GOD IS DEAD
By Prof. SERGIO E. AREVALO, JR., Th.M.
June 20, 1996)
“The man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead” (Prov. 21:16, KJV).
In the beginning of the 20th century, the God-is-Dead theology was popularized by Christian liberal theologians. The roots of this theology go back to philosopher Friedrick Nietzsche (1844-1900) who popularized that “God is dead.” However, in the theological circle it was popularized by at least four noted theologians, namely: Gabriel Vahanian, Paul Van Buren, William Hamilton and Thomas J.J. Altizer.
Gabriel Vahanian taught that our society as post-Christian, Christianity has been eclipsed by the modern , scientific age. “God is no longer necessary; he is irrelevant, he is dead.” Although Vahanian did not himself believe God is dead, he urged a form of Christianity that was secular.
Paul Van Buren taught that “Honesty demands that we recognize that we must live in the world as if there were no God. . . . We stand continually in the presence of the God who makes us live in the world without the God-hypothesis.”
William Hamilton saw that the death of God as a cultural event occurring in the last 200 years. Human being, therefore, must adapt himself to the death of God, not expecting any help from God; rather, solutions to life’s problems are found in the secular world. “God is no longer necessary to deliver man from restlessness, despair, or self-righteousness; indeed, there is no God to do so.” The reason human being can do without God is the rise in technology and modern science.
Thomas J.J.Altizer taught that God died in history when Christ died on the cross. “We shall understand the death of God as an historical event; God has died in our time, in our history, in our existence.” It appears that Altizer stresses that God’s transcendence no longer exists because of the death of Christ.
Although there are shades of difference among the Death-of-God theologians, in general, they encouraged their students and followers to live Christianity in a secular way. In other words, human being should not depend too mucho on God since society has already tools to live independently, simply because of the coming of modern technology and science.
Why do I discuss this? Simply because of the sprouting of new and modern technologies and sciences. Recently, I watched on television and an American show featured the new grass cutter. That little machine is solar-operated. In other words, it has no battery or gasoline. It operates through the light of the Sun. The machine does not need manual guidance of the owner or the driver since it is guided by the built-in computer. It works without a driver. When it bangs to a corner or a stone, it maneuvres itself to another direction.
In the same show featured the wrist-watch style cellular phone. The phone is like a wrist watch strapped to the wrist of the owner. Telephone companies nowadays are developing a telephone system that breaks the language and racial barriers in communication. When you call to Japan or somewhere else in the global village using your own dialect, e.g. Tagalog, the computerized telephone will translate for you your message and vice versa. Of course, nowadays videophone is not new. When you talk to your friend using videophone, you will see him/her face to face.
In our modern hospitals nowadays, we have Picker IQ CT scan in order to see everything under the human skin; Hemodialysis Machine is used to eliminate kidney waste materials; Novus 2000 is used to detect eye defects; Fiberoptic Endoscopy with sophisticated scopes is used to pinpoint exact location of hidden tumors, ulcers and bleeding sites; Cabot Medical Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy system is used to remove the defective gall bladders; sensitive ultrasound is used to detect vaginal problems; Tripter Compact (Estracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripter) is used to break the stones in man’s kidney and urinary.
In the light of the coming of new inventions, modern technologies and sciences, human beings are somewhat having all the gadgets to live without God. In the ancient days, people were heavily relying on God since they have no means to heal themselves but the power of God. In this sense, God is the Great Healer theology emerged existentially in the lives of the early believers. Because of this, the ancient people became closer to God, since He did not answer negatively their prayers, God healed them.
In these modern days, God is the Healer theology is somewhat diminishing because of the coming of new inventions, especially in medicine. It seems that praying to God is a mere fanaticism or a foolish belief. It seems further that God won’t work these days. It seems that God is dead!
If your belief is like this, thus, you delimit or de-empower the Omnipotent, Omniscient God. We must be reminded that God is the very ground of man’s intelligence who invented new technologies and sciences. Without God’s revelatory guidance, man could not invent anything!
