Thoughts on Prometheus Rebound: The Irony of Atheism

Abstract

I have often been intrigued by Simone Weil's remark that 'there are two atheisms, of which one is a purification of the notion of God.' Joseph McLelland's learned and engaging book joins the ranks of a number of other volumes which have sought to disarm a certain kind of atheism (as well as a certain kind of Christian theism) by rejecting their characterization of God in terms of heteronomous power. His book is, of course, primarily a piece of analysis in the history of ideas, not an apologia. But the apologetic intent, though muted, emerges most clearly in the final chapter where he sets out some of the theological themes which distinguish Christian belief in God from some accounts of the transcendent which have cluttered up the history of philosophical theism and have been woven into the history of some Christian theology. 'Antitheism assumes something about the Christian God which is not so' (p. 286); properly understood, Christian faith spells 'the end of Zeus,' and so 'opens the possibility of a God beyond the omnipotent Tyrant and so beyond the dialectic of Aeschylus' (p. 291).