For the more metaphysical among us a good read would be The Gospel of Christian Atheism by Thomas J.J. Altizer. This book gave me an interesting and very different perspective on atheism when I was still a college student. You can see it here if you’re interested.

In the sixties, this somewhat unconventional theologian pioneered a new view on the ‘death of God’ concept first proposed by the famous philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. Whereas Nietzsche tried to exemplify a figurative “God” of being “killed” as a metaphor for religion gradually losing to naturalism, Altizer takes the concept to a more literal dogma.

According to Altizer, the God of Christianity committed an act of self-destruction by incarnating himself as Jesus Christ, who we subsequently crucified. This idea is at odds with my own views, but he does proclaim the importance of Jesus as a central figure or a Messiah to humanity.

Although Altizer has a different view on Christian philosophy, his Christrocentricity might portray his emphasis on the importance of the moral philosophies of Jesus Christ. So, although Altizer’s “annihilation of God” theory might sound a bit crazy to some, in the Gospel of Christian Atheism he does give a very interesting view on the centrality of Jesus to atheists of his kind.

I would recommend this book to folks interested in a more philosophical debate about the importance of Christ in people’s lives.

This may be a postmodern tour de force. Or it may be nonsense. It may have made me think but I don’t know what it has made me think.

Paul, John, Augustine, Luther, Blake, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Hegel, Joyce, and so on. Incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, apocalypse, all given a new spin. But where?

What do you do with a book like this? Has it raised too many questions and perhaps answered none? Can you recognize Christianity in its pages? Has Altizer somehow found a bewildering way to bring the revolutionary Jesus to life?

Did you think you might be comforted? Did you think you might find the way to Rome?

What have they done to Jesus, the orthodox, the Gnostics, the logical philosphers and the pleasant storytellers? Can you consider the crucifixion afresh, can you look back again on the history of the West, without being shocked?

This is not a simple book but neither is it postmodern play. There’s are real challenges in these pages. Working within theologizing, Altizer is out to shove you to take up some cross and go some where for someones’ sake. And several millenia will be on your back. And you will feel it.

In the “Politics of Experience”, the great psychiatrist R.D. Laing wrote: “If I could turn you on, if I could drive you out of your wretched mind, if I could tell you, I would let you know.” Altizer may have done just this for those of us who have become at all settled in their beliefs.

If you don’t want to be challenged, hurry back to your church and Bible study group, before you begin to feel Altizer’s pull. This is not a book I can follow in one reading. I haven’t understood what all this would mean for my daily life, but Western intellectual history may never be the same.

06/16/07: I just read Altizer’s Living the Death of God: A Theological Memoir. I don’t doubt that his writing is provocative and would make for a healthy challenge for orthodox Christians, but I’m more concerned now that he may enjoy the kind of wordplay “postmodern” writers seem to fall victim to. I’m also not clear from this book that he understands Gnostic Christianity (or Buddhism, although I am sure he must and has written elsewhere about these) although he does seem to acknowledge some power of Gnostic Christianity. But, as most often, it seems impossible to be clear just what he is saying.

http://www.christianatheism.com/the-gospel-of-christian-atheism