Depoortere on the Death of God

Is the death of God still relevant for theology in our so-called post-secular age, in which even philosophers, once the great adversaries of religion, are now turning to it? I allege that it is. For, have we not all, to some degree, taken on this Protestant way of thinking? Probably, only few Westerners still share the “strong and pervasive sense of the presence of the sacred in the world” of medieval Catholics and it is not very likely that many in the West still experience the world as “one vast organic entity that [is] ultimately grounded in God as its origin and source.” Therefore, even after the so-called end of the end of religion, it remains meaningful to speak about the death of God, namely as a powerful and appealing metaphor for the fate which transcendence suffered under the impact of secularization in the West. When God is said to have died, it means that daily life in the West is most often no longer in touch with the Living One who is, according to the Biblical testimony, the origin and ground of our existence. This makes clear that the death of God is still an important challenge to Christianity. This challenge, moreover, is not merely a matter of an opposition between Christianity and secular modernity. Given the role of Protestantism in bringing about the death of God, the relation between both is much more complex than that...

Frederiek Depoortere, "'God Himself Is Dead': Luther, Hegel, and the Death of God," Philosophy and Theology 19, 1-2; p.192