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Resurrecting the Death of God: The Origins, Influence, and Return of Radical Theology
In 1966, an infamous Time magazine cover asked "Is God Dead?" and brought the ideas of theologians William Hamilton and Thomas J. J. Altizer to the wider public. In the years that followed, both men suffered professionally and there was no notable increase to the small number of thinkers considered death of God theologians. Meanwhile, Christian fundamentalism staged a striking comeback in the United States. Yet, death of God, or radical, theology has had an ongoing influence on contemporary theology and philosophy. Contributors to this book explore the origins, influence, and legacy of radical theology and go on to take it in new directions. In a time when fundamentalism is the greatest religious temptation, this volume makes the case for the necessity of resurrecting the death of God.
218 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 2014
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June 27, 2024
EXCELLENT SUPPORTIVE EXPOSITION/ANALYSIS OF “DEATH OF GOD THEOLOGY”
The editors of this 2014 book wrote in the ‘Acknowledgements’ section, “The desire to ‘resurrect’ death of God theology began as a conversation between the editors of this volume in a coffeehouse… where they were, at the time, colleagues in the Department of Religion. Books lined the walls of the coffeehouse, including some that were donated by retired professors of the university. One of those books was Radical Theology and the Death of God, published in 1966 by William Hamilton and Thomas J.J. Altizer, which one of the editors picked up on a whim and read… Upon discussing [this book] it became evident to both editors that the topic, though theologians and philosophers were still discussing it ‘underground.’ Had to be raised up for broader consideration.”
They added in the Introduction, “The question is whether the return of religion demands the return of radical theology. We… believe it does. Fundamentalist religion… has become a destructive and alienating force in our culture, one that … validates amassing personal wealth at the expense of others… Radical theology may have been crucified and abandoned by popular culture shortly after its inception, but its return today is absolutely imperative… we declare the need to speak against a culture of misguided faith by resurrecting the death of God for public reconsideration. We invite the reader---religious or otherwise---to contemplate an updated and revised version of radical theology for our time, one that ACTIVELY seeks to eradicate the gods of fundamentalist Christianity insofar as they threaten our civil liberties… Behind this new version … lies a single conviction: if silence or indifference is no longer an option, then perhaps the best alternative is nothing less than a RADICAL one.” (Pg. 3)
They explain the aftermath of the infamous 1966 Time magazine cover, ‘Is God Dead?’: “The response was fierce. Altizer received death threats and nearly lost his position at Emory University. Hamilton was less fortunate. Colgate Rochester Divinity School mysteriously ‘removed’ his chair of theology. Other theologians, perhaps afraid of the backlash, denied their affiliation with the ‘movement’ that Altizer and Hamilton had spearheaded. By the end of the decade, both theologians found themselves teaching not only at other universities but also in a different field entirely. The controversy they started was apparently over. The death of God was dead.” (Pg. 1) Later, they add, “Hamilton himself turned to exploring issues of the death of God primarily through the writings of Herman Melville. He moved to teach in secular schools… from which he retired in the mid-eighties.” (Pg. 25)
They argue, “Radical theology, in short, could move us well beyond more superficial alternatives like new atheism. From the beginning it has taken for granted the claim that new atheists have only more recently begun to discover: any understanding of God as a ‘supreme being’ who exists ‘out there’ in the universe, interfering at whim with scientific laws and natural processes, is either dead or should be killed…[The radical theologians] named the darkness, the feeling of loss, the sense of divine absence that perhaps many continue to feel---or fail to acknowledge---in our time. They also developed … a new kind of ‘God/less talk that take the otherwise overwhelming silence of God into account as the starting point for theological reflection. A reintroduction and reconsideration of radical theology thus has value today… One thing, however, remains clear: ours is a time ripe for the reexamination of radical theology. Ours is a time for resurrecting the death of God.” (Pg. 15-16)
They say of Altizer, “His theological assertions differ so profoundly from the dominant theological radicalism of our time… that some have tried to write him off as an irresponsible eccentric… Whether one agrees with him or not, one discovers in his writings a coherent vision of great power… this vision has been arrived at … by an approach to Christian theology in the context of the history of religions… Indeed, Altizer is the first major theologian since World War I to think theologically from the perspective of the history of religions conceived on a world scale.” (Pg. 60) They continue, “Altizer’s writing has more the function of poetry than of typical academic theology. We look to the poet neither for dogma nor for argument. We do not expect information. We look to the poet for insight and vision… When teaching theology seemed closed to him, he took a position in an English department teaching Blake.” (Pg. 66) They add, “[Altizer] bemoans the near disappearance of serious theology in the progressive Protestant seminaries… Altizer’s ‘death of God’ never meant that believers should cease to concern themselves with God… To read Altizer is to know that God is of utmost importance, even, perhaps especially, in God’s death.” (Pg. 68)
