Lower Wisdom

Remonstrans recently linked to a nonsensical post about the trinity by “naked pastor”.  Most detailed explanations of the trinity are sophist nonsense, and naked pastor is a real humdinger.

Just last night, I read Jürgen Habermas in “The Dialectics of Secularization”, and came across another whopper of a theory:

Without initially having any theological intention, the reason that becomes aware of its limitations thus transcends itself in the direction of something else.  This can take the form of mystical fusion with a consciousness that embraces the universe; it may be the despairing hope that a redeeming message will occur in history; or it may take the shape of a solidarity with those who are oppressed and insulted, which presses forward in order to hasten on the coming of the messianic salvation.  These anonymous gods of the post-Hegelian metaphysics – the encompassing consciousness, the event from time immemorial, the non-alienated society – are an easy prey for theology.  There is no difficulty in deciphering them as pseudonyms of the Trinity of the personal God who communicates his own self.

Wow, Habermas blithely declares, in passive voice, that “there is no difficulty in deciphering” his putrid nonsense.  As if he is merely stating a common-sense fact, which any intelligent person would know.

It was very difficult to read the entire work, but I persisted.  Contrary to what I had been led to believe, Habermas is maddeningly nonsensical.  Like many of the other German philosophers, he is an expert at embedding unsubstantiated presuppositions within deeply nested clauses.  One particularly annoying habit is his continual uses “post-this” or “post-that” to imply a sense of “progress”; as if anything slapped with a “post” label is now dead and overturned by whatever the chronicler of progress deems to be current.  And what can I say about the use of the phrase “post-Hegelian”?  Hegel was nonsensical enough; anyone who would eagerly build a castle on the foundation of Hegel’s grave is even worse.