Albert Camus was a figure greatly admired during the second half of the twentieth century. His chilling evocation of the absurdity of human life in The Myth of Sisyphus,Footnote ¹ his stinging critique of the hypocrisy of bourgeois society in The Outsider,Footnote ² and his vivid depiction of Nazi oppression, and resistance to it, in The Plague,Footnote ³ struck a chord with a Europe devastated by the violence and suffering of two world wars. Camus’ work still appeals today: a new Pléiade edition of his complete works is in preparation;Footnote ⁴ the translation of his articles for the Resistance periodical Combat has revived interest in him in this country.Footnote ⁵ In a new century, still dominated by violence, in which religion is seen by many as contributing to that violence, the challenges posed for Christians by Camus’ atheist humanism remain powerful. My aim in this article is to explore the nature of those challenges and to consider some of the ways in which Christians are seeking to respond to them.

The Myth of Sisyphus begins with the statement that there is only one serious philosophical problem, that of suicide, deciding, that is to say, whether or not life is worth living. The image of the human condition, presented by Camus, is of Sisyphus, condemned for eternity to roll a stone up to the top of a hill, only to see it roll down again. The human condition is ‘absurd’. We, who are filled with the desire for clarity, are trapped in an irrational universe, indifferent to our needs and desires. We know that either God is all-powerful and we are not free, or that he is not all-powerful and we are free. Only when we cease to deceive ourselves and accept the absurdity of our condition will we find happiness.

The abstract concept of the absurd is given a social context in The Outsider. A young clerk, Meursault, leads an uneventful life, characterised by the routine of travelling to the office, working, travelling back home and sitting on his balcony in the evening, watching the world go by. When the novel opens, he has just received the news of his mother's death in an old people's home, some distance away. He makes the journey to the home, sits with the coffin overnight and attends the funeral. Then comes the event which changes his life: he shoots and kills an Arab. He is on the beach, it is oppressively hot, the sun blazes down, its light glints on the knife the Arab is holding, and Meursault fires the fatal shot. At his trial, Meursault shows no emotion, offers no excuse, makes no plea for mercy. The prosecution convinces the jury of Meursault's guilt, not because a plea of self-defence would not be sustainable, but rather because of the accused's lack of emotion. It is pointed out that Meursault had shown no emotion at his mother's funeral either: he had even smoked during the vigil over the coffin. Meursault is condemned to death because he does not behave as society expects him to behave. Enraged, he refuses to talk with the priest who comes to urge him to repent and seek God's forgiveness. As he sees it, the life he loved is to be taken from him because he had not wept at his mother's funeral. He faces death in the full knowledge of the absurdity of the human condition, unrecognised by the hypocritical, self-deceiving people who have condemned him.

Self-deception also characterises the people of Oran, who fail to recognise and act upon the signs that a plague is about to engulf the city: they refuse to see the significance of the dead rats, which appear in doorways and in stairways showing symptoms of disease. Nor had the German people recognised the signs of the evil which was to engulf Europe in the shape of Nazism. There were those who did recognise the signs, however, represented in the novel chiefly by Dr Rieux, a clear-thinking, positive human being, who understands the absurdity of the human condition, accepts the presence of evil in the world and does his best to combat it, without thought of reward. Rieux is the incarnation of Camus’ concept of ‘revolt’, developed in more philosophical language in The Rebel. Footnote ⁶ Rieux's attitude is contrasted with that of Father Paneloux, an academic and an expert on St Augustine, with little knowledge of the world. As the plague develops, Paneloux preaches, to the terrified citizens of Oran, that the plague has come as a punishment from God for their lack of faith. When he witnesses its full horror at first hand, however, and, with Rieux, watches a young child die, his certainty evaporates. Eventually, the team of doctors succeeds in defeating the plague and it gradually disappears. Rieux, the narrator, who clearly speaks for Camus, knows, however, that the retreat of the bacillus, the symbol of evil, is only temporary: it is merely dormant and will return.

