M. CHRISTOPHER WHITE SCHOOL OF DIVINITY

CHRIST AS THE TOMB OF GOD:

AN EXAMINATION OF THE SUPERSESSIONIST NATURE OF

CHRISTIAN DEATH OF GOD THEOLOGIES

SUBMITTED TO DR. KENT BLEVINS

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF

RELI640A: THEOLOGICAL STUDIES SEMINAR

BY

THOMAS J. WHITLEY

10 NOVEMBER 2008

i

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….1

PHILOSOPHY AND THE DEATH OF GOD………………………………………………………………………………………3

THEODICY AND THE DEATH OF GOD……….…………………………………………………………………………………7

JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIES OF THE DEATH OF GOD…………………………………………………10

Secularization as Starting Point 10

A Christian Theology of the Death of God 12

A Jewish Theology of the Death of God 15

CHRISTIAN DEATH OF GOD THEOLOGY AS SUPERSESSIONISM…………………………………………………18

LOOKING AHEAD: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?....................................................................22

BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………27

1

INTRODUCTION

Why now? Why write a paper on death of God theology now when it was at its apex

over forty years ago? Why is there suddenly an interest once again in this form of radical

theology?1 Moreover, one might also be justified in saying that this theology was rightly thrown

out long ago and, thus, interest need not be stirred about it anymore. Not being interested in

this theology, though, seems to be quite a difficult task. For, I have been drawn to death of God

theology from at least three different avenues. Because of this I am approaching death of God

theology from these three different avenues: philosophy (most notably affected by the works

of Friedrich Nietzsche), theodicy (think of John K. Roth and his theodicy of protest), and most

importantly my work in the area of Jewish-Christian relations/dialogue.

My first encounter with death of God theology was from the Jewish perspective in the

work of Richard L. Rubenstein. I was struck by his statement that “we live in the time of the

death of God.”2 Due to the resonance of this statement, I decided to see what Christians were

saying about this radical theology. What I found in Christian death of God theology – as

presented by Thomas J. J. Altizer, William Mallard, William Hamilton, Gabriel Vahanian and Paul

van Buren, who can only be loosely associated with this movement – was a striking and

prevailing theme woven through the very framework of the theology that left me disappointed

1 I use this term not only because it was used of this movement, but also because it was used by

proponents of this theology to describe themselves. 2 Richard L. Rubenstein, After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism. (Indianapolis: The

Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1966), 246.

2

and wanting more.3 This theme, that is sometimes subconscious and other times palpable, is

also the thesis of this paper: Christian death of God theology is inherently supersessionist.

To defend this thesis, this paper will look at the question of the death of God from the

perspective of the three arenas previously mentioned: philosophy, theodicy and Jewish-

Christian relations/dialogue. Further, this paper will examine both Jewish and Christian death of

God theologies and will attempt to illuminate their inner theological structures.

3 Paul van Buren rejected being associated with the death of God movement; however, his work is rightly

categorized here. John K. Roth says, “Less exuberantly optimistic than the early Hamilton, van Buren disliked his being linked with the other radical theologians; but it was not hard for most people to see that the conclusion of his work in The Secular Meaning of the Gospel implied a kind of death of God nonetheless.” From John K. Roth, “The Holocaust, Genocide, and Radical Theology: An Assessment of the Death of God Movement” in Stephen R. Haynes and John K. Roth, eds., The death of God Movement and the Holocaust: Radical Theology Encounters the Shoah (Westpot, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 71.

3

PHILOSOPHY AND THE DEATH OF GOD

There seems to be no other place to start a paper on the death of God, than with

philosophy and the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche was not the only philosopher to

speak of the death of God, though. Martin Heidegger took up this aspect of Nietzsche’s work

and understood it as the death of metaphysics. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel spoke of the

negation of negation.4 Nonetheless, Nietzsche is still the most famous philosopher to deal with

the death of God.

The most famous statement on the death of God in Nietzsche’s work comes from “The

madman.” This, however, was not the only time in The Gay Science, first published in 1882, that

Nietzsche references or speaks to the death of God. The first mention of God being dead is in

section 108: “After Buddha was dead, they still showed his shadow in a cave for centuries - a

tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead: but given the way people are, there may still for

millennia be caves in which they show his shadow. – And we – we must still defeat his shadow

as well!”5 Then, in section 125 Nietzsche introduces “The madman.” I have included this section

in its entirety so as to give as full of a context as possible.

Haven’t you heard of that madman who in the bright morning lit a lantern and ran around the marketplace crying incessantly: “I’m looking for God! I’m looking for God!" Since many of those who did not believe in God were standing around together just then, he caused great laughter. Has he been lost, then? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone to sea? Emigrated? – Thus they

4 Thomas J. J. Altizer heavily relies on in this idea in his book The Gospel of Christian Atheism.

5 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of

Songs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 109.

