Abstract
K.H. Miskotteâs Bijbels ABC, recently translated into English as Biblical ABCâ¯s, resources resistance by carefully reading the Hebrew scriptures. This article argues that the central, defining theme of the book is the focus on the Name YHWH as âanti-pagan monument par excellence.â Paganism for Miskotte does not mean the absence of religion nor a particular, polytheistic religion or worldview, but the natural human inclination to declare the existing order sacred. Humanity is profoundly âoccupiedâ and needs the Word, the Name-in-action, in order to be liberated from pagan, religious occupying forcesâwhether these forces are political, spiritual, military, economical or linguistic. This focus on the âanti-paganâ stance of the Name determines the entire structure of Biblical ABCâ¯s, its method and content.
Biblical ABCâ¯s1 has a special place in the oeuvre of K.H. Miskotte. It is a little gem between two other monumental works. Just before the German forces invaded Dutch soil, Miskotte had finalized his book Edda en Thora2 [Edda and Torah], in which he compared the pagan myth of the Edda to the Hebrew Bible. After the surrender of the Dutch army, the book was forbidden and no longer available. After the war, Miskotte presented his views on the meaning of the Hebrew Bible in his magnum opus When the Gods are Silent,3 a text that essentially elaborates upon what had already been sketched out concisely in Biblical ABCâ¯s.
Miskotte wrote the much smaller booklet of Biblical ABCâ¯s (1941) in a hurry. It was meant to instruct leaders of Bible-reading groups and to give them a sense of the structural elements of the biblical textsâthe grondpatronen [ground patterns]4âso that they could teach and lead the many reading groups that arose during the German occupation. Biblical ABCâ¯s has often been compared to a stock cube, holding together all the oils and spices in a very compressed form, a cube from which the careful reader can make thousands of portions of theologically tasty soup, if she has the patience to water the cube properly.
This article aims at analyzing what could be considered the constitutive ingredient of this little stock cube. Given the different thematic chapters in the book, many different theological loci seem to battle for priority. But when looked at more closely, a single dominant theme can be discerned that runs through the entire book and constitutes its theological position and its message. In my perception, this single theme consists of both a positive and negative sideâor rather, involves an affirmative and a critical stance. The single theme is the priority of the divine Name (YHWH) and, deriving from it, the âmethod of the Nameâ (21) that reverses the order of acquiring theological knowledge and, at the same time and by doing so, criticizes and thwarts our natural human religion and religious intuitions. As with many aspects of Miskotteâs theological ideas, this decisive theme at first appears to be but a formal, methodological issue, yet it turns out to be crucial material theology. It starts with Miskotteâs denouncing all pre-framed human categories or concepts or intuitions as ways to gain divine knowledge. He clearly advocates that all theological knowledge can only be derived from the specific event of the Word, which comes from the Name. Knowledge of God starts with the particularity of the Name. In scripture, and therefore in theology, epistemology moves from the particular toward the general and not the other way around.
Miskotteâs prioritization of the particular immediately brings with it very critical consequences for Christian theology: the general religious inclinations of humanity do not constitute the starting point of the theological enterprise; rather, this role belongs to the careful reading of scripture, which sketches out the Name in unexpected ways. Moreoverâand such is the material, critical side of the central theme in Biblical ABCâ¯sâthe Name causes the entire Bible to be an âanti-religiousâ or âanti-paganâ testimony. The Name, as it appears in the world of the Bible, is not a neutral appearance, according to Miskotte. It sets itself apart from both nature as such and human culture, thus evoking an exodus out of natural human bindingsâthose bindings that Miskotte characterizes as paganism. This will be discussed in the second half of this article, but first I will start with the methodological side of the central theme of Biblical ABCâ¯s.
