Slavoj Zizek - Why Only an Atheist Can Believe (7/9)

[@ollieeSkate]

many thanks for uploading

[@not2tees]

"We should forget all that legalistic topic - God paid the price for our redemption - oh my God! Paid to whom? To devil? To what? The death on the cross is the death of God as an absolute master who controls everything in a kind of teleological unity so that all our stains are somehow redeemed as contributing to some higher harmony unknown to us. Christ coming here, suffering with us, means precisely, our suffering is for the real. You cannot redeem it in this stupid way." He's right.

[@not2tees]

"The death of Christ means something very radical. In all other religions: we trust God, we believe in God. The death of Christ means: God trusts us. It means, like: 'I give you your freedom. It's up to you.' Holy Ghost is for me, I take it literally when it says in the Bible, 'whenever the two of you are there, I will be there.' It means the gift of freedom. It means God isn't going to place up there a guarantee. God entrusts the fate of creation, His own fate, to us."

[@not2tees]

"That's for me what the Holy Ghost is: God is no longer the substantial master Up There. God is - to put it in this way - the spirit of our community. It's the gift of freedom. I claim that if you don't draw this crazy conclusion, then you re-paganize Christianity. You fall back to that level of 'God is Up There, sending messengers,' or whatever. Sorry to inform you (though you know this) but Christ is not a messenger of God, Christ is God." His "atheism" is indeed radical!

[@not2tees]

"What happens here is part, as it were, of the history of God. And although I don't agree with Emmanuel Levinas, he made nicely this point, (here I agree with him) apropos iconoclasm: don't misread it! The prohibition against making the image of God in Judaism does not mean this Gnostic way, 'Oh, it's too mysterious, we cannot paint it.' It means the exact opposite. It means, God is alive not in your stupid deep meditations of Up There, but how you act/react with others."