Abstract
Thomas J.J. Altizer is one of the most important theologians of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and all radical theology must pass through and be conversant with his work and the historical significance of his earlier contributions. This chapter presents Altizer’s essential ideas in a straightforward and accessible manner and provides a guide for the beginning reader.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Mark Taylor: “For Altizer, the question of style is a matter of substance. Always the Southern preacher, his sentences are crafted to be spoken rather than read” (Taylor, “Foreword,” in Altizer [2006], xvi). Altizer (2006) writes: “I was and am deeply committed to preaching” (15); “I will always be a Southern preacher” (26); “if all of my genuine theological writing is preaching itself, I can relish an image of myself as a Southern preacher, and perhaps I am the last truly southern preacher, and if only thereby the last theologian” (181); and finally: “Once the death of God controversy fully broke, I was continually on television. As I traveled about the country, I was invariably interviewed for local television, and I always responded with preaching; perhaps I was the first television evangelist” (16).
- 2.
John Elson, “Toward a Hidden God,” Time (8. April 1966).
- 3.
For more on this episode, see Gary Hauk, “When God ‘Died’ in Atlanta” Saporta Report (6. April 2015); and Christopher Rodkey , “Methodist Heretic,” Methodist History 49.1 (2010): 37–50.
- 4.
For more information on this episode, see Rodkey (2010), esp. 42ff. The statement by the Methodist Bishops was published as “Statement of the College of Bishops, Southeastern Jurisdiction,” The Mississippi Methodist Advocate ns 19.17 (2. February 1966), 6.
- 5.
Cf. Lissa McCullough, “Historical Introduction,” in McCullough and Schroeder (2004), xxi.
- 6.
Parts of this and the following sections are taken or reduced from Christopher Rodkey , In the Horizon of the Infinite: Paul Tillich and the Dialectic of the Sacred, Ph.D. diss., Drew University (Madison, NJ, 2008), 171–173.
- 7.
Nevertheless, it is worth noting that this sharply anti-ecclesiastical position is not absolute. Already by 1967, Altizer had softened this stance, writing in a Cross Currents article that “Many critics have charged that a death -of-God theology can have no possible ground in the life of the Church… But I believe [this] to be untrue.” Rather, he argues, radical theology can find a place in a church, provided it is “a living Church, a Church living simultaneously in the historical past, the contemporary present, and the apocalyptic future, and therefore an organic Church moving through an evolutionary process of development” (Altizer 1967a, pp. 271–272). Eric Meyer offered a noteworthy and detailed critique of this article in his “Catholic Theology and the Death of God ,” in (Cobb, 1970, pp. 77–92).
- 8.
- 9.
Nicholas Gier, “Process Theology and the Death of God,” in Cobb (1970), 187.
- 10.
- 11.
Altizer notably holds the Phenomenology in considerably higher regard than the remainder of Hegel’s corpus. Criticism is particularly leveled against the posthumously published lectures: “if we were to judge his lectures on the philosophy of history by the dialectical criteria set forth in his Logic and Phenomenology, we could only judge the late Hegel to be a bad disciple” Altizer 1967b, p. 170). Further: “if we look upon the Phenomenology of Spirit rather than his university lectures as the real enactment of Hegel’s understanding of predestination ….” (2003, p. 59).
Although The New Apocalypse will privilege the Logic together with the Phenomenology, Altizer also holds the former in suspicion, arguing that the Logic (excepting its most radical moments) remains ultimately bound within a historyless philosophy of the eternal return. “But all of this thinking is a thinking of eternal return, as most openly manifest in its ultimate identification of Alpha and Omega, or of an absolute beginning and an absolute ending. Even Hegel succumbs to this thinking in the Science of Logic, and if this is a deeply circular thinking which is a cyclical thinking, it finally thinks eternal return and eternal return alone, or does so apart from its most subversive sections” (Altizer 2006, p. 138).
- 12.
J. Nelson, “Deicide, Theothanasia, or What Do You Mean?” in The Meaning of the Death of God, ed. B. Murchland (New York: Vintage, 1967), 196.
- 13.
On Joachim : “Throughout Christian history, apocalyptic movements have been the most subversive movements, and most subversive to all given or established Christianity. While this is true in Judaism and Islam as well, it is only Christianity that has realized a total apocalypticism, as first decisively manifest in medieval Joachism , a Joachism that is deeply reborn in the modern world. If Joachim of Fiore is the first truly apocalyptic thinker, his thinking not only profoundly affected the Spiritual Franciscans but also Dante himself, so that Joachim appears as a redeemed and shining prophet in the Paradiso (12:140)” (Altizer, 2012b, p. 18).
- 14.
Thomas Altizer, A Critical Analysis of C. J. Jung’s Understanding of Religion, unpublished Ph.D. diss. (University of Chicago, 1955), 215–216.
- 15.
Robert Ross, “From World Negation to World Affirmation,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 37.4 (1969), 356.
- 16.
Bruno, in Ross, 356, quoting a 1964 translation by A. Imerti.
- 17.
David Jasper, Review of Living the Death of God by T. Altizer, Contributions in Religion and Theology 5.2 (2007), 160.
- 18.
See, for example, Mircea Eliade, “Notes for a Dialogue,” in Cobb (1970): 234–241.
- 19.
David Tracy, Dialogue with the Other (Louvain: Peeters Press, 1990), 55–56; Mircea Eliade, Patterns of Comparative Religion, trans. R. Sheed (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), §159 (p. 419).
- 20.
Eliade (1996), §159 (p. 419).
- 21.
Ibid., (p. 420).