1 Method of the Name
Miskotte identifies his method as a phenomenological method, inspired by the scholarly current of phenomenology of religion established at the beginning of the twentieth century as a response to and criticism of reductionist empiricism. The Dutch scholar Pierre Daniel Chantepie de la Saussaye (1848â1920) is considered the founder of this movement, which has had a large influence on the study of religion in Europe. Scholars within this movement, though divided on many topics, were united in their criticism of reductionist empiricism and in their desire to study religion as a phenomenon sui generis, irreducible to the physiological, historical, or sociological categories of other fields of study. Many of the phenomenologists worked under the assumption that the Holy or the Sacred was the driving force behind the phenomena they studied and described.5 It was the Dutch scholar Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890â1950) who tried to draw a sharper distinction between theology and the study of religion by limiting the phenomenology of religion to the study of the acts of religious people.6 He developed his own form of phenomenology in which religious phenomena are viewed as structured.7 These structures of religious phenomena are to be found within the appearances of religious acts themselves. Not the alleged force behind them but the phenomena themselves must first be named and, secondly, understood. This second step shows that Van der Leeuw was strongly influenced by Wilhelm Diltheyâs method of Einfühlung:8 the phenomena should also be interpolated in oneâs own life and consciousness in order to really understand them.9 For Van der Leeuw, this is only one step in his method of phenomenology, which ideally leads to grasping the âessenceâ of religious phenomena, and of a religion as a whole, by describing its âstructures.â10
Miskotte embraced the approach of this so-called Wesensschau [observation/intuition of essences].11 The method includes the observer making an existential connection with his/her object and focuses upon the observation of essential structures, whether the object is an African dance or a Greek epic. This resulted in Miskotteâs focus on key words [grondwoorden], structural words and concepts that constitute the entirety of scripture. Additionally, this methodological commitment means that no special hermeneutics for biblical texts need to be developed. Understanding scripture does not principally differ from understanding any other text or phenomenon.12
Already in this formal aspect of his theology, Miskotte prioritizes the concrete, specific object of his research (in this case, the biblical text) over the general concepts or categories with which scholars in religious studies or theology usually confront their objects. First and foremost, the text should be observed as a structured world of its own, apart from pre-framed questions and concepts. This method also includes the suspension of judgment as well as the suspension of belief or disbelief. As Miskotte clearly states at the beginning of Biblical ABCâ¯s, his booklet is not meant to advocate truth or to practice Christian apologetics, but only to advance insight into the structural concepts and key words within the world of the Bible, âwithout posing the question of truthâ (14). For this reason, the first chapter is programmatically called âReading Scriptureâ and the second chapter âTeachingâ: the starting point is the study of scripture that âopens as a worldâ (1) and presents itself to us as âTeaching,â Miskotteâs rendering of the word Torah (7).
The phenomenological method thus features an all-encompassing priority of the particular: the texts as given phenomena should be observed and understood on their own terms, not pressed into the mold of predefined, abstract concepts or ideas. However, this priority of the particular is not limited to methodology only: according to Miskotte, it turns out that the biblical texts, like many other literary texts, demonstrate a preference of their own for the concrete over the abstract, for the particular over the universal. To give an example: time after time, Miskotte stresses that one should not too easily ignore the anthropomorphic character of the biblical texts and their protagonist (24â25).13 After all, in the Bible, we encounter a very concrete, human manner of speaking. In contrast with what we might expect from a religious text, this anthropomorphic language about God and reality is not a primitive residue that should be overcome by hermeneutics and exegesis in order to get to the putative âheartâ of the matter. On the contrary, the anthropomorphic language and manner of speaking is the heart of the matter.14 This particular God is concerned with a particular humanity: the message of the Bible is not about abstract notions, but about concrete, human particularities.
Following this path, the theological aspect of Miskotteâs âmethodâ comes into sight: if we cannot impose our own concepts and assumptions upon the texts we try to understand, we cannot approach the biblical texts with our preexisting concepts of âGodâ either. Here too, the biblical texts correct the reader with their particular order and with their particular anthropomorphic manner of speaking. There is not a general concept of âGodâ or âdeityâ that sets the tone in Tanakh, but a very special Name. The texts of Tanakh do not work with a general concept of god and gods, but rather introduce a particular Name, YHWH, which then subsequently defines the content of the concept âgod.â Miskotte shows how in Tanakhâin the Psalms but also in narrative texts, prophetic texts, and many other textsâthe Name takes central stage:
The word âNameâ is, as it were, the A of the biblical ABCâ¯s, the first and decisive line in the design of the thoughts of God. In the building of scriptural vocabulary, it is the cornerstone, and it possesses a miraculous supporting capacity. It binds even the most disparate parts together and gives these contradictions a gleam of certainty that has no human origin. Whoever learns to fathom this word becomes truly Bible-believing.15
17
The Name itself is revelation in its optimal form: amid the status quo, someone-in-particular makes himself known. The general concept of âgodâ is not decorated with an extra name, the predicate YHWH, but ratherâaccording to Miskotteâit is the other way around: the unfamiliar name YHWH is the starting point, it is the particular that takes the lead. It is this Name that begets the predicate âgod.â When reading Israelâs confession in Deuteronomy 6, the first part of the sentence should therefore be stressed: âYHWH is our god.â The order YHWH Elohim is irreversible.16
God does not appear to us as the most general, that which can be found everywhere, but rather as the most unique, that which can be sought and found somewhere specific. This does not mean God couldnât be the most general and the all-powerful and the omnipresent, but rather that the road to knowledge does not begin with the general.
