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Living the Death of God: A Theological Memoir
Theologian Thomas J. J. Altizer became both famous and infamous as the chief spokesman for death-of-God theology in the 1960s. In the years that followed, he has created a theological tradition that has influenced all succeeding generations of theologians. Living the Death of God is Altizer's theological memoir. Taking us from his transformation as a theological student to his present life of solitude, Altizer recapitulates the voyage to create a truly new theology. The memoir recounts each stage of this voyage, from being overwhelmed by Satan to a conversion to the death of God and an extensive and even ecstatic preaching of the death of God. However, this is the death of that God who is the wholly alienated God, a death realizing anew the crucified God or the apocalyptic Christ. Written with Altizer's characteristic elegance, this book is fascinating on its own account, but can also serve the reader as a companion or introduction to Altizer's body of work.
210 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1967
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About the author
Thomas J.J. Altizer
36 books20 followersThomas Jonathan Jackson Altizer was a radical theologian who is known for incorporating Friedrich Nietzsche's conception of the "death of God" and G. W. F. Hegel's dialectical philosophy into his systematic theology.
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June 27, 2024
THE “DEATH OF GOD” THEOLOGIAN OF THE 1960S LOOKS BACK, THEOLOGICALLY
Thomas Jonathan Jackson Altizer (born 1927) taught religion at Wabash College, then he taught English at Emory University from 1956 to 1968. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and most famously wrote The Gospel of Christian Atheism.
He wrote in the Preface to this 2006 book, “This memoir is a recapitulation of the life work of a radical theologian, intending to recover and renew theological moves occurring over a lifetime, but occurring in the context of an ultimate ending of theology, thereby opening the possibility of the birth of a new and even absolutely new theology. It is to be emphasized that this memoir is not a personal one, but rather a theological memoir… This is a voyage that ever more comprehensively has occurred throughout our history, and … its very ending has created a totally new call. That is a calling that is here explored … in the context of contemporary nihilism… understood to be a reflection of the death of God, yet a death of God that is an actualization of the apocalyptic transfiguration of Godhead itself…
“Throughout my theological career, I have been accused of writing too abstractly or too abstrusely. Hopefully that can largely be rectified by the genre of the memoir, but nevertheless this writing will be vastly distant from our common theological writing, which is simply closed to the realms explored here… I have always been more effective in oral rather than written communication, and this memoir is intended to approximate speech, and to do so… by an intimate voice as well.”
He recalls, “Although my home was little more than nominally Christian, I was obsessed with Christianity throughout my youth… I had no real religious guidance at all, being forced thereby to find my own way… While a theological student, I was … acting vicar of … St. Mark’s Church… the time came for me to be given a psychiatric examination as a prerequisite for my candidacy for the priesthood of the Episcopal Church. I unexpectedly and totally failed… I was seriously advised that I could expect to be in a psychiatric institution within a year… my beloved professor… insisted that it was an act of both providence and grace, for if I had no true vocation for the ministry, I did have one for theology…" (Pg. 3-5)
He explains, “No one whom I have known has influenced me more deeply than [Mircea] Eliade… Eliade, as an Eastern Christian, could know a uniquely modern death of God as having its origin in the very advent of Western Christianity, but this advent itself is a repetition of the primordial death of God, and an advent that will finally culminate in a ‘coincidentia oppositorum’ [“unity of opposites”] between the sacred and the profane. Clearly such a concidentia oppositorum is a deep ground of all my work… initially my real theological voyage was made possible by an opening to the truly sacred ground of the radical profane. Hence I was ever more fully drawn into Nietzsche, the purest thinker of the radical profane.” (Pg. 8) He adds, “it is true that [Karl] Barth is the only modern theologian whom I profoundly respect.” (Pg. 9)
He recalls, “Despite the fact that I had published two books and many article, I still had not become a genuine writer. This, I believe, occurred with the writing of my third book, ‘The New Apocalypse: The Radical Christian Vision of William Blake.’ … At first I could find no publisher for my Blake manuscript, and … I was caught up in a new theological fervor which was beginning to grip the country. This occasioned my writing of ‘The Gospel of Christian Atheism,’ which immediately became a theological scandal, perhaps simply because of its title, for there is little evidence that more than a few have actually read the book… A storm had broken out even before it was published, initiated by the New York Times and Time magazine: Their articles on the new death of God theology were remarkably responsible… The truth is that journalists read the new theology more responsibly than did many, if not most, theologians, and for two years radical theology was at the forefront of the mass media; it was as if the country itself was possessed by a theological fever… in which the most religious nation in the industrial world had suddenly discovered its own deep atheism.” (Pg. 12)
