Table Of ContentJohannes Sloek
Devotional Language
W
DE
G
Theologische Bibliothek
Töpelmann
Herausgegeben von
O. Bayer • W. Härle • H.-P. Müüer
Band 77
Walter de Gruyter • Berlin • New York
1996
Johannes Sloek
Devotional Language
Translated from the Danish
by
Henrik Mossin
Walter de Gruyter • Berlin • New York
1996
© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI
to ensure permanence and durability.
Die Deutsche Bibliothek - Catalogmg-'m-Pnblication Data
Sloek, Johannes:
Devotional language / Johannes Sloek. Transl. from the Danish by
Henrik Mossin. — Berlin ; New York : de Gruyter, 1996
(Theologische Bibliothek Töpelmann ; Bd. 77)
Einheitssacht.: Det religiose sprog <eng}.>
ISBN 3-11-015228-2
NE: GT
© Copyright 1996 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-10785 Berlin
All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
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sion in writing from the publisher.
Printed in Germany
Conversion: Ready Made, Berlin
Printing: Werner Hildebrand, Berlin
Binding: Liideritz & Bauer-GmbH, Berlin
Preface
A The Original Context of »Devotional Language«*
»Devotional Language« was first published in Danish (as »Det religiose
sprog«) in 1982 and reissued in 1994 because of its persistent importance in
theological debate. In this major study Professor Sloek, who is the most
important Kierkegaard scholar in Denmark in the 20th century, carries out
an analysis of the languages of myth, devotion, and reason and their
interrelationship. In recent centuries the validity of religious ideas and
notions have been seriously contested, and on the basis of scientific and
philosophical concepts it has become a widespread opinion that religious
ideas and notions are not only false but have no meaning, whatsoever. After
a preliminary investigation of the relationship between language and
phenomenon Sloek goes on to analyse the >epiphanical< character of mythical
language and illustrates how both devotional language and, surprisingly,
rational language depend on it. Devotional language points back to mythical
language, whereas rational language points away from it in an attempt to
transcend its own foundation. The modern or post-modern desorientation
of our culture is due to the fact that we have forgotten or abandoned the
prerequisite of the truth expressed by mythical language.
This book originally formed the 2nd part of a trilogy, in which »The
Misery ofTheology« (Danish: »Teologiens elendighed«) and »The Christian
Proclamation« (Danish: »Den kristne forkyndelse«) constituted the 1st and
3rd parts. The coinage »The Misery of Theology« must be understood
polemically as opposed to »The Richness of Theology«, by which Sloek
refers to both traditional and modern theological systems, which he sees as
based on metaphysical abstractions. He is polemically criticizing a modern
* Notes. References to the most important literature on the subject which has been used
in the preface occur within the textual corpus to avoid overdocumentation. See also the
list that the author has attached to the end of the book. In fact, this list could be
lengthened considerably as there is a still-growing scholarly production on the theme of
the myth.
VI Preface
theology of creation (in Denmark represented by Loegstrup) seeing it as
»new wine in old bottles.« Instead, theology should understand its own
»miserable« state and use this as the adequate starting point. Theology has
come under pressure from two sides. On one hand it has been miscredited
by a scientifically influenced non-religious, or even anti-religious conception
of life, and on the other hand, it is pressurized by obscurantist, >new age<-
religion with all its propaganda. In the context of a Kierkegaardian analysis
of the absurdity of existence Sloek proclaims that Christianity assigns the
individual to his or her own actual life as a God-given condition, without
giving any explanation, change, comfort, or sense as far as this life is
concerned; but by being a God-given condition the life of the individual
gains its own specific quality. To Sloek a recurrence to or insistence on
traditional metaphysical thinking is both outmoded and meaningless.
Having performed the analysis of language, in general, and mythical and
devotional language, in particular, Sloek goes on to focus on what Christia-
nity actually proclaims in »The Christian Proclamation.« Essentially,
Christianity proclaims a paradoxical unity of myth and history, and the life-
story of the individual Christian is part and parcel of the incredible story
of God's human life in Jesus Christ.
