Comments on: The God of Atheism

By: Nate Kerr

Nate Kerr — Sat, 30 May 2009 18:05:32 +0000

John Tyson’s question resonates with something that I have been thinking for some time. To what degree does this emerging fashionable engagement with today’s “cultured despisers” of Christianity and religion confirm so-called “postliberal” theology’s methodological continuity with much of liberal Protestantism and its Kulturprotestantismus?

By: Josh

Josh — Sat, 30 May 2009 15:37:54 +0000

It’s kind of like how Voegelin referred to Christianity’s having “de-sacralized” politics.

By: John Tyson

John Tyson — Fri, 29 May 2009 21:31:06 +0000

I’m still wondering, what good does this sudden engagement with the “New Atheists” do in the end? It seems readers of the New Atheists, especially Dennett, would have made their mind up a long time ago. Is their really a space for persuasion here? It seems like Dennet/Ditchkins and Hart/Eagleton (although his own atheism makes this binary problematic) represent such opposite ends of the spectrum that they wouldn’t matter to the other. Perhaps, Eagleton complicates this.

By: Bobby Grow

Bobby Grow — Fri, 29 May 2009 19:03:27 +0000

Weren’t the first Christians called atheists because they rejected the pantheon? Seems to be the inverse, . . . good quote, Halden.

By: robert

robert — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:50:32 +0000

Interesting. Under that formulation it is indeed the New Atheists who are the polytheists cowering before the gods of nature, whether those gods be the market, historical determinism, natural selection, etc.

By: Halden

Halden — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:15:15 +0000

Yeah, he totally does.

By: R.O. Flyer

R.O. Flyer — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:12:46 +0000

Have you noticed that Eagleton practically plagiarizes McCabe? I mean some of the stuff is pretty much word for word, straight out of McCabe.

By: Ethan

Ethan — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:59:11 +0000

In many ways McCabe’s legacy lives in Denys Turner’s studies of medieval mysticism, philosophical theology, and political theology. Turner hasn’t McCabe’s wit, but he makes explicit the dense philosophical and historical scholarship that was implicit in McCabe’s essays and which I have often wished McCabe had written about more directly.

By: kim fabricius

kim fabricius — Fri, 29 May 2009 11:15:38 +0000

Cf. Nicholas Lash:

“I am not nearly as puzzled by people who say ‘I believe in God’ as I am by people who think that they can give a straightforward and satisfactory account of what they mean when they say that they believe in God.
…. We should, perhaps, ask ourselves whether it is obviously the case that Christian belief systematically excludes all forms of agnosticism.”

From “Can a Theologian Keep the Faith?”, in Theology on Dover Beach (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1979), p. 46.

And: “Perhaps only a faith that has lost its nerve feels obliged continually to insist that it is quite sure of itself, that it knows quite clearly what is to be said concerning the mystery of God.
…. Immense human suffering has been caused by people who, lacking a very profound understanding of themselves, were nevertheless quite confident that they understood God.”

From “Continuity and Discontinuity in the Christian Understanding of God”, in ibid., p. 31.

By: Nate

Nate — Fri, 29 May 2009 10:45:38 +0000

I really dig that excerpt. I might have to check that book out.