Theology Today - Vol 23, No. 2 - July 1966 - BOOK REVIEW

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The Gospel Of Christian Atheism
By Thomas J. J. Altizer
157 pp. Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1966. $1.75.

At the height of the "New Theology" controversy in Great Britain in 1907, P. T. Forsyth remarked (rather uncharitably) that certain efforts at theological restatement seemed to him "like a bad photograph: overexposed and underdeveloped." I am prompted (equally uncharitably) to apply the remark to certain of the writing connected with the contemporary "death of God" movement in Protestant theology. (Those who take umbrage at this description are at liberty to apply to my comments the retort that was directed to Forsyth, that his own writings resembled "fireworks in a fog.")

I do not mean to imply that the question of the "death of God" is an unimportant question upon which theologians can simply turn their backs, but I do mean to imply and also to state directly that the formulation of the issue in Thomas J. J. Altizer's The Gospel of Christian Atheism seems to me so hastily constructed and so obscurely presented as to remove it from the category of writings that need to be taken seriously. If this sounds like a harsh judgment, I can only respond that since Altizer harshly writes off as irrelevant or wrong or both almost every other Christian theologian who has ever lived, there can hardly be objection if one theologian feels constrained to turn the compliment back upon its originator.

For so long has Altizer's version of the "death of God" been at the center of attention in the mass media that I, like many others, have eagerly been awaiting a full and definitive treatment of exactly what he was trying to communicate. It was therefore with more than a little eagerness that I turned to The Gospel of Christian Atheism. Here, I was sure, would be the definitive statement of the new position, the careful development of the argument, the contribution to the ongoing theological dialogue, that would give us something solid to which to react. I approached the book with all the openness and receptivity I could muster, feeling sure that if the-re really was something in the new movement, Altizer's book would tell me so.

I was, to indulge in massive understatement, disappointed. The book abounds in obscure terminology, loose use of language, sloganeering in place of argument, sweeping generalities, and unsupported conclusions.

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Not only is the material unclear, but what is clear is far from having the self-evidential quality that its author attributes to it. Under the circumstances, it would be preferable simply to ignore the book and turn to the really significant attempts to discuss contemporary theological issues (Cox, Robinson, van Buren, Hamilton, Hoekendijk, Cobb, Rahner, Schillebeeckx, and a host of others spring to mind). But since the mass media have ordained Altizer as the high priest of a new movement," it is impossible to pretend that the book has 'not appeared. It must be examined with some care, if only for the purpose of persuading others that they need not accord it the same kind of attention. The need to engage in this paradoxical stance of calling attention to the lack of need to call attention is furthered by Altizer's recent suggestion (in Radical Theology and the Death of God, p. 170) that silence about his writings may be taken to imply assent to their content.

Whereof one cannot be silent, then, of that must one speak, and it will be clear already that the gravamen of my charge is that Altizer has not given us a statement with which we can really come to grips. It may be that he has got ahold of something important, but if so the fact is not discoverable from his book. So the present essay, rather than being an attempt to initiate a dialogue with Altizer, is the recording of a feeling that no dialogue is called for, at least until he has made a more careful attempt to communicate his position.

My reactions, then, boil down to the following:

1. Either Altizer cannot write clearly; or

2. He can write clearly but does not care to take the trouble to do so; or

3. His subject matter is of such a sort that it is incommunicable in the prose style he has adopted; or

4. I am too dense to understand what he is writing about.

The conclusions to be drawn, respectively, from these reactions seem to me to be the following:

1. Altizer should stop writing books; or

2. He should take special pains in the future to try to communicate his position; or

3. He should turn to sheer evocative language and poetry, and stop trying to communicate through prose; or

4.I should stop writing reviews.

Those, if there be such, who do understand The Gospel of Christian Atheism will certainly opt for the fourth of these conclusions. For the moment, I incline to either (or both) the second or the third.

