Facs
Transcript
So the Protestant education must finally lead to the Protestant, I wouldn't call it autonomy, but I would like to call it theonomy, derived from theos, God, and nomos, law –– not a heteronomy, a strange law, is imposed on us (the ecclesiastical), nor autonomy (without any center and content), but theonomy, namely a life which is centered in the center of all life, where the autonomous decisions get their meaning and their content, from the Ultimate, even if they are directed against the church.
So we have here a most difficult problem again, the education towards freedom from education. And this is indeed the Protestant aim. Perhaps it will never be reached, but it must remain the aim, and Protestantism can never accept the Catholic principle of life-long subjection to the authority of the Church. This is indeed a great decision, and everyone who is tired of his autonomy is inclined to go into the protective gown, which is all-embracing, of the Mother-Church. Or we can also [call] it “womb,” returning to it: there you have the safety of your pre-birth situation. But Protestantism doesn't give this safety, it gives the risk, and in the risk the total in reunion with God, and the possibility of another separation, in the person-to-person encounter.
Now here you have these three steps, and these three great problems: 1) from primitivism, through the critical stage, through reinterpretation of these symbols; 2) the relationship of actual questions and answers; 3) the autonomy, which becomes theonomy, if it is related to the Ultimate.