Monty Python and Philosophy, Gary Hardcastle [portable ebook reader TXT] 📗

God Is Dead (and I’m Not Feeling so Good Myself)

Alright, I can see your priorities. Let me play, then, Virgil to your Dante, Socrates to your Plato, Pontius Pilate to your Biggus . . . well, never mind. Let’s examine the remarkable, sinless life of Brian Cohen (Maximus) in light of certain philosophical and theological worries. And regarding such worries, God is on top of the heap, so let’s get right to that. This may be objectionable to some. Perhaps I’m bound for the infernal region. Handily, my Baptist friends believed that once you are saved, you’ll always be saved, and they have even been known to toss out those who disagree (although I was never clear whether that is enough to get a person “unsaved”). It seems the Baptists can send you on your way, but not precisely to hell, so they, along with most Protestants, seem to have signed a sort of non-proliferation of damnation pact, abdicating the nuclear option for the soul. The Roman Catholics wisely retain their weapon stock, leaving them the only remaining super(natural)-power. But as I mentioned, I got saved by the Baptists and I am not going to look a gift-Deity (or badger) in the mouth. You are quite another matter. You may need to go and find your own Baptists. Mine are probably in heaven by now. But it is your soul I am most worried about, as you will see.

So, God. In 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), in an especially foul mood, published the following infamous words (except they were in German):

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place and cried incessantly: “I seek God! I seek God!” As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. “Is God lost?” one asked. . . . “Or is he hiding?” “Is he afraid of us?” “Has he gone on a voyage? Emigrated?” [I thought God was non-migratory.] The madman jumped into their midst. . . . “Whither is God?” he cried. “I will tell you. We have killed him, you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? . . . [a dozen more such questions] . . . Do we hear nothing yet of the gravediggers of God? . . . God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.28

Nietzsche was never renowned for his lightness of heart. It is not easy to distinguish the philosophical from the theological sense in this little narrative. Until recently both theologians and philosophers were plenty occupied with the Big Guy, so how to tell the difference?

One might think, “no theologian would proclaim the death of God,” but in the 1960s a bunch of theologians got a wild hair and did just that, and started wringing their hands over what becomes of theology afterwards.29 It was a silly time. They mostly went away, some not by their own choosing. So what is Nietzsche on about, and what makes it philosophy?

In the passage, the crowd of unbelievers is laughing at the man who would be sincere. Make no mistake, this is all about laughing at God, and what perils to the soul accompany this activity. What kills God is the laughter—or at least, laughter kills the cheerless God sought by those whose dominant religious passion is wrapped in pathos. Few have contributed more to laughing at such a God (and His followers) than the loyal Pythons, but they begin by having God (a less austere one) laugh at such believers. In Monty Python and The Holy Grail, addressing the believers adopting the “correct” pathos, God says: “Oh, don’t grovel . . . do get up! If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s people groveling!!” When Arthur apologizes, God rebukes him: “And don’t apologize. Every time I try to talk to someone it’s sorry this and forgive me that and I’m not worthy . . .” and “It’s like those miserable psalms. They’re so depressing. Now knock it off.”30 This is the sort of situation into which Nietzsche’s “madman” steps, as a pathetic follower (or so he is taken to be by those laughing). The laughter is the clue that whatever reverence the solemn God once commanded has lost its grip. This may be the “madman’s” point, of course.

This Deity Is Bleedin’ Demised

Nietzsche is quite right. If that God ever really existed, He is dead now. That so many people find the Pythons funny is Nietzsche’s justification. The God of our Victorian foreparents doesn’t frighten us now nearly so much as a Stephen King novel, although His followers (God’s, not King’s) are still numerous enough and in themselves plenty scary and increasingly desperate in an unbelieving world. Stephen King’s followers are scarier when one sits near them at dinner, although they get on nicely with Nietzsche’s people, since they all wear black, chew with their mouths open, and happily endure the interminable ramblings of self-indulgent writers who need editors far more than followers. The old God has been reduced now to a weapon of mass destruction, wielded by those angry about His death. Yet, to have a personal relationship with the dead God, one must supplement the historic pathos with a peculiar narcissistic psychosis.31 This psychosis I will call “the Comic,” following a usage by Henri Bergson (1859-1943), which I will explain in a moment. For now, grant that reflection upon the difference between the history of the pathos of Christianity and its modern transformation into a psychosis is very much a philosophical matter, not a theological one, and this is what Nietzsche was foreseeing.

Philosophy is reflection upon all experience and aims at self-knowledge, including religious experience and ideas like “God.” Theology, by contrast, is reflection upon religious experience and