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One of the main problems posed for the reader is that lie is constantly confronted by words and slogans whose meanings are never clarified. This is particularly frustrating when Altizer is using traditional terms but with a special meaning of his own. "Word" is a classic example. The term, with its upper-case "W" appears hundreds of times. By pages 17-18 we have been informed that "the Word is in process of renewing all things, not by recalling them to their pristine form in the Beginning, but rather by making them new so that they can pass into the End" (p. 18). Does this have something to do with the Incarnate Word or Logos, as might be expected in a book on Christian theology? Apparently not, for by the next page we have been told that "the principle of the Word can be and is indeed present, even though it is not possible to discern any traditional signs of its activity" (p. 19, italics added). What, then, are the criteria by means of which to discern signs of the presence of this Word, whatever it is? No more frustrating question can be asked of the book. We are urged to a "pneumatic or spiritual understanding of the Word" (p. 25), and we are urged to seek "a total union with the Word" (p. 25). But we never learn what this entails or how it is to be brought about.

"Epiphany" is another keyword, appearing interminably, but criteria for distinguishing proper epiphanies are noticeably lacking. "Sacrality," "primordial," "immanence," "every alien other," "Incarnation," are likewise key terms but it seldom becomes clear just what Altizer's special meaning for them is. When we do learn, the meaning is so novel as to make us wonder why the traditional terminology was retained, Incarnation, for example, is "the contradiction of life and the deification of nothingness" (p. 95).

I can only conclude that there is an "in" language by which members of the "death of God" school communicate with one another. But as long as they are going to write books for all of us, rather than letters to one another, I insist that they have the responsibility of giving the rest of us some help, not only in learning their terminology but in indicating on what levels they are using words. Rather than help of this sort, Altizer simply repeats and re-arranges the key words and slogans on page after page. Here are two passages from the latter part of the book which are typical of the book as a whole, and my complaint is that we have no clearer understanding by the end of the book of the meaning of the key terms than we had at the beginning. We have simply heard them more often:

Insofar as an eschatological epiphany of Christ can occur only in conjunction with a realization in total experience of the kenotic process of

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self-negation, we should expect that epiphany to occur in the heart of darkness, for only the universal triumph of the Antichrist can provide an arena for the total manifestation of Christ (p. 120).

It is precisely because an epiphany of Antichrist abolishes the transcendent source of evil and nothingness by embodying a primordial chaos in the actuality of history that it is a redemptive epiphany, an epiphany unveiling the full reality of alienation and repression, thereby preparing the way for their ultimate reversal (pp. 121-122).

These are difficult enough, and one could quite properly take almost every phrase and ask the author to explain what he is trying to communicate to us. But it is even more bewildering to be told, again in a typical sentence, that "to know an alien and empty nothingness as the dead body of God is to be liberated from every uncanny and awesome sense of the mystery and power of chaos" (p. 96).

In the midst of paragraphs containing such sentences, the reader leaps with hope upon the announcement that he is to be told what is "the absolutely decisive and fundamental theological principle" of Altizer's position (p. 84). The answer is that "the God of faith so far from being unchanging and unmoving is a perpetual and forward-moving process of self-negation, pure negativity, or kenotic metamorphosis" (p. 84). From this, the reader is exhorted to be open to "truly new epiphanies whose very occurrence either effects or records a new actualization or movement of the divine process" (p. 84). But where are these epiphanies, and, more importantly, what are the criteria by which one is to discern them? The reader never learns.

At many points, "God is Jesus." On a few occasions, "the radical Christian confronts us with the liberating message that God is Satan" (p. 101; and cf. "this epiphany of God as Satan," p. 113). Repeatedly, of course, we are told that "God is dead," and that he "has actually died in Christ" (p. 103). Such statements leave one in utter confusion. If God is Jesus, and God is Satan, then presumably Jesus is Satan. If God is dead, and God is Satan, then presumably Satan is dead. If God has "actually died" in Christ, and God is Satan, then Satan "actually died" in Christ. The last state of confusion is surely worse than the first.

Which brings us to the most confusing matter of all. What, indeed, does the slogan "God is dead" mean? We learn that God is Jesus, and that "God has truly died in Jesus" (p. 71)-and yet Jesus continues to be spoken of in the present tense, as "the Jesus who is actually and fully incarnate in every human hand and face" (p. 71).

Truly to pronounce his name-and for the radical Christian the names of Jesus and God are ultimately one-is to participate in God's death in Jesus and thereby to know the God who is Jesus as the expanding or forward-moving process who is becoming "One Man" (p. 75).

