Pamięć w myśleniu religijnym. Kultura wspominania, zapominania i nadziei

Abstract

The aim of the present considerations was to scrutinize the presence of memory in religious thinking. The research field was Jewish and Christian religious memory (tradition), viewed in formal and objective aspects. Some modes of memory (recalling, forgetting, hope) are discussed, and God’s faithful memory of man and the drama of human forgetfulness about God are indicated as well. The presented analyses, albeit limited and fragmentary of necessity, can serve as a creative impulse to launch investigations on the relations between religious memory and modem times. Today, we witness the rise of numerous problems in this field in connection with an unexpected return of religion to our current reality, as none of the following have come true: predictions of the onset of a “completely religionless era” (D. Bonhoeffer) or the hopes of 19th and 20th century critics of religion who wanted to reduce it to socio-psychological relations, such as reaction to social injustice (K. Marx), compensation of weakness (F. Nietzsche) or childhood neurosis (S. Freud). Though still hesitantly, religion is making its way back to culture, and this entails the necessity of defining its proper place in the modem society. In this respect, the present times open a huge research field for the philosophy of religion, one of the crucial areas of investigation being reflection on the specificity of religious memory.