heresy and the European imagination between the world warsLazier, Benjamin1971-creatorauthor.textbibliographyElectronic books.History.njuPrinceton, N.JPrinceton University Press©20082008monographiceng1 online resource (xiv, 254 pages)Could the best thing about religion be the heresies it spawns? Leading intellectuals in interwar Europe thought so. They believed that they lived in a world made derelict by God's absence and the interruption of his call. In response, they helped resurrect gnosticism and pantheism, the two most potent challenges to the monotheistic tradition. In God Interrupted, Benjamin Lazier tracks the ensuing debates about the divine across confessions and disciplines. He also traces the surprising afterlives of these debates in postwar arguments about the environment, neoconservative politics, and heretical forms of Jewish identity. In lively, elegant prose, the book reorients the intellectual history of the era. God Interrupted also provides novel accounts of three German-Jewish thinkers whose ideas, seminal to fields typically regarded as wildly unrelated, had common origins in debates about heresy between the wars. Hans Jonas developed a philosophy of biology that inspired European Greens and bioethicists the world over. Leo Strauss became one of the most important and controversial political theorists of the twentieth century. Gershom Scholem, the eminent scholar of religion, radically recast what it means to be a Jew. Together they help us see how talk about God was adapted for talk about nature, politics, technology, and art. They alert us to the abiding salience of the divine to Europeans between the wars and beyond--even among those for whom God was long missing or dead.The Gnostic return -- God interrupted: Romans in Weimar -- Overcoming Gnosticism -- After Auschwitz, earth -- Pantheism revisited -- The Pantheism controversy -- From God to nature -- Natural right and Judaism -- Redemption through sin -- Jewish Gnosticism -- Raising Pantheism -- From nihilism to nothingness -- Scholem's golem.Benjamin Lazier.Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-244) and index.e------Jonas, Hans1903-1993Scholem, Gershom1897-1982Strauss, LeoJonas, Hans1903-1993Scholem, Gershom1897-1982Strauss, LeoPhilosophJonas, HansScholem, GershomStrauss, LeoGnosisGod (Judaism)History of doctrines20th centuryJewish philosophy20th centuryHeresyHistory20th centuryPantheismHistory20th centuryGnosticismHistory20th centuryEuropeIntellectual life20th centuryRELIGIONJudaismTheologyPHILOSOPHYReligiousGnosticismGod (Judaism)History of doctrinesHeresyIntellectual lifeJewish philosophyPantheismEuropeJodendomGnosticismePantheïsmeAfwezigheid van GodEuropa (geografie)PantheismusJüdische PhilosophieHäresiePantheismus-StreitGnosis 1900-1999 fast BM610 .L3935 2008eb296.3/110904Lazier, Benjamin, 1971-Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, ©2008(DLC) 2008005405(OCoLC)2123756529781400837656140083765022573/cttx3fr JSTORhttp://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=355995http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=355995N$T11030720200709055334.0ocn705945740eng