Bogoslovska smotra, Vol. 83 No. 2, 2013.
Pregledni rad
Abraham's Faith as a Source of Unfaith? Gen 22:1-19 in the Perspective of New Atheism and Moral Theology
Nenad Polgar
Sažetak
The article detects the role of Gen 22:1-19 as one of the favourite themes within the discourse of the New Atheists, despite the fact that this text is an important orientation point of the three monotheistic religions. The author finds a preliminary reason for this situation, which breeds completely opposite interpretations of the text, in the polemical nature of the relationship between New Atheism and new religiosity. However, he rejects the usefulness of such an approach and, instead, opts for seemingly (in this context) forgotten methods of dialogue and hermeneutics of generosity. While using these methods, but also emphasising the importance of going back to the original text, the author critically analyses the contemporary interpretations of Gen 22, in an effort to look beyond the polemical rhetoric of New Atheism and new religiosity towards their deepest motives and legitimate concerns, which should be taken seriously. Such a methodological choice kads the author towards an insight that the aforementioned (polemical) situation demands an analysis of Gen 22 (and other issues it raises) within the relationship between the Scripture and moral theology (exegetical, hermeneutical, methodological, and theological task), in order to not only understand it, but to also show how it can benefit from the atheistic critique. By engaging in this article only with the exegetical and hermeneutical tasks (while leaving the methodological and theological tasks for the next article), the author has demonstrated a mutual interrelatedness of these two tasks, which demands a careful approach to interpretation, if one is indeed struggling to understand and not only to use a text for some other purposes. The author analyses a few interpretations of Gen 22 by applying the categories of diabolization, banalization, and ethicization, which leads him to conclude that most of these interpretations did not demonstrate the aforementioned carefulness in interpretation. Although this conclusion shows why there is no point in further discussing which among the analysed interpretations is right, the understanding of the text of Gen 22 in the contemporary context can still benefit from them. Namely, by applying the aforementioned categories on these interpretations, one can get a sense of the complexity of the process of interpretation and of issues/questions with which a contemporary reader approaches the text.
Ključne riječi
Genesis 22; Abraham; interpretation; New Atheism; hermeneutics of generosity
Hrčak ID:
105299
URI
Datum izdavanja:
8.7.2013.
Posjeta: 2.146 *