It is not easy to be an atheist during Christmas. Atheism demands seriousness: if God does not exist, one must be consistent. However, the experience of living without dependence on a Creator Being—a defining characteristic of atheism—often gives rise to a new, subterranean divinity. There is nothing more absolute than denying the possibility of an Absolute.
Some of Friedrich Nietzsche’s thought seems to flow in this direction. Christianity, he argues, was born as the insurrection of the dispossessed. Yet, it equalizes all people at the lowest level, creating a scenario of shared weakness. Nietzsche sought to transcend this pitiable state through the concept of the Übermensch, or “Superman,” who is full of vitality, driven by the will to power, and holds profound contempt for a God who, in Nietzsche’s eyes, failed on the cross.
More intriguing is the perspective of the Mexican philosopher Guillermo Hurtado. A scholar of Bertrand Russell’s thought, Hurtado published a small book in 2016 titled Dialéctica del Naufragio (The Dialectic of Shipwreck). In its pages, Hurtado not only examines the question of life’s meaning but also reflects on the crisis within his own atheism.
Indeed, a well-educated philosopher, equipped with the full rationality of rigorous study, may at some point in life perceive a crack in the framework: God is nowhere to be seen. Yet, Hurtado proposes, perhaps the first humans were not expelled from Paradise by God; instead, God may have distanced Himself from their lives and the world. If this is true, the absence of God explains why we do not see the Creator. Our predicament is far worse than that of the atheist: we are not alone, but we are abandoned. In God’s absence, humanity wanders lost, yearning for something more.
Even Jean-Paul Sartre, an avowed atheist, appeared to glimpse this yearning in a moment of extreme adversity. Captured by the Nazis in 1940, Sartre sought to console his fellow prisoners by writing a Christmas play titled Bariona, or the Son of Thunder. That same December, Sartre performed in the play, taking on the role of one of the Magi, who declares:
“It is true we’re very old and very wise and know all there is to know about the bad things on this earth. But when we saw that star in the sky, our hearts jumped for joy like children’s and we set forth; because we wanted to do our duty as men, which is to hope. The man who loses hope … is the man who’ll be hounded out of his village. … But for the man who has hope, everything comes up smiles and the world is his oyster.”[1]
There are indeed moments when evil seems overwhelming, crushing, and inescapable. Yet, during that dark Christmas, Sartre seemed to brush against the horizon of Hope—not optimism, not utopianism, but the Hope that arises from the presence of something unexpected, a presence that bursts into the world and opens a new horizon for suffering and injustice.
In other words, the absurdity that Albert Camus so profoundly meditated upon faces a sharp challenge. A surprising and scandalous presence emerges as a faint light in the fog: a small, marginalized child is born in Bethlehem. Through this child, an extraordinary hypothesis enters history: the Whole is found in the fragment. In the greatest fragility lies the secret that evil will not have the final word.
Note
[1] Contat, Michel. The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre. Northwestern University Press, 1974, p. 110.
Rodrigo Guerra López is the secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.
Originally from Mexico City, he graduated in philosophy from the Free Popular University of the State of Puebla, Mexico; he was then awarded a higher degree in university humanism from the Ibero-American University, Mexico, and a doctorate in philosophy from the International Academy of Philosophy of the Principality of Liechtenstein.
He has held the role of academic coordinator of the John Paul II Pontifical Institute in Mexico City and has served as professor of metaphysics, bioethics, and philosophy of law at the PanAmerican University, Mexico. In 2013 he held the Karol Wojtyla Memorial Lectures at the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland.
From 2004 to 2007 he directed the Observatorio Socio Pastoral of the Latin American Episcopal Council. In 2008 he founded the Centro de Investigación Social Avanzada (CISAV), of which he is professor-researcher of the Division of Philosophy and member of the Consejo de Gobierno.
He is a member of the theological commission of the Latin American Episcopal Council and of the Pontifical Academy for Life, and is the author of numerous publications in the field of anthropology, bioethics, and social philosophy.
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