4

shouted and laughed, one interrupting the other. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. “Where is God?” he cried; “I’ll tell you! We have killed him – you and I. We are all his murderers. But how did we do this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Where is it moving to now? Where are we moving to? Away from all suns? Are we not continually falling? And backwards, sidewards, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an up and a down? Aren’t we straying as though through an infinite nothing? Isn’t empty space breathing at us? Hasn’t it got colder? Isn’t night and more night coming again and again? Don’t lanterns have to be lit in the morning? Do we still hear nothing of the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we still smell nothing of the divine decomposition? – Gods, too, decompose! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How can we console ourselves, the murderers of all murderers! The holiest and the mightiest thing the world has ever possessed has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood from us? With what water could we clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what holy games will we have to invent for ourselves? Is the magnitude of this deed not too great for us? Do we not ourselves have to become gods merely to appear worthy of it? There was never a greater deed – and whoever is born after us will on account of this deed belong to a higher history than all history up to now!” Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; they too were silent and looked at him disconcertedly. Finally he threw his lantern on the ground so that it broke into pieces and went out. “I come too early”, he then said; “my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder need time; the light of the stars needs time; deeds need time, even after they are done, in order to be seen and heard. This deed is still more remote to them than the remotest stars – and yet they have done it themselves!” It is still recounted how on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there started singing his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but, “What then are these churches now if not the tombs and sepulchers of God?”6

Before we move to just what Nietzsche means by the phrase “God is dead,” one section from

Thus Spake Zarathustra must be taken into account. In this section, which is from the Prologue,

Zarathustra is asking a saint in the forest why he is there:

The saint answered: “I make songs and sing them; and making songs I laugh, cry and

hum: I praise God thus.

6 Ibid., 119-120.

5

With singing, crying, laughing, and humming I praise that God who is my God. But what

gift bringest thou to us?”

Having heard these words Zarathustra bowed to the saint and said: “What could I give

to you! But let me off quickly, lest I take aught from you!” – And thus they parted from

each another, the old man and the man like two boys laughing.

When Zarathustra was alone, however, he spake thus unto his heart: “Can it actually be

possible! This old saint in his forest hath not yet heard aught of God being dead!”7

It is not self-evident from these passages that Nietzsche is not speaking in solid, physical terms.

However, when we go again to The Gay Science, Nietzsche offers some help. In section 343,

Nietzsche asserts that “the greatest recent event – that ‘God is dead’; that the belief in the

Christian God has become unbelievable – is already starting to cast its first shadow over

Europe.”8 This advent, Nietzsche takes as a positive:

Indeed, at hearing the news that ‘the old god is dead’, we philosophers and ‘free spirits’

feel illuminated by a new dawn; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement,

forebodings, expectation – finally the horizon seems clear again, even if not bright;

finally our ships may set out again, set out to face any danger; every daring of the lover

of knowledge is allowed again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; maybe there has never

been such an ‘open sea.’9

Nietzsche is not asserting in concrete terms that God has actually died. Rather, Nietzsche is

saying that the idea of “God” has died, or is no longer capable of acting as a source of a higher

law. For Nietzsche, the Christian God, since this God can no longer be believed, will no longer

7 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, trans. Alexander Tille

(London: Macmillan and Company, LTD, 1896), 4.

8 Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 199.

9 Ibid.

6

stand in the way, as it were, of human beings realizing the value and potential of this world. The

image of the open sea with which Nietzsche concludes this section is at once thrilling and

terrifying. It is a scary proposition, indeed, to be out in an open sea, but it also points to the

limitless possibilities. Beginning from this point, the death of God, humans can now move

forward, move beyond and begin the process of the revaluation of all values. The Christian

theologians that pick up Nietzsche’s words do so at a great disservice to Nietzsche and with far

different starting points, motivations and conclusions. This will be examined later in the paper.

7

THEODICY AND THE DEATH OF GOD

While philosophy was a completely natural avenue from which to approach the death of

God, theodicy seems to be quite the opposite. Theodicy is “the word traditionally used in

theology for an argument that attempts to show that God is righteous or just despite the

presence of evil in the world.”10 It is true, on one level, that theodicy and the death of God are

unrelated. However, when the point is pushed and the heart of theodicy comes to bear, one

begins to realize that one of the main subconscious questions involved in any theodicy is

precisely about the death God.