God should be seen as alive and working in human technologies and sciences. We can only express and reveal that God is alive through and in man’s technologies and sciences when we use our inventions for the glory of God and for the service of mankind. This is the real understanding or wisdom. Thus, God is not dead in the modern society, but instead those people who use their intelligence for their own sake, to mislead the faithful, and to oppress others. They do remain in the congregation of the dead. As the Proverb says, “The man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead” (21:16, KJV).
Thomas J.J.Altizer, 1927-
Wilfredo H. Tangunan, 1999
Thomas J. J. Altizer was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1927. Altizer received his Ph.D at the University of Chicago in 1955 with a dissertation on Greek and Eastern religious philosophy. He taught at Wabash College from 1954-1956, then moved to Emory University as professor of Bible and Religion until 1968. The “death of God” theology became a heated debate during his professorship at Emory. Although he was not removed from his teaching position, he accepted a position at the State University of New York in 1968 as professor of English.
Some of his primary works are: Oriental Mysticism and Biblical Eschatology (1961), Truth, Myth and Symbol, ed. Altizer, William Beardslee, and J. Harvey Young (1962), Mircea Eliade and the Dialectic of the Sacred (1963), Radical Theology and the Death of God, ed. Altizer and William Hamilton (1966), The Gospel of Christian Atheism (1966), The New Apocalypse: The Radical Christian Vision of William Blake (1967), The Descent into Hell (1970), The Self-Embodiment of God (1977), Total Presence: The Language of Jesus and the Language of Today (1980), History as Apocalypse (1985), Genesis and Apocalypse: A Theological Voyage Toward Authentic Christianity (1990), and The Genesis of God: A Theological Genealogy (1993).
The Task of Radical Theology and Dialectical Method:
Thomas J.J.Altizer observes that American theology is in the process of transition. The emergence of radical theology replaces the older forms of faith, in which the traditional faith is passing and has no relevance to the present. The revolution of radical theology reverses the old forms of theology that is based on the God of Christian tradition. For Altizer, the task of theology must abandon the theology created by Christendom and embrace the dawn of radical theology that proclaims the good news of the “death of God.” Theology in order to be authentic must experience death and rebirth. Theology must die first and cease to be itself. If theology is truly to die it must will the “death of God” of Christendom. In order for a new theology to be reborn, everything that theology has must be negated. Authentic theology cannot be reborn “unless it passes through and freely wills its own death and dissolution. Theology is now impelled to employ the very language that proclaim the “death of God” (Altizer 16, 1966). Theology today must embrace the radically profane form of contemporary existence to prepare for a theology that seeks to unite the radical sacred and the radical profane. Radical theology is moving towards a profane destiny. Its task is to provide a way to return to “God who is all in all that enables theology not to return to an old form of the sacred but welcomes the God that affirms the profane” (Altizer 19, 1966).
Altizer’s concern is the connection of the sacred to the profane and how to make the Christian faith relevant to the modern secular world. The task of radical theology is to affirm the profane, which has been negated by the Christian tradition. The problem that theology faces, according to Altizer, is the danger of Gnosticism where religion becomes a negation of the world. Gnostic thinking escapes the reality of the present that makes faith becomes irrelevant to the world. The problem created by Gnosticism is that it emphasizes the split of the sacred and the profane, wanting to affirm life by moving towards the sacred and negates the profane (Altizer 144, 1966). “Gnosticism is a form of world opposing faith in which it seeks salvation by a radical kind of world negation” (Altizer 19, 1966). Altizer emphasizes that Gnosticism is dangerous to the Christian faith because of its world negation, it denies the possibility of redemption. A theology that holds to the theology of Christendom that dichotomize the “sacred and the profane, cannot escape the charge of Gnosticism. The affirmation of the traditional forms of faith becomes a Gnostic escape from the brute realities of history” (Altizer 95, 1966). The Gnostic attitude of separating the sacred and the profane leads God to be unrecognized in the world leading to a Godless world. Faith no longer works in the profane. The problem of Altizer is how to make faith become meaningful to the secular world and how to speak a theology that affirms the profane (Altizer 28-9), 1966). Altizer’s concern is to save Christianity from the danger of Gnosticism.
