I recently read Altizer’s The Gospel of Christian Atheism and found it to be enjoyable and interesting, yet also frustrating. It was interesting in its use of Hegel, Nietzsche and Blake as an attempt to learn theological lessons from our historical moment and in the idea of God ceasing to be a transcendent sovereign and becoming present in each individual in some form. It was frustrating in that it mostly asserted rather than argued this position. It seems to me to take the form of a manifesto in some sense, a kind of rallying cry, which may explain this feature. Of course, argumentation is not lacking altogether, and this is what struck me as interesting. Such metaphysical speculation is obviously impossible to prove, so you can say anything you want as long as it sounds plausible and isn’t too internally contradictory (all ‘systems’ have some tensions if not contradictions). I presume that what makes it plausible is the way it chimes with other ideas and experiences people have. So some people are willing to believe that God is a real entity in some sense but then ceased to exist in that form, whereas others believe in the Trinity. Either version is pretty weird and not conducive to any straightforward empirical validation. The same can often be said of philosophical ontologies too.
So what’s the point of these speculations? Partly to explain experiences, partly to express a vision of the world (we can’t help but make meaning), partly to ground a politics. Altizer clearly had bad experiences with the church, and the church at present often does hinder moral progress, so Altizer wants to generate some form of Christianity, or theological discourse, beyond the clutches of the church. Fair enough. I hope to blog more about this idea in the work of Andrew Shanks in the not too distant future.
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