He continues, “Throughout this period my deepest comrade was William Hamilton… [We] formed an alliance, which subsequently resulted in the publication of several of our articles under the title Radical Theology & the Death of God… it was Bill who most effectively goaded me in the direction of a fully kenotic or self-emptying theology… I was much more deeply supported by friends and colleagues than was Bill, as witness the response of our respective institutions: Bill was no longer allowed to teach theology, while Emory fully supported me… Be that as it may, theology then enjoyed national and even world attention which is inconceivable today…” (Pg. 12-13) Later, he adds, “I think that I became one of the most hated men in America… while I offended many permanently, and lost every hope of a foundation grant or a major academic appointment, I have never regretted the offense that I gave.” (Pg. 16)
He observes, “a real problem is just what is that world in which theology is now spoken; I join innumerable theologians in believing that this can no longer be only a church or a religious institution, and never before has there been a deeper chasm between religious institutions and the world, thus foreclosing the possibility of a church theology that could be a theology for the world, or a church theology that could be anything but a sectarian theology.” (Pg. 56) He adds, “Yes, the death of God is by necessity a renewal or resurrection of an absolute nothingness, thus nihilism inevitably follows in its wake, but now and for the first time nihilism is established as a universal horizon, and one which is actually known by everyone who is now awake.” (Pg. 58-59)
He asserts, “As always, our most powerful theology is a negative theology, and a purely negative theology, one here assaulting every manifest meaning of ethics itself. Hence a genuinely theological ethics is inseparable from an antinomian ethics, an antinomian ethics annulling or reversing every possible law, yet it is precisely the deepest antinomianism which releases the purest assurance. But if we can understand such assurance as being absolutely necessary to real action or real engagement, then we can understand it as a reflection of that indicative which is indistinguishable from the true imperative. This could only be an imperative not coming from the beyond, not coming from ‘God,’ but arising from immediate actuality itself. So that genuine assurance or genuine certainty is in no sense either hope or ‘faith,’ but is far rather an ultimate acceptance … to that which is most immediately and actually real.” (Pg. 125)
He suggests, “There is a very good reason why the very word ‘God’ is so circumscribed in our world, almost never pronounced by those who are wisest among us, and then only all too indirectly or elusively. In a genuine sense this is our most forbidden word, so that a truly new iconoclasm is pervasive among us, and most pervasive among those who are seemingly the most distant from God. Yet the theologian, too, is reluctant to pronounce the name of God in our world… and I suspect that I have been most offensive to my fellow theologians in so frequently evoking God.” (Pg. 130)
He states, “Now it becomes overwhelmingly important to understand an eternal death of God which is not the eternal resurrection of God… Only now did it become fully clear to me that if the death of God has actually occurred then the very actuality of this death is inseparable from the genesis of God. For only that which has actually begun can actually die, and if God has truly and actually died then God Himself is inevitably the consequence of a truly actual genesis or beginning. Thereby I was given my most original theological idea, for even if it is deeply grounded in both Blake and Hegel, so far as I know it had never been given a fully explicit or systematic logical formulation.” (Pg. 133)
In the final chapter, he says, “Of course, I had been drawn to what can be understood as a nihilistic theology from the very beginning of my work, and had long believed that a pure nihilism is the inevitable consequence of the death of God, a nihilism which now and for the first time is the very arena of all genuine theological voyages, just as it has become the arena of all our deeper imaginative and conceptual voyages. This is indeed a common judgment tin our time, I share it with a significant number of theologians, and I am far from being alone in being persuaded that it is a profound reaction against such nihilism that is a fundamental ground of a new fundamentalism and a new conservative or reactionary theology, one now dominating our religious and theological worlds, just as it is also true that nihilism is an impelling force in creating that new social and political conservatism which so dominates the world.” (Pg. 171-172)
He perhaps concludes, “My one great lament about my own work is that it did not dare to become open to the deepest and most absolute No. This I had hoped to rectify in my retirement, for this way demands genuine solitude, and genuine isolation as well. My retirement has given me this, but there is certainly every probability that I will not fully prosecute this calling, in which case I will finally be a theological failure, and I cannot dissociate true theological failure from damnation itself. Once again I ask how one could be a true theologian without a genuine sense of damnation. By this criterion I am surely a theologian, but inasmuch as I believe that this is a universal condition, all of us finally are theologians, and theologians precisely in thinking about our damnation.” (Pg. 179-180)
Altizer’s version of “radical theology” is certainly not for everyone. (I personally find his overuse of ‘concidentia oppositorum’ somewhat tiring, as well as his deliberately paradoxical use of common terms which he refuses to define or redefine.) Still, he has persevered through his early “faddish” period, and has continued to produce serious and creative theological works throughout his career.
