Religious anecdote and its theological origins

Abstract

The article deals with the ethical assessment of a religious anecdote. The author insists that religious jokes can be regarded as a form of confessional identity as they date back to the antiquities and often imply the most important theological problems. Some religious anecdotes are analyzed to show that the humorous techniques used in them refer to some characteristic standards of theological reasoning. In the author’s view, religious anecdotes are mostly based on a parody of the principle of а “self-establishing truth”. Among other cases, this kind of truth was used in the ontological argument for the existence of God proposed by Anselm of Canterbury. Now­adays, it is considered obvious by both theologians and philosophers that the ontological argu­ment is valid only for those who already believe in God. For the rest, however, such an argument is nothing but a joke. From this point of view, any manifestation of religious faith contains something anecdotical as it is always a deviation from the norms of rational thinking. Nevertheless, in confessional and national self-awareness such a deviation based on self-establishing truths is rather important because it helps to construct a consistent world view satisfying all the needs of a religious or national community. Therefore, deviations from the norms of rationality can be considered as the most important factor in a confessional or national identity.