Camus’ attitude to Christianity in these, his best known and most influential works, is negative. He was not, however, a militant opponent of the Christian faith. His biographer, Olivier Todd, writes, indeed, that he was ‘haunted by the idea of God throughout his life’.Footnote ⁷ In a lecture Camus gave in 1948, he said that he wanted a genuine dialogue with Christians, which did not paper over the cracks: he would welcome cooperation with them in a world where there was so much suffering.Footnote ⁸

Genuine dialogue between atheists and Christians seems at present to be drowned by what Nicholas Lash calls ‘Dawkins din’, a reference to Richard Dawkins’ highly publicised condemnation of religion.Footnote ⁹ During the past decade, all religion has been the victim of vehement attack. Lash suggests that the unbeliever, who is a genuine seeker after truth, has become invisible among those who either identify with Dawkins’ views, or who ‘can't be bothered with all that stuff’.Footnote ¹⁰ In A Secular Age,Footnote ¹¹ Charles Taylor analyses the way in which not to believe in God has become the default position over the last five decades or so, as compared with belief being the default position in, say, 1500. He charts the development, over the centuries, of the self-sufficient humanism, of which, he writes, Camus is a convincing representative, a person, who, because of his refusal to accept the consolation of the church, and his determination to work for the good of his fellow human beings, is respected and admired in today's society.Footnote ¹²

Camus’ atheism was not an ill-thought out, uninformed rejection of the Christian faith. As a young man, he devoted three years of academic study to a postgraduate thesis on ‘Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism’.Footnote ¹³ In this article I examine the aspects of the Christian faith which he explored in the thesis, the way he responded to them, and the problems which remained unresolved for him at the end of his studies. I then discuss ways in which those problems might form the basis for meaningful dialogue between Christians and those whose outlook on life reflects the concerns expressed by Camus.

Camus’ choice of subject for his ‘diplôme d'études supérieures’ was a surprising one. From a desperately poor family in Algeria, he was nevertheless well served by the French educational system. His teachers at primary and secondary school recognised his ability, and made it possible for him to go on to university in Algiers, where he took a degree in philosophy. Not all his time as a student was devoted to study: he played football, was a prominent figure in left-wing politics, took an active part in the theatre as both actor and producer and led a full social life. To his dismay, his football career was cut short when he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Even more seriously, on completion of his diploma, an academic career was closed to him because of his illness: it made him ineligible to sit for the agrégation, the passport to teaching at higher level in the French system. It was then that Camus’ writing career began: he worked as a journalist, first in Algiers, then in Paris. During the Nazi occupation of France, he edited the periodical Combat for the Resistance. His success as a writer earned him the Nobel prize for literature in 1957. His death in 1960, in a car accident, robbed Europe of one of its most gifted writers.

The subject of his diploma, ‘Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism’, seems out of character with the preoccupations of the young Camus, and to have little relevance to his future career. It provides evidence, however, of an early serious engagement with the Christian faith. It was a wide and daunting subject to undertake for a first postgraduate qualification, but Camus’ bibliography shows reading of considerable depth and breadth. In his introduction, Camus explains the attraction which the subject had for him: the work of Plotinus and Augustine appealed to him, he wrote, because they belonged to the Mediterranean world as he did; he felt closer to them than he did to distant German philosophers and theologians. The stated aim of the thesis was to discover wherein the originality of Christianity lay, through tracing the way, during the first four centuries ad, that Christianity interacted with Hellenic culture. It consisted of an introduction, and four chapters which dealt with: the growth of Christianity in the first two centuries ad; the perspectives of Gnostic thought; the contribution of the work of Plotinus to the development of Christianity; the work of Augustine.