- 22.
- 23.
Ross, 355–356.
- 24.
Rodkey (2008), 149–155.
- 25.
Daniel Peterson, “Introduction” in Peterson and Zbaraschuk (2014), 15.
- 26.
The very language of the “death of God” is itself drawn from Johannes Rist’s 1641 Lutheran Hymn, “O Traurigkeit, O Herzeleid.” See: G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion: One Volume Edition, Lectures of 1827, trans. R.F. Brown et al. (Oxford: Clarendon, 2006), 468.
- 27.
Altizer, in Altizer and Montgomery (1967), 13; and Henry Stob, “The Apologetic Stance of Christian Atheism,” The Reformed Journal 16 (1966), 10.
- 28.
Lissa McCullough, “Theology as Thinking of Passion Itself,” in McCullough and Schroeder (2004), 39.
- 29.
Rodkey (2008), 122–124.
- 30.
Ibid., 124–129.
- 31.
Altizer, in Cobb (1970), 75, referencing Luke 17:21 and Hebrews 10:22–23, respectively.
- 32.
McCullough, “Theology as Thinking of Passion Itself,” in McCullough and Schroeder (2004), 24.
- 33.
Altizer, in McCullough and Schroeder (2004), 223.
- 34.
McCullough, “Theology as Thinking of Passion Itself,” in McCullough and Schroeder (2004), 44.
- 35.
Rodkey (2008), 145–149.
- 36.
Thomas Altizer, in Altizer et al. (1982), 176.
- 37.
Mark Taylor, Erring (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
- 38.
John Milbank, “Materialism and Transcendence,” in Theology and the Political (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 422.
- 39.
Adam Kotsko, Žižek and Theology (New York: T&T, 2008), 149–154.
- 40.
Slavoj Žižek and John Milbank, The Monstrosity of Christ, ed. C. Davis (Cambridge: MIT University Press, 2009), 260.
- 41.
See, for example, Robert Brown, “What does the Slogan Mean?” in The Meaning of the Death of God, ed. B. Murchland (New York: Vintage, 1967), 171.
- 42.
Adam Kotsko, “Altizer as The Third Rail of Academic Theology,” An und für sich, online (5. February 2013), accessed 14. October 2017. http://itself.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/altizer-as-the-third-rail-of-academic-theology.
- 43.
Rodkey (2010), 47–50.
- 44.
Brown, 171.
- 45.
Ibid., 172.
Works Cited
Altizer, Thomas. 1961. Oriental Mysticism and Biblical Eschatology. Philadelphia: Westminster.
———. 1962. The Challenge of Modern Gnosticism. Journal of Bible and Religion 30 (1): 18–25.
———. 1963. Mircea Eliade and the Dialectic of the Sacred. Philadelphia: Westminster.
———. 1966. The Gospel of Christian Atheism. Philadelphia: Westminster.
———. 1967a. Catholic Philosophy and the Death of God. Cross Currents 17: 271–282.
———. 1967b. The New Apocalypse. Ann Arbor: Michigan State University Press.
———. 1970. The Descent into Hell. Philadelphia: Lippincott.
———. 1977. The Self-Embodiment of God. New York: Harper & Row.
———. 1979. Mircea Eliade and the Death of God. Cross Currents 29: 257–268.
———. 1980. Total Presence. New York: Sudbury.
———. 1985. History as Apocalypse. Albany: SUNY Press.
———. 1990. Genesis and Apocalypse. Albany: SUNY Press.
———. 1993. The Genesis of God. Louisville, KY: Westminster.
———. 1997. The Contemporary Jesus. Albany: SUNY Press.
———. 2002. The New Gospel of Christian Atheism. Aurora: Davies.
———. 2003. Godhead and the Nothing. Albany: SUNY Press.
———. 2006. Living the Death of God. Albany: SUNY Press.
———. 2012a. The Apocalyptic Trinity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
———. 2012b. The Call to Radical Theology. Ed. L. McCullough. Albany: SUNY Press.
Altizer, Thomas, and William Hamilton. 1966. Radical Theology and the Death of God. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
Altizer, Thomas, and John Montgomery. 1967. The Altizer-Montgomery Dialogue. Chicago: InterVarsity.
Altizer, Thomas, Max Myers, Carl Raschke, et al. 1982. Deconstruction & Theology. New York: Crossroad.
Barth, Karl. 1933. The Epistle to the Romans. Trans. E. Hoskyns. New York: Oxford University Press.
Cobb, John, ed. 1970. The Theology of Altizer. Philadelphia: Westminster.
———, ed. 1987, June 17. Can Christianity Shape Higher Education in a Pluralistic Age? The Christian Century: 258–260.
Eliade, Mircea. 1996. Patterns of Comparative Religion. Trans. R. Sheed. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. 1964. On Religion. New York: Schocken Press.
McCullough, Lissa, and B. Schroeder, eds. 2004. Thinking Through the Death of God. Albany: SUNY Press.
Peterson, Daniel, and G. Zbaraschuk. 2014. Resurrecting the Death of God. Albany: SUNY Press.
Rodkey, Christopher. 2008. In the Horizon of the Infinite: Paul Tillich and the Dialectic of the Sacred. PhD diss., Drew University. Madison, NJ.
———. 2010. Methodist Heretic. Methodist History 49 (1): 37–50.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Pearl, J.L., Rodkey, C.D. (2018). Thomas J. J. Altizer. In: Rodkey, C., Miller, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Radical Theology. Radical Theologies and Philosophies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96595-6_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96595-6_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-96594-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-96595-6
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)