The Death of God: The Culture of Our Post-Christian Era

by Gabriel Vahanian

Overview

"The death of God" began, according to Vahanian, the moment Western man started to compromise with the Biblical concept of God transcendent, and to merge the identity of the Godhead with the identity of humankind. From this compromise evolved the belief in the possibility of heaven on earth, in human perfectibility, in the expectation that man, both individually and collectively, can control his termporal fate. Today, as a consequence, Western society not only exalts all possible material comforts, but requires as well easy, guaranteed, status-assuring religious affiliations. The present search for "inner security" is in direct opposition to the toleration of doubt that tests the strength of genuine religious faith. And Vahanian shows how our spiritual decline is reflected in much of the most important imaginative writing of today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781725226708
Publisher:	Wipf & Stock Publishers
Publication date:	09/01/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	286
File size:	31 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Gabriel Vahanian, Professor emeritus at the University of Strasbourg, was educated in Paris and Princeton. In 1958 he founded and directed the graduate program in religion at Syracuse University. He was a founding member of the first board of directors of the American Academy of religion. In 1981-82 he served on the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research. His latest book is Praise of the Secular.

Table of Contents

Preface Paul Ramsey xiii

Foreword xxxi

Part 1 The Religious Agony of Christianity

I Modern Religiosity And The Christian Tradition 3

II The Dishabilitation of The Christian Tradition 14

Man: From the New Adam of Faith to the Christic Man of Religiosity 17

The Kingdom of God: Relevant as Utopia, Irrelevant as Religiosity 20

The Social Gospel and the Acculturation of Christianity 28

Further Symptoms of the Dishabilitation 37

III Misbegotten Revival 49

IV Christianity, Secularity, And Secularism 60

Secularity as a Christian Obligation 61

The Religious Revival as Secularism 69

V The Case For A New Christian Culture 79

Twilight or Dawn? 80

A Christian Philosophy of Culture 86

VI Present Culture And Its Case Against Christianity 106

God Is, Therefore All Is Grace 107

All Is Grace Because God Is Dead 122

Part 2 The Cultural Agony of Christianity

VII Cultural Incapacity For God: The Absence of God's Reality 137

Retrospect and Prospect 139

Cultural Incapacity for God 144

Christianity and the Present Cultural Crisis 151

VIII Cultural Disavowal of God: The Reality of God's Absence 163

The Christian Basis of Science and Humanism 165

The Scientific Approach and the New Humanism 171

The Ethic of Radical Immanentism 180

IX The Legacy of Christianity: Its Self-Invalidation 190

The Radical Immanentism of Religiosity 190

Existentialism and the Death of God 203

Afterword 228

Notes 233

Suggestions For Further Reading 241

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"An unhesitating, unflinching analysis of an age which, Vahanian believes, has no concern even to deny God....A cultural analysis of the religious, political, artistic, literary and societal movements of our era."

Paul Ramsey


"The most exciting theological book I have read in many years. In some ways, it is a parallel to Karl Barth's Romerbrief."

Rudolf Bultmann


"Vahanian's message has to do with the 'dishabilitation' of the Christian tradition, with its replacement by bourgeois religiosity and a theology of 'immanentism,' with the desperate effort of Western culture to shake off the 'crippling shakles' of a supernatural piety."

Robert Fitch, New York Times

Editorial Reviews

"An unhesitating, unflinching analysis of an age which, Vahanian believes, has no concern even to deny God....A cultural analysis of the religious, political, artistic, literary and societal movements of our era."

Paul Ramsey


"The most exciting theological book I have read in many years. In some ways, it is a parallel to Karl Barth's Romerbrief."

Rudolf Bultmann


"Vahanian's message has to do with the 'dishabilitation' of the Christian tradition, with its replacement by bourgeois religiosity and a theology of 'immanentism,' with the desperate effort of Western culture to shake off the 'crippling shakles' of a supernatural piety."

Robert Fitch, New York Times

From the Publisher