Thomas Jonathan Jackson Altizer (born 1927) taught religion at Wabash College, then he taught English at Emory University from 1956 to 1968. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and most famously wrote The Gospel of Christian Atheism.
He wrote in the Preface to this 2006 book, “This memoir is a recapitulation of the life work of a radical theologian, intending to recover and renew theological moves occurring over a lifetime, but occurring in the context of an ultimate ending of theology, thereby opening the possibility of the birth of a new and even absolutely new theology. It is to be emphasized that this memoir is not a personal one, but rather a theological memoir… This is a voyage that ever more comprehensively has occurred throughout our history, and … its very ending has created a totally new call. That is a calling that is here explored … in the context of contemporary nihilism… understood to be a reflection of the death of God, yet a death of God that is an actualization of the apocalyptic transfiguration of Godhead itself…
“Throughout my theological career, I have been accused of writing too abstractly or too abstrusely. Hopefully that can largely be rectified by the genre of the memoir, but nevertheless this writing will be vastly distant from our common theological writing, which is simply closed to the realms explored here… I have always been more effective in oral rather than written communication, and this memoir is intended to approximate speech, and to do so… by an intimate voice as well.”
He recalls, “Although my home was little more than nominally Christian, I was obsessed with Christianity throughout my youth… I had no real religious guidance at all, being forced thereby to find my own way… While a theological student, I was … acting vicar of … St. Mark’s Church… the time came for me to be given a psychiatric examination as a prerequisite for my candidacy for the priesthood of the Episcopal Church. I unexpectedly and totally failed… I was seriously advised that I could expect to be in a psychiatric institution within a year… my beloved professor… insisted that it was an act of both providence and grace, for if I had no true vocation for the ministry, I did have one for theology…" (Pg. 3-5)
He explains, “No one whom I have known has influenced me more deeply than [Mircea] Eliade… Eliade, as an Eastern Christian, could know a uniquely modern death of God as having its origin in the very advent of Western Christianity, but this advent itself is a repetition of the primordial death of God, and an advent that will finally culminate in a ‘coincidentia oppositorum’ [“unity of opposites”] between the sacred and the profane. Clearly such a concidentia oppositorum is a deep ground of all my work… initially my real theological voyage was made possible by an opening to the truly sacred ground of the radical profane. Hence I was ever more fully drawn into Nietzsche, the purest thinker of the radical profane.” (Pg. 8) He adds, “it is true that [Karl] Barth is the only modern theologian whom I profoundly respect.” (Pg. 9)
He recalls, “Despite the fact that I had published two books and many article, I still had not become a genuine writer. This, I believe, occurred with the writing of my third book, ‘The New Apocalypse: The Radical Christian Vision of William Blake.’ … At first I could find no publisher for my Blake manuscript, and … I was caught up in a new theological fervor which was beginning to grip the country. This occasioned my writing of ‘The Gospel of Christian Atheism,’ which immediately became a theological scandal, perhaps simply because of its title, for there is little evidence that more than a few have actually read the book… A storm had broken out even before it was published, initiated by the New York Times and Time magazine: Their articles on the new death of God theology were remarkably responsible… The truth is that journalists read the new theology more responsibly than did many, if not most, theologians, and for two years radical theology was at the forefront of the mass media; it was as if the country itself was possessed by a theological fever… in which the most religious nation in the industrial world had suddenly discovered its own deep atheism.” (Pg. 12)
He continues, “Throughout this period my deepest comrade was William Hamilton… [We] formed an alliance, which subsequently resulted in the publication of several of our articles under the title Radical Theology & the Death of God… it was Bill who most effectively goaded me in the direction of a fully kenotic or self-emptying theology… I was much more deeply supported by friends and colleagues than was Bill, as witness the response of our respective institutions: Bill was no longer allowed to teach theology, while Emory fully supported me… Be that as it may, theology then enjoyed national and even world attention which is inconceivable today…” (Pg. 12-13) Later, he adds, “I think that I became one of the most hated men in America… while I offended many permanently, and lost every hope of a foundation grant or a major academic appointment, I have never regretted the offense that I gave.” (Pg. 16)