To illustrate this point, I will examine the theodicy of protest that John K. Roth offers in

Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy. To be clear, Roth does not espouse a theology of

the death of God, but I assert that Roth must wrestle with this question as he formulates his

theodicy. In addition, in many ways, Roth’s theodicy of protest is really an “antitheodicy,”

because it does not do what most theodicies do: legitmate evil.11 Roth determines that the

characteristic that God must possess is omnipotence. This foundation is based on the Christian

affirmation that God raised Jesus from the dead.12 It is from this central conviction that Roth’s

theodicy of protest takes place.

10

Stephen T. Davis, “Introduction” in Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy, ed. Stephen T. Davis, rev. ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), xi.

11

John K. Roth, “A Theodicy of Protest” in Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy, ed. Stephen T. Davis, rev. ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 17.

12

Roth, “A Theodicy of Protest,” 11.

8

Roth recognizes the presence of evil in the world and cannot assert that God is

omnibenevolent for several reasons. Roth quotes Hegel that history is “the slaughter-bench at

which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of states, and the virtue of individuals have been

sacrificed.”13Further, Roth sees all of the evil throughout history as waste and asserts that “such

a wasteful God cannot be totally benevolent.”14 Some may respond to this position that surely

God has done things that, from a Judeo-Christian perspective, would serve as evidence of God

being good and loving. Roth responds thus: “But to speak of a God who leads people out of

bondage or who raises persons from death is surely not to speak of a God who, by history’s

ongoing testimony, is always doing the best God can. God’s saving acts in the world are too few

and far between.”15

Roth’s entire theodicy of protest “hinges on the proposition that God possesses – but

fails to use well enough – the power to intervene decisively at any moment to make history’s

course less wasteful.”16 God is eternally guilty.17 While this may seem like a horrible place to

end up, but Roth is not alone in this position. Roth is largely reliant on the work of Elie Wiesel.

One of the three quotes at the beginning of Roth’s essay is the following quote from Wiesel’s

The Trial of God: “He is almighty, isn’t He? He could use His might to save the victims, but He

doesn’t! So – on whose side is He? Could the killer kill without His blessing – without His

13

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel quoted in John K. Roth, “A Theodicy of Protest” in Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy, ed. Stephen T. Davis, rev. ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 7.

14

Roth, “A Theodicy of Protest,” 7. 15

Ibid., 11. Italics mine. 16

Ibid., 14. 17

Ibid.

9

complicity?”18 This is the only possible place for Roth to end up when he asserts that God is

omnipotent.

One may then ask, of Roth, why not leave God behind? Is an omnipotent, yet partially

evil God really worth holding on to? Roth is not prepared to go this far: “To deny God outright

could go too far.”19 Roth has struggled with whether he can assert that, like Rubenstein, “we

live in the time of the death of God.”20 He cannot. It is evident, though, that at the heart of

Roth’s theodicy is a struggle with the existence of God. Roth even shows that he agrees very

much with Wiesel that “life in a post-Holocaust world can be more troublesome with God than

without God.”21 Wiesel, however, “does not let God go, any more than he will give up on

humankind, although he has good reasons to do both.”22 Roth finds this position meaningful

and thus accepts it as his own. Though Roth ultimately asserts that God exists, and does not

posit some sort of death of God theodicy – as if one were even possible23 – that his theodicy of

protest is in continual dialogue with the question of the death of God cannot be denied.

18

Ibid., 1. 19

Ibid., 6. 20

Richard L. Rubenstein, After Auschwitz: Essays in Contemporary Judaism (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1966), 246.

21

Roth, “A Theodicy of Protest,” 6. 22

Ibid. 23

D. Z. Phillips may actually do this in “Theism without Theodicy” in Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy, ed. Stephen T. Davis, rev. ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001).

10

JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIES OF THE DEATH OF GOD

Secularization as Starting Point

“Is God dead? It is a question that tantalizes both believers, who perhaps secretly fear

that he is, and atheists, who possibly suspect that the answer is no.”24 This is how the article

“Toward a Hidden God” began on April 8, 1966 in Time magazine. This article correctly put its

finger on one of the pulses of the death of God movement in the 1960s. From this question,

countless others stem. How did we get to this question in the first place? How do we answer

this question in a meaningful way while maintaining integrity? The questions are endless, as are

the responses. Jewish and Christian theologians who have answered this question either in the

affirmative or very near the affirmative are of interest to this section.

Both Jewish and Christian death of God theologians agree on the starting point:

secularization. Harvey Cox, in The Secular City, which was first published in 1965, defines the

term as “the loosing of the world from religious and quasi-religious understanding of itself, the

dispelling of all closed world views, the breaking of all supernatural myths and sacred

symbols.”25 The Time article immediately follow this quotation with, “Slowly but surely, it

dawned on men that they did not need God to explain, govern or justify certain areas of life.”26

24

“Toward a Hidden God,” Time, April 8, 1966. Quoted in Stephen R. Haynes and John K. Roth, eds., The death of God Movement and the Holocaust: Radical Theology Encounters the Shoah (Westpot, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 3.