In his introduction Camus presented the complex argument he was to develop in the thesis. He saw the Hellenic world, into which Christianity spread from its Jewish roots, as a civilisation confused and looking for certainties. The sky, he wrote, was peopled with gods, Jaweh, the Roman gods, the dark, tragic forces of Greek mythology competing with the enlightened perspective of such figures as Plato and Socrates. Christianity offered the certainty which people sought: it represented the birth of a new civilisation. It was not, however, a new philosophical system. Camus described it rather as ‘a collection of aspirations’. If it was to develop, it had to ‘pour itself into the forms of Greek thought’.Footnote ¹⁴ This was a difficult process. First, to the Greek concept of cyclical, necessary time, Christianity opposed the concept of historical time, in which, at one specific moment, the divine revealed itself through the Incarnation. Second, to the Greek view of man, pursuing, through knowledge, an ideal of virtue, Christianity offered salvation through divine grace. Third, to the Greek concept of autonomous, self-sufficient man, Christianity opposed an ideal of humility, compassion and self-sacrifice, as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. Camus presented his thesis as an account of Christianity's search for a language which would render the faith comprehensible to the Hellenic world.

Within the confines of an academic exercise, the young Camus was confronting the great questions of Christian doctrine, with which theology has wrestled for the last 2,000 years: the relation of divine power to creation; the manifestation of that relation in the incarnation; the relation of God to humanity in the concept of grace; the transformation of the individual which faith effects. It was presumptuous, perhaps, but these are the questions which were to underlie Camus’ mature works which have been so widely read: The Myth of Sisyphus, The Outsider, The Plague. Unbelievers today ask the same questions: Christians need a language in which they can formulate their understanding of these issues. In the last section of the article, I examine the way in which some leading theologians point the way forward.

In chapter 1 of his thesis, ‘Evangelical Christianity’, Camus presented his perception of the development of Christianity during the first two centuries ad. He stressed the simplicity of their message: of the incarnation, when God took human form, of Jesus Christ, who, by his death redeemed sinful humanity. The martyrdom of Christ was also his triumph. The message was delivered with passionate conviction, evidence of the rich spiritual life of the witnesses.

Camus saw the ethos of early Christianity as characterised both by a deep pessimism and a confident hope. The pessimism reflected early Christians’ preoccupation with death. The symbol of Christianity was the cross, the image of a cruel and humiliating death, and Christians themselves were suffering persecution and martyrdom because of their faith. Also, they were convinced that the end of the world, the end of all human life on earth, was imminent. For Camus, the early Christian view of the human condition resembled that of Pascal, whose vision was one of men, condemned to death themselves, watching others being brutally murdered as they awaited their own execution.Footnote ¹⁵ Nevertheless, Christians were sustained by hope of salvation through their faith in Jesus Christ. Salvation would come, not through any knowledge or wisdom they might acquire, but through their faith in their saviour.

As Christianity moved further away from Judaism, and sought Gentile converts, however, the need became evident to formulate their faith in terms which those trained in the Greek philosophical tradition would understand. Camus wrote of his admiration for the apostolic fathers, particularly Clement of Alexandria, who wrestled with the tension between the truth as Christians knew it and the worldview of the Greeks. It was on the territory of philosophy that Greek and Christian civilisations met. He ended his first chapter with the warning that Christianity was entering a dangerous period at the end of the second century, with the emergence of the Gnostic heresies.

The first chapter shows how Camus’ study of early Christianity affected him. He could identify with the Christian preoccupation with death and suffering: it resonated with his own illness and the poverty of his family and people. The passionate conviction of the early Christians impressed him, as did the readiness of their leaders to enter into intellectual debate with their opponents.

In chapter 2, ‘Gnosticism’, Camus presented his analysis of the attempts, over some 200 years, of Gnostic theologians, to resolve the tensions between the Greek concept of man in control of his destiny, and the Christian concept of man saved by God's grace. It was a dauntingly complex subject but, from his reading, Camus drew out four principal themes. First, he pointed to the Gnostic preoccupation with evil: man was predisposed to evil, and it was expiated through martyrdom, above all through the martyrdom of Jesus Christ. The second theme was redemption: redemption was possible only through faith in the God of spirit and truth, not through faith in the lesser god, responsible for the creation of the material world. Third, there was the concept of the intermediaries between God and man: Camus saw in the concept a reflection of the mythical figures of the Upanishads, who represented aspects of the supreme deity, Brahman. Last, Camus analysed, in some detail, the concept of the unattainable and incommunicable God, who could be reached only by an elect few, devoted to contemplation and the pursuit of knowledge. In Camus’ view, Gnosticism did not create a path for Christianity to follow. The Gnostics’ preoccupation with evil, their concepts of a distant, unattainable God and of redemption possible for only an elect minority, created, in Camus’ words, a ‘monstrous Christianity’.Footnote ¹⁶ Although Gnostic thought reflected many of the influences present in Mediterranean culture, it failed to provide for Christianity a framework and language which would make the faith accessible to the Hellenic world. Camus’ interest in these ancient texts was the expression of his desire to reconcile two conflicting views of the human condition, a desire which was to be evident in all his mature work. On the one hand, he was convinced that it was human beings’ capacity for clear, logical thought which would enable them to live good lives, not harming, but living peaceably with others. On the other hand, he knew that this ‘new civilisation’, which swept the ancient world, asserted that it was divine power alone which transformed human beings and led to salvation. Gnostics were, however, he wrote, elaborating a Greek theory of grace which was seriously flawed.