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So for the life of me I cannot see that God "is dead" at all. Perhaps on Altizer's terms he once was, but he surely is no more. Altizer goes on even more explicitly to talk about "a redemption issuing from the total presence of God in Christ, as God himself becomes the Word who is progressively incarnate in the actual processes of history" (p. 83).

Now if words have any meaning, the above quotations arc saying not that "God is dead," but quite the opposite, namely that God is "progressively incarnate in the actual processes of history," and that God is "the expanding or forward-moving process who is becoming 'One Man.'" The phrase "God is dead" is thus dissolved into a misleading and inaccurate bit of sloganeering, that is disavowed in the very context of its proclamation. For Altizer, God appears to be very much alive. If this is so, Altizer should discard the slogan that has brought him so much attention. If it is not so, he should exegete the slogan in ways consistent with its proclamation.

Another type of linguistic difficulty is created by the exhortation that we should will the death of God (pp. 136, 146). What kind of use of language is this? Since Altizer so frequently asserts that God is already dead, the most we could possibly do, if Altizer is right, is to acknowledge the fact. What does it mean to "will" a past reality? All we can do is affirm it or deny it. When one considers the absolute finality with which the death of God is proclaimed by Altizer, as a sheerly unrepeatable and irrevocable event, one wonders how one could possibly add an iota to its irrevocability by "willing" it. If Altizer means that we should will to affirm the death of God, that would be another matter. But the distinction is never clarified.

Perhaps the greatest linguistic difficulty in the book is its diffuseness when presenting an alternative to traditional Christian faith. Altizer simply moves here to the language of ecstatic utterance: "All things will dance when we greet them with affirmation" (p. 154). If we wish to share in the vision, we get instructions such as the following:

It is precisely by a radical movement of turning away from all previous forms of light that we can participate in a new totality of bliss, an absolutely immanent totality embodying in its immediacy all which once appeared and was real in the form of transcendence, and a totality which the Christian must name as the present and living body of Christ (p. 153, italics added).

There is an ecstasy here, but if the book is meant to share it with us, we need more direction than simply being told (precisely) to turn away "from all previous forms of light." Theology could, perhaps, be written as poetry (and Altizer's strong dependence on Blake and Nietzsche suggests that this is really the form in which he should write), but the

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reader needs more help if precision is, to be defined in terms of the above typical quotation.

The trouble with ecstatic utterance is that in a prose context it too easily degenerates into sloganeering, which can be a very dangerous tool for a theologian. An image offered once can evoke a response; an image offered repeatedly begins to pall. Drawing from Blake, Altizer tells us, for example, that Jesus "is actually and fully incarnate in every human hand and face" (p. 71). The phrase is repeated at crucial points on subsequent pages (cf. pp. 83, 136), but we never learn what it really means. What does it mean to affirm that Jesus is "actually" incarnate in the hand pulling a trigger in Vietnam? Sometimes this presence in every hand and face is described as an epiphany (p. 83), sometimes as an incarnation (p. 136). Are epiphany and incarnation, therefore, identical?

Amid many things that are unclear in the book, one thing is absolutely clear. This is Altizer's total disavowal of the church-and, indeed, so it would appear, any form of community. He makes evident from the beginning that the Christian church is the real roadblock in the way of an understanding of "radical" Christian faith. "The churches are inadequately equipped to face such a challenge." Christian faith has gotten bogged down in "an increasingly archaic ecclesiastical tradition" (p. 9).

None of this, however, is a plea for the reform of the church; it is a plea for the rejection and disavowal of the church. The new theologian is not posing as a "reformer" (p. 26). The only truly contemporary theology will have to find itself "outside of the given and established form of the church" (pp. 9-10). The book is begun, continued, and ended in the same vein. "Theology must never again be enclosed within the classrooms and churches" (p. 12, italics added). There must be "a total negation of the human and historical world of Christendom" (p. 150, italics added).