They point out, “Radical theology was probably not meant by … Altizer at first to be an EXTRA-ECCLESIAL phenomenon; Altizer was forbidden from entering the Episcopalian ministry on the basis of psychological fitness, even while he himself served as a lay minister to an interracial church on Chicago’s South Side. Few modern theologians have the distinction of being strictly forbidden by certain denominations…” (Pg. 125)
They observe, “First, radical Christianity is at the very least ‘post-ecclesial,’ if not ‘anti-ecclesial.’ In a 1990 essay… Altizer claimed that Christianity requires a ‘historically evolving faith and praxis’… Second, a post-ecclesial and anti-ecclesial ecclesiology is a radical ecclesiology… Radical ecclesiology is a ‘radical negation’ of the church as we know it, though it is not an ‘exitus’ or exodus… a radical ecclesiology equips individuals to teach individuals how to engage and change the world in an EXTRAORDINARY Christlike manner rather than passively interpret the world for signs of its own destruction---a destruction with culpability resting in Christian passivity.” (Pg. 133-134)
They state, “The death of God is not simple atheism but a radical atheism that converges with radical faith. Conventional understandings of atheism are not radical enough. Either religion is seen as a cultural sublimation (and/or illusion) to counter the natural fear of death, or atheism is seen as producing a simple subtraction of God from the world, leaving a hole from which meaning bleeds out.” (Pg. 152)
In his Afterword to the book, Altizer notes, “a genuine enactment of the death of God is inevitably a dialectical movement, and just as the philosophical enactment of the death of God has given us our most profoundly dialectical thinking, the imaginative enactment of the death of God is purely dialectical, too, and the deeper the imaginative enactment the purer its dialectical ground and movement. Indeed, it is the uniquely modern realization of the death of God that has given us our most profoundly dialectical movements… that have exploded in late modernity… Yes, late modernity is the age of the death of God and also the age in which a birth occurs of the absolutely new, and an absolutely new only made possible by the death of God… Only in the prophetic revolution of Israel does an absolute negation occur in the ancient world, a negation that is truly renewed in the advent of Christianity, a Christianity effecting an absolute negation of an old aeon or old creation, and only that negation realizes apocalypse.” (Pg. 187-188)
He says, “Thus the death of God has released a vast number of worlds, but overwhelmingly at hand is a truly new emptiness, a new vacuity so empty as to be free of all signs, an absolutely new anonymity now becoming all in all… Can a world of such tranquility be a consequence of the death of God? Is absolute negation inseparable from God so that the death of God brings all such negations to an end?... Is it even possible that the death of God itself would make possible a renewal of theology?... Perhaps the death of God has ended the impossibility of theology, so that as a consequence of the death of God it is impossible not to think theologically and impossible not to exercise a theological imagination.” (Pg. 189-190)
This book will be “must reading” for anyone studying the contemporary development/resurgence of ‘death of God theology,’ or other forms of contemporary Radical Theology.
The editors of this 2014 book wrote in the ‘Acknowledgements’ section, “The desire to ‘resurrect’ death of God theology began as a conversation between the editors of this volume in a coffeehouse… where they were, at the time, colleagues in the Department of Religion. Books lined the walls of the coffeehouse, including some that were donated by retired professors of the university. One of those books was Radical Theology and the Death of God, published in 1966 by William Hamilton and Thomas J.J. Altizer, which one of the editors picked up on a whim and read… Upon discussing [this book] it became evident to both editors that the topic, though theologians and philosophers were still discussing it ‘underground.’ Had to be raised up for broader consideration.”
They added in the Introduction, “The question is whether the return of religion demands the return of radical theology. We… believe it does. Fundamentalist religion… has become a destructive and alienating force in our culture, one that … validates amassing personal wealth at the expense of others… Radical theology may have been crucified and abandoned by popular culture shortly after its inception, but its return today is absolutely imperative… we declare the need to speak against a culture of misguided faith by resurrecting the death of God for public reconsideration. We invite the reader---religious or otherwise---to contemplate an updated and revised version of radical theology for our time, one that ACTIVELY seeks to eradicate the gods of fundamentalist Christianity insofar as they threaten our civil liberties… Behind this new version … lies a single conviction: if silence or indifference is no longer an option, then perhaps the best alternative is nothing less than a RADICAL one.” (Pg. 3)
They explain the aftermath of the infamous 1966 Time magazine cover, ‘Is God Dead?’: “The response was fierce. Altizer received death threats and nearly lost his position at Emory University. Hamilton was less fortunate. Colgate Rochester Divinity School mysteriously ‘removed’ his chair of theology. Other theologians, perhaps afraid of the backlash, denied their affiliation with the ‘movement’ that Altizer and Hamilton had spearheaded. By the end of the decade, both theologians found themselves teaching not only at other universities but also in a different field entirely. The controversy they started was apparently over. The death of God was dead.” (Pg. 1) Later, they add, “Hamilton himself turned to exploring issues of the death of God primarily through the writings of Herman Melville. He moved to teach in secular schools… from which he retired in the mid-eighties.” (Pg. 25)
