As a result of the onslaught of positivism in the linguistic schools, religion has found itself somewhat sterilized: The production of any subject matter which might be called legitimate offspring of theology has been thwarted at its inception, the invalidation being made at the level of language. This linguistic contraception has given peace of mind to many impatient empiricists.

But as usual, religionists have had their own word games for some time, declaring that beyond their propositions are realities transcending conceptualization; they never tire at asserting that radical empiricism relegates to man a divine attribute if his experience is capable of an inclusive appropriation of reality. Bultmann's demythologization of the New Testament typifies the process: New meaning (the existential factor) is found in early Gospel stories. Tillich's critique of theism is another case in point: Who knows exactly what Tillich has done with his God who is God beyond God, or Being beyond being? But whereas these theologians have pointed to proposed realities beyond the power of conceptualization, the positivists see only their finger extended with no referent at the other end.

The purpose of this paper is to examine a contemporary movement in Christian theology, one set forth by the "Death of God" or "Christian atheism" proponents, and to pay special attention to the linguistic subtleties which cause one to pose the question of the subtitle of this paper. Thus the question: Is Mr. Altizer's Christian atheism a philosophical exposition in religious garb, or is his thought thoroughly theological, being merely philosophical in the application of philosophical ideas for an explication of theological themes? It is a question of clarification: How secular is Altizer's radical Christianity and how Christian is it?

As it has been characteristic of Christian theology in the last century and a half to be crystallized into movements which purport to present the real relevance of the gospel, so the "Death of God" proponents claim that their "radical theology" adequately and creatively communicates the significance of Jesus to the predicament of modern man. William Hamilton and Thomas J. J. Altizer appear to be the avant-garde for the new interpretation of the significance of Jesus of Nazareth, with Paul M. van Buren and Gabrail Vahanian adding their own distinctive opinions in quite a related fashion. This new evangel which promises to present Christ without myth and without the traditional institutional strictures can only be understood against the background of two religio-philosophical aspects of the Christian tradition, namely, the distinctive essence of Christianity within the Christian continuum and the technical connotations of the phrase "death of God" as purported by Friedrich Nietzsche. After a brief introduction of these two factors, I will attempt to clarify Altizer's contentions in the Death of God Movement, and I will give a critique of his contributions as regards man and the modern world.

First, one must understand the character of Christianity itself, i.e., its essence or unique religious system in regard to religion in general. I am not suggesting an orthodoxy par excellence by which all divergent interpretations within Christendom might be anathematized, but I merely contend that there is an essence within the various Christian sects which distinguishes Christianity from the other religious systems of the world. That essence, I contend, is the belief that history itself has been dissected, the point of division being the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth, with this "total event" (1) operating to some degree for the transformation of life and for the establishing of a kingdom of God. Consequently, all history, to some degree at least, before that event is viewed as abortive,(2) and all history subsequent to that event is seen as the period of an actualization of the significance of that event. This fact of a divine juncture constitutes the essence of Christianity as I understand it.

In the early Christian Church the fact of heresy was not a matter of determining whether or not God had decisively acted in Jesus; the theological quibble was in regard to how he had done such. That God had decisively acted in Jesus was never a point of argument.(3)

In the Middle Ages history was indeed crystalized into divine epochs. The epoch of the Spirit was to encompass the time subsequent to the Christ event, engulfing all of the rest of history, ending only with the triumphant return of Christ.(4) Thus with Joachim of Floris the entire history of the world was seen compacted between the creation and the end of the world, with man ordained to adjust to the significance of how that end would be actualized because of the Christ event.(5)

Even what today has been called the classical liberal expression of Christianity has not moved beyond the limits of this stipulated definition of the essence of Christianity. Walter Rasuchenbusch's A Theology for the Social Gospel is typical of the perspective of Christian liberalism. Yet, although the work is fraught with optimism for man's ability to alleviate his problem, the paradigm for that utopia of ethical manhood is seen to be Jesus through whom God has worked, if only by supreme example of the ultimate end of man.(6)

The ardent rebuttal against the liberalism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was given by Karl Barth, the great promoter of Neo-orthodoxy. His adversary theologically was Ludwig Feuerbach, who in The Essence of Christianity turned theology into anthropology. But one must again ask: Just how far did Feuerbach go with his humanist tendencies? I have noted that Feuerbach, though quite radical in inverting the source of theological concepts, was yet typically Christian as regards the proposed definition of the essence of Christianity. The following quotation from Feuerbach should be sufficient to demonstrate this conclusion.

"The incarnation is nothing else than the practical material manifestation of the human nature of God....Christ is God known personally; Christ, therefore, is the blessed certainty that God is what the soul desires and needs him to be. . .Hence, only in Christ is the last wish of religion realized...So far the Christian religion may justly be called the absolute religion."(7)

"It is thus a constructive social suggestion that we endeavor to give up, as the basis of our desire to win a satisfactory life, the quest for the companionship with a being behind or within the fleeting aspect of nature; that we assume the universe to be indifferent toward the human venture that means everything to us; that we acknowledge ourselves to be adrift in infinite space on our little earth, the sole custodians of our ideals. . .Accept the stern condition of being psychically alone in space and time, that we may then, with new zest, enter the warm valley of earthly existence - warm with human impulse, aspiration, and affection, warm with the unconquerable thing called life."(8)

The key to the radical theologians today is an understanding of two Friedrichs, Hegel and Nietzsche. Hegel contended that the Christian religion was the absolute religion because it set forth the conditions of the fulfillment of freedom and self-consciousness to which the Spirit was logically moving. Thus the incarnation was to Hegel the expression of the Spirit's actualization in history, a kenosis by which Spirit which originally existed in-itself (an sich) becomes historical, an object for-itself (fur sich). The key to Hegel's view of Christianity is negation. Historical actuality negates the Spirit's primordial form, and the incarnation sets forth Absolute Spirit because for the first time consciousness recognized God in immediate present existence.(9)

The same theme of negation finds expression in Nietzsche. Nietzsche's proclamation of the death of God was the result of his recognition of an abasement and depreciation of man within the typical Christian theistic complex of theological conceptions. I agree with Walter Kaufmann who contends that Nietzsche's statement concerning man's murder of God should be understood as "an attempt at diagnosis of contemporary civilization."(10) Nietzsche's problem was his observation that the typical corollary of the postulation of a divine personage seemed always to be a depreciation of man inversely in relation to the divine exaltation. Also, Nietzsche understood that the advance of science and culture itself would cause man gradually to subsume under his own creativity the works which heretofore had been relegated to god. It was this theological automation which would make the Deity unemployed, and hence, in this manner God was declared dead and man his murderer.

Altizer contends that the Death of God movement should not be called a reformation. He prefers the term "radical Christian" to "reformer," because the force of the new faith is revolutionary, "given to a total transformation of Christianity."(11) Altizer states that his innovation is best understood in contrast to the mystical Oriental religions. The latter, he contends, are oriented to a negation of time and history by a "backward movement to the primordial Totality."(12) The Oriental mystic desires a return to a paradisal Beginning. The goal is the disappearance of inactivity of all motion and process, which resurrects the original Totality.(13) To the mystic, true Being is the abolition of existence.(14)

In the Oriental religious systems, profane existence is negated. But this negation is dialectical in that the abolition of the profane resurrects the sacred. The dialectical negation of time and space produces an Eternity. Thus, says Altizer, "an absolute negation of the profane is equivalent to a total affirmation of the sacred."(15) Therefore, this dialectical movement is toward a coincidentia oppositorum in which "the profane reality ceases to move or disappear, thereby becoming identical with the sacred, and the sacred now ceases to exist in opposition to the profane."(16)

According to Altizer this coincidentia oppositorum was expressed in biblical eschatology, not by the proclamation of a return to a primordial Beginning, but by an apocalyptic End which would negate the fallen state of history and culminate in the New Age of the true kingdom of God. Consequently, one should not posit an unfathomable gulf between biblical eschatology and the Oriental religions. However, Altizer sees the radical Christian movement going beyond the mere apocalyptic form of faith. Radical Christianity alone culminates in a coincidentia opositorum which negates deity itself, thereby establishing a sacred realm of time and history per se.

The key to Altizer's negation of deity is his idea of a radical kenosis. The primary idea of the Incarnation, according to Altizer, is that it is not merely a figurative means of speaking of a transcendent God who reveals himself from beyond. The Incarnation is viewed by Altizer as effecting a real change or movement in God himself, i.e., God himself ceases to exist and to be present in his primordial form(17) Altizer calls the divine kenosis a 'self-annihilation of God."(18) "He is truly dead," says Altizer, "he is not simply hidden from view."(19) But - and here emerges what appears to be the illegitimate theological child which should embarrass Altizer's philosophical divorce of God from religion - the Incarnation is a "Word unfolding itself in the concrete process of time and space, and therefore a Word that is liberated from its source in the primordial Beginning."(20) Thus to Altizer the uniqueness of Christianity is that the "Word has kenotically emptied itself of Spirit in becoming embodied in flesh."(21) Consequently, only the Christian can truly proclaim the death of God.

"So long as the Church is grounded in the worship of a sovereign and transcendent Lord, and submits in its life and witness to that infinite distance separating the creature and the Creator, it must continue to reverse the movement of the Spirit who progressively becomes actualized as flesh, thereby silencing the life and speech of the Incarnate Word."(22)

Thus Altizer declares that it is significant to say that God becomes Jesus and not vice versa.(23) Also, this kenotic movement is not something finished. "At no point in the dialectical process can one isolate the Word and affirm that here it receives its final and definitive expression," says Altizer.(24) The Word continues its kenotic movement and direction by "moving from the historical Jesus to the universal body of humanity, thereby undergoing an epiphany in every human hand and face."(25)

Without some introduction to Nietzsche's religio-philosophical connotation of the death of God, the reader of Altizer can quite easily become perplexed with the Christian confession of the death of God. There is a stark equivocation in making a common reference to their ideas by he term "death of God." Hegel has the key to Altizer's kingdom, not Nietzsche. Thus one asks: Just how radical is Altizer? Has he not merely set up the divine in earthly vessels when he insists on the work of the Word: The following suggests an affirmative answer.

Probably the most creative aspect of Altizer's thought is his presentation of the negation of guilt as a corollary to the negation of God. Following Nietzsche's idea of resentment, Altizer clearly points out that with the disappearance of the transcendent God of primitive and present orthodox systems of Christianity, guilt, as it is ordinarily understood, disappears. But the power for facing the despair of the death of God is a wage upon the presence of the living Christ.(27) Thus, from this perspective Altizer reiterates the conclusion of Nietzsche and William Blake, that the radical Christian now can see that the transcendent God is synonymous with Satan, being contradictory to life and a symbol of No-saying to human existence.(28)

Altizer's Christianity is Christianity in its most radical form as regards the proposed definition of its distinct essence. Not only is Jesus the focal point of divine work; he becomes the plenary recipient of all divine categories by a negation of all other divine conceptualizations. It is just at this point that Altizer's terminology should be clarified.

Today in common parlance "atheist" connotes one who does not believe in a deity at all. Clearly this is not Altizer's position. He is a non-theist (a-theist) who affirms a belief in a divine reality which expresses itself in human life and history. Altizer calls the divine principle or reality the Word, and it is the introduction of this concept which is so perplexing. Throughout the reading of Altizer's works one feels a sense of liberation in his forthright elucidation of the negative effect which theistic absolutism has had on humanity. He appears to shelve the traditional religious terminology, making man a responsible creature who must face the reality of existence. Then one is introduced to a "Word" which actualizes itself in the historical process. Altizer reminds on of the child who declares that he does not believe in Santa Claus, yet insists on hanging up his stocking. One cannot deny a deity beyond man (even if the transcendent is a mysterium of inner power which paradoxically is called imminent) and at the same time bombard his audience with synonyms for the divine nomenclature.

Here Altizer's "Christianity" must face the honest question of a true secular man: Why any religious terminology at all? Influenced by Tillich, Altizer tries to wed religious terminology with philosophical concepts. But both must face up to the accusation of a bias for religious terminology rather than mere psychological or sociological descriptions of human experience.

It is true that with Jesus the theistic god concept became radically related to humanity (although one must recognize that any theistic concept has inherent within it an incarnational form since the analogy in theism is man himself). But Altizer does not view the historical phenomenon of Jesus merely from the stance of comparative religion, i.e., the fusion of Hebraic theistic historical eschatology with Greek conceptions of savior gods in the mystery religions, the result being a divine drama which includes all of history as a preparation-event-consummation syndrome. Rather than purporting Christianity to be a logical consequence of man's symbolization of his response to his finitude, Altizer becomes quite religious, non-secular, and sees what Hegel (the philosophical idealist!) declared years ago: Divine Spirit actualizing itself in history, Christianity being its ultimate expression.

Indeed, God is dead in the sense that the theistic absolutism of traditional religious structures is no longer tenable, and man is left in silence which causes anxiety and despair over having lost a divine authority which had insured meaning of life by giving man a place in relation to it. The death of God is an experience, a non-referential proclamation, not a propositional statement which has a referential predicate in the ordinary sense. But Altizer's God died in history at a focal point, at the Incarnation of God (the loss of the primordial form).

For the modern man who seeks a more empirical approach to religion, assent is easily given to Altizer's denunciation of the dogma of the risen Christ, which is a No-saying to historical reality, a re-positing of a transcendent God which in turn negates any historical epiphany. Thus, to Altizer God dies at the Incarnation and remains dead without a resurrection. But is not Altizer's "Word" the equivalent of the risen Christ who to traditional Christianity was never viewed as far removed, but as permeating all of history with his power in the Spirit?

The Death of God movement to which Professor Altizer subscribes certainly is a radical Christianity, but it is also a confused one. However, the confusion is born of a misconception of modern culture. Altizer, Hamilton, and Van Buren insist that the present era is post-Christian and secular. Post-Christian it is, but only partly is it secular. I would characterize modern man as one who is experiencing the growing pains of "coming of age," to use Bonhoeffer's terminology. Since science and technology, through a cause-effect empirical method, has supplanted the providential mysterious economy of the Divine, man has found his theology to be like a key to a lost lock. But modern man emotionally does not want to admit that he is on his own. Despair today is the experience of the absence of God. It is also a desire for a better return of a divine reality.

1. The term "total event" was used by Dr. Theodore R. Clarke to distinguish his empaasis on the entire ministry of Jesus in contradictinction to those theoloogians who give primary emphasis to the death of Jesus as the factor of atomement. See his work, Saved by His Life, pp. 213 ff. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1959.

14. Ibid. Altizer is quite enamoured with the contribution of Mircea Elaids's work concerning the mythical images of rebirth. See Eliade's Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return and Birth and Rebirth. see also Altizer's work, Mircea Eliade and the Dialectic of the Sacred.