I share a considerable amount of the exasperation Altizer feels about traditional church structures, but what surprises me in his total rejection of the community of faith is that I cannot discover him offering anything to take its place. The life of the radical Christian, if this book is any indication, is an utterly solitary one. Suppose I were persuaded of the truth of Altizer's gospel. Where would I go? With whom would I join? What kind of a community would there be through which to give expression to my new found faith? I am left with the feeling that the only course of action open to me would be to go to Emory University and take courses under Altizer on the poetry of William Blake.

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Altizer not only feels that the church is irrelevant and, since purveying a false gospel, misleading. He sees it as positively evil, in the fact that it finally becomes "the expression of the will to power," and to the degree that it claims to be the body of Christ it is already "set upon the imperialistic path of conquering the world" (p. 132). I would suggest that this picture of the church, though abundantly illustrated throughout Christian history, is particularly inappropriate as a description of what is happening in the life of the contemporary church. Rather than expressing "the will to power," the Second Vatican Council, for example, represents an exercise in the divesting of power. Rather than being "set upon the imperialistic path of conquering the world," Vatican 11 has represented a genuine and authentic attempt to refashion the image of the church as the servant of the world, and has declared a willingness to disengage itself from expressions of power that cloud the gospel. As Article 76 of "The Church in the World Today" puts it, the church "stands ready to renounce the exercise of certain legitimately acquired rights, if it becomes clear that their use raises doubt about the sincerity of her witness."

III

Altizer not only disavows the church, he also disavows the entire Christian past. A fully consistent Christianity "renounces all attachment to the past" (p. 50, italics added, cf. p. 77). Theology "must ever give itself to a negation of every past form of the Word" (p. 83, italics added). The Christian for whom Christ is to be truly present must adopt "the one principle" that "he can no longer be clearly or decisively manifest in any of his previous forms or images" (p. 137, italics added). We are even urged, in the concluding ecstatic portions of the book, to "speak against every previous epiphany of light" (p. 152, italics added). Altizer suggests that Christianity and Judaism are discontinuous, and goes on to argue that if there is a chasm between the Old Testament and the New Testament, there is no reason why there should not be a chasm between the New Testament and "a whole new form of faith" (p. 27, italics added).

I submit that this whole plea is nonsense (in the descriptive rather than pejorative meaning of the latter word), and that historical creatures cannot simply start de novo any time they feel like it. If we do this we are utterly at the mercy of whim and fancy with no criteria whatever by which to judge where the new epiphanies are. And the proof of the nonsense nature of the plea is that Altizer himself is unable to carry it through. For scarcely has he nailed down the total disavowal of the past than lie appeals to the use of the past himself, and in a very crucial

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way: "The name of Jesus Christ is simply meaningless apart from its Old Testament background, for it is the God of the Old Testament who becomes fully actualized and historically real in Christ" (p. 87).

One simply cannot have it both ways here, particularly after having previously asserted that Judaism and Christianity are discontinuous, any more than one can say in one breath that we should "speak against every previous epiphany of light" (p. 152), and then -on the same page insist that we get our marching orders from Second Isaiah-an epiphany of light if there ever was one.

If Altizer is to be consistent, it is hard to see how he can retain the name "Jesus" or the name "Christian." Christianity did not retain the name "Jew"; why should Altizer, offering a revelation to replace the Christian one, retain tile name "Christian"? Altizer, far from being daring and far out, is, simply in terms of his own presuppositions, much too timid. If we need, as he asserts again and again, a wholly new language, if we must disengage ourselves from all past forms and images of thought, then why retain archaic words like "God" and "Jesus" with the intolerable burden of outmoded freight they have to carry? I find this one of the most confusing points in Altizer's whole approach. In the midst of his impassioned and reiterated pleas for a break with the past, he draws back from asserting the full consequences of his own position.

Not only does Altizer disavow the church and the past, but in doing so he often describes past Christian thought in ways that do a serious injustice to it. The "traditional" Christianity that he destroys so nimbly is usually a far cry from the real article. Illustration can be given from three areas.

(1) The doctrine of Christ. The crucial distinction between Altizer's position and the traditional position is stated by him in the following way: "The radical Christian reverses the orthodox confession, affirming that 'God is Jesus' [Blake's Laocoön engraving], rather than 'Jesus is God'" (p. 44).

