the fascist in all of us: blaming the "other one"

*

~ GEN 3:
12-13 ~

~ "De vrouw
die u hebt gemaakt
om mij ter zijde te staan,
heeft mij vruchten van de boom gegeven
en toen heb ik ervan
gegeten!" ~

~ "De slang
heeft me misleid
en toen heb ik ervan
gegeten!" ~

~*~

~*~

K.'s
fullest exposition
is found,
not in his commentary on Romans
but in his essay
"Paul & Israel,"
in which he reveals
both a hopelessly confused and confusing understanding of Judaism
and of
Paul.

He
achieves this confusion
by mixing two entirely separate categories:
On the one hand,
an assumption by Jews of some kind of privilege with G D borne of possession of the Torah or the past of the patriarchs;
on the other, "religious achievement,"
blithely assuming that all will assent that reliance on ethnic status without works is equivalent to reliance on commitment
to the fulfillment of G d's
will.

Only
the latter
is considered "religious achievement" by Jews;
the former is the source of the obligations that Jews have and feel to perform
works.

THESE
are both
considered by K. equally as examples of a "distinction that he may have previously conferred upon us," that is, both ethnic Jewishness and attempting to do his will
in the present.

This
is simply
sleight of hand to cover up the fact that Paul's open expression here
is direct and obvious contradiction
to Lutheran
theology.


~*~


However,
let all that be as it may,
and let indeed even the improbability
and incoherence of K.'s interpretation of Paul
rest for a moment -
it has been adequately disposed of
by contemporary critics -
the issue that concerns me here
is the moral responsibility which a postwar German must take
for allowing himself
to utter the following
statement,

"In and with Israel
he strikes
at the hidden Jew in all of us,
at the man who validates rights and demands
over against God on the basis of God's past dealings with him
and to this extent is serving not God
but an illusion."



FIRST of all,
there is the sheer arrogance of the claim to understand Israel's religion
on the part of a man who only knows that religion from secondary sources
and indeed those produces by the same hostility to Jews
that he shares.


ON
WHAT BASIS
dare he,
a German writing after World War II,
characterize Judaism as the religion of men [sic] who
"validate rights and demands over against God"? -
particularly as by then it had been amply demonstrated by jewish AND Christian scholars that SUCH a description of Judaism
is a libel!


And
even more condemnable
is the mode of expression,
making "Jew" the name and allegory for something shameful about human nature.


The notion
that there is Jewishness
[a Jewish spirit]
that is hidden
in everyone
and must be driven out
or overcome was
"paradigmatic
of the most virulent variety of anti-Semitism in the 20th century," according to P.H.,
because
"the true, fanatical anti-Semite of the Hitlerian type
furiously fights what he conceives to be a threatening possibility
within himself."


It is
impossible to imagine
that K. was innocent of the implications of his use of "the Jew Within"
as a trope for human evil,
since it was a veritable topos of German
anti-Semitism.


IF
this tradition
was abominable BEFORE the Nazi genocide,
it has only become more so NOW that its effects have become
historically real in SUCH
deadly fashion.


~*~


Undoubtedly K. himself
- known as an opponent of Nazism -
imagined that he was striking a blow against anti-Semitism
by indicating that "Jewishness" is not the special province of Jews,
but in fact he did
the reverse?!

When I say,
as I often do,
that there is a Nazi hidden in each of us,
I am implying the proposition that to be a Nazi is something essentially evil!

There IS no such thing as good Nazis and bad Nazis.

For K.
to write such
a sentence of a "Jew,"
and thereby imply such a proposition of Jews,
shows that he has learned nothing at all
from the events of the
Nazi genocide?!

Postmodern
hermeneutics has often been claimed
as an escape from moral
responsibility.

I would claim the exact opposite.

Interpretation
can no longer serve as a cover
for moral and political irresponsibility,
since we know that hermeneutical choices are always being made
by interpreters.

There may be
interpretations that the text excludes;
it almost never demands ONLY
ONE reading.

THUS
if K. reads PAUL anti-Semitically,
then he, K.,
must be held responsible for his
anti-Semitism.

[D.'s
example
- among others -
amply reveals the
alternatives.]


I thus find
the following statement
almost shocking in its lack of care
for Jewish sensibility:

The
approach to Paul
taken by the representatives of dialectical theology
should not be lightly dismissed by those who cannot accept it.
It represents much the most impressive modern attempt to reach to the heart of Paul's theology, and its theological seriousness compels respect,
the more so as it has been engendered in part by the bitter
experiences of modern
German history.


Although I am
NOT familiar with all theologians,
from where I sit and write, the works of Bultmann & K. seem more engendered by the ideology that CAUSED the "bitter experiences of German [!] history" than
by those experiences.


[And I learn from reading C.
that M.B. sought, unsuccessfully,
a retraction from K..]



Finally for now,
my conclusion is that, to the very great extent
that the work of B. & K. IS generated by anti-Judaism
- which is, by now, at the end of 20th century no longer distinguishable from anti-Semitism - it should NOT be dismissed lightly
but rejected vigorously by all who desire and
'need to be' Christian, for their unconscionable notions
could not possibly, I submit, represent the
"will of G D!"

~verdrietignahnahbah!gaap!verwardgemeenliefdesverdrietgemeenverwardgaap!bah!nahnahverdrietig~
engel
20 aug 2005 - bewerkt op 20 mrt 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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