25

Harvey Cox quoted in “Toward a Hidden God,” 8. 26

“Toward a Hidden God,” 8.

11

This certainly is true of the process of secularization, but it is not true of the response to

secularization. To be sure, many religious people went to the antithesis of this view. However,

not all did, as has already been noted, but those who affirmed the death of God did so for quite

different reasons. For the radical theologians, it was not that belief in God was no longer

necessary, rather it was that belief in God was no longer possible. Thomas J. J. Altizer, one of

the very first Christian proponents of death of God theology, makes this point very clear in his

essay, “The Holocaust and the Theology of the Death of God” in The Death of God Movement

and the Holocaust: “The simple truth is that it is no longer possible to affirm a providential God

unless one affirms that God wills or effects ultimate evil.”27

The Death of God Movement and the Holocaust was written in 1999 and is, as evidenced

by its title, intended to foster intentional dialogue about the relationship between the death of

God movement and the event of the Holocaust. Thus, Altizer, and others, speaks directly to the

Holocaust, an aspect that was missing from all of the Christian death of God theologians in their

work from the 1960s. Instead, the Christian death of God theologians were much more

concerned with secularization in a general sense. Jewish death of God theology, as espoused by

Richard Rubenstein, however, was markedly different. Speaking of himself and Christian death

of God theologians, Rubenstein says, “we are at least agreed upon our analysis of the radical

secularity of contemporary culture as a starting point for theological speculation.”28 For

27

Thomas J. J. Altizer, “The Holocaust and the Theology of the Death of God” in Stephen R. Haynes and John K. Roth, eds., The Death of God Movement and the Holocaust: Radical Theology Encounters the Shoah (Westpot, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 19. This quote should also remind the reader of the discussion on “Theodicy and the Death of God,” as Altizer can be seen to be wrestling with the same questions as John K. Roth in his theodicy of protest, albeit coming to a different conclusion.

28

Rubenstein, After Auschwitz, 247.

12

Rubenstein, though, the “radical secularity of contemporary culture” is seen most fully in the

Holocaust. This becomes apparent when the two earliest mentions of the death of God in

Rubenstein’s work are in After Auschwitz: Essays in Contemporary Judaism, written in 1966, and

“Judaism and the Death of God,” written in 1967.29 For Rubenstein, the context for the

question of the death of God was the Holocaust.

A Christian Theology of the Death of God

Thomas J. J. Altizer wrote The Gospel of Christian Atheism in 1954, in which he

celebrated the “good news” of Christian atheism. Altizer saw his task as an important one, an

honest one. Of himself, it seems, he writes:

Today a new theologian is speaking in America, a theologian who is not so confident of the truth or certainty of faith, yet a theologian who is willing to discuss the meaning of faith. From the perspective of the theology of our century, the strangest thing about this new theologian is his conviction that faith should be meaningful and meaningful in the context of our world … Having come to the realization that Christian theology cannot survive apart from a dialogue with the world, it is increasingly being recognized that dialogue is a mutual encounter: faith cannot speak to the world unless it is prepared to be affected by that world with which it speaks.30

Altizer’s theology is in response to the reality that he perceives and while many may recoil at

Altizer’s conclusions, his theology is one that understands its foundations and takes them to the

fullest of their implications. Altizer recognizes the risk involved, but sees this as necessary:

29

The article referenced here, “Judaism and the Death of God,” is from Playboy, vol. 14, no. 7 (July, 1967), 69ff.

30

Thomas J. J. Altizer, The Gospel of Christian Atheism (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1954), 16-17.

13

“Again and again Christian theologians have told us that faith is a risk - despite the fact that few

theologians have taken more than a token risk - and we must recognize that a faith which is not

open to the loss of faith is not a true form of faith.”31

So, then what does Altizer mean when he espouses Christian atheism, or the death of

God? Relying on Hegel, Altizer asserts that “God negates himself in his own revelatory and

redemptive acts.”32 Through all of this, Altizer is making solid claims. He is not relying on

symbols or mere rhetoric, as some have suggested.33 Altizer sees the death of God as “an actual

and real event … that has actually happened both in a cosmic and historical sense.”34 John

Charles Cooper claims that Altizer and his counterparts were not completely literal: “what is

happening is the great conspiracy of the sensitive who create symbols and do not take them

literally while the insensitive react in horror at these symbols such as ‘the death of God.’”35 To

contrast Cooper, and others, and to highlight further that the radical theologians did not intend

to speak symbolically, we turn now to William Hamilton’s well-known essay, “The Death of God

Theologies Today.” In this essay, Hamilton states unequivocally that symbols are not being

employed in his work or the work of his colleagues: “We have insisted all along that ‘death of

God’ must not be taken as symbolic rhetoric for something else. There really is a sense of not-

31

Ibid., 28. 32

Ibid., 102. 33

See Thomas A. Idinopulos, “The Holocaust and the Death of God: A Response to Altizer, Hamilton, and Rubenstein” in Stephen R. Haynes and John K. Roth, eds., The Death of God Movement and the Holocaust: Radical Theology Encounters the Shoah (Westpot, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 65-66.

