Bernhard Welte - Building bridges between theology and philosophy

Abstract

Bernhard Welte was born in 1906 in Meßkirch near Lake Constance. In a retrospective view of his childhood and youth, he laments that his Catholic-influenced homeland was no longer living in the ideal world for which one longed, but in an altogether defensive situation. The Catholic faith was dominated by neo-scholasticism, which fought against the hostile tendencies of the time. The intellectual world of philosophy and science had been at odds with the Christian faith since the Enlightenment and secularization. Besides Welte, there were two people from Meßkirch with whom he was acquainted and who were to become very famous, namely the philosopher Martin Heidegger and the later Archbishop of Freiburg Conrad Gröber. The three people from Meßkirch each dealt differently with the situation described. This hurt Bernhard Welte from the beginning. A solution could perhaps be found in Freiburg with its high academic standards. There he found the open-minded "Freiburg Circle", which was open to the questions of the time. In this circle he found researchers who dealt with the most prominent theologian of the Catholic faith, Thomas Aquinas, in a new way, namely, with French philosophers and theologians, they created a new image of Thomas: not a man of stubborn conservative spirit, but who tried to build a bridge between faith and philosophy, even if it did not last long. Welte sought this bridge for his, a newer time.

He found it in his habilitation on Thomas Aquinas and Karl Jaspers. Jaspers had spoken of "philosophical faith" as the center of philosophy. Jaspers was, so to speak, the ambassador of "existential philosophy" after the war. This seemed to suit Weltes' interest quite well. He was interested in the subject of "existence", the philosophy of the "essence of man". When Jaspers spoke of "philosophical faith," shouldn't there be a bridge to "religious faith"? Welte's study caused a sensation. But Welte could not agree with Jaspers on one thing: Jasper's faith aimed at a floating "transcendence" and was not to be won over by the Christian incarnation. But something remained from this comparison of Thomas and Jaspers: the method, that is the method of phenomenology. Freiburg was the place of the new philosophical method after Edmund Husserl came to Freiburg with Heidegger. To determine and apply the basic operations of phenomenology remained Weltes' special task thereafter. After his appointment to the chair of Christian Philosophy of Religion in 1952, the name of "Freiburg Phenomenology of Religion" spread with Welte. However, elsewhere the phenomenology of religion according to Husserl's method had also already gained a foothold and Welte joined it. The theme of the phenomenology of religion at that time was the "sacred". For Welte it became the basic word of his thinking for years. However, the basic words of "salvation" and "sacred" were not reserved for the theologians; Heidegger and others also sought the "salvation" of Dasein or existence in the philosophy of being. The last years Welte was therefore in conversation with Heidegger to work out the difference between philosophical salvation and Christian "salvation" or "sacred" and "God". It can be recalled at this point the statement of Levinas, which was turned against Heidegger: "Salvation is not being". Thus Welte finally went with Heidegger the way through all stages of being: God is not being, God is not the "sacred", God is not the holy, God is before all and above all: the incomprehensible, the "light in nothing".