Perhaps this is an area where every generation starts from scratch. Although the crisis of the First World War inaugurated an especially strong period of disillusion with regard to the optimism of the previous age, the pattern has repeated itself in many ways in more recent times, e.g., the loss of faith in politics as a means of advancing human well-being. And perhaps this also has to do with basic elements in growing up.

Now, as at the beginning of the 19th century, there is a certain discovery of Eckhart and related figures. There are questions as to how far our Eckhart accords with the real medieval teacher of that name, but there are certainly images in his work that help us work our way past several of the aporia with which we're confronted in our attempts to think about God.

I still read a lot about teenage angst! Of course, any kind of mourning CAN become pathological and then it 'has to stop', but to move through life untouched by the loss of hopes, beliefs and aspirations once cherished is also questionable.

Interpretation is a task that we repeatedly have to take up and start again from the beginning, Sisyphus-like. But, as Camus said, we must always imagine Sisyphus happy, and this is not so difficult when it's a matter of texts that reveal important truths about being human.

I think he [Heidegger] sets the question up in a useful way and, despite appearances, he's not 'against' technology. He just wants us to have a questioning and thoughtful relation to it. This must be relevant to any approach.

But why should a religious person be interested in a work like Heidegger's that many regard as the epitome of nihilism? For a start, because Heidegger forces us in a way that few philosophers do to really think through the seriousness and all-encompassing nature of our mortality.

Barth's approach tears up any possibility of dialogue between faith and unfaith or between theology and other human sciences. Theology just says what it says on the basis of scripture, and that's that.