34

Altizer, The Gospel of Christian Atheism, 103. 35

John Charles Cooper, Radical Christianity and Its Sources (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1968), 38.

14

having, of not-believing, of having lost, not just the idols or the gods or religion, but God

himself. And this is an experience that is not peculiar to a neurotic few, nor is it private or

inward. Death of God is a public event in our history.”36

Further, Altizer proclaims that “God has actually died in Christ” and that “God has fully

and totally become incarnate in Christ.”37 John Charles Cooper, in Radical Christianity and Its

Sources, correctly understands death of God theology as Christocentric: “for each major radical

– Altizer, Hamilton and van Buren – Jesus is of paramount importance. Each is radically

Christocentric in his thought.”38 This view continues to be supported as more examples are

procured. William Mallard writes that “for a Christian to speak of God is” to understand that

“the reality of God finds description in relation to the vital events moving towards, through, and

beyond the ministry of Jesus.”39 Richard Rubenstein also recognizes the Christocentrism in

death of God theology: “Christian death of God theologians may have lost God, but as Professor

Hamilton has suggested, they have by no means lost the Messiah. Radical Christian theology is

profoundly Christocentric.”40 As can be seen, then, Christian death of God is Christocentric in

nature and this leads to its inherent supersessionism, as will be discussed later. Before turning

36

William Hamilton, “The Death of God Theologies Today” in Thomas J. J. Altizer and William Hamilton, Radical Theology and the Death of God (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1966), 46-47.

37

Ibid. 38

Cooper, Radical Christianity and Its Sources, 23. 39

William Mallard, “A Perspective for Current Theological Conversation” in Thomas J. J. Altizer, ed., Toward a New Christianity: Readings in the Death of God Theology (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1967), 330.

40

Rubenstein, After Auschwitz, 247.

15

to the supersessionist nature of Christian death of God theology, though, we will briefly

examine Jewish death of God theology.

A Jewish Theology of the Death of God

A Jewish theology of the death of God is much less concrete than is its Christian

counterpart. This is clear in the works of Richard Rubenstein when he continually makes

reference to the fact that “we live in the time of the death of God” and is not comfortable

saying, categorically, “God is dead.”41 Rubenstein clearly does not believe that God is actually

dead, but feels the necessity to use this language, nonetheless. “After Nietzsche, it is impossible

to avoid his language to express the total absence of God from our experience.”42 As trite as it

may seem, Rubenstein’s theology of the death of God can just about be summed up in three

sentences: “I believe the most adequate theological description of our times is to be found in

the assertion that we live in the time of the death of God. The vitality of death of God theology

is rooted in the fact that it has faced more openly than any other contemporary theological

movement the truth of the divine-human encounter in our times. The truth is that it is totally

nonexistent.”43 To be sure, this is not all that Rubenstein says on the topic, but he does provide

the reader with a succinct summary of his views.

41

Rubenstein, After Auschwitz, 246. 42

Ibid., 245. 43

Ibid.

16

Much of the rest of Rubenstein’s time spent on the death of God deals specifically with

the differences between his theology of the death of God and that of his Christian counterparts,

most specifically Thomas J. J. Altizer. These differences are of extreme importance and will be

considered here, as they give added context to Christian theologies of the death of God and

could, at least potentially and in theory, result in being helpful to these Christian theologies.

The first and main point of difference between Rubenstein and Alitzer is Christ. While

Rubenstein agrees with Altizer and other Christian death of God theologians that the

“transcendent God of biblical monotheism is ‘dead,’” he does not share the belief that “Christ is

now present in the concrete actuality of our history.”44 Rubenstein then goes on to say, “For me

the ‘death’ of the biblical God of history, covenant, and election is a ‘cultural’ rather than an

ontological event.”45

In addition to rejecting the presence of Christ in actual history, Rubenstein also rejects

that God had a providential role in history. “I have categorically denied,” says Rubenstein, “any

purposeful divine involvement in the history of Israel, and most especially in the Holocaust.”46

Altizer speaks in contrast to this: “it is the … Holy of Holies who is the murderer of His Chosen

People and the Nazis … like Pharaoh are only His chosen instrument.”47 Rubenstein rejects the

44

Richard L. Rubenstein, “Radical Theology and the Holocaust” in Stephen R. Haynes and John K. Roth, eds., The Death of God Movement and the Holocaust: Radical Theology Encounters the Shoah (Westpot, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 44.