In order to free Christianity from the Gnostic bondage, it needs a dialectical form of faith. A genuinely dialectical faith can never be Gnostic. The dialectical method always constitutes the principle of negation and affirmation. “The dialectical faith’s negation of history is grounded in the affirmation of the present“(Altizer 110, 1966). The task of theology must now accept a dialectical vocation in which it must learn the language of affirmation and negation. It must sense the possibility of yes, which can become no and no which can become yes. In short, “theology must be born out of a truly dialectical method through the negation and affirmation which culminates on the “coincidence of the opposites” (Altizer 109-10, 1966). Initially, Mircea Eliade’s study of religions helps Altizer understand the dialectical relation between the sacred and the profane. Though the sacred and the profane radically oppose each other, at the same time they mutually require each other. The ultimate meaning of the dialectic is realized when the opposition of the sacred and profane is overcome in the “coincidence of the opposites.” The profane is radically negated leading to a deeper movement into the sacred, in which the profane is transformed and at the same time losing and manifesting its identity with the sacred. According to Altizer, this is the religious movement of both the Oriental mysticism and traditional Christianity, in which the “coincidence is realized through the abolition of the profane as profane” (Ogletree 83-4, 1966). This attitude is also a manifestation of a Gnostic religion, a flight from the world, “wanting to experience salvation by negating the world and moves to the sacred” (Altizer 144, 1966). The profane is annulled and suffers from a Gnostic injury.
According to Altizer, this kind of movement by collapsing the profane into the sacred is a violation to the faith of the New Testament and the Christian meaning of the Incarnation. The dissolution of the profane into the sacred has been the characteristic of the Christian tradition, a manifestation of Gnostic thinking which does not affirm the world. According to Altizer, this is a heresy. The doctrine of the Incarnation affirms the profane rather than abolish it. Only in affirming the reality of the profane can make the genuine coincidence of the opposites possible, that is, the coming together of the reality of the sacred and the profane. This coincidence of the opposing reality of the sacred and the profane makes Christianity’s celebration of the Incarnation a real event, effecting a real transformation of the world. Faith in this dialectical sense must negate the sacred. A sacred that abolishes the profane cannot affirm the Incarnation and can never understand the true meaning of the Incarnation. A faith that virtually negates the profane can never realize the promise of redemption (Altizer 149, 1966).
The Doctrine the Incarnation and God’s Self-negation:
Thomas J.J.Altizer’s The Gospel of Christian Atheism tries to move to combine biblical theology and philosophical theology. He tries to build a radical doctrine of the Incarnation on the concept of kenosis. Altizer finds the dialectic of Hegel helpful in reinterpreting the Incarnation. According to Altizer, Hegel’s idea of kenosis and the dialectical process of self-negation of being, provides him a way of interpreting the self-emptying of the Incarnation in which he finds a poetic visioning as expressed in the work of William Blake. In other words, W.Blake supplies Altizer a poetic vision and Hegel supplies the philosophical agenda to interpret the vision. Altizer uses Phil. 2:7 as a biblical base for a kenotic doctrine of the Incarnation and by using the metaphysics of Hegel’s idealism as a philosophical framework (Cobb 33-4, 1970).
