Athens and Jerusalem City of Essay

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Alluding to "proofs" that God exists shifts the discussion from attempts to mobilize "Jerusalem" in the service of "Athens" to more religiously motivated projects to justify faith. The goal here may be to assuage one's own doubts, develop latent truths within the content of faith, or, more often, to convince others through a demonstration of logic or even rhetoric. In many cases, these arguments are persuasive to the extent to which they define the religious proposition as a limit or convergent case: For Aquinas, for example, God as first cause or first mover, or God as the ultimate telos or source of all philosophical confidence.

While they may be rhetorically dazzling in effect, these arguments resolve to special pleading for faith as not entirely subject to secular categories of reason, as when Habermas defined God as that aspect of experience "that gives coherence, unity, and thickness to [a] life-world" that would otherwise be ruled entirely by secular systems (Habermas 121). Even contemporary apologetics are concerned with carving out a privileged territory for the "sacred" within a secular world; thus, if "philosophy" is consciously delimited as the study of the logos or of logic, then "religion" is allowed free reign over everything else, including love and faith (Lawless 2).

This carving-out strategy returns to Tertullian's now-ancient objection to attempts to blend philosophy with religion: If someone is searching for space for religion within philosophy, then in a very real sense, they are still primarily engaged with philosophy, not religion. Efforts to clear away space within "Athens" for "Jerusalem" are really only meaningful in a context where faith is not (yet) the ultimate arbiter of all questions.

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Kierkegaard brought the entire history of religious and philosophical discourse back to Tertullian and "Jerusalem" by placing faith at the center of religion and demoting logic to a self-defeating role. Famously, Kierkegaard bases his discussion of God not on logical grounds but on the existential bedrock of personal conviction. Moreover, this conviction can only be achieved through the rejection of logic and the explicitly irrational embrace of the unknown:

But when I let go, the existence is there. But this act of letting go is surely also something; it is indeed a contribution of mine. Must not this also be taken into the account, this little moment, brief as it may be -- it need not be long, for it is a leap (Kierkegaard 25).

Any other encounter with the religious object would be limited by the bounds of reason and so would only be inauthentic, Kierkegaard says. Thus, arguments to the historical record are irrelevant to, for example, a person's participation in Christianity. (as in Kant, the Kierkegaardian believer operates "as if" the content of faith is objectively true and even believes if the secular facts run counter to religious truth.)

We have come full circle. If we believe -- if we are resident in Tertullian's "Jerusalem" -- then all the compensations of philosophy are at best beside the point and at worst dubious distractions. Residents of Jerusalem have nothing to do with Athens, but those in Athens can and often do have a lot to do with Jerusalem.

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