamentally rooted in our experience, has

no correspondence in our experience; it cannot justify itself, prove it-

self by something about which we could say we truthfully await; it is

the eruption of something from the other side, from the totally other

into our culture.




But it is necessary at once to add thatjthis kerypma has only

vis ible by faea?m in g..it sdLa,fact o f culture/N q.L m I v has it rupju red

Into our culture, but it has appeared as a fact of culture. It has created

new words, new affirmations, including an art, a philosophy, whichHegel may have been the first to think through systematically as Chris

tology. Consequently, a double relationship is instituted with culture,

a relationship of discontinuity and a relationship of continuity.

Relationship of discontinuity: This means that the Gospel will al-

w ays be carried b y an extr aord in arily fragile testim ony, that o f the

preacher, that of personal life, that of community. There is no proof

w hic h can support either the experie nce or the rationale . In th is sense,

the Cross remains a folly for the intelligent, a scandal for the wise.

But at the same time a new structure of communication, a new dis-

course appears which is of cultural importance, and which happens

throu gh w ha t one could calkism “ ava ilable b^|i&vabi&” ray ab le dis

p on ib ie). That is what we learned first from the school of form criti-

cism, then from B ultma nn. I must say that we are tod ay in theolo gy

doubly debtors: to Barth and to Bultmajm.

Each epoch permfCSToelievable and an unbelievable. So it is certain

that the language in wh ich “ those things” have been spo ken , in orde r

to return to the expression of the beginning, is folly; but, at the sametime, it is folly which speaks into a certain available believable at a

given time.

In the preceding century, one was particularly concerned with the

contaminations of the Gospel by Orientalism, Hellenism, etc. Think of

the wo rk o f Harnack, trying to rediscover an “ esse nce ,” as he said, the

essence of Christianity, uncontaminated by Hellenism. Our generation

hasdiscovered something mpre important than these additions of

Hellenism and Orientalism—something which pertains eventoJthe

composi tiorToT the text we now read: to know that the(6ultural vehicle)

hassimposed its ownl^vv>that it is present in the expressions oJLthe

text. TKTFpresence first m an ifestsltself under th e ’torrm M .ajxoaception

of the world which one could call 'mythologicajln .the sense that it

repTe sFrvt Ft FTe~wo rid as a sys tem o f reg ion s and o f lo ca lit ies w here t'h e

destiny o f beings is de p lo ye d ; itJs. .therefore,, b y a sort o f e.sch ato logi

caTcosmoTogvTwith its hell and heaven, that the £ ultiixal_v.gh c)e..£ir_&t

becom es evident^/rhis m yth ologic al vie w in itself did n ot con stit ute 3

ia s can cfalTo f ancient man. It has beco m e a scandal for m ode rn m an, |||I but this scandal is no t that o f the Cross; it is the fa ls e sca nd al of a culf |

||tural vehicle which is no longer ours.

But it is not only this mythological framework which falsely pro-

vokes the scandal. T here is also the fr am ew ork w hic h I w ould call

natural believable, to know that the folly of the Cross will be said

w ithin the available credib le o f a given culture; the signs w il l becom e




miracles, the divine origin of Christ is going to be expressed by way of

the virgin b ir th ; vic tor y ove r death, the R esurre ction, is going to be told

in statements on the empty tomb, the miraculous apparitions. But noy^

that long and durable coalescence between the folly of the message and

wKaFhas Deen th e believable o f an epoch Has been broken befo re pur

eyes, a n d lf ls tins dissociationT*?twee nt h e c u 1t uraPhel'ievaMeo n the

oneTiand, and the f o lly and the scandal of the. Cross a n d jh e Resurrec-

tion on the other which to me constitutes the problem of demythologi

zaTio’n. T his problem is not o nly legitim ate, but urgent and u navoida ble,

to such an extent that it has become the central event in our culture.

If we are always4qually far from the follv of the Cross.ltif it is no

ipore believable today than it was for ancient man, what has become

.^irreversible is our...culturalestrangement from a cultural vehicle)which is,

for us, to a great extent mythological. In this regard the work of Bult-

mann is perfectly legitimate, to dissociate the true scandal from the,

false sca,ndal. T o d em yth olo giz e is t o ’clissolve the false scandal in orde r

tolRave the true scandal, the original scandal, revealed to all.

