An Existentialist Theology by John Macquarrie
"An Existentialist Theology" by John Macquarrie explores the intersection of existential philosophy and New Testament theology, particularly through the lens of 20th-century existential thought, notably influenced by Martin Heidegger. Macquarrie argues that existentialism, which emphasizes human freedom and the burden of choice, resonates deeply with the teachings found in the New Testament, especially in the writings of Saint Paul. Both frameworks stress the importance of authentic living versus inauthentic existence, where individuals must confront their choices and the underlying anxiety tied to existence.
He contends that existentialism serves as a modern rediscovery of existential themes present in the New Testament, which were overshadowed by institutional Christianity throughout the Middle Ages. Macquarrie also critiques the work of Rudolf Bultmann, noting strengths in his existentialist interpretations of scripture while identifying gaps, such as the neglect of the Old Testament and the church's communal role. A significant theme in Macquarrie's theology is the necessity of divine grace and intervention, which he believes is essential for authentic living, contrasting with the existentialist view that centers on the individual's capacity for choice. This theological perspective positions existentialism not just as a philosophical stance, but as a potential pathway to a deeper understanding of faith and human responsibility within a contemporary context.
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An Existentialist Theology by John Macquarrie
First published: 1955
Edition(s) used:An Existentialist Theology: A Comparison of Heidegger and Bultmann. Foreword by Rudolf Bultmann. New York: Harper & Row, 1965
Genre(s): Nonfiction
Subgenre(s): Biblical studies; spiritual treatise; theology
Core issue(s): Conscience; despair; faith; freedom and free will; responsibility; self-knowledge
Overview
Well-known theological and philosophical scholar John Macquarrie attempts the daunting task of assessing the effectiveness and relevance of twentieth century existential thought in elucidating the New Testament for the modern world. He accepts Martin Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit (1927; Being and Time, 1962) as a representative statement of existential beliefs, with emphasis on human existence as a phenomenological fact without explanation or justification. Under this view, humans are free to accept their freedom of choice and their responsibility for those choices and live authentically, with attendant anxiety (existential angst) but with conscience prompting them to live as a microcosm of how the world should be, given no outside controls. Likewise, people are free to deny choice and live inauthentically by escaping to the world and avoiding thought and the overriding consciousness of death (nothingness), which paradoxically gives life its meaning and creates the urgency for authentic, complete, self-aware living.
Macquarrie effectively explains how this belief system underlies and informs Rudolf Bultmann’s Theologie des Neuen Testaments (1948-1953; Theology of the New Testament, 1951-1955) and insightfully elucidates the similarities between existential beliefs and New Testament teachings particularly as reflected in the writings of Saint Paul. Those significant similarities include the individual and experiential emphases in both, as the individual must confront life and experiences and choose either authentic life (existential) or Christian life (New Testament) or else choose thoughtlessness and the world and retreat into mindless worldly activity (existential) or worldly pleasures and sins (New Testament). Macquarrie also persuasively notes the specificity and lack of generalization characteristic of both existentialism and the New Testament, as opposed to the abstract generalization of ancient Greek philosophy and most Western philosophy since that time. He sees further similarity in Jesus’ opposition to mindless traditions and group rituals and existentialism’s emphasis on unique, isolated individual decisions and actions free of precedent or imitation. Macquarrie notes further illuminative similarities: Existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre write with an individual emphasis in their novels, plays, and other writings, and this emphasis is like that of the New Testament on individually focused historical narrative, poetry, and myth. Existential angst over choosing authentic or inauthentic life and Christian fear and trembling before the choice of denying or accepting God are virtually identical emotional states. Also, conscience plays a very similar role in Christian and in existential life, and personal freedom to choose is fundamental to both. Macquarrie even goes so far as to interestingly argue that existentialism is to some extent a rediscovery of and re-emphasis on ideas implicit in the New Testament that were ignored or at least de-emphasized by the Catholic church of the Middle Ages and beyond, which was dominated by group rituals and tradition.
Macquarrie also points to specific aspects of Bultmann’s existentialist-based interpretation of the New Testament, which render the work more intelligible to today’s world. For example, he notes approvingly Bultmann’s argument that Saint Paul’s explanation of the resurrection is essentially an allegory of two ways of existential being, the inauthentic way of worldly preoccupation and blindness to choice and the authentic way of awakening to self-knowledge and freedom of choice and exercising that choice to live a fully realized, conscience-controlled, responsible life. Therefore, to Bultmann, and implicitly to Macquarrie, Saint Paul presents Christ’s death and resurrection as symbolic of this character transformation, like other myth/allegory in the New Testament, with this interpretation solving the problem of the modern world’s disbelief in the facticity and historicity of the resurrection. Also, Macquarrie perceptively analyzes and credits Bultmann’s interpretation that the New Testament writers viewed evil not as something inherent in the world, outside the human, but as the product of human choices and actions, exactly as existentialism emphasizes that the negative in the world results from individuals’ failure to face their freedom and choose responsibly and live as a microcosm of how the world should be.
