Introduction to Part Four

Abstract

At the heart of many philosophical and theological discussions following mid-century, was the question, how do we think and speak of God? Many younger philosophers and theologians stood on the shoulders of the giants whose era was ending in an effort to respond to this question in a significant way. The 1960s appear in this context as a flash point in the effort to think and speak of God. The 1960s began with a bang, so to speak, in some cases temporarily drowning out voices discussed in the third part of this book whose vital signs were and often continue to be quite good. Scepticism about the meaning and truth of God-talk which haunted many philosophical discussions became a reality within the theological communities themselves. Gabriel Vahanian’s 1960 book, The Death of God, provided an analysis of western culture arguing that we have entered a post-Christian era. In 1963 Bishop John Robinson published, Honest to God, which brought to the attention of the public many issues raised by the work of such theologians as Bonhoeffer, Bultmann and Tillich. More radical theologies emerged in the United States at about the same time. In the year that Robinson published his book, Paul Van Buren published The Secular Meaning of the Gospel. Although he modified his position somewhat in his later work, in this book he essentially agrees with the conclusions of those who apply the verifiability-falsifiability theory of meaning to religious language, argues that talk of a transcendent God is meaningless, and reduces religious language to talk of history and ethics. In The Gospel of Atheism, published in 1966, Thomas Altizer, writing under the influence of such persons as Hegel, Nietzsche and William Blake, argues for a kind of religious atheism in which God empties himself into the world thus freeing human beings from an alienating otherworldly power and for a new life. And, in After Auschwitz, Richard Rubenstein, speaks pessimistically of the violation of the covenant of God with Israel, his loss of faith in God, and the tragic vision of life that he confronts in Auschwitz.KeywordsWestern PhilosophyComparative PhilosopherNatural TheologyReligious LanguageFeminist PhilosopherThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.