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In the aftermath of writing The Death of God, Vahanian had opportunity to advance his discussion. In his introduction to No Other God, he wrote, "Taken as nothing less if nothing more than a cultural phenomenon, the death of God signifies the transition from radical monotheism to radical immanentism and marks the birth of secularism as the vector of the new religiosity. It announces the the advent of a new, culturally Christian, paganism, even while theology is busy overlooking its indigence or covering it up with a glorified but amnesic vocabulary....But what I have denounced elsewhere as the charter of the incipient post-Christian idolatry is now proclaimed as the first article of an imman...
Conservative religious figures routinely warn against the dangers of secularization, just as proponents of the modern secular state decry the theocratic tendencies of religion. Both sides assume that the sacred and the secular are diametrically opposed. Gabriel Vahanian rightly calls such misbegotten assumptions into question. The problem lies elsewhere. In the light of the biblical dialectic of holiness and the secular, Praise of the Secular deftly "vindicates" the secular, weaving together philosophy, history, and theology in fine Derridean, yet reinforced, deconstructionist fashion. Vahanian argues that religion, far from being opposed to the secular, finds its fulfillment in the secular ...
Gabriel Vahanian's final work, Theopoetics of the Word weaves together Christian theology, continental philosophy and cultural studies to present a new theology of language and technology for the 21st century.
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.
Ephemeral differences notwithstanding, both literature and the Bible are stirred by a common passion for words, all of which are on an equal footing in staging an at once intimate and ultimate passion of the word. Of language and its quest for truth of which each and every word of a dictionary is entrusted, so long as no word per se can lord it over all the other words. Keepers of the word, words cannot keep a secret, bound as they are both to reveal and conceal it at one and the same time. Except for a parrot, language has no mother tongue: it inherits only that which it can translate: the everlasting into the ephemeral, the temporal into the eternal, speaking into writing - into that which...
In The Death of God, theologian Gabriel Vahanian reflects on the cultural and intellectual trends that have eroded the foundations of traditional Christianity and opened up new possibilities for human creativity and freedom. Drawing on a wide range of philosophical and literary sources, Vahanian argues that the demise of the God of the Bible has created a void that can only be filled by the imaginative and critical powers of human beings themselves. His provocative and insightful analysis challenges believers and non-believers alike to rethink the role of religion in contemporary society. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base...
“The most exciting theological book I have read in many years. In some ways, it is a parallel to Karl Barth’s Römerbrief.”—RUDOLF BULTMANN “An unhesitating, unflinching analysis of an age which, Vahanian believes, has no concerns even to deny God...a cultural analysis of the religious, political, artistic, literary and societal movements of our era.”—PAUL RAMSEY “In his preface to The Death of God, Paul Ramsey, Professor of Religion at Princeton university, explains that we are now in the second phase of the period post-mortem Dei—the first phase was anti-Christian, ours is post-Christian...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 shackles’ of a superannuated piety. “The quality of mind which enters into this book is unique and fascinating...Vahanian is a fierce but eloquent prophet of the Lord.”—ROBERT E. FITCH, New York Times Book Review
This book addresses the problem of religion, ethics, and public policy in a global technological civilization. It attempts to do what narrative ethicists have said cannot be doneto construct a cross-cultural ethic of human dignity, human rights, and human liberation which respects the diversity of narrative traditions. It seeks to do this without succumbing to either ethical relativism or ethical absolutism. The author confronts directly the dominant narrative of our technological civilization: the Janus-faced myths of Apocalypse or Utopia. Through this myth, we view technology ambivalently, as both the object of our dread and the source of our hope. The myth thus renders us ethically ...
Innocent Himbaza and Adrien Schenker, O.P., are biblical scholars at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Jean-Baptiste Edart, a member of the Community of Emmanuel, teaches at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Rome. Benedict M. Guevin, O.S.B., professor of theology at Saint Anselm College, translated the work into English.
All-new essays from some of America's most influential theological and religious thinkers open up new ways of theological thinking and put American radical theology in context from Paul Tillich to the present.