45

Ibid., 44-45. 46

Ibid., 44. 47

Thomas J. J. Altizer quoted in Rubenstein, “Radical Theology and the Holocaust,” 44.

17

idea that Israel is “in any sense the Chosen People of God or that in any real sense a covenant

exists between God and Israel, save in the latter’s collective religious imagination.”48

48

Rubenstein, “Radical Theology and the Holocaust,” 44.

18

CHRISTIAN DEATH OF GOD THEOLOGY AS SUPERSESSIONISM

Supersessionism, also known as the theology of displacement, is the stance that the

majority of the church takes toward Judaism and Jewish people.49 R. Kendall Soulen offers this

lengthy, but accurate description:

According to this teaching, God chose the Jewish people after the fall of Adam in order

to prepare the world for the coming of Jesus Christ, the Savior. After Christ came,

however, the special role of the Jewish people came to an end and its place was taken

by the church, the new Israel. The church, unlike the Jewish people, is a spiritual

community in which the carnal distinction between Jew and Gentile is overcome.

Accordingly, the church holds that the preservation of the Jewish identity within the

new Israel is a matter of theological indifference at best, and a mortal sin at worst. Yet

the Jews themselves failed to recognize Jesus as the promised Messiah and refused to

enter the new spiritual Israel. God therefore rejected the Jews and scattered them over

the earth, where God will preserve them until the end of time.50

Thus, Christians superseded Jews as God’s chosen people. Now, it may not already be clear to

the reader from Christian death of God theology’s radical Christocentrism that is it

supersessionist. This section intends to leave no doubt. The extreme Christocentric nature of

Christian death of God theology really leaves it no choice but to be supersessionist. Altizer says:

Indeed, the Christian confesses that God is most truly or actually himself while in a state of ultimate self-alienation and self-estrangement. For the Christian believes that God most fully reveals himself in Jesus Christ: and the kenotic acts of the Incarnation and the Incarnation and the Crucifixion are by no means to be understood as fragmentary epiphanies of the power and glory of an eternal and unchanging Godhead, but rather as historical acts or events whereby the Godhead finally ceases to exist and to be real in its

49

R. Kendall Soulen, The God of Israel and Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 1. 50

Ibid., 1-2.

19

past and primordial manifestations.51

We have already seen where Altizer said “God has fully and totally become incarnate in Christ”

and now he is asserting that “God most fully reveals himself in Jesus Christ.”52 Altizer does not

stop at asserting that God is most fully God’s self in Christ, but also asserts that any hearkening

back to God before Christ is unacceptable:

Only by recognizing the antithetical relationship that radical faith posits between the

primordial and transcendent reality of God and the kenotic and immediate reality of

Christ, can we understand the violent attack which the radical Christian launches upon

the Christian God. Even the remembrance of the original glory and majesty of God roots

the Christian in the past, inducing him to evade the self-emptying negativity of a fully

incarnate divine process, and to flee from the Christ who is actual and real in our

present.53

For Altizer the Christ of the present is real, the God of history is not.54 This is indeed a shocking

statement to make, but it is not altogether unexpected, especially when seen in light of the

high Christology that radical theology possesses. The most shocking statement that I came

across, though, that is blatantly supersessionist is one made by William Mallard.

The mediation at Sinai presented the Infinite as a kind of Great and Unspeakable King

upon the mountain, a "halfway" movement into man's condition and therefore a sign,

or "shadow" of the full and rich Incarnation to appear in Jesus. The "anthropomorphic"

51

Altizer, The Gospel of Christian Atheism, 86. Italics mine. 52

Ibid., 103 and 86, respectively. 53

Ibid., 133. Italics mine. 54

The sharp contrast made between the God before Christ and then Christ bears resemblance to Gnosticism. This was another one of my original observations of Christian death of God theologies. This idea, however, has been fully developed and may not carry much weight. I had altogether abandoned this idea until reading what Richard Rubenstein wrote in 1999: “In true Gnostic fashion, Altizer further argues that the diminished Godhead is ‘uniquely the God of Israel’ and the God of the Holocaust.” Quote from “Radical Theology and the Holocaust” in Stephen R. Haynes and John K. Roth, eds., The Death of God Movement and the Holocaust: Radical Theology Encounters the Shoah (Westpot, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 46-47.

20

movement of God in much Old Testament history was therefore a middle-ground,

arousing a sense of the Infinite that yet was somehow in human form and self-involved

in men's affairs. God was a person-like Being, dwelling "on high," but ranging far and

wide in human activity. The next movement of the Divine, announced through the pre-

exilic Prophets, was to repudiate this mediate and more localized form because of man's

determination to idolatrize the human side of it and thus to render impossible any

moment of faith before the Infinite. God's wrathful withdrawal into his Infinity rendered

him at once less "bound," less manipulatable, more abstract, more "ethical," more

terrifying.55

Sinai as a “halfway” moment and a “shadow” of the full incarnation that was to appear in

Jesus? This statement most clearly elucidates Christian death of God theology as

supersessionist. All of the ingredients are present. Judaism and the covenant that God made

with Israel at Sinai was merely a halfway point. The history of God acting in the Old Testament

was a “middle-ground.” Moreover, God rejected this covenant because, apparently, humans

were idolizing the “human” side of God. What is more, and almost unbelievable and alone even

among other Christian supersessionisms, is that it now “render[ed] impossible any moment of

faith before the Infinite,” that is, under this “mediate and more localized form,” also known as

Judaism, faith was and, one could easily argue, remains impossible.56

It was not until very late in my research that I came across anyone else who even came

close to labeling Christian death of God theology as supersessionist. Richard Rubenstein seems

to skirt the issue in “Radical Theology and the Holocaust,” but never comes out and says it

explicitly. The beginning of his essay contains a reference to what Stephen R. Haynes identifies

as the “‘witness-people myth,’ the belief that whatever happens to the Jewish people, for good

55

Mallard, “A Perspective for Current Theological Conversation,” 333. 56

Ibid.

21

or ill, is an expression of God’s providential justice, and, as such, a sign ‘for God’s church’”57

Rubenstein is able to recognize the supersessionist nature of the witness-people myth, saying

that it “in turn derives from the supersessionary claims of the Christian church concerning the

biblical idea of a covenant between God and Israel as his Chosen People.”58 Rubenstein will

then go on to label Altizer’s work as being part of this witness-people myth. “No matter how

sophisticated his apocalyptic, mystical theology may be, he cannot abandon the idea of Israel as

the Chosen people, a ‘witness people’ whose continuing travail confirms the truth of Christ’s

church.”59 This is as close as Rubenstein comes to claiming that Christian death of God theology

is supersessionist and to this point I have found no others willing to make this claim.

57

Rubenstein, “Radical Theology and the Holocaust,” 43. 58

Ibid. 59

Ibid., 48.

22

LOOKING AHEAD: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

I began this paper by asking the question, “Why now?” Why broach the topic of the

death of God now, especially when most have left it to die? Moreover, why make claims and

assertions about a theology that few people know about and less care about? I also opened this

paper by stating the three avenues from which I am approaching death of God theology:

philosophy, theodicy and Jewish-Christian relations. The last of these has not been mentioned

again until now by design. This final avenue is much more personal to me than the first two. I

have recently been afforded the opportunity to be involved in Jewish-Christian dialogue on a

number of levels that range from the history of Jews and Christians working together, or not, in

America to conversations with rabbis about the importance of this particular interfaith

relationship and the potential fruit to be reaped from this relationship.

This relationship is important to the current discussion insofar as Christian theology and

Jewish theology are conversant with one another. I hold that Jewish and Christian theologies

must remain in conversation with one another and allow themselves to be influenced, affected

and sharpened by each other. My perspective is from the Christian side and as such I must

speak to fellow Christians. We must develop readings of the Bible and theologies that do not

denigrate Judaism or Jews. Amy Grossblat Pessah, and others, recognize the need for this as

well and offers one step in coming closer to accomplishing this goal: The prospects of

developing a nonsupersessionist reading of the Bible will emerge when Christians recognize and

23

affirm that their interpretation of the Bible does not exhaust the truth of the Scriptures.”60 The

need for this becomes unmistakable when we realize that “there is no way around this

stubborn fact. Christians cannot enter into relationship with the God of Israel without

simultaneously becoming entangled with God’s covenantal partner, Israel.”61 We, as Christians,

are and always will be tied to Judaism. We must not resent this fact; rather we should celebrate

it.

Even more lucidity is brought forth when the reader understands that the original goal

of this paper. Upon seeing the supersessionism that was so ingrained in Christian death of God

theologies, I set out to see how these theologies could be informed and shaped by Jewish death

of God theologies. Ultimately I hoped to find and be able to promote a Christian death of God

theology that was not supersessionist. For you see, I like many others have been deeply

affected by not only the Holocaust, but all the evils present in our world. I continually wrestle

with the question of theodicy and were it not for my own inability to relinquish the

omnibenevolence of God, I would certainly adopt John K. Roth’s theodicy of protest.

