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Thomas J. J. Altizer,
The New Apocalypse: The Radical
Christian Vision
of William Blake
Philosophical and Cultural Studies in Religion
In The New Apocalypse it is the author's thesis that William Blake
is the most original prophet and seer in the history of Christendom,
that he created a whole new form of vision embodying a modern
radical and spiritual expression of Christianity, and that an
understanding of his revolutionary work demands a new form of
theological understanding. Although radical Christianity was given a
genuine mystical expression by Meister Eckhart and his followers, to
say nothing of the radical Protestant mystics of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, it has never made a real impact upon
Christian theology, and not until Blake was it given a full
visionary form. Unlike the epic poetry of Dante and Milton, Blake’s
prophetic poetry both transcends and negates its roots in the
Christian tradition: it unveils a Jesus who is the totality of both
God and man, envisions a cosmic history reflecting a movement from
Fall to Apocalypse, and records an ecstatic immersion in the joy and
the horror of concrete experience.
To enter the world of Blake’s vision is to be initiated into a new
and radical form of faith, a paradoxical but deeply modern faith
that is both sacred and profane, both mystical and contemporary at
once. This study represents an initial theological attempt to enter
the world of Blake’s vision, to appropriate from that vision a
theological form that will be relevant to our world, and to do so on
the basis of a dialectical understanding of theology, choosing Hegel
as a guide to the dialectical ground and meaning of Blake’s vision
in the belief that Hegel’s dialectical “system” is a far more
effective guide to Blake’s visionary world than are the traditional
forms of Christian theology and mysticism.
Contents
Abbreviations for Works of William Blake
Introduction
Part
I Fall
1. Dialectic and Fall
2. God
3. Nature
4. Perception and the Senses
5. Sex and the Body
6. Reason
7. Space and Ulro
8. Religion
9. The Female
Part
II Redemption
1. The Age of the Spirit
2. Incarnation and Kenosis
3. Atonement and Luvah
4. Creation
5. The Female
6. Generation and Regeneration
Part
III History
1. History and Vision
2. Paradise and History
3. Cosmos and History
4. God and History
5. Jesus
6. States and the Individual
Part
IV Apocalypse
1. America
2. Dialectic and Apocalypse
3. Mysticism and Eschatology
4. Self-annihilation
5. Christ and Antichrist
Afterword
Notes
Index
Author
Thomas J. J. Altizer is a native of Charleston, West Virginia. He
took his PhD at the University of Chicago and is presently Professor
Emeritus of Religious Studies, The State University of New York at
Stony Brook. Altizer can be characterized as the most radical
theologian of our age: a major exponent of the death of God
theology, and the only theologian who has constructed a full and
comprehensive radical theology, one grounded in the Bible, our
imaginative traditions, modern dialectical philosophy, and a
Buddhist horizon
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