Altizer’s doctrine of the Incarnation is an inversion of the traditional Christian thinking. The traditional thinking conforms to the dissolution of the profane to the sacred. Altizer asserts that only in the self-emptying of God can provide redemption of the profane world. “When the sacred and the profane are understood as a dialectic opposites where mutual negation culminates in a transformation of each into its repetitive “other” then the Christian coincidence of opposites becomes the eschatological realization of the dialectical union of the original sacred and the radical profane (Altizer 155, 1966). Altizer contends that a truly “Christian theology must affirm the union of the sacred into the profane and affirm the profane as profane” (155). The movement of the sacred into the profane is explained through the dialectical movement of the kenotic Incarnation of the Word. Altizer’s kenotic Incarnation is a forward movement of God into the human flesh by self-emptying with the form of God (Phil. 2). Understood in this way, the kenotic movement of the Incarnation is a continuing “process of Spirit becoming flesh, the movement of the sacred becoming profane” (Altizer 152, 1966). This is Altizer’s doctrine of self-negation of God grounded from his kenotic christology. Altizer’s kenotic Incarnation means the self-emptying of God completely from his transcendent form to and become totally incarnate in the world. Kenosis is a “total process in which a pure transcendent God becomes a totally immanent actuality” (Noel 176, 1970).
Altizer sees F.Hegel’s dialectic of the kenosis as an embodiment of the theological meaning of the Incarnation (Ogletree 63, 1966). Hegel’s notion of kenosis gives the idea of pure negativity as the center of dialectical system. The concept of negativity is the process of self-realization of the Hegelian notion of the Spirit. For Hegel, according to Altizer, “Spirit is the kenotic or emptying process of negativity found in being” (63). “This dialectical thinking of pure negation of Spirit kenotically becomes its own other, existing as an actual opposite of its own original identity” (65). The forward movement of the Spirit is made possible only by the actual process of self-negation (65). Altizer found Hegel’s kenosis as the expression of God’s self-negation through the Incarnate Word. The self-negation of the Spirit is the expression of God’s self-sacrifice manifested in the kenotic Incarnation of Jesus Christ. This makes God’s self-sacrifice a redemptive act of self-negation. God’s kenotic Incarnation manifests the total presence of Jesus in the world which is also the expression of Jesus’ act of redemption of the profane. The “death of God” as manifested in the kenotic Incarnation can be viewed a doctrine of redemption. The profane is redeemed through the unity and actual presence of Christ in history by the reality of the kenotic Incarnation. This shows the total self-giving love of God. The absolute negativity as the expression of God’s total self-giving is also a manifestation of God’s act of redemption (69).
The Meaning of the “Death of God”:
J.J.Altizer’s “death of God” has two phases. Altizer’s early notion of the “death of God” is understood in “historical-existential” terms (Cobb 34, 1970). Viewed in this way, the “death of God“, according to Altizer, is an historical event, “that God has died in our time, in our history, in our existence” (Altizer 11, 1966). The experience of the profane affirms the “death of God.” Later, with the coming into terms with the dialectic of Hegel, Altizer was able to reconcile philosophy and theology, “the death of God” is ontologized and universalized. The “death of God” becomes the “self-annihilation of the Spirit primordial nature and deficient actuality (the transcendent being), pours into the world and becomes flesh. The “death of God” is now seen in ontological and existential terms” (Cobb 34, 1970). The “death of God” is not only a designation of an historical event, but also a theological assertion about Christ and the meaning of his presence in the secular world. Altizer’s problem is how can such a theology of the “death of God” “contribute to the emergence of a profane form of faith in our time” (Ogletree 86, 1966). Again, Hegel’s idea of negativity provides Altizer with a perspective in the affirmation of the “death of God.” Negation in Hegel’s thought refers to the dissolution of a given actuality as a precondition for the emergence of a new possibility through a forward movement process. In the light of Hegel’s principle of negativity, Altizer interprets the “death of God as God’s own act of self-negation. In Jesus Christ, God has emptied himself into the world. Altizer asserts the legitimacy of speaking about the “death of God” by emphasizing “the principle of negation as realized in the actualization of the profane that requires the negation of the sacred” (90).
“God is dead” as the “Wholly Other” who in isolation beyond the world remain unaffected by the world processes. The Spirit’s forward movement into the process has resulted in the radical transformation of his being. “The transcendence has been transformed wholly into immanence” (90-1). This is the meaning of the Christian affirmation of the “death of God” according to Altizer. The central theme for Altizer is to affirm the nature of God’s presence in the world. (92). The ‘death of God’ for Altizer is divine sacrifice for the redemption of the profane. It is an expression of divine love. God’s self-annihilation is an act of redeeming and affirming God’s creation. In this sense, Altizer insists that only a Christian can affirm the “death of God.” The “death of God” is God’s act of affirming the profane as rooted in the positive significance of God’s self-sacrifice. Viewed in this way, the “death of God” is fundamentally a redemptive event in which humanity is liberated from the clutches of the “Wholly Other” (93). Altizer wants us to follow the logic of the Incarnation as a forward movement in which God, the “Wholly Other’s” self-emptying in totality is realized in the forward movement of history (95). Altizer’s radical theology attempts to interpret the contemporary form of Christ’s presence in the world (95). His innermost concern is for us to detach from the traditional understanding of God. The Christian traditional understanding of God has isolated God from the world that made God static, unaffected and remote from the world realities. Altizer’s project is to affirm Christ’s presence in the world in such a way to enable us to affirm the “death of God” theologically (99).
Altizer was influenced by Nietzsche’s radical philosophy, particularly on the repudiation of the Western Christian tradition as expressed on Nietsche’s “God is dead.” Nietzsche’s proclamation of the “death of God” has shattered the transcendent being of Christendom (Altizer 98, 1966). Altizer’s radical theology which is based wholly on the presupposition of the “death of God” has led to the collapse of the transcendent being. The “death of God” as the negation of the pure transcendent God of the Christian tradition is what Altizer termed “Atheism.” “Atheism” in this sense is a criticism of a remote God. “This God beyond the world is a non-redemptive God who by virtue of his sovereign transcendent stand wholly apart from the historical presence of the Incarnation” (62). For Altizer, this transcendent God cannot redeem the world. Therefore, it must be declared dead. The saying that “God is dead,” radical theologians attempt to say that the transcendent ground of the world has died. But ultimately, God died for the redemption of the world (Altizer 78, 1967). The affirmation of the “death of God” is Christianity’s act of transforming the original old faith of the transcendent “Wholly Other.” This makes Christianity become a world affirming religion. The “death of the Christian God” implies that the “transcendence of Being has been transformed into radical immanence” (Altizer 101, 1966). Radical theology’s “death of God” claims that the absolute transcendence is transfigured to absolute immanence (98). The originally transcendent sacred becomes immanent. The formerly separated realms of reality, the sacred and the profane, are becoming into one. The sacred now is in the midst of the profane (Noel 175, 1970). Therefore, to speak of the “death of God” is to “speak of a movement of God from transcendence to immanence (Altizer 11, 1967). The concept of the “death of God” becomes a confession of faith that affirms God’s self-negation as expressed in the Incarnation is a manifestation of God’s redemptive act in history.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Altizer, Thomas J. J., 1967. Altizer-Montgomery Dialogue. Chicago, Illinois: Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship.
Altizer, Thomas J. J. and Hamilton, William. eds., 1966. Radical Theology and The Death of God. Indianapolis; New York; Kansas City: The Bobbs-Merril Company, Inc., a subsidiary of Howard W. Sams & Co., Inc Publishers.
Secondary Sources
Cobb, John Jr. B. ed., 1970. The Theology of Altizer: Critique and Response. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press.
Noel, Daniel C. 1970. “Thomas Altizer and the Dialectic of Regression,” in The Theology of Altizer: Critique and Response. John B. Cobb, Jr. ed., Philadelphia: The Westminster Press.
Ogletree, Thomas W. 1966. The Death of God Controversy. Nashville; New York: Abingdon Press.
Scribbling 