Chapter 3, ‘Mystical reason’, consists of Camus’ reflections on the work of Plotinus. For Camus, Plotinus was the key figure who provided the possibility of a link between the Greek philosophical approach and the Christian faith. Central to Plotinus’ work was his concept of the One, the only reality, at once transcendent and immanent. To the soul of the One, the human soul reaches up to converge with it. The soul is borne up by its intelligence, itself a reflection of the intelligence of the One. The soul can also be drawn downwards, however, to converge with the material world. The title of chapter 3 indicates the nature of the attraction which Plotinus held for Camus. Plotinus saw the world as explicable by Reason. This was a Reason, however, which operated through sensibility to the beauty of the world. It had an aesthetic, spiritual dimension which drew the soul towards God. It was not the cold, calculating Reason which could be manipulated, and which manipulated in turn. It was ‘Mystical Reason’ akin to the ‘heart’ of Pascal. Camus echoed Pascal's statement, ‘Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point’.Footnote ¹⁷ Camus found in Plotinus the aesthetic sensibility with which he himself responded to the beauty of creation, to literature and to music. He found in Plotinus also the nostalgia for God which he experienced throughout his life, the God whom he was perhaps nearest to finding as he researched his thesis. Camus was aware of the danger of presenting Plotinus as more Christian than he was, however. ‘The coup de théâtre of the Incarnation made no sense for Plotinus’, he wrote.Footnote ¹⁸ Yet Plotinus’ evocation of the One resonated with Camus. Plotinus conceived the One as the supreme power which flowed out into the world, while remaining undiminished: it resembled a tree whose branches grew outwards without reducing its life force; a light undimmed by the rays which emanated from it; a spring from which rivers flowed without causing it to dry up.Footnote ¹⁹ Plotinus’ work represented an attempt to reconcile opposing principles: a God who was at once transcendent and immanent; a reason which was mystical; an intelligence which had sensibility. It gave to Christianity a method and a way of thinking.

In chapter 4, ‘Word and Flesh’, Camus’ admiration for Augustine is evident throughout. He sympathised with the young Augustine's passionate desire for truth, and his preoccupation with the suffering caused by evil in the world. Augustine was, Camus wrote, Greek in relation to his need for coherence, and Christian in the anxiety which his feelings aroused in him.Footnote ²⁰ Augustine's own experience was the basis for his intellectual research: he was attracted to Neoplatonism, but it was his own need for certainty which led him to ‘transfigure’ it, to use Camus’ term.Footnote ²¹ Camus opened chapter 4 by quoting, at length, the passage in the Confessions where Augustine described his reading of the ‘platonic books’.Footnote ²² They had introduced him to the Word as intermediary between God and humanity, but the Platonists had not fully understood and accepted the fact of the incarnation, when the Word became flesh, and God took on the mantle of infirm, enslaved humanity. It was this revelation of the humility of Christ which brought about Augustine's conversion. For him, conversion was wrought by grace: the exercise of free will lay in the decision to accept or refuse God's grace, contrary to the views of Pelagius. (Camus referred only briefly to the controversy.Footnote ²³) It was through grace alone that Augustine was lifted out of the doubt and misery of his early years. This was a very different perspective from that of Plotinus. Nevertheless, it was Neoplatonism, Camus believed, which led Augustine to view the relation between faith and reason less as a conflict, and more as a dialogue. Reason could be illuminated by faith, and it was this concept of ‘mystical reason’, as Camus termed it, which Augustine handed on to be used as a tool by future fathers of the church. Camus described Augustine's work as a ‘second revelation’: the presentation, in the language of Greek philosophy, of the first revelation of early, evangelical Christianity. By clothing it in the language of Greek thought, Augustine lost nothing of the power of the first revelation: that of the incarnation. By considering the Christian faith in relation to Greek philosophy, he made its originality even more apparent.Footnote ²⁴