19
Taking this inversion into account, it is understandable why Miskotte, after the introductory chapters, starts with the Name as the A of the biblical ABCâ¯s (chapter 3), and also that the following chapters are about the Order of Godâs virtues (chapter 5) and the Unity of these virtues (chapter 6). Miskotte has done everything he can to make clear that the general concepts of divine attributes, such as infinity and omnipotence, should not be the frame in which one fits the A of the biblical ABCâ¯s, the Holy Name. The adjectives or characteristics that are used for YHWH, as well as Godâs ânamesâ (chapter 4), can only be understood from the unique Name itself. As we learn from Miskotte in chapter 7 (The Acts), a name (a person) can only be known through his/her acts. Hence all divine adjectives or attributesââperfections,â as Barth calls them17âmust derive from and relate to the Name in his sole act of Love. In this particular act the Name may, subsequently, also prove to be almighty and omnipotent:
21This is the same structure as the Old Testament, which is, to speak, theMETHOD OF THE NAMEnamely: first, this God is our Godâand only then: this God is the only, the almighty, the omnipresent, and so on.
The priority of the particular appears thus on many different levels as the methodological key in Biblical ABCâ¯s and in Miskotteâs theology in general: on the textual, literary, hermeneutical, and theological level.18 In all cases, the method of knowledge always starts with the particular and then possibly moves to the universal: the view of the latter, though, will be changed substantially when it has its starting point in the particular.19
2 Anti-religious and Anti-pagan Testimony of Scripture
For Miskotte, biblical revelation is the self-disclosure of this radically particular Name:20 someone who was not known makes himself known in particular words and deeds. If indeed the Bible is not about divinity in general, and if indeed the God of the Bible is not the omnipresent force that is behind everything that happens or exists, then the world of the Bible criticizes the general human concepts of religion. The concreteness and particularity of the Name to which both testaments testify21 forces the reader to take a close look at the biblical structures and key words [grondwoorden]. These latter may critically oppose the concepts with which human beings usually live and which they deduce from the world around and within them. It brings Miskotte to the conclusion that scripture is an anti-religious and anti-pagan testimony. This bold thesis is one of the first statements Miskotte makes in Biblical ABCâ¯s: he claims that we must turn to the Teaching, the Torah, again, in order to rediscover that the entirety of scripture opposes the natural religion of humanity, that is, it is set entirely against our own natural, religious inclinations (4).22
First, I would like to discuss Miskotteâs notion of the anti-religious testimony. Carefully following the lead words of the biblical texts, Miskotte concludes that in scripture, and first and foremost in the Hebrew Bible, there is something else at stake than an account of a general human âreligiousâ experience. The religious concepts that we might think or expect to be prominent in the âmagna cartaâ of Christianity are not testified to in scripture; on the contrary, our religious concepts may even be criticized by the key words and key concepts that take the lead in the biblical texts. In chapter 11 of Biblical ABCâ¯s, Miskotte starts with a list of words that we might expect the Bible to talk aboutâincluding eternity, personality, nature, virtueâbut which turn out to be not even present in the Israelite scriptural worldview. Miskotteâs own phenomenological approach to the biblical texts makes him aware that Tanakh deviates from the religious concepts that humanity tends to live by, both outside and inside the church.
