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Thomas J. J.
Altizer, The New Gospel of Christian Atheism
Philosophical and Cultural Studies in Religion
When Thomas
Altizer’s The Gospel of Christian Atheism appeared in 1966 at
the height of a national media furor over the emerging “Death of
God” movement (a movement that precipitated a world-wide
re-evaluation of the nature and existence of God and inspired some
significant contributions to twentieth century theology) it became
an international best seller. Now, in
The New Gospel of Christian
Atheism, the author undertakes a radical rewriting of that work,
incorporating his more recent theological thinking, and addressing
our contemporary nihilism. The original
Gospel promoted the
controversial idea of the death of God to an excited American and
international public; this
New Gospel articulates the abiding
seriousness of that radical theological vision anew, some
thirty-five years later, for our age of rapid technological advance
and globalization.
The New Gospel of
Christian Atheism sets forth an apocalyptic theology of history
that understands the ending of Christendom as a consequence of the
universalization of Christianity itself, so that the “Death of God”
in the modern world reflects the final phase of a radical
incarnational movement: that is, the embodiment of the divine Spirit
in the “flesh” of the world. In this movement of immanentization, it
is God’s transcendence itself that is sacrificed, negated, emptied
out into the very world that embodies and incarnates the divine
will, such that now the center of faith lies at the center of the
world.
Here Altizer’s early
vision of the 1960s is deepened and confirmed in the boiled-down,
essential, distinctive language of his mature years. The consistency
of his project across four decades is newly visible in this
New
Gospel for our day.
Contents
Preface
Chapter One — The
Uniqueness of Christianity: Religion, History, Death
Chapter Two —
Jesus and the Incarnation: The Name of Jesus, Self-Emptying, The
Universal Humanity
Chapter Three —
God and History: Dialectic and Theology, The Christian Name of God,
God and Satan
Chapter Four —
The Self-Annihilation of God: The Death of God, Atonement, The
Forgiveness of Sin
Chapter Five — A
Calling: The Body of Christ, Absolute Nothingness, A Call
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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