Eugen Drewermann Quotes
June 20, 1940
More Eugen Drewermann Quotes
In all cultures, it is the task of a religion to close the field of contingency …and to set up havens of the absolute where it is possible to be led from acting to listening, from having to being, from planning to hoping, from judging to forgiving from the finite into the infinite. A society in which such open spaces of eternity do not exist or are only insufficiently developed dies of itself due to lack of air to breathe.
Eugen Drewermann— Quoted in Matthias Beier, A Violent God-Image. An Introduction to the Work of Eugen Drewermann, p. 276 (2004)
You see, my Lord Archbishop, what is "dubious" about my theology is not that it contradicts particular doctrinal teachings, things are much worse or better: what I want, is no more and no less than a fundamental change in the whole way that theology is done today; but I want this out of faith, not out of faithlessness.
Eugen Drewermann— Letter to Archbishop J J Degenhardt, printed on rear cover of Eugen Drewermann, Worum es eigentlich geht. Protokoll einer Verurteilung (1992)
People are given a false alternative: the choice between an unenlightened belief and an enlightened unbelief. Most intellectuals seem to pay homage to the second variant.
Eugen Drewermann— Quoted in Michael Meier and Marlène Schnieper, "Wir haben Gott zu einem Ding degradiert," Kath.ch.
If you want to change people by talking about God, then there is only one way: instead of teaching God, you must live God. Because: “teaching” God is unthinkable in any other way than the way you would teach love or poetry. You teach love only through love, poetry only through writing poetry, faith in God only through a contagious way of trusting.
Eugen Drewermann— Jesus von Nazareth (1996)
We see in the 20th Century an unfortunate trench warfare, in which psychoanalysis, in a struggle against the internalized compulsion and superstition of a particular doctrine, has expressed itself atheistically. By contrast, theology is not merely under suspicion of talking soullessly about God. Both theology and psychology, in striving for human health, need one another like the right and the left hand.
Eugen Drewermann— "Heil und Heilung - Theologie und Psychoanalyse," speech at a conference of therapists in Basel, Switzerland (1977-05-21)
Drewermann's contribution is indispensable for two reasons: because he takes mental/spiritual suffering seriously and works for the liberation of those who "all their life long, crippled and cramped by fear, were prevented from risking themselves in life." Secondly, because he does something for the worldwide Church which Latin American liberation theologians cannot achieve but need: he challenges the megainstitution's attempt to stabilize power by means of fear and names authoritarian religion "a form of violence."
Eugen Drewermann— Dorothee Sölle, "Heilung und Befreiung," from Der Klerikerstreit, ed. Peter Eicher, p. 30. (1990) Quoted (and translated) in Matthias Beier, A Violent God-Image. An Introduction to the Work of Eugen Drewermann, p 3 (2004)