In his very brief conclusion to the thesis, Camus acknowledged that, to arrive at a definition of the originality of Christianity, had been too vast a topic for him to tackle within the confines of a thesis for a diploma. Its originality was not in doubt, however. In Camus’ view, the early development of Christianity showed, not the Hellenisation of Christianity with a consequent loss of its original power, but rather the Christianisation of a decadent Hellenic civilisation, He put it simply: for Greek man had been substituted Christian man.Footnote ²⁵ The tragic, Hellenic civilisation he had evoked in his introduction had been replaced by a Christian civilisation, full of vitality and hope. Its themes were the incarnation, and a philosophy which embraced the history, misery and suffering of the human condition. It was a philosophy which, for many years, acted as a shield against the affliction of the Western world.Footnote ²⁶

Camus’ biographer, Olivier Todd, considered that, despite the positive view of Christianity expressed at the close of his thesis, Camus emerged from his theological studies as ‘the artist of his own spiritual and earthly destiny’.Footnote ²⁷ Camus’ thesis shows, however, how deeply certain aspects of Christianity resonated with him. He was moved by the passionate conviction of the early Christians, and the power of their faith which caused Christianity to spread so rapidly through the Mediterranean world. He was drawn to the figure of Jesus Christ, because of Jesus’ humanity, his humility, his suffering and his compassion for the suffering of others. He respected the early fathers of the church's willingness to engage with Greek philosophy. He admired Augustine's honest confession of his fallibility, his uncompromising search for truth, and the interdependence of his philosophy and his personal experience. Camus’ text shows, however, little desire to engage at any deep level with Christ as the revelation of God, the central tenet of Christian doctrine. Nor did Camus seek to develop an understanding of the Christian concept of the transformation of the individual human being through grace. (He did, however, emphatically reject the Gnostic heresy of salvation for an elect few.) Humanity's search for a transcendent divinity Camus explored in more depth in his account of Plotinus than in his exploration of the history of the Christian faith.

Camus’ mature, humanist philosophy developed during the period of the rise of Nazism and the Second World War. His articles for Combat show that, while he retained his respect for the Christian faith, his hopes for the future lay with the potential for clarity of vision, and support for each other, of human beings, independent of any allegiance to faith. He was, nevertheless, ready to enter into dialogue with Christians who were sufficiently open-minded to do so:

Humanists have much in common with Christians:

One particular passage shows how similar the problems which Camus faced are to those which face the Western world today. We, too, live in fear, and our clarity of vision is blurred by fundamentalist hubris:

Camus was referring here to relations between Russia and America on the threshold of the cold war, under the shadow of the atomic bomb, but our world still lives with the threat of terror, and the clamour of those who know that they are right, and whose ideology, which they claim is the expression of their faith, leads inevitably to violence and mass murder.

How do Christians, whose faith is illuminated by reason, as Augustine believed it should be, enter into dialogue with those who, like Camus, are unable to accept the concept of an all-powerful, loving God, whose creation is nevertheless filled with suffering? The first step is perhaps to become aware of the ‘insulation’ of the language Christians use with each other. It is a point made by Nicholas Lash in his article ‘The Impossibility of Atheism’:

The second step may be to attempt to understand the language the unbeliever uses to present his view of the world. Camus, in The Myth of Sisyphus, talks of an indifferent universe, and of a God who is absent. In The Plague, he evokes a vengeful God, who inflicts suffering on humanity as a punishment for their sins. There is no awareness of a loving God, who shares in human suffering. It seems that, despite his study of Augustine, Camus had developed no real understanding of the significance of the incarnation. Credal assertion of the two natures of Christ remained for him a mere formula. Jesus was, for Camus, a human being who suffered and who cared; God, if he existed, was a remote, unapproachable, transcendent being.