It seems that when we dare to be “boldly honest with God and with ourselves” we

encounter decisions that are some of the hardest we will ever have to make.62 We must

maintain our integrity, even if it means that certain parts or understandings of God must die.

60

Amy Grossblat Pessah, Kenneth J. Meyers and Christopher M. Leighton, “How Do Jews and Christians Read the Bible?” in David F. Sandmel, Rosann M. Catalano, and Christopher M. Leighton, eds., Irreconcilable Differences? A Learning Resource for Jews and Christians (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001), 69.

61

Nina Beth Cardin and Fayette Breaux Veverka, “Living with the Other: Are the Irreconcilable Differences Between Christians and Jews a Blessing, a Curse, or Both?” in David F. Sandmel, Rosann M. Catalano, and Christopher M. Leighton, eds., Irreconcilable Differences? A Learning Resource for Jews and Christians (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001), 184.

62

Roth, “A Theodicy of Protest,” 17.

24

John K. Roth quotes Annie Dillard on the difficulty that she has with much that she hears in

“religious” places: “Many times in Christian churches I have head the pastor say to God, ‘All

your actions show your wisdom and love.’ Each time, I reach in vain for the courage to rise and

shout, ‘That’s a lie!’ – just to put things on a solid footing … Again, Paul writes to the Christians

in Rome: ‘In all things God works for the good of those who love him.’ When was that? I missed

it.”63 This is certainly not a comfortable place to be, but it is an honest place and I believe that if

God, if God is still alive as I believe, desires anything of us, then it must be our honesty and our

integrity.

Alas, we are still left with the question of what is gained by asserting that Christian

death of God theologies are supersessionist and by comparing them to a Jewish death of God

theology. I have not, as of yet, been able to honestly imagine what a Christian death of God

theology that was not supersessionist would actually look like. Nevertheless, I still feel that I can

join Richard Rubenstein in asserting that “we live in the time of the death of God.”64

Furthermore, I do believe that we are not left groping in the dark simply because we cannot, at

this moment, fashion a Christian death of God theology that is nonsupersessionist. Instead, we

should listen again to John K. Roth:

Gods die when the visions they support disintegrate. They do not die, however, at the

same time or in the same way for everyone. Even if the death of God does take place, in

one way or another, that passing does not mean so much that a religious ending has

63

Annie Dillard, For The Time Being (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 85-86, quoted in Roth, “A Theodicy of Protest,” 19.

64

Rubenstein, After Auschwitz, 246.

25

been reached but that beginnings have been made possible for new and different

encounters with the source and ground of our being within history itself.65

We should not see the death of certain parts or understandings of God as the end, but rather as

opportunity for new beginnings, as Roth suggests.

Furthermore, Roth and Haynes, in the Epilogue to The Death of God Movement and the

Holocaust, offer their understanding of the legacy that the death of God movement leaves

behind. “Disturbing questions – some prompted explicitly by the radical theologians, others

raised by their interpreters and critics – remain the most important legacy of the death of God

movement.”66 This may well be the legacy, but it should also be what propels us into the future.

Roth and Haynes recognize this: “it is crucial for this question asking to persist because the

quality of human life depends on the quality of the questions we ask and on the ways in which

good questions govern our lives individually and collectively.”67 The importance of questions

should not be underestimated. For, the bulk of what we understand and assert about God

originated as responses to questions. To conclude this paper, I must borrow a story from Elie

Wiesel’s Night in which he remembers a conversation with his peculiar teacher, Moché the

Beadle.

“Man raises himself toward God by the questions he asks Him,” he was fond of

repeating. “That is the true dialogue. Man questions God and God answers. But we

don’t understand His answers. We can’t understand them. Because they come from the

65

John K. Roth, “The Holocaust, Genocide, and Radical Theology: An Assessment of the Death of God Movement” in Stephen R. Haynes and John K. Roth, eds., The death of God Movement and the Holocaust: Radical Theology Encounters the Shoah (Westpot, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 74. Italics mine.

66

John J. Roth and Stephen Haynes, “Epilogue” in Stephen R. Haynes and John K. Roth, eds., The Death of God Movement and the Holocaust: Radical Theology Encounters the Shoah (Westpot, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 131.

67

Ibid., 132.

26

depths of the soul, and they stay there until death. You will find the true answers,

Eliezer, only within yourself!”

“And why do you pray, Moché?” I asked him.

“I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right

questions.”68

Perhaps that we question is the point. As it is now, we can do no other.

68

Elie Wiesel, Night, trans. Marion Wiesel (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006), 5.

27

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