Inspired by Barthâs notion of religion,23 Miskotte called the Hebrew Bible an anti-religious book because it questions all our natural religious inclinations. Limitations of space prevent me from going into detail about Miskotteâs own theological development and the manner in which his concept of âreligionâ changed from a positive or neutral reference to the very specific, partly Barthian concept of âreligion.â I also cannot address the ways in which Miskotte differs from Barth with regard to âreligion.â24 But briefly put: like Barth, Miskotte uses the term âreligionâ for the human activity that the special revelation in Christ (Barth) or of the Name (Miskotte) opposes. Barth asserts that the revelation of Christ finds humanity busy with justifying itself by creating gods in whose eyes human beings can justify themselves. Miskotte sketches the default religious stance of humanity as sacralizing the existing, thus stressing the more passive, underlining experience of life as it is. The Name encounters human beings while they are in full awe of the world as it is. This awe and its outworking is what Miskotte calls âreligion.â
However, discovering that âreligionâ as such is not a key concept in the Bible itself, Miskotte soon seems to prefer another, additional notion that refers to this particular âsense of lifeâ [Dutch: levensgevoel]. In his book Edda en Thora, which appeared in 1939, we get the impression that Miskotte eagerly opts for a concept that is closer to him and also more biblical: namely, pagan and paganism, referring to the biblical distinction between the Am Yisrael (â®
The material, theological meaning of âpaganismâ in Miskotteâs perception could best be summarized as the veneration of the existing order, the sacralization of the status quo. Paganism does not refer to a lack of religion or the absence of religious convictions, but, on the contrary, to religious ecstasy for whatever exists.27 This veneration of what-exists (Being) can take many forms, from very primitive worship of wooden idols to an extremely sophisticated metaphysical philosophy: and yet all these forms can be reduced, according to Miskotte, to a common denominator, which is nothing less than the âprostration before Life.â28 Paganism, in any form, is characterized by declaring the existing as authoritative simply in virtue of its existing.29
To avoid misunderstanding, it may be good to stress that by choosing the word âpaganism,â Miskotte does not refer to particular religious traditions or their real-existing followers in past or present. Neither does he have in mind the more general notion of polytheism, nor of atheism, nor a specific, sociologically distinguishable group of people who do not believe in God. On the contrary, the paganism that the message of the Old Testament opposes is something (according to Miskotte) very close to us all, religious and atheistic people alike. More than a conscious, confessional decision, it is an unconscious âsense of life,â a ânaturalâ default worldview. Miskotte himself saw its most extreme perversion reflected in the ideology of the National Socialists happening right before his eyes, but he identified this movement as an extreme, nihilistic version of the paganism that humanity as a whole, including the church, is always quite naturally in danger of slipping into.
In Biblical ABCâ¯s, Miskotte sketches the pagan worldview or âsense of lifeâ as a closed world, in which the lonely human being is left no other option than to accept and even worship Fate. The pagan is ultimately the lonely Hero who takes up his Fate in a silent universe. There may be gods in the pagan universeâmaybe even manyâbut they only reflect the forces and the fate that human beings experience in the world: âPaganism projects divine names out of their experience of life in the world: Zeus or Odin, the All, Life, Fateâ (27).
For Miskotte, it is the unique Name of YHWH which pierces this closed universe. YHWH, the God of Israel, does not equal Fate, or Life-as-it-is. On the contrary, the speech-act of the Word liberates humanity from this silent and lonely fate by speaking, by establishing a covenant between himself and his people. This act of Love overcomes fate and cleaves the silent universe.
The phrase that occurs more often than any other in Scripture, so often that we might gloss over it out of habit and boredom, is this: âAnd God said.â âThen God spoke.â Already this claim distinguishes the creation story, for example, from the seemingly similar mythologies of the nations. âThen God said, âLet there be lightâ; and there was lightâ (Gen 1:3).
In paganism, people speak or shout to silent Fate. The deeper this silence becomes, the more shrilly do human cries ring out, until they are stifled, and they ebb into the cruel silence of submission, which amounts to the death of the soul.
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We can now understand the focus of the second half of Biblical ABCâ¯s: after the emphasis on the methodological and theological priority of the particular in the chapters about the Name, subsequently thought through in relation to divine virtues and acts, Miskotte focuses on the very typical, anti-pagan key words of the Bible, starting with âWordâ (chapter 8). It is the important concept of âWordâ that initiates a genuine history, a truly human history, an exodus out of the silent pagan universe. This divinely initiated history itself is indicated in the Bible by the key word âWayâ (chapter 9): a path that leads humankind out of its myth, out of its belief that the world is good as it is. According to Miskotte, paganism essentially has no sense or knowledge of history, nor of true expectation (chapter 11), since the pagan world is ultimately closed, in a totalizing and also in a totalitarian way.