Dorothée Soelle, in Theology for Sceptics, argues that it is this view of God which is at the root of the sceptics’ misunderstanding of the Christian message. The widely held, apparently pious view of God as the ‘omnipotent Lord of heaven and earth, who is completely independent of us’ does not represent the God of the Gospel.Footnote ³³ Such a concept of God is a stumbling block to understanding of the incarnation. In Suffering, Soelle quotes the experience of Elie Wiesel in Auschwitz. Prisoners were forced to watch the long death agony of a young boy on the gallows. To the cry of the prisoner, ‘Where is God? Where is he?’ Wiesel wrote that ‘I heard a voice within me answer, “Here he is – hanging on this gallows”’.Footnote ³⁴ Soelle develops her thinking on God's pain and ours in Theology for Sceptics

Bonhoeffer was a contemporary of Camus. He was hanged in a concentration camp in 1944, the year in which Camus was writing the articles for Combat, quoted above. As he faced the possibility of execution, Bonhoeffer wrote, in his letters from prison, of his conviction that God, through Christ, shared in the suffering of humanity:

Bonhoeffer's words might well have resonated with Camus, but I have no evidence that he knew Bonhoeffer's work: most of Bonhoeffer's writings were published posthumously, and took some time to reach the French public. He has, of course, had considerable influence on British and American, as well as German, theology.

In Theology for Pilgrims, Nicholas Lash also contests the supposition that divinity and humanity are antithetical. He believes, with Karl Rahner, that ‘Human existence is what happens when God freely, and forgivingly communicates himself’. Like Rahner, he insists that ‘the more divine we become, the more human we become’. He goes on, ‘Jesus is not less human than the rest of us, but more so’.Footnote ³⁷ Soelle puts it thus:

Rowan Williams develops the thought further when he writes, ‘each one of us is in a relationship with God before we've even thought about it’.Footnote ³⁹ He understands the revolt which contemplation of suffering arouses, however. In his chapter on ‘The Risk of Love’, he draws attention to the ever-changing nature of the universe, and to the freedom which people have ‘to think, plan and choose’. He asks the reader to contemplate whether ‘a world with a perpetual safety net really would be a world at all, a place with its own integrity and regularity’.Footnote ⁴⁰ Rowan Williams sets out the central truth of the Christian message, which Camus, at the end of his period of theological study, had not really grasped

Camus poses a challenge for contemporary Christianity. Although he died half a century ago, his views are not at variance with those of many people today, human beings who have ‘come of age’, in Bonhoeffer's words.Footnote ⁴² The challenge for Christians in the twenty-first century is to present their faith in language which those who do not share it can understand. There are atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, whose minds are closed, and whose hatred of all religions blinds them to the range and diversity of human potential. With them, dialogue is not possible. Others, like Camus, are searchers after truth. Although not necessarily of the stature of Camus, they resemble him in their concern for the suffering of humanity, their philosophical bent and their creative urge. They recognise the power of the Christian faith, and are drawn towards it. With them, dialogue is possible, and indeed essential, if the church is not to shrink back into its shell, in the face of the onslaught of militant atheism. The distance between believers and unbelievers like Camus is not so very great. Archbishop Bruno Forte made the point very powerfully in a lecture, ‘Believers are, in the end, those who try, every day, to believe, and non-believers, as they suffer from the pain of God's absence, are people who try to believe, but fail.’ He went on to say, ‘Dialogue between believers and non-believers is one of the highest and most enriching challenges of our post-modern Europe.’Footnote ⁴³ Albert Camus’ youthful thesis on early Christianity, with its reflections on the powerful attraction the Christian faith had for him, and the difficulty he had in committing himself to it, deepens understanding of the territory within which dialogue between believer and unbeliever can take place today.