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The theism-atheism debate is foreign to many Mahāyāna Buddhist thinkers such as the Japanese Zen Master Dōgen (1200–1253). Nevertheless, his philosophy of ‘expression’ (dōtoku) is able to shine a new light on the various incarnations of this debate throughout history. This paper will explore a/theism from Dōgen’s philosophical standpoint.Dōgen introduces the notion of ‘expression’ to describe the concomitant vertical and horizontal relationships of the religious project, namely the relationship between the individual and the divine