In a short finale,30 Biblical ABCâ¯s ends with an outlook on the life of the community that testifies in the world to this grand alternative to paganism (chapter 12). Like the divine Name or Teaching, âchurchâ may not be what we usually think it is. Miskotte identifies âcongregationâ in the biblical sense as core groups in society that, by reading the biblical texts, resist the paganism in society and in themselves. Church is not the worldly power of an institution or a dogma but consists of the marginal groups of resistance that are like salt that salts the earth. They resist the temptation of the pagan myth that the given things such as blood and soilâor should we say these days âraceâ or âidentityâ?âdefine humanityâs destiny.
3 Miskotteâs Self-Critical Criticism of Religion
Finally, a short note on the self-critical character of Miskotteâs approach to paganism. For it should be stressed that Miskotte does not aim for a judgment of paganism by the church or by Christianity that can be imposed upon others from an infallible, safe position. On the contrary, he recognizes the paganism that he describes in every fiber of his own being. Moreover, Miskotte realizes that there cannot ever exist a meta-position from which such a judgment could be made: we are all pagans, after all. If indeed paganism is the âreligion of natural man,â there is no point in condemning it. Quite the opposite: Miskotte wants to honor and appreciate paganism in its cultural expressions, in the stories, myths, music, philosophies, art, and novels that it has produced: âWe are constantly showing a lack of understanding, appreciation, and admiration of paganism.â31 This âsense of lifeâ that is so close to us all cannot be easily dismissed by judging it and placing it outside ourselves.
This does not mean, however, that the biblical texts do not, rightly, criticize paganism. On the contrary, the Bible is full of judgment. The critical stance of the biblical texts is something that Miskotte recognizes and appreciates as one of the main contributions of the Bible to humankind. This may be hard to understand in times when most of us struggle with the allegedly exclusive and even violent language of the Bible.32 But it is precisely in connection with such debates that Miskotteâs contribution could prove decisive. For Miskotte does not consider the judgment of paganism to be an intolerant form of religious zealotism but sees it as a liberation. The Word, even the divine judgment, liberates humanity from the âbondage to the demonsâ (41), from the house of religious slavery. Speaking of the psalms, Miskotte claims that âthe praise [of the psalms] is the joy of a soul drenched in wonder that we do not have to be pagans any moreâ (41).
In the biblical texts, it is Israelâand, in its wake, also the Christian congregationâthat is struck by the judgment of paganism first and foremost.33 It is the reader (or hearer) of the text whose paganism is mirrored and criticized and judged. Miskotte considers the biblical texts not only as a criticism of religion, but crucially as a criticism of the readerâs own religion, their own inclination to venerate the existing order instead of trusting the Name, who liberates humankind from its bondage to Fate, from the given status quo.
The self-critique34 that is hidden in the biblical texts is something that concerns the preacher and the congregation in the first place. It should be noted clearly that with this self-critique, Miskotte does not (only) mean that the church and its clergy should be aware of the devastating failures of the church institutions regarding their morality, their words and (lack of) deeds in the cruel history of the Christian church. That is something that needs to be taken into consideration as well, of course. But the self-criticism of the scriptures digs deeper. It poses a question about the paganism, the veneration of the existing order, that occurs today, even and especially among those who hear the scriptural words. As strongly as Miskotte opposed the Nazi ideology and its cruel deeds, he was fully conscious that the Nazism he witnessed was but a particularly perverse expression of the paganism within his own natureâfrom which he needed to be liberated by the Word.
Even though the concept of âoccupationâ is absent in Biblical ABCâ¯s35âprobably because Miskotte did not want to run the risk of wakening a rather sleepy German censorâthis is, in my opinion, exactly what Miskotte would consider to be the human condition: humanity is occupied by alienating forces, powers as he calls them (93), that lead humankind away from its original callingâto be human before YHWH. Miskotte shows that when one carefully follows the biblical key words, the Bible functions as a mirror to our times. Just as Miskotte discovered that the key concepts of the Nazi ideology such as Hero (54), Ideal, Eternity, Virtue (109) are not the decisive concepts in the Bible, in the same manner we can critique contemporary ruling concepts in view of the biblical preference for completely different key words such as Name, Word, Way, and Expectation. This criticism concerns the church as much as the world. Miskotte shows that a theology that is grounded in the key words of scripture has the ability both to criticize the confessional doctrines (this first and foremost!)âthus saving the church from pagan tendencies within itselfâand at the same time to criticize the secular godly powers that rule the world and that rule our own hearts and minds.