I see no way in which one can responsibly assert that orthodox Christology is described by the statement "Jesus is God." The most important battle in the early centuries was the militant unwillingness of Christian orthodoxy to settle for the confessional statement, "Jesus is God." The early struggle against docetism was waged on these lines. The. creedal controversies of the third and fourth centuries were a similar attempt to guard against this kind of one-sided emphasis. But Altizer,

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On Purely arbitrary grounds, will not allow the Christian heritage to proclaim what it has, in fact, proclaimed. There may be a lot of theological problems with the affirmation that Jesus was "true God and true man," but that is the affirmation in terms of which traditional Christianity must be challenged, not the affirmation that "Jesus is God."

(2) The doctrine of the Spirit. For a writer who makes so much use of the notion of the Spirit, Altizer is strangely unwilling to allow traditional Christianity to have any doctrine of the Spirit. He insists that Christians, other than himself, are confined to the past.

Only a dead or dying theology could rest upon the principle that the Christian Word is fully or finally present in the past. . . . We must not betray that faith by falsely believing that faith is confined to either its primitive or its past historical expressions (p. 18).

But who asserts that faith is "confined to either its primitive or its past historical expressions"? The Christian orientation to the past is to a past that becomes present, to events that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, become contemporaneous. If there were no doctrine of the Holy Spirit in Christian history, Altizer's case would be airtight. Unfortunately for his case, there is a doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Whatever one thinks of that doctrine, it has at least been a way of trying to affirm the ongoing activity of God, as against the notion of "confining" him to the past. The same caricature is present when Altizer writes about how wrong it is "to confine theological meaning to the sacred history and scriptures of the past" (p. 82), as though, once again, the past cannot become contemporary in the life of the Spirit. Altizer's bete noire is "confinement," but only a very jaundiced view of the history of theology need lead one to the conclusion that proclaiming the death of God is the only way out of confinement. An appropriation of the doctrine of the Spirit is another.

(3) The doctrine of God. Altizer's characterization of traditional theology is indicated by the following: "Throughout its history Christian theology has been thwarted from reaching its intrinsic goal by its bondage to a transcendent, a sovereign, and an impassive God" (p. 42). As the theme develops, it is clear that terms like "impassive" are crucial to Altizer's designation. The God being described is Pascal's "god of the philosophers," the static deity of Greek metaphysics, a god who is "distant and non-redemptive," standing "wholly apart," a god who, following Aristotle, is pure actuality (p. 62). Christian theology is thus indited, "because it has ever remained bound to an idea of God as a wholly self-sufficient, self-enclosed, and absolutely autonomous Being" (p. 67, italics added). The only possible recovery will be by repudiating "all religious conceptions of the mystery of the Godhead, with their inevitable corol-

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lary that the sacred or ultimate Reality is impassive and silent (p. 85, italics added). What Altizer wants instead, is a God "who abandons or negates his original passivity and quiescence" (p. 86). It is thus insisted that the God of traditional Christian faith is: (a) originally passive and quiescent, and (b) that he does not abandon this passivity and quiescence.

One feels a sense of exasperation, let alone frustration trying to respond to this sort of argument. On what terms can one possibly deal with an assessment of Christian history which lumps the whole previous Christian tradition into the catchall of Greek metaphysics, defines God in those terms, substitutes the part for the whole, and then by dismissing the part creates the impression that it has invalidated the whole? Methodologically, that is what Altizer seems to have done, and it will not stand. One can legitimately object to the strain in Christian theology that Altizer here indites, but this by no means entitles one to insist that it is the normative, or the only, or even the crucial strain. To discredit the God of Aristotle, as Altizer wants to do, is by no means to have discredited the God of the Bible, who, if he 'is to be attacked, might more properly be attacked for overactivity rather than quiescence.

The same device is used to invalidate the relation of Word to Scripture: "Of course, a religious Christianity will dogmatically insist that the Word has been given its definitive and final expression in the Bible" (p. 49, italics added). This is far from being an "of course" statement. If a "religious Christianity" makes any kind of dogmatic insistence, it is surely that "the Word has been given its definitive and final expression in . . ." Christ, the Word Incarnate, the Word made flesh, and even this must be understood in the sense that that Christ continues to be active in the Spirit. It simply will not do to convict past Christian history of biblicism and then by discounting biblicism give the impression that one has thereby succeeded in discounting all past Christian history.

