William Blake The theme of God's "death" became more explicit in the theosophism of the 18th- and 19th-century mystic
William Blake. In his intricately engraved illuminated books, Blake sought to throw off the dogmatism of his contemporary Christianity and, guided by a lifetime of vivid visions, examine the dark, destructive and apocalyptic undercurrent of theology. Most notably, Blake refused to view the crucifixion of
Jesus as a simple bodily death, and, rather, saw in this event a
kenosis, a self-emptying of God. As Altizer writes, Blake "celebrates a cosmic and historical movement of the Godhead that culminates in the death of God himself".
19th-century philosophy In the 19th century,
Death of God thought entered philosophical consciousness through the work of German philosopher
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Drawing upon the mysticism of
Jakob Böhme and the
Idealism of
Johann Gottlieb Fichte and
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Hegel sought to revise
Immanuel Kant's Idealism through the introduction of a
dialectical methodology. Adapting this dialectic to the chief theological problem, the nature of God, Hegel argued that God (as Absolute or Father) is radically negated by the concrete
incarnation of God (as Christ or Son). This negation is subsequently itself negated at the
crucifixion of Jesus, resulting in the emergence of the
Holy Spirit, God as both concrete (the Church) and absolute (spiritual community). In Hegelian thought, therefore, the death of God does not result in a strict negativity, but rather, permits the emergence of the full revelation of God: Absolute Consciousness.
20th-century philosophy and theology Though he preceded the formal Death of God movement, the prominent 20th-century Protestant theologian
Paul Tillich remains highly influential in the field. Drawing upon the work of
Friedrich Nietzsche,
Friedrich Schelling and
Jakob Böhme, Tillich developed a notion of God as the "ground of Being" and the response to nihilism. Central to this notion was Tillich's rejection of traditional
theism and insistence upon a "God above the God of theism". In
The Courage to Be he writes: In 1961, Gabriel Vahanian's
The Death of God was published. Vahanian argued that modern
secular culture had lost all sense of the
sacred, lacking any
sacramental meaning, no
transcendental purpose or sense of
providence. He concluded that for the modern mind "God is dead". In Vahanian's vision a transformed
post-Christian and
post-modern culture was needed to create a renewed experience of deity.
Thomas J. J. Altizer offered a radical theology of the death of God that drew upon
William Blake,
Hegelian thought and Nietzschean ideas. He conceived of theology as a form of
poetry in which the
immanence (presence) of God could be encountered in
faith communities. However, he no longer accepted the possibility of affirming belief in a transcendent God. Altizer concluded that God had incarnated in Christ and imparted his
immanent spirit which remained in the world even though Jesus was dead. Unlike Nietzsche, Altizer believed that God truly died. He was considered to be the leading exponent of the Death of God movement.
Richard L. Rubenstein represented the radical edge of
Jewish thought working through the impact of
the Holocaust. In a technical sense he maintained, based on the
Kabbalah, that God had "died" in creating the world. However, for modern Jewish culture he argued that the death of God occurred in
Auschwitz. Although the literal death of God did not occur at this point, this was the moment in which humanity was awakened to the idea that a
theistic God may not exist. In Rubenstein's work, it was no longer possible to believe in an orthodox/traditional theistic God of the
Abrahamic covenant; rather, God is a historical process.
21st century Although the direct linkage between the Lacanian–Marxist critical theory of
Slavoj Žižek and
Death of God thought is not immediately apparent, his explicitly Hegelian reading of Christianity, defended most conspicuously in the 2009
The Monstrosity of Christ, strongly lends itself to this tradition. Strongly influenced by both
Dietrich Bonhoeffer and
G. K. Chesterton, Žižek advocates a variant of
Christian atheism, more or less strongly depending upon context. As early as
Adam Kotsko's 2008
Žižek and Theology a direct linkage between Žižek and this tradition has been maintained. Initially, reviewers vigorously rejected this connection, but following the publication of
The Monstrosity of Christ as well as subsequent co-paneled sessions, the direct relation between Žižek and
Thomas Altizer has become clear. ==Theology==