50 Key Concepts in Theology

Radical Theology and The Death of God, p. 16).
Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) said that Christians ‘recognize in the cross of
Christ the death of God, by which he has conquered the devil and the world’.
Matthew Arnold (1822–88) spoke in his poem ‘Dover Beach’ (1867) of
the ‘melancholy, long, withdrawing roar’ as the ‘Sea of Faith’ recedes.
Albert Camus (1913–60), the existentialist atheist, commented in The
Myth of Sisyphus: ‘To kill God is to become god oneself; it is to realize
already on this earth the eternal life of which the Gospel speaks.’

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Don Cupitt (1935– ) argued in a ground-breaking book, Taking Leave of
God (1980), that we only need God as a guiding ‘ideal’ or ‘the sum of our
values’, but that the idea of a ‘real’ God is redundant.
Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–72) argued that God is simply a projection of
human concerns.
Eberhard Jüngel (1934– ) argued in God as the Mystery of the World
(1983) that the concept of the ‘death of God’ should be understood only to
refer to Christ’s death, and that this death is necessary.
Martin Luther (1483–1546) famously said in a chorale that Gott selbst ist
tot (‘God himself is dead’) – a line that later influenced Hegel. It is amusing
to think that Nietzsche probably sang this chorale as a child, and that Martin
Luther may have inadvertently given Nietzsche the idea that God is dead.
Karl Marx (1818–83) argued that the concept of God was a tool of
oppression, and that belief in God would disappear naturally as oppression
was lifted.
Blaise Pascal (1623–62) proclaimed that ‘the great God Pan is dead’ – a
reference to the loss of a sense of divinity in the world.
Praxeas (second century ad) was a modalist who argued that God the
Father died on the cross with Christ. (See ‘Modalism’ in ‘The Trinity’.)
Gabriel Vahanian (1927– ) argued in God is Dead: The culture of our
post-Christian era (1957) that, for modern people, atheism is a way of life.
Max Weber (1864–1920) coined the phrase ‘the disenchantment of the
world’ to describe the way in which secular thinking has dissolved the
mystery of the cosmos.
IDEAS
Patripassianism: the belief that God the Father died on the cross with
Christ.
Anti-Foundationalism: the belief that our thoughts and perceptions are
not grounded in facts, truths and realities.
Kenosis: the idea that God ‘emptied himself’ in order to become human.
BOOKS
Thomas Altizer, The Gospel of Christian Atheism (Westminster Press,
1966)
Jackson L. Ice and John J. Carey (eds.), The Death of God Debate

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(Westminster Press, 1967)
Thomas W. Ogletree, The Death of God Controversy (Abingdon Press,
1966)

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