It is next to impossible to discover just what "radical Christianity" is, since the definitions become so arbitrary. For example, Nietzsche is cited as a Christian prophet. How can such an assertion be defended? Very simply. Define a "radical Christian" as one who realizes that "there is no way to true faith apart from an abolition or dissolution of God himself" (p. 25), and of course it follows that since Nietzsche believed in the abolition or dissolution of God, lie was by very definition a radical Christian. Since "radical Christianity is inseparable from an attack on God," it follows that one who attacks God, particularly if he attacks him vehemently, is a radical Christian. Nietzsche eminently qualifies.

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To me, this is playing with words in unhelpful, if not frivolous, fashion. One can prove anything this way, and I can just as persuasively argue that Billie James Hargis is the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church. How can such an assertion be defended? Very simply. I define the "pope" as one who sees that there can be no true papacy apart from an abolition or dissolution of the Roman Catholic Church. It follows that since Billie James Hargis believes in the abolition and dissolution of the Roman Catholic Church, he is by very definition Pope. Since the papacy is inseparable from an attack upon the Roman Catholic Church, it follows that one who attacks the Roman Catholic Church, particularly if he attacks it vehemently, is Pope. Billie James Hargis eminently qualifies. If the argument seems farfetched, I indicate only that in it I have merely paraphrased the argument of the preceding paragraph.

There is another dimension of the arbitrariness that I find confusing and inconsistent. Altizer insists that traditional Christianity has been wrong in asserting the finality of past events. By making something final out of incarnation, for example, traditional Christianity has thereby rendered itself unable to see subsequent epiphanies. Finality at all costs is to be avoided in favor of openness to new actions and epiphanies. It is therefore more than a little disconcerting to find Altizer proclaiming that with his position finality has at last burst upon the scene.

The radical Christian is a revolutionary, he is given to a total transformation of Christianity, a rebirth of the Christian Word in a new and final form (p. 26, italics added).

The radical Christian . . . maintains that we are now living in the third and final age of the Spirit (p. 27, italics added; cf. also pp. 64 and 76).

The radical Christian proclaims that God has actually died in Christ, that this death is both an historical and a cosmic event, and, as such, it is a final and irrevocable event which cannot be reversed by a subsequent religious or cosmic movement (p. 103, italics added).

The radical Christian affirms . . . that the death of God is a final and irrevocable event (p. 107, italics added).

What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If traditional Christianity is to be indited for claiming finality, Altizer's claims to finality stand under similar indictment.

Altizer says that he finished The Gospel of Christian Atheism "while still riding the momentum of my initial enthusiasm" (p. 13). The fact is evident throughout. There may be enthusiasm, but there is no pre-

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cision. There may be momentum, but there is no discipline. What should have been a clarifying statement becomes a confusing evocation. I can only conclude that if the " death of God" theology has a future, it will be in spite of this book rather than because of it. The book is not a gospel, for its self-styled good news is as diffuse as it is strident, and leaves the reader baffled rather than empowered. It is not Christian, for it demands an explicit repudiation of all that has previously claimed the name, and only by being inconsistent with its own premises can it claim the name. It is not atheism, for instead of no god it offers us a fresh god to take the dead god's place. The book, rather than demonstrating the death of God, succeeds only in demonstrating the death of this particular version of the death of God theology.

And yet, there is one saving grace toward the end. After all of the jaunty iconoclasm, there are a few paragraphs in which Altizer acknowledges the kind of risk to which he invites the reader:

The contemporary Christian who bets that God is dead must do so with a full realization that he may very well, be embracing a life-destroying nihilism. . . . No honest contemporary seeker can ever lose sight of the very real possibility that the willing of the death of God is the way to madness, dehumanization, and even to the most totalitarian form of society yet realized in history (p. 146).

While this scarcely carries the note of "gospel," it does convey a note of honest sobriety that one wishes had characterized the previous 145 pages of sweeping denunciations and confident claims. It might even provide the way toward a fresh beginning.

Robert McAfee Brown
Stanford University
Stanford, California