Why Atheists Need the Church

 

“Only theologians can be true atheists”

Lacan

I’ve recently been preparing for an online seminar I’m teaching with John Caputo at the GCAS, and one of the thinkers I’ve been brushing up on is the 19th century philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach. While he never achieved philosophical sainthood and missed becoming a canonical figure in Western thought, his ideas have had a decisive impact on many key figures who came after him. Feuerbach marks an important development in the criticism of religion, and while he is most famous for his exploration of theology as anthropology, he can also be viewed as critical in the genesis of the idea that theology is connected with the development of atheism.

It’s this second aspect of his work that’s been intriguing me as I return to his books. It is often overshadowed by his theories of projection and human nature, but it might well be his most important and lasting contribution to the philosophy of religion, as well as offering some interesting insights into the subversive role of church.

Feuerbach was not only theologically literate, theology was his main tool in critiquing religion. Indeed he saw himself as a friend of the theologians, as one who was bringing them glad tidings by exposing their own deepest (humanistic) truth.

One of the keys to understanding the connection between theology and atheism requires that we first understand what Feuerbach meant by the term “religion.” Feuerbach didn’t make up his own definition, but instead embraced the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher’s view that religion was the expression of the experience of absolute dependence.

By viewing religion in this way a small rift is exposed between religious expression and belief in a God or the gods. If religion is concerned with responding to a sense of absolute dependence, then it is more fundamental than its symbolic expression. As a result, it is severed from some particular sets of beliefs. While the belief in God  might be the primary way that religion manifests itself in a Western context, the feeling of absolute dependence is able to express itself in other ways.

From this perspective religious critique is not limited to some critique of theism, but rather needs to develop an understanding of how the sense of absolute dependence arises (a subject Feuerbach approaches in The Essence of Religion). It is precisely this thinking that helped Marx articulate how the critique of heaven leads inexorably to the critique of earth and how the undermining of sacred sovereignty would ultimately provide the tools for undermining of secular sovereignty.

With this brief background we can begin to understand why some thinkers within continental philosophy think theology might be important in the development of atheism.

One of the justifications for studying philosophy is captured in the aphorism, “those who are least aware of theory are most enslaved by it.” In a similar way, one might say that those who are least aware of absolute dependence are most enslaved by it. From this perspective the theological enterprise has the most potential for freeing people of religion. For, if we have not seriously worked through the sense of absolute dependence then, even if we take up a position such as humanism, we will likely do so in a religious way.

If theology involves the systematic study of religion, and religion is the feeling of absolute dependence, then theology can be thought of as the discipline that reflects upon the nature and origin of this feeling. Other disciplines will either ignore this entirely, or look at it in some peripheral way. But theology proper will face it head on.

Without bringing this experience to the surface and reflecting upon its nature, the feeling will tend to manifest itself in unthinking ways. Whether it comes out in politics or culture, the foundational religious experience will continue to show itself in potentially destructive ways.

This does not, of course, mean that theologians tend to tread this path. Most of the work that takes place under the name “theology” is confessional in nature and exists to justify the claims of a particular denomination. But, from a Feuerbachian perspective, theological reflection that is not apologetic in nature can provide the tools for breaking free of religion presicely by exposing the various ways in which it continues to exist in a subterranean way amongst those who claim to eschew it.

The persistence of religion beyond a particular set of beliefs can be seen as one of the reasons why Lacan articulated the cry of atheism as “God is unconscious” rather than the more well-worn “God is dead.” To claim that God is unconscious is to claim that religion continues to function after the belief in God has been abandoned. Something that Nietzsche was well aware of. This is also why Lacan claimed that it takes a theologian to be an atheist.

Employing the insights and spirit of Lacan, one might want to slightly rework his formulation to claim that one really needs a church to be an atheist. For the (Radical) theologian is an individual who seeks to understand the workings of absolute dependance, but that understanding is neither sufficient, nor required in order to break free from it. What one rather needs is a set of practices that enable one to disrupt such a feeling of dependence. The radical church, as an expression of radical theology, is a place that lives out this disruption through its liturgical practice.