K.H. Miskotte, Bijbels ABC (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1941), translated into English in 2021 as Kornelis H. Miskotte, Biblical ABCâ¯s: The Basics of Christian Resistance, trans. E. Hof and C. Cornell (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2021). References to the English translation are given in parentheses in the main text of this article.
K.H. Miskotte, Edda en Thora: Een vergelijking van Germaanse en Israëlitische religie (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1939), no English translation is available (yet). Quotes from this book are taken from the 4th edition in paperback (Kampen: Kok, 2008), referred to as ET.
K.H. Miskotte, Als de goden zwijgen: over de zin van het Oude Testament (Amsterdam: Holland, 1956); translated into German as Wenn die Götter schweigen: Vom Sinn des Alten Testaments (Munich: Kaiser Verlag, 1963), transl. Hinrich Stoevesandt; and translated into English in 1967 as When the Gods Are Silent (London: Collins, 1967), trans. John W. Doberstein. The German and the English editions have been expanded by Miskotte himself, by adding a few short chapters and other explanatory sentences throughout the book. A few small chapters from the original Dutch edition were removed in the German and English edition. In this article, I will quote from the English edition/translation, abbreviated as WGS. Please note that the English custom of using capitals in book titles contradicts the meaning of the book itself, in which âgodsâ is systematically spelled without capitals.
Miskotte had a preference for concepts starting with the Dutch word âgrondâ [ground], such as grondlijnen [ground lines], grondwoorden [ground words], grondstructuur [ground structure] and many more, especially in relation to the grammar and structure of the Bible. The translators of Bijbels ABC have decided to leave the Dutch words as they are, offering a literal English translation between square brackets (xii).
Kocku von Stuckrad, The Scientification of Religion: An Historical Study of Discursive Change, 1800â2000 (Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter, 2014), 127â128.
Von Stuckrad, The Scientification of Religion, 124.
Axel Michaels, âPhenomenology of Religion,â in Religion Past and Present (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 34â35.
Here we leave aside the influence of the philosophical current of phenomenology and of its main representative, Edward Husserl, on Van der Leeuw. Molendijk states that Husserlâs influence was far less than Diltheyâs influence on Van der Leeuw. Philosophical phenomenology and phenomenology of religion have historically gone very different ways. See Arie L. Molendijk, âAu fond: The Phenomenology of Van der Leeuw,â Journal for the History of Modern Theology 25, no. 1 (2018): 57.
This comes very close to Miskotteâs âHerkenningâ [Recognition] that he offers after every chapter in Edda en Thora, when he compares the structures of the Edda to the dominating, contemporary ideological concepts (of Nazism, that is).
Thomas Ryba âPhenomenology of Religion,â in Robert A. Segal and Kocku von Stuckrad, eds., Vocabulary for the Study of Religion (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 43â45.
Even though Miskotte never explicitly stated the influence of Van der Leeuw on his work, it is clear that he has been influenced by him and by the entire current of phenomenology of religion (see also Gerrit G. de Kruijf, Heiden, Jood en Christen: een studie over de theologie van K.H. Miskotte (Baarn: Ten Have, 1981), 96). His dissertation Het Wezen der Joodsche Religie [The Essence of Jewish Religion] (Amsterdam: H.J. Paris, 1933), includes a paragraph on âZin en grenzen eener âWesensschauââ¯â [Meaning and Limits of a âWesensschauâ] (51â60), in which Miskotte refers only to Dilthey and not to Van der Leeuw, but clearly follows in Van der Leeuwâs footsteps with regard to the phenomenology of religion.
WGS, 146: âThere is no special hermeneutical method which is reserved for the Holy Scriptures.â Liberal theologians such as Friedrich Schleiermacher also opposed a special hermeneutical treatment of the biblical texts, but their argumentation was quite different: they did not believe that there was something like âspecial revelationâ and therefore no special hermeneutics was needed. Miskotte argues that the dialectical theology, in which he includes his own theology, defends the opposite: the highly particular revelation as testified in the scriptures âis seen to be so divine, but also so human, that it can contain and reveal the rule of life and thought for the whole of life,â the God of scripture is too great to be an exception.
