Reflection for March 11

Looking into the faces of the great “masters of suspicion”—Freud, Marx and Nietzsche—[Paul] Ricoeur did not flinch. Yes, they were reductionists, denying the full range of power for religious symbols. But religion, said Ricoeur, urgently needs their furious efforts to “liquidate the idols.” Only through the most nihilistic and destructive criticism can people of faith be freed from idolatry to discover anew religious truth. “It may be,” said Ricoeur, “that extreme iconoclasm belongs to the
restoration of meaning” (Thomas G. Long, “Idol smasher,” Christian Century, March 7, 2012).