Bogoslovska smotra, Vol. 86 No. 4, 2016.
Original scientific paper
The Radical Theology of Thomas Altizer: an Overview and Problems
Zoran Turza
orcid.org/0000-0001-8436-6592
; Catholic Universitiy of Croatia, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Dialectical tension between atheism and faith is based upon human being´s religious experience of the world and himself/herself. This tension has culminated in Nietzsche´s critique of Christianity that denounced it. During the sixties of the last century theology answered Nietzsche at the II Vatican Council and through a theological movement called »radical theology«. It was shown that »radical theology«, as the common term for the group of authors, is far from uniform when it comes to the core ideas associated with it. It was a heterogeneous movement and its most important author was Thomas Altizer who understood Nietzschean proclamation of God’s death radically and in the ontological sense. He tried to reflect about the main theological ideas, like death of God, the Incarnation and the doctrine of Jesus Christ by accepting the ontological and theological fact of God’s death and he did it often in unsystematic and fragmentary way. Altizer begins his theology from the critique of traditional doctrine of God which is transcendent and distant. It became obvious that his theology will lead to several theological problems: it reduces theology to anthropology, his doctrine of God is based upon false image of God which appears from the lack of respect for the doctrine of God in the Christian Tradition, it takes over literature as a theological source, it holds one-sided interpretation of the kenosis of Jesus Christ in history of theology, and it interprets ecclesiology as a specific universal ecclesiology. Although foundations of »radical theology« were highly questionable, it made theology attentive to atheism. But, more than that, it can be interpreted as a movement within protestant theology that emerged as a revolt against the dominant dialectic theology of Karl Barth.
Keywords
death of God; atheism; radical theology; Thomas Altizer
Hrčak ID:
174460
URI
Publication date:
7.2.2017.
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