Christian atheism is an ideology that embraces the teachings, narratives, symbols, practices, or communities associated with
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, which states that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God and Resurrection of Jesus, rose from the dead after his Crucifixion of Jesus, crucifixion, whose ...
without accepting the literal existence of
God
In monotheistic belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the un ...
. It often overlaps with
nontheism
Nontheism or non-theism is a range of both religious and non-religious attitudes characterized by the absence of espoused belief in the existence of God or gods. Nontheism has generally been used to describe apathy or silence towards the subjec ...
and
post-theism
Post-theism is the belief that the belief in a God belongs to a previous stage of human development and, thus, a division of theism vs. atheism is obsolete. It is a variant of nontheism. The term appears in liberal Christianity and post-Christiani ...
.
Common beliefs
There are different schools of thought among Christian atheists. Thomas Ogletree, Frederick Marquand Professor of Ethics and Religious Studies at
Yale Divinity School
Yale Divinity School (YDS) is one of the twelve graduate and professional schools of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Congregationalist theological education was the motivation at the founding of Yale, and the professional school has ...
, lists these four common beliefs:Ogletree, Thomas W. The Death of God Controversy. New York: Abingdon Press, 1966.
# the assertion of the unreality of God for our age, including the understandings of God that have been a part of traditional Christian theology;
# the insistence upon coming to grips with contemporary culture as a necessary feature of responsible theological work;
# varying degrees and forms of alienation from the church as it is now constituted, and;
# recognition of the centrality of the person of Jesus in theological reflection.
Theological approaches
Death of God theology
Death of God theology
Death of God theology refers to a range of ideas by various theologians and philosophers that try to account for the rise of secularity and abandonment of traditional beliefs in God. They posit that God has either ceased to exist or in some way ...
, which had brief public prominence in the mid-1960s, refers to a range of views aiming to account for the rise of secularity and emphasizing that God has either ceased to exist or never did. According to Paul van Buren, a Death of God theologian, the word ''God'' itself is "either meaningless or misleading". Van Buren contended that it is impossible to think about God and said, "We cannot identify anything which will count for or against the truth of our statements concerning 'God'." Most Christian atheists believe that God never existed, but a few take the death of God literally.Lyas, Colin. "On the Coherence of Christian Atheism." ''The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy'' 45(171): 1970.Thomas J. J. Altizer spoke of Jesus' death on the cross as a redemptive event that passed the baton to humanity. In ''The Gospel of Christian Atheism'', he stated, "Every man today who is open to experience knows that God is absent, but only the Christian knows that God is dead, that the death of God is a final and irrevocable event and that God's death has actualized in our history a new and liberated humanity."Altizer, Thomas J. J. ''The Gospel of Christian Atheism''. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1966.
Some death of God theologians favor separation from the institutions of the
Christian Church
In ecclesiology, the Christian Church is what different Christian denominations conceive of as being the true body of Christians or the original institution established by Jesus Christ. "Christian Church" has also been used in academia as a syn ...
. Altizer stated that "the radical Christian believes that the
Asimov's Guide to the Bible
''Asimov's Guide to the Bible'' is a work by Isaac Asimov that was first published in two volumes in 1968 and 1969, covering the Old Testament and the New Testament (including Deuterocanonical books, the Catholic Old Testament, or deuterocanonic ...
'' by
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov ( ; – April 6, 1992) was an Russian-born American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. H ...
Ernst Bloch
Ernst Simon Bloch (; ; July 8, 1885 – August 4, 1977; pseudonyms: Karl Jahraus, Jakob Knerz) was a German Marxist philosopher. Bloch was influenced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx, as well as by apocalyptic and religious thinker ...
Christian deism
Christian deism is a standpoint in the philosophy of religion stemming from Christianity and Deism. It can often refer to Deists who believe in the moral teachings—but not the divinity—of Jesus. Corbett and Corbett (1999) cite John Adams an ...
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Christ myth theory
The Christ myth theory, also known as the Jesus myth theory, Jesus mythicism, or the Jesus ahistoricity theory, is the fringe view that the story of Jesus is a work of mythology with no historical substance. Alternatively, in terms given by ...
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Demythologization
Demythologization as a hermeneutic approach to religious texts seeks to separate or recover cosmological, sociological and historic claims from philosophical, ethical and theological teachings. Mostly applied to biblical texts, demythologization ...
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Lloyd Geering
Sir Lloyd George Geering (born 26 February 1918) is a New Zealand theologian who faced charges of heresy in 1967 for teaching that the Bible's record of Jesus' death and resurrection is not true. He considers Christian and Muslim fundamenta ...
God Is Not Great
''God Is Not Great'' (sometimes stylized as ''god is not Great'') is a 2007 book by journalist Christopher Hitchens in which he makes a case against organized religion. It was originally published in the United Kingdom by Atlantic Books as ''Go ...
'' by
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British and American author and journalist. He was the author of Christopher Hitchens bibliography, 18 books on faith, religion, culture, politics, and literature. He was born ...
* ''
Jefferson Bible
''The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth'', commonly referred to as the ''Jefferson Bible'', is one of two religious works constructed by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson compiled the manuscripts but never published them. The first, ''The Philoso ...
''
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Jewish atheism
Jewish atheism is the atheism of people who are ethnically and (at least to some extent) culturally Jewish.
"Jewish atheism" is not a contradiction because Jewish identity encompasses not only religious components but also, and for most J ...
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Materialism and Christianity
Some Christian theologians embrace a holistic combination of Christian theology with ''some'' ideas of (ontological) materialism, a belief that matter is a fundamental substance of the world and that mental phenomena result from matter.
Historica ...
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Nontheist Quakers
Nontheist Quakers (also known as nontheist Friends) are those who engage in Quaker practices and processes, but who do not necessarily believe in a theistic God or Supreme Being, the divine, the soul or the supernatural. Like traditional Quakers, ...
(previously titled here "Nontheist Friends")
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Nontheistic religion
Nontheistic religions (not to be confused with atheism) are traditions of religious belief, thought within a religious context—some otherwise aligned with theism, others not—in which nontheism informs religious beliefs or practices. Nonthei ...
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Religious naturalism
Religious naturalism is a framework for religious orientation in which a naturalist worldview is used to respond to types of questions and aspirations that are parts of many religions. It has been described as "a perspective that finds religious ...
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Postchristianity
Postchristianity is the situation in which Christianity is no longer the dominant civil religion of a society but has gradually assumed values, culture, and worldviews that are not necessarily Christian. Post-Christian tends to refer to the loss ...
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Robert Jensen
Robert William Jensen (born July 14, 1958) is a former professor of journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. From 1992 to 2018 he taught graduate and undergraduate courses in media law, ethics, and politics.
He has focused much of his ...
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Robert M. Price
Robert McNair Price (born July 7, 1954) is an American New Testament scholar who argues in favor of the Christ myth theorythe claim that a historical Jesus did not exist. Price is the author of a number of books on biblical studies and the hi ...
Spiritual but not religious
"Spiritual but not religious" (SBNR), also known as "spiritual but not affiliated" (SBNA), or less commonly "more spiritual than religious", is a popular phrase and initialism used to self-identify a life stance of spirituality that does not reg ...
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Spiritualism
Spiritualism may refer to:
* Spiritual church movement, a group of Spiritualist churches and denominations historically based in the African-American community
* Spiritualism (beliefs), a metaphysical belief that the world is made up of at leas ...
References
Further reading
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* Hamilton, William, ''A Quest for the Post-Historical Jesus'', (London, New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 1994). .
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Atheism
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the Existence of God, existence of Deity, deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the ...
Atheism
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the Existence of God, existence of Deity, deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the ...