In WGS, Miskotte dedicates a small chapter to âThe Anthropomorphous Nameâ (WGS, 127â133) and to âThe Humanity of Scripturesâ (WGS, 149â153).
Revelation is, for Miskotte, nothing less than incarnation: God makes himself known, he makes himself so small in order to be known by us. Incarnation is not a dogma or a certain aspect of the New Testament, but the entire presupposition of scriptureâof the entire way of speaking of Tanakh: God reveals himself in the relationship (the covenant) with humanity, in a human way.
This âinversionâ of the general and the particular is considered by Miskotteâs student Frans H. Breukelman as the decisive characteristic of the story of creation in Genesis 1. See F.H. Breukelman, Bijbelse Theologie I/2: Toledoth. De theologie van het boek Genesis (Kampen: Kok, 1992), 215: âIn heel de Tenach wordt niet kosmisch over de mens gesproken, maar menselijk over de kosmos.â [Tanakh does not speak cosmically about humanity, but in a human way about the cosmos].
I cannot fully grasp the contextual meaning of âBible-believingâ [Dutch: bijbelvast] in the English-speaking world, but I would prefer the translation âversed in scripture,â as the Dutch word âbijbelvastâ does not refer to âbeliefâ but only to a thorough knowledge of the Bible.
WGS, 123. For this reason, Miskotte is not very interested in the notion of âmonotheismâ while analyzing the character of biblical faith: âMonotheism is not special, because it does not need particular revelation. What is more advanced than monotheism appears in the guise of what is lesser: a godâ (20). Paganism can appear as polytheistic or as monotheistic: it does not really matter whether one god or multiple gods are being venerated, symbolizing the powers of the natural order. The Name criticizes both concepts.
In German: Vollkommenheiten. See Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik II/1 (Zürich: TVZ, 1942), §â¯29â31.
In literary terms this is called âmetonymyâ or pars pro toto. See for a clear explanation of the different (literary and theological) sides of metonymy in the Bible: Marco Visser, Pars pro toto: Analyse van de figuur van het pars pro toto in het werk van F.H. Breukelman en uitwerking aan de hand van de teksten over de knecht van JHWH in Jesaja. Een bijbels-theologisch onderzoek, ACEBT-SS 18 (Amsterdam: Societas Hebraica, 2021), esp. 65â80.
In this respect, Miskotte was influenced by Franz Rosenzweig and other Jewish philosophers (see, e.g., Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, 5th ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1996), 49â54). In our own time, Miskotte would have found an ally in the Jewish theologian and rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who made this a focal point of his theological work. See, for example, Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Aaron W. Hughes, Jonathan Sacks: Universalizing Particularity (Leiden: Brill, 2013), esp. 9â11.
See also Sören Petershans, Offenbarung des Namens und versöhntes Leben: Eine Untersuchung zur Gotteslehre bei K.H. Miskotte (Leipzig: EVA, 2016), 129â158.
This refers to another important aspect of Miskotteâs theology: in accordance with Barthâs threefold form of the Word, he considers scripture as âwitnessâ to the self-revelation of this particular God. Other than Barth he considers both testaments to bear witness to the Name. Materially, for Miskotte, this Name equals Jesus Christ (see Biblical ABCâ¯s, 28), but by stating that YHWH=The Name = Jesus Christ, Miskotte binds the two testaments more strongly together. Arnold Huijgen considers this concept of âtestimonyâ to be ârather forced,â saying âtoo little for the New Testament and too much for the Oldâ (A. Huijgen, âCalvinâs Old Testament Theology and Beyond,â in B. Gordon and C.R. Trueman, eds., Oxford Handbook of Calvin and Calvinism (Oxford: OUP, 2021), 100. This is, however, the heart of Miskotteâs theology: Jesus Christ is the fulfillment, confirmation, and perpetuation of the Name YHWH.
See also Collin Cornell, âName and Nihilism: Miskotte as Theological Interpreter for a World Come of Age,â in Communio Viatorum, 2021/3, 209â226, in which Cornell shows that Miskotteâs priority of the Name and biblical religion-criticism are âtwin themesâ throughout his work (217).
Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik I/2 (Zürich: TVZ, 1938), §â¯17. The German original appeared in 1938 and Miskotte was deeply influenced by it.