They argue, “Radical theology, in short, could move us well beyond more superficial alternatives like new atheism. From the beginning it has taken for granted the claim that new atheists have only more recently begun to discover: any understanding of God as a ‘supreme being’ who exists ‘out there’ in the universe, interfering at whim with scientific laws and natural processes, is either dead or should be killed…[The radical theologians] named the darkness, the feeling of loss, the sense of divine absence that perhaps many continue to feel---or fail to acknowledge---in our time. They also developed … a new kind of ‘God/less talk that take the otherwise overwhelming silence of God into account as the starting point for theological reflection. A reintroduction and reconsideration of radical theology thus has value today… One thing, however, remains clear: ours is a time ripe for the reexamination of radical theology. Ours is a time for resurrecting the death of God.” (Pg. 15-16)
They say of Altizer, “His theological assertions differ so profoundly from the dominant theological radicalism of our time… that some have tried to write him off as an irresponsible eccentric… Whether one agrees with him or not, one discovers in his writings a coherent vision of great power… this vision has been arrived at … by an approach to Christian theology in the context of the history of religions… Indeed, Altizer is the first major theologian since World War I to think theologically from the perspective of the history of religions conceived on a world scale.” (Pg. 60) They continue, “Altizer’s writing has more the function of poetry than of typical academic theology. We look to the poet neither for dogma nor for argument. We do not expect information. We look to the poet for insight and vision… When teaching theology seemed closed to him, he took a position in an English department teaching Blake.” (Pg. 66) They add, “[Altizer] bemoans the near disappearance of serious theology in the progressive Protestant seminaries… Altizer’s ‘death of God’ never meant that believers should cease to concern themselves with God… To read Altizer is to know that God is of utmost importance, even, perhaps especially, in God’s death.” (Pg. 68)
They point out, “Radical theology was probably not meant by … Altizer at first to be an EXTRA-ECCLESIAL phenomenon; Altizer was forbidden from entering the Episcopalian ministry on the basis of psychological fitness, even while he himself served as a lay minister to an interracial church on Chicago’s South Side. Few modern theologians have the distinction of being strictly forbidden by certain denominations…” (Pg. 125)
They observe, “First, radical Christianity is at the very least ‘post-ecclesial,’ if not ‘anti-ecclesial.’ In a 1990 essay… Altizer claimed that Christianity requires a ‘historically evolving faith and praxis’… Second, a post-ecclesial and anti-ecclesial ecclesiology is a radical ecclesiology… Radical ecclesiology is a ‘radical negation’ of the church as we know it, though it is not an ‘exitus’ or exodus… a radical ecclesiology equips individuals to teach individuals how to engage and change the world in an EXTRAORDINARY Christlike manner rather than passively interpret the world for signs of its own destruction---a destruction with culpability resting in Christian passivity.” (Pg. 133-134)
They state, “The death of God is not simple atheism but a radical atheism that converges with radical faith. Conventional understandings of atheism are not radical enough. Either religion is seen as a cultural sublimation (and/or illusion) to counter the natural fear of death, or atheism is seen as producing a simple subtraction of God from the world, leaving a hole from which meaning bleeds out.” (Pg. 152)
In his Afterword to the book, Altizer notes, “a genuine enactment of the death of God is inevitably a dialectical movement, and just as the philosophical enactment of the death of God has given us our most profoundly dialectical thinking, the imaginative enactment of the death of God is purely dialectical, too, and the deeper the imaginative enactment the purer its dialectical ground and movement. Indeed, it is the uniquely modern realization of the death of God that has given us our most profoundly dialectical movements… that have exploded in late modernity… Yes, late modernity is the age of the death of God and also the age in which a birth occurs of the absolutely new, and an absolutely new only made possible by the death of God… Only in the prophetic revolution of Israel does an absolute negation occur in the ancient world, a negation that is truly renewed in the advent of Christianity, a Christianity effecting an absolute negation of an old aeon or old creation, and only that negation realizes apocalypse.” (Pg. 187-188)
He says, “Thus the death of God has released a vast number of worlds, but overwhelmingly at hand is a truly new emptiness, a new vacuity so empty as to be free of all signs, an absolutely new anonymity now becoming all in all… Can a world of such tranquility be a consequence of the death of God? Is absolute negation inseparable from God so that the death of God brings all such negations to an end?... Is it even possible that the death of God itself would make possible a renewal of theology?... Perhaps the death of God has ended the impossibility of theology, so that as a consequence of the death of God it is impossible not to think theologically and impossible not to exercise a theological imagination.” (Pg. 189-190)
This book will be “must reading” for anyone studying the contemporary development/resurgence of ‘death of God theology,’ or other forms of contemporary Radical Theology.
November 28, 2019
It’s an essay collection, so mileage varies, but there’s some great stuff in here. I found chapters 2-5 and 10 especially useful. I loved the exploration of Dorothee Soelle’s thought, and am eager to dig more deeply into her work.
And not surprisingly Altizer’s brief afterword, despite its brevity, is bursting with bracing ideas.
And not surprisingly Altizer’s brief afterword, despite its brevity, is bursting with bracing ideas.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews