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The New Gospel of Christian Atheism
Thomas J.J. Altizer's The New Gospel of Christian Atheism is a largely rewritten version of his earlier classic and controversial book on this subject, which was a major contribution to twentieth century American theology. This revised and updated version is set forth in prose that is at once lucid and bold, and gives us nothing less than a new vision for the postmodern era in original and unforgettable terms.
170 pages, Paperback
First published March 7, 2003
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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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March 20, 2025
THE “DEATH OF GOD” THEOLOGIAN UPDATES HIS BOOK FOR A POSTMODERN WORLD
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. He has written other books such as Radical Theology and the Death of God; The Descent into Hell: A Study of the Radical Reversal of the Christian Consciousness; The New Apocalypse: The Radical Christian Vision of William Blake; Total Presence: The Language of Jesus and the Language of Today; Godhead and the Nothing]], The Call to Radical Theology; Genesis and Apocalypse: A Theological Voyage Toward Authentic Christianity; Living the Death of God: A Theological Memoir]], etc.
He wrote in the Preface to this 2002 book, “While a genuinely radical theology, [[ASIN:B0006BO8C4 The Gospel of Christian Atheism]] was very much a product of the Sixties, hence it is apparently wholly irrelevant today, but it has no counterparts at all in our world, so I accepted the task of its substantial revision in an attempt to address theologically our postmodern world. Above all, this revision is concerned to address our contemporary nihilism… a nihilism that is a consequence of Christianity, yet no real theological explanation of our nihilism now exists.” (Pg. ix)
He continues, “Almost forty years have elapsed since the original writing of ‘The Gospel of Christian Atheism,’ and my theology has evolved considerably since that time. Nevertheless, I think that there is a genuine continuity between my earlier and my later work, and above all so in its centering upon a uniquely Christian atheism. [This book] does not incorporate material from my later work… Today all forms of Christian orthodoxy can only maintain themselves by refusing any possible ultimate transformation of Christianity, but a radical Christian theology is inevitably in quest of such a transformation, and while commonly this quest occurs in genuine solitude, it also occurs communally.” (Pg. x-xi)
He opens the Introduction with the statement, “Is a genuine theology possible our new world? Of a genuinely Christian theology? This book is the exploration of the possibility of a truly new theology for us, one only possible as the consequence of the dissolution of an old theology, a dissolution ending every theology that we have known, or, if not ending it, so profoundly transforming theology itself that only a truly new theology is now possible… orthodoxy now reigns in our theological worlds… above all against a uniquely modern realization of the death of God. The death of God is a truly paradoxical symbol, a symbol evoking that Crucifixion which the Christian knows as the one source of redemption, and a symbol of that uniquely modern atheism which is a full dissolution or reversal of Christianity… Such an ultimate atheism is surely possible only within a Christian horizon, or only as a consequence of the ending of Christendom.” (Pg. 1) He adds, “This book will engage the possibility that Christianity has truly been reborn in the modern world, a rebirth only possible with the ending of Christendom.” (Pg. 2)
He states, “Only in a Christian of post-Christian world is an ultimate dichotomy manifest and real, one both external and internal, a dichotomy embodying an absolute opposition, an opposition between real and actual opposites, and one that can be stilled only by an ultimate impotence of passivity… Thus Christianity embodies a truly paradoxical relationship between humanity and divinity… no other tradition… has known such an overwhelming chasm between Godhead and the world.” (Pg. 20)
He asserts, “Only Christianity calls for a full experience of an actual death and an actual dying as the way to transfiguration and rebirth, and just as the passion story is the very center of the synoptic gospels, it is a meditation upon that passion that is the deepest and purest Christian meditation… Thus death is absolute in Christianity as it is in no other tradition… This totality of death is also inseparable from what Christianity knows as the new creation, only the ending or death of the old creation makes possible the new creation, and Paul knows that ending as occurring in the Crucifixion, a crucifixion thereby manifest as apocalypse itself.” (Pg. 30) He goes on, “For the death of God is inseparable from the advent of a truly new and even total nihilism, a truly new desert and abyss, a nihilism that Nietzsche knows as a consequence of Christianity, and a consequence of the uniquely Christian God… who alone has made possible and made necessary our ultimate abyss.” (Pg. 31)
He suggests, “Not only are Nietzsche and Blake our purest modern apocalyptic visionaries, they have also given us our purest modern apocalyptic visions of the uniquely Christian God… Only in that perspective can the uniquely Christian God be known as an absolute No or as Satan, and it is precisely the death of that God that releases an absolutely new apocalypse, and apocalypse that Nietzsche named as Eternal Recurrence and Blake named as Jerusalem.” (Pg. 96)
He asks, “What can it mean to speak of the death of God? Indeed, is it even possible for us to speak of the death of God, and how could this occur at a time when the very name of God appears to be unspeakable? First, we must recognize that the proclamation of the death of God is a Christian confession of faith, and of a uniquely Christian faith in the ultimacy of the Crucifixion. For to know the God who has truly and actually died is to know the God who died in Jesus Christ, an ultimate and absolute death that the Christian knows as the one source of redemption, a redemption that is finally apocalypse itself. This is… an absolute negation that is an absolute negativity, and an absolute negativity finally releasing the third and final age of the Spirit.” (Pg. 97)
He contends that “at the very center of Christianity… [is] an ultimate redemption from an ultimate damnation, and that very redemption reveals the universality of damnation, and a damnation that does not disappear from the Christian consciousness until the full secularization of Christianity.” (Pg. 115) Later, he argues, “the real theological question is not why does God permit evil, but is evil itself inseparable from God, one that is potentially answered in the traditional theological answer that God permits evil to make possible the freedom of the will, for that is inevitably the affirmation that the fulness of God’s creation, or the fulness of God’s eternal acts, is inseparable from an ultimate realization of evil.” (Pg; 139)
He concludes, “the transfiguration of an absolute negativity… can occur only as a consequence of the full epiphany of an ultimate negativity, and a truly comprehensive and universal negativity, one that certainly can be known in postmodernity… Yet only a deep and ultimate emptiness if open to an ultimate transfiguration, this primal truth is known not only by every higher mysticism but by every deeper expression of the imagination, just as it is known by the Christian in knowing the Crucifixion as being absolutely essential to apocalypse, and thus knowing the death of God as being essential to the apocalypse of the Godhead. If that apocalypse is occurring even now… can we nonetheless greet that calling with an ultimate affirmation and an ecstatic joy?” (Pg. 152)
Altizer’s deliberately paradoxical theology can be infuriating to many, but he is the only one of the four original “Death of God theologians” (the others were William Hamilton, Gabriel Vahanian, and Paul van Buren) who seemingly “stuck to” theological writing throughout his career. This book, like his others, will interest some, and disgust other people.
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. He has written other books such as Radical Theology and the Death of God; The Descent into Hell: A Study of the Radical Reversal of the Christian Consciousness; The New Apocalypse: The Radical Christian Vision of William Blake; Total Presence: The Language of Jesus and the Language of Today; Godhead and the Nothing]], The Call to Radical Theology; Genesis and Apocalypse: A Theological Voyage Toward Authentic Christianity; Living the Death of God: A Theological Memoir]], etc.
He wrote in the Preface to this 2002 book, “While a genuinely radical theology, [[ASIN:B0006BO8C4 The Gospel of Christian Atheism]] was very much a product of the Sixties, hence it is apparently wholly irrelevant today, but it has no counterparts at all in our world, so I accepted the task of its substantial revision in an attempt to address theologically our postmodern world. Above all, this revision is concerned to address our contemporary nihilism… a nihilism that is a consequence of Christianity, yet no real theological explanation of our nihilism now exists.” (Pg. ix)
He continues, “Almost forty years have elapsed since the original writing of ‘The Gospel of Christian Atheism,’ and my theology has evolved considerably since that time. Nevertheless, I think that there is a genuine continuity between my earlier and my later work, and above all so in its centering upon a uniquely Christian atheism. [This book] does not incorporate material from my later work… Today all forms of Christian orthodoxy can only maintain themselves by refusing any possible ultimate transformation of Christianity, but a radical Christian theology is inevitably in quest of such a transformation, and while commonly this quest occurs in genuine solitude, it also occurs communally.” (Pg. x-xi)
He opens the Introduction with the statement, “Is a genuine theology possible our new world? Of a genuinely Christian theology? This book is the exploration of the possibility of a truly new theology for us, one only possible as the consequence of the dissolution of an old theology, a dissolution ending every theology that we have known, or, if not ending it, so profoundly transforming theology itself that only a truly new theology is now possible… orthodoxy now reigns in our theological worlds… above all against a uniquely modern realization of the death of God. The death of God is a truly paradoxical symbol, a symbol evoking that Crucifixion which the Christian knows as the one source of redemption, and a symbol of that uniquely modern atheism which is a full dissolution or reversal of Christianity… Such an ultimate atheism is surely possible only within a Christian horizon, or only as a consequence of the ending of Christendom.” (Pg. 1) He adds, “This book will engage the possibility that Christianity has truly been reborn in the modern world, a rebirth only possible with the ending of Christendom.” (Pg. 2)
He states, “Only in a Christian of post-Christian world is an ultimate dichotomy manifest and real, one both external and internal, a dichotomy embodying an absolute opposition, an opposition between real and actual opposites, and one that can be stilled only by an ultimate impotence of passivity… Thus Christianity embodies a truly paradoxical relationship between humanity and divinity… no other tradition… has known such an overwhelming chasm between Godhead and the world.” (Pg. 20)
He asserts, “Only Christianity calls for a full experience of an actual death and an actual dying as the way to transfiguration and rebirth, and just as the passion story is the very center of the synoptic gospels, it is a meditation upon that passion that is the deepest and purest Christian meditation… Thus death is absolute in Christianity as it is in no other tradition… This totality of death is also inseparable from what Christianity knows as the new creation, only the ending or death of the old creation makes possible the new creation, and Paul knows that ending as occurring in the Crucifixion, a crucifixion thereby manifest as apocalypse itself.” (Pg. 30) He goes on, “For the death of God is inseparable from the advent of a truly new and even total nihilism, a truly new desert and abyss, a nihilism that Nietzsche knows as a consequence of Christianity, and a consequence of the uniquely Christian God… who alone has made possible and made necessary our ultimate abyss.” (Pg. 31)
He suggests, “Not only are Nietzsche and Blake our purest modern apocalyptic visionaries, they have also given us our purest modern apocalyptic visions of the uniquely Christian God… Only in that perspective can the uniquely Christian God be known as an absolute No or as Satan, and it is precisely the death of that God that releases an absolutely new apocalypse, and apocalypse that Nietzsche named as Eternal Recurrence and Blake named as Jerusalem.” (Pg. 96)
He asks, “What can it mean to speak of the death of God? Indeed, is it even possible for us to speak of the death of God, and how could this occur at a time when the very name of God appears to be unspeakable? First, we must recognize that the proclamation of the death of God is a Christian confession of faith, and of a uniquely Christian faith in the ultimacy of the Crucifixion. For to know the God who has truly and actually died is to know the God who died in Jesus Christ, an ultimate and absolute death that the Christian knows as the one source of redemption, a redemption that is finally apocalypse itself. This is… an absolute negation that is an absolute negativity, and an absolute negativity finally releasing the third and final age of the Spirit.” (Pg. 97)
He contends that “at the very center of Christianity… [is] an ultimate redemption from an ultimate damnation, and that very redemption reveals the universality of damnation, and a damnation that does not disappear from the Christian consciousness until the full secularization of Christianity.” (Pg. 115) Later, he argues, “the real theological question is not why does God permit evil, but is evil itself inseparable from God, one that is potentially answered in the traditional theological answer that God permits evil to make possible the freedom of the will, for that is inevitably the affirmation that the fulness of God’s creation, or the fulness of God’s eternal acts, is inseparable from an ultimate realization of evil.” (Pg; 139)
He concludes, “the transfiguration of an absolute negativity… can occur only as a consequence of the full epiphany of an ultimate negativity, and a truly comprehensive and universal negativity, one that certainly can be known in postmodernity… Yet only a deep and ultimate emptiness if open to an ultimate transfiguration, this primal truth is known not only by every higher mysticism but by every deeper expression of the imagination, just as it is known by the Christian in knowing the Crucifixion as being absolutely essential to apocalypse, and thus knowing the death of God as being essential to the apocalypse of the Godhead. If that apocalypse is occurring even now… can we nonetheless greet that calling with an ultimate affirmation and an ecstatic joy?” (Pg. 152)
Altizer’s deliberately paradoxical theology can be infuriating to many, but he is the only one of the four original “Death of God theologians” (the others were William Hamilton, Gabriel Vahanian, and Paul van Buren) who seemingly “stuck to” theological writing throughout his career. This book, like his others, will interest some, and disgust other people.
April 15, 2013
Extremely interesting and insightful. Unfortunately, the writing style is hard to read, and it assumes a certain background in philosophy. Not for those new to postmodern theology.
June 17, 2024
Read for class. Interesting, but hard to read if you aren't a literal religious scholar.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews