In his book The Gay Science, Frederich Nietzsche famously declares that “God is dead.” If we steer clear of whether God is actually dead or not, we come to a profound experiential truth of modern life: for many, it, at least, feels as if “God is dead.” In comparison to previous ages, the modern one is disenchanted. A medieval person may have been comforted by the moon as the lamp of an ever-vigil God or seen the stars as divine signs begging to be interpreted, but the modern person sees the moon and stars as distant balls of matter floating randomly. As the Catholic novelist Flannery O’Connor said sixty years ago, “If you live today, you breathe in nihilism.”
The purpose of this reading group is to experience God’s absence and presence through modern literature. We will read widely across time, genre, and religious belief: from John Milton to the contemporary author Phil Klay, from the short stories of Anton Chekhov to the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Discussions will center around this question: What does a life with or without God feel like?
All undergraduate, graduate, and medical students are welcome.
Email jprather@houstoninstitute.org to RSVP.
