The Death of God Series - A Brief Introduction

This time of year, leading up to Easter, is a time to think about the death of God. Confronting God's death is not only a focal point for Easter -- it is a central concern of the Christian tradition more broadly. And even still, the Nietzsche’s phrase, "God is dead," still marks a transgression. To speak of God's death as something other than a historical mark, "God was dead (for a bit)" or "God died (at one point in time)," seems heretical. Yet, the continued celebration and mourning of Easter is a reenactment. The death of god is repeated every year. Churches replaying this death scene through sermons, hymns, the creeds, and even through salvation prayers. To mark this as a historical event erases the importance of the endless return of death and mourning within Christianity. This repetition is a way to access the impossible, but it always evolves and moves forward. It is never the same.

Although "God is dead" has been primarily attributed to Nietzsche, he was not the first to develop the significance of this concept. It is also worth noting that the death of God actually has deeper, and more distinctly Christian roots. The phrase "God is dead" is seen in a Lutheran hymn by Johann von Rist, a 17th century poet. The way in which a phrase regarding a core structure within the Christ narrative (the death/crucifixion) has been converted into a battle cry for atheism is worth spending some time unraveling.

To limit the death of god to a singular reading is to miss the complexity and possibilities in a site that radically shapes the way we think of Christianity, structures of meaning, and culture, among other things. The death of God unravels a pattern of dualistic thinking. We can no longer comfortably operate on the binaries of theist/atheist, sacred/profane, religious/secular, belief/doubt, etc.

 This will be extended into a series of posts that attempt to unpack varied approaches to thinking through the death of God. A few that are already planned out are listed below:

Cultural Condition

Divine Scapegoat

Enemy of the State

Symbolic Criticism

Self-annihilation

Nothingness

Aesthetics and Iconography

This list is a rough starting point, and the order/topics may change as ideas develop. These conceptual nodes are likely to open up new pathways, challenge expectations, and unravel certainties.

In many ways, this is part of participating in and acknowledging the death of God. It is a refusal of certainty and a commitment to open possibility, even when that hope requires suffering. To say and experience "God is dead" is to dwell in the suffering. According to Kierkegaard, this is core to Christian life, "in order to become and remain a Christian [one] must endure sufferings that he consequently can avoid simply by refraining from becoming a Christian." This tension highlights the importance of taking the death moment seriously, exploring its implications, and understanding the significance that extends beyond the Christian tradition, infecting western culture more broadly.