He observes, “a real problem is just what is that world in which theology is now spoken; I join innumerable theologians in believing that this can no longer be only a church or a religious institution, and never before has there been a deeper chasm between religious institutions and the world, thus foreclosing the possibility of a church theology that could be a theology for the world, or a church theology that could be anything but a sectarian theology.” (Pg. 56) He adds, “Yes, the death of God is by necessity a renewal or resurrection of an absolute nothingness, thus nihilism inevitably follows in its wake, but now and for the first time nihilism is established as a universal horizon, and one which is actually known by everyone who is now awake.” (Pg. 58-59)
He asserts, “As always, our most powerful theology is a negative theology, and a purely negative theology, one here assaulting every manifest meaning of ethics itself. Hence a genuinely theological ethics is inseparable from an antinomian ethics, an antinomian ethics annulling or reversing every possible law, yet it is precisely the deepest antinomianism which releases the purest assurance. But if we can understand such assurance as being absolutely necessary to real action or real engagement, then we can understand it as a reflection of that indicative which is indistinguishable from the true imperative. This could only be an imperative not coming from the beyond, not coming from ‘God,’ but arising from immediate actuality itself. So that genuine assurance or genuine certainty is in no sense either hope or ‘faith,’ but is far rather an ultimate acceptance … to that which is most immediately and actually real.” (Pg. 125)
He suggests, “There is a very good reason why the very word ‘God’ is so circumscribed in our world, almost never pronounced by those who are wisest among us, and then only all too indirectly or elusively. In a genuine sense this is our most forbidden word, so that a truly new iconoclasm is pervasive among us, and most pervasive among those who are seemingly the most distant from God. Yet the theologian, too, is reluctant to pronounce the name of God in our world… and I suspect that I have been most offensive to my fellow theologians in so frequently evoking God.” (Pg. 130)
He states, “Now it becomes overwhelmingly important to understand an eternal death of God which is not the eternal resurrection of God… Only now did it become fully clear to me that if the death of God has actually occurred then the very actuality of this death is inseparable from the genesis of God. For only that which has actually begun can actually die, and if God has truly and actually died then God Himself is inevitably the consequence of a truly actual genesis or beginning. Thereby I was given my most original theological idea, for even if it is deeply grounded in both Blake and Hegel, so far as I know it had never been given a fully explicit or systematic logical formulation.” (Pg. 133)
In the final chapter, he says, “Of course, I had been drawn to what can be understood as a nihilistic theology from the very beginning of my work, and had long believed that a pure nihilism is the inevitable consequence of the death of God, a nihilism which now and for the first time is the very arena of all genuine theological voyages, just as it has become the arena of all our deeper imaginative and conceptual voyages. This is indeed a common judgment tin our time, I share it with a significant number of theologians, and I am far from being alone in being persuaded that it is a profound reaction against such nihilism that is a fundamental ground of a new fundamentalism and a new conservative or reactionary theology, one now dominating our religious and theological worlds, just as it is also true that nihilism is an impelling force in creating that new social and political conservatism which so dominates the world.” (Pg. 171-172)
He perhaps concludes, “My one great lament about my own work is that it did not dare to become open to the deepest and most absolute No. This I had hoped to rectify in my retirement, for this way demands genuine solitude, and genuine isolation as well. My retirement has given me this, but there is certainly every probability that I will not fully prosecute this calling, in which case I will finally be a theological failure, and I cannot dissociate true theological failure from damnation itself. Once again I ask how one could be a true theologian without a genuine sense of damnation. By this criterion I am surely a theologian, but inasmuch as I believe that this is a universal condition, all of us finally are theologians, and theologians precisely in thinking about our damnation.” (Pg. 179-180)
Altizer’s version of “radical theology” is certainly not for everyone. (I personally find his overuse of ‘concidentia oppositorum’ somewhat tiring, as well as his deliberately paradoxical use of common terms which he refuses to define or redefine.) Still, he has persevered through his early “faddish” period, and has continued to produce serious and creative theological works throughout his career.
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