At the same time, Macquarrie notes the occasional bias in Bultmann’s existentialist theology, which causes him to distort New Testament writing. One such distortion is Bultmann’s failure to deal with Christian communities of believers (the church) as a solution both to extensive worldliness and private anguish and isolation, given Bultmann’s implicit acceptance of the individual isolation of existentialist thought as the fundamental human reality. Macquarrie notes another such distortion in Bultmann’s failure to address the Holy Spirit, arising from Bultmann’s emphasis on the existential human experience rather than on the religiously transcendent and reflecting Bultmann’s desire to demythologize the New Testament and thereby make it more accessible and acceptable to the scientifically oriented modern world.
Troublesome about Macquarrie’s work, though, is his failure to address the Old Testament from an existential perspective. This failure may immediately arise from the fact that Bultmann also does not address the Old Testament, probably because reconciling the Old Testament to existentialism would be more difficult, if not impossible.
Even more troublesome is Macquarrie’s analysis of the centrality of conscience in Heidegger’s existentialism, as the force that compels the individual to make the choice for self-aware, authentic, responsible living. After accurately presenting conscience’s centrality in existentialism, Macquarrie unconvincingly and without real explanation asserts that conscience cannot fulfill the role Heidegger assigns to it, that only some power outside the individual can lead individuals to choose the authentic life. Of course, the reason why Macquarrie asserts this is that he is a Christian believer, not an existentialist, and thus he does not understand the function of or power of conscience in a non-Christian existentialist. The reasoning by Macquarrie here is especially specious because, of course, Macquarrie’s only basis for his position is his own religious faith, which cannot be reasonably explained. In fact, in this sense, Macquarrie actually denigrates existentialism, as he does elsewhere in his description of Heidegger’s emphasis on individual isolation as arrogant and defiant. As a Christian believer, ultimately Macquarrie cannot really understand or accept Heidegger’s existentialism, which raises the possibility that Macquarrie’s real purpose, like Bultmann’s, is to co-opt existentialism by adding God to it and thus use it to proselytize for New Testament Christianity.
Christian Themes
In addition to the central contention that choice of the authentic or the Christian life is impossible absent God as an outside force available to and interacting with humans, Macquarrie integrates several other Christian themes into his work. One is the power of and importance of grace, which is the means by which God saves the previously nonbelieving human on that human’s acceptance of God’s existence and importance and decision to live a Christian life. Macquarrie accurately notes that there is no analogous belief or phenomenon in Heidegger’s existentialism and that grace exists independently from humans and is not in humans’ control, but is an action, an event, in which God powerfully participates.
Related to grace as a Christian theme in Macquarrie’s work are the historic, saving events that make it possible for humans to receive grace. These saving events, or mighty acts in Macquarrie’s terms, which came into the human situation solely because of God, include Jesus’ conception, his incarnation of God, his birth and life, his crucifixion, and his resurrection. Macquarrie synthesizes these mighty acts under the cross as symbol and contends that whatever happened specifically at the time of these events, all that believers need to know (and all they probably can know) is that, at that time in history, God directly intervened in earthly life and thereby provided believers with the avenue by which they can attain everlasting life, that is, by accepting God’s existence and intervention, whatever the specifics, and by living a life of faith, hope, joy, peace, freedom, and especially love (and even love of nihilists like Heidegger).
Sources for Further Study
Gordon, Hiam, ed. Dictionary of Existentialism. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999. Useful background treatment of the key concepts of existentialism, with essays on alienation, anguish, anxiety, conscience, choice, existence, freedom, guilt, irony, and many others.
Hardwick, Charley D. Events of Grace: Naturalism, Existentialism, and Theology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1996. An insightful extension of Rudolf Bultmann’s demythologizing, arguing for a Christian theology based on philosophical naturalism to render an accurate existentialist account of Christian faith.
Jenkins, David. The Scope and Limits of John Macquarrie’s Existential Theology. Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksell International, 1987. Valuable study of the fallacies as well as the strengths of Macquarrie’s writings on existentialism and theology, delineating the flimsy grounds for some of Macquarrie’s arguments.
McBride, William L., ed. Sartre and Existentialism: The Development and Meaning of Twentieth-Century Existentialism. New York: Garland, 1997. A diverse collection of essays concerning virtually all aspects of existentialism, by well-known philosophers such as Paul Tillich and by noted academics, with negative as well as positive views of this philosophy.
Macquarrie, John. Existentialism. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972. A comprehensive treatment of existentialism that, although published seventeen years after An Existentialist Theology, should probably be read first, to grasp the basic concepts Macquarrie applies in the earlier, more difficult, work.