A detailed description of the development of Miskotteâs concept of religion, and the differences between his approach and Karl Barthâs in this regard, will be part of the thesis that I am currently preparing under the supervision of Stephan van Erp at the KU Leuven. For a brief description of the project, see:
ET, 21.
Although Miskotte adds the adjective ânaturalâ to the notion of religion, to define paganism: âpaganism is the natural religion of humanityâ (ET, 21) and the pagan is âthe human being in his natural religionâ (in the Dutch version of Bijbels ABC, 111. This is an addition to the text by Miskotte himself in 1966). âNaturalâ in this sense also hints to Barthâs rejection of ânaturalâ theology: a theology that acknowledges other sources for knowledge of God outside the special revelation of God in Jesus Christ as testified to in the scriptures, for example in nature or human reason.
ET, 216: âEn nu is het toch zo dat de mens van nature op zijn buik ligt voor dat wat is, voor het bestaande. Dat is het hele heidendom, het naïeve van de koperen of houten afgoden of het radicale en bewuste heidendom van de natuur en het Wereld-Schicksal, het noodlot. Zij liggen in religieuze vervoering voor wat dan toch maar bestáát en wat dan toch maar gebeurt en waar men dan toch maar niets aan veranderen kan, wat altijd zo geweest is en wat altijd zo blijven zal.â [And yet it is the case that humanity is naturally lying flat on its stomach for whatever-exists, for the Existing [Being]. That summarizes paganism altogether, the naivety of the copper or wooden idols or the radical and conscious paganism of Nature, of the Doom of the world, of Fate. They are lying in religious ecstasy for whatever does exist, for whatever does happen, and to which one cannot change anything, for what has always been and will remain so forever.âTrans. ME.]
ET, 66. Given the large range of (negative) connotations that the term âpaganismâ evokes, I will propose in my forthcoming study (see note 24) that a more neutral, descriptive terminology would help to understand what Miskotte means with âpaganismâ.
See also Rochus Zuurmond, âGebruik je verstand,â in: Ch. Doude van Troostwijk et al., eds., âWij willen het heidendom eerenâ: Miskotte in de ânieuwe tijdâ (Baarn: Ten Have, 1994), 110â114, esp. note 4.
I leave here aside the intriguing chapter 10 on Sanctification, but from the other contributions in this special issue it may be clear that âsanctifyâ is a central key word for Miskotte in the Hebrew Bible, which includes the emancipatory and justifying salvation by YHWHâwho is the ultimate Holy One.
WGS, 7 [trans. Doberstein]. In the Dutch original: âWij schieten altijd tekort in begrip en bewondering voor het heidendom.â
The debate about the exclusivistic and violent side of biblical monotheism (see note 16) received a boost in the second half of the 1990s when both Jan Assmann and Regina Schwartz addressed this critical/judgmental character of the (Hebrew) Bible. Regina M. Schwartz, The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). The debate has continued ever since. In my opinion, the self-critical stance of Miskotteâs biblical theology would be a great contribution to the debate on the allegedly âexclusiveâ and violent character of biblical monotheism. This is the main topic of my project referred to in note 24.
This is exemplarily shown in one of Miskotteâs âExamples of an Applicationâ with which When the Gods Are Silent ends. In the sketch about Exodus 32 (WGS, 382â388), Miskotte makes clear that the Golden Calf episode shows how easily Israel, who is also the reader of the text, slips into paganism by desiring an available deity. The judgment that follows is not a judgment of the world, but of the church: âJudgment begins with the household of God!â (387).
See also Susannah Ticciatiâs response article in this journal issue, âMiskotteâs Biblical ABCâ¯s: Paganism as Self-Deception,â in which she considers Miskotteâs focus on the particularity of the Name and his separateness from the world as the ultimate opening to human self-reflection and self-criticism, while, in contrast, pagan glorification of the All uncritically embraces every fear and desire and emotion that wells up among and within human beings.
In another booklet that Miskotte published in 1941, Het waagstuk der prediking (The Wager of Preaching), he does speak of the human being as âoccupied territoryâ: â⦠our human life, our entire existence turns out to be âoccupied territoryâ in which there is no place for the Word of God.â K.H. Miskotte, Het waagstuk der prediking (Den Haag: D.A. Daamen, 1941), 5. [Dutch original: â⦠ons mensenleven, ons ganse bestaan blijkt âbezet gebiedâ waarin voor het Woord Gods geen plaats is.â]