Thus, we are now in a hermeneutical age: on the one hand, the de-

ciphering of illusions of religious consciousness belongs hereafter to the

attestation of the faith of modern man; and yet, we know now that in

deciphering the cultural vehicle of the text, we have to discover what is

more than text, what is the preaching of the Person and of the event of

Christ. T o put it another w ay, it is a proclamation pu rified o f its m yth -

ological vestments with which Christian preaching is confronted today.

It is true that there has always been a hermeneutics, in the sense that

the Fathers of the Church posed the problem in the manner of St.

Pa ul,1 how can one interpret the Old Testam ent in terms o f the New?

In another sense, there has always been a hermeneutical problem. Not

only was it necessary to decipher the images of the Old Testament into

the New, but it was also always necessary to decipher the New Testa-

ment into life. St. Paul is the founder of this second signification of

Christian hermeneutics when he showed that the relationship of the

Cross to the Re surrection o f Christ has its analogy in the relationship

of the death of the old man and the birth of the new. Therefore, this

analogical relationship, this analogy of faith between Christ and our-

selves, duplicates the typ olog ical relationship betw een the figures of

the Old Testament and the New Testament. Such was the kernel of

what one could ca ll th e ancie nt herm eneutics. But we modern men are

confronted with a totally new necessity: to know, to decipher scripture

itself as a text which at the same time reveals and conceals. For the

first Christians, it is certain that the kerygma was not a text. On the

contrary, it was a living Word which showed the way to read a text.

There was only one text, the Old Testament, and what they preached

was Christ as a living W ord in re lationsh ip to a text that had becom e,




accordingly, an obsolete letter, an old letter, the Old Testament. But

caught in its own cultural trap, the New Testament became, it also,

a te st a m e n t it becam e a letter. A nd our hqrnieneiitical4irabie.m is ffrxn

the f ollo w in gL.wh at t,o do so that the N ew Testa m ent w ill not be 3.

second Old Te stam en t? What to d o so that it w ill not be a letter? We

have thus entered into an age when it is in interpreting, consequently

in trying to discern what is announced through what has been said in

a certain cultural language, that the faith of modern man is possible.

I We arejtherjsfore. tod ay j n j i situ atio n w here it is in rein terpreting

I that w e can believe. An d I am not afraid to say tha t we are in a “ circle ”

in the sense that Bu ltm an n, taking an expression o f Heidegger, speaks

o f the “ hermen eutical circle.” I can on ly, in effe ct, approach a tex t if

I hear it as it speaks to me, if I am seized by what is said through the

text. It is in this sense that it is necessary to believe in order to under-

stand, but I cannot grasp what it has told me unless I first decipher

the text.

Bultmann has forcefully understood the true nature of this circle,

w hich is not only a psy cholo gic al circle (to know that it is necessary

to have within oneself the emotion or the experience of faith in order

to approach a text), but also a methodological one, to know that it is

the object of faith that rules the reading, but that it is alsoothe m et b o j

]of_degip]jejme nt which_rulgs th.ejcompC eh en sion, the com preh ensio n

I itself being ruled in the Worauf bin, tha t is, in the “ towa rd wh ich”| o f the look ing and the hearing.2

The exegete is not his own master; to understand is to place himself

under the object which is at stake in the text; thus, the Christian her-

meneutics must be placed in motion by the Announcement which is

at stake.

There is a circle because in order to understand the text, it is neces-

sary to believe what the text announces. But what the text announces is

given nowhere else than in the deciphering of the text and in this kind

of struggle between the false and the true scandal in the heart of thetext itself.

I will say, then, that this circle can only be broken by the believer

in the hermeneutics when he is faithful to the community, and by the

“ herm eneut” in the believer when he does his scientific work o f exe-

gesis. This is today the dual condition of modern man in whom strug-

gles both a believer and an atheist; in the believer himself there con-

front one another an adult critic and a naive child who listen to the

Word.

I have by design ju xta posed the external critique and the internalcritique, demystification and demythologization. We learn their organic

connection when in the following essay, we incorporate them together

in the struggle for the language of faith.

RICOEUR, Paul. 14 - The Critique of Religion

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