B. »Devotional Language« seen in relation to some
major German studies of myth within recent years
In »Theologische Hermeneutik« (1992) Wolfgang Nethofel is mainly con-
cerned with what he sees as the necessity of a shift from epistemological
theology to theological epistemology (as indicated by the title). Christian
theology must and will transcend the historically specific contexts in which
it has been developed, and, by its very nature, it will have the words and acts
of Jesus Christ as its starting point. Nethofel's analysis is both historical and
semiotic in its attempt to reconsider theology on the crossroads between
modernism and post-modernism, incorporating the results of the textual
analyses of structuralism and post-structuralism. Semiotics are the historical
culmination of traditional epistemology and point to new insights beyond
the written word. Moreover, the development of the media brings with it
new ways in which our consciousness and beliefs are formed, and, con-
sequently, it is essential to focus on the interaction between the patterns of
Preface VII
Christian tradition and the means by which these have come down to us in
history. We find ourselves in a new phase where the literal culture of the
modern era (in German: »Neuzeit«) — from the Renaissance and onwards
— is quickly being superseded by a post-modern culture dominated by the
electronic media, and this has serious implications as far as the forming of
consciousness and religious orientation are concerned. However, it is possible
to analyse the complexity of this situation methodically and theoretically by
applying semiotic analysis and thus transcend the literal and anthropological
contexts in which they originated. This is exactly what Nethofel does in the
belief that the Christian tradition contains the auto-poetical elements and
patterns which will over and again find their expression in an interplay with
the media context of the time.
Since Plato traditional epistemology has been based on the written
word, and since the art of printing was created in the Renaissance, we have
had a literal culture which has determined our outlooks, in general. The
quest of >truth< has been performed within the limitations imposed upon us
by a literal culture. However, this epistemological reliance on scripture is
simply inadequate, today, as the new technologial media change the very
conditions of our perceptions of life and our orientation in it. Traditional
epistemology is a logos-bound attempt to detach the observer or thinker
from what is actually being observed or thought about. Whereas speech is
an original phenomenon, epistemology becomes a discipline which creates
a correspondence between the word and a relation to a reality outside the
word. This dichotomy both illustrates the success of the conquest of nature
and the problem of understandings i.e. relating one to the other. In
modern epistemology, from Peirce and onwards, there is a tendency to
concentrate on the process of »semiosis«, itself, and, consequently, a
scepticism about separating the three elements of the epistemological triangle
(i.e.: Word, Concept, and Object) in pairs in order to create >meaningful
relations.< The whole history of consciousness is a continuous attempt to
demythologize or interpret whatever might be thought, but, as Odo
Marquard has pointed out, the history of this process is itself a myth.' Here
we find an obvious parallel to Sloek, who also warns against breaking up the
i Marquard, Odo: Lob des Polytheismus. Über Monomythie und Polymythie (1979) - in
»Abschied from Prinzipiellen« (Stuttgart, 1987)
VIII Preface
trinity of both epistemology and ontology. Nethofel and Sloek agree to the
primary status of myth. It is the very essence of traditional communication.
It is pre-logical and an expression of superindividual and collectively
important aspects of what is experienced.
Throughout the era of the written word we find a stringent attempt to
reduce >meaning< to a question of correspondence between language and the
world outside language, which must be understood in the sense that some-
thing stands under it and legitimates it. In the change from mythos to logos,
from 750 to 400 B.C., we find an attempt to establish a foundation in the
medium of writing, but at the same time the situational and actual, >face-
to-face< context of the myth is disregarded in favour of a consistent
understanding. As mentioned above, the consciousness of logos creates a
distance between the subject (the thinker) and the object (whatever is
thought about), and myth is reduced to a genre. Myth is, in other words,
non-conceptual thinking; it is looked down upon, although the concepts
are immanent in myth in the shape of names, as already noted by Schel-
ling1. Nethofel is talking about a non-symmetrical interaction between
mythos and logos (p. 58), in which the latter must always assert itself, whereas
Sloek is speaking about the primacy of mythos, from which logos will always
try to emancipate. Both accentuate that myth cannot be semantically
derived from anything else and is thus semantically prior to whatever comes
after it. There is, according to Nethofel, an obvious parallel in the ways that
Jewish rabbis edited The Old Testament and presented a uniform picture of
the relationship between Jehova and His People and the way early Greek
philosophers tried to establish a uniform concept of truth, which intentio-
nally referred to itself. Both exemplified the transition to a literal, or semi-
literal culture. Christianity arose in a semi-literal context, and the acts and
words of Christ are to be taken in a much more comprehensive way than
has been allowed by the predominantly literal culture of the modern We-
stern World. They are >signs< in a semiotic sense, and Christ is — in his
overall practice - both the divine >signifiant< and >signifié<. Nethofel applies
the practice of semiotic process to the epistemological circle, thus ensuring
a historical incentive to go on exploring and developing Christian tradition
in a changing world. The patterns of the Christian tradition have come
down to us in multiform ways, and they will continue to develop in an
2 »Einleitung in der Philosophie« (1857)
Preface IX
>interferential< interplay with the variegated forms of communication of our
culture. In the only semi-literal culture of the Middle Ages we may find a
parallel to this. Structures, such as the Cathedral of Chartres e.g., are to be
interpreted semiotically as comprehensive signs, as patterns of Christian
tradition, which address all of our senses and will continue to do so. We are,
so to speak, living in the common room of >the global village< in much the
same way as we were living in a common pictorial world — or room — in the
Middle Ages. Sloek would find no consolation in such considerations and
accept modern alienation as a predicament, which is to be accepted because
of — and only because of — the personal decision in favour of the kerygma,
as also Bultmann claimed. Dialectically this decision must, of course, in
mythical language be seen as »the gift of The Holy Spirit.« There is no way
to go back beyond the experience of the absurdity of existence. The gospel
does, however, both legitimate this absurdity as a God-given predicament
(the myth of creation) and relieve us from its cultural burden (the forgiveness
of sin).
As mentioned above, the Christian starting point must always be based
on the words and acts of Jesus Christ, and - to Nethôfel — in a historical
perspective, they generate a process of traditions, which is not to be limited
within a literal culture — firstly, because they have originated in a semi-literal
environment and, therefore, transcend the limitations imposed on them by
a literary approach; secondly, because the history of their effect is not to be
encapsulated in what a specific historical period may see as being epistemo-
logically acceptable. Nethôfel carries out a methodical and theoretical
examination of the historical development of epistemology. Myth is, as
mentioned above, the essence of traditional communication, and the
confusion as to the meaning of the word, itself, is due to the way a literal
culture has, by implication, detached itself from a communication based on
a direct and corporeal situation, substituting mythos by logos, and thereby
reducing the scope of mythical communication and its effect. In its origin
mythical speech knows exactly what it is talking about in a »face-to-face«
communication, and it is only in a literal culture — where we find the
dichotomy between expression and understanding (or »Verstehen« in the
sense applied by Heidegger and Bultmann) — that we are gradually estranged
from the immediate and apparently obvious >meaning< of myth.
Where Nethôfel is emphasizing the historical aspect and contemporary
relevance of myth, Sloek is pointing exclusively to the existential consistency
X Preface
of myth. Bultmann's demythologizing (»Entmytologisierung«) of the Chri-
stian Gospel may be a specific historical manifestation of an epistemological
process, which, according to Nethofel, has exhausted its own potential
because of a historical change from a literal to a multi-media culture, but,
to Sloek, demythologizing or remythologizing become two of a kind — in
so far as the first is dependent on the myth (as Bultmann recognized) and
the other goes to emphasize exactly this point. Nethofel is concerned with
the way Christian orientation is transformed and being transformed in a
contemporary context, in which old and new intermingle. Scripture broke
down the »face-to-face« communication of what was before, and the
electronic media have broken down the traditional concept of the informant
and the confidence in the literary medium. He sees the possibility of a
much more variegated and fractal communication of the Christian tradition,
and in his methodical analysis he accentuates the non-verbal aspects of the
Christian tradition. In fact, the Middle Ages bear witness to a much more
comprehensive bearing down of Christian patterns, and the modern age (or
»Die Neuzeit«) seems, on the surface, to have reduced or construed
Christianity according to what was epistemologically valid. Modernism is
a logical revolt against mythos, and the ideas of historical criticism have
construed a fiction of epistemology. Even the idea of >the historical Jesus<
is an epistemological construction, due to the position that history was
granted in most of the 19th and 20th centuries. Thus, according to Nethofel,
it is necessary to make a deconstruction of traditional epistemology in
order to go beyond the limitations imposed on Christian tradition by the
era of the written word and focus on an epistemology based on theology,
which will be capable of meeting the demands of the post-modern world.
Luther's assertion that scripture interpreted itself »sui ipsius interpres«3 was
a revolutionary statement at a time when literal culture became absolutely
predominant, but although the statement may be semiotically correct, it is
too restricted when we are dealing with a culture in which our consciousness
is not primarily formed by the written word.
In 1983, Nethofel published his »Strukturen existentialer Interpretation«,
in which he performs a structuralist analysis of Bultmann's commentary to
the Gospel of St. John (from 1941). Bultmann's program of »demytholo-
3 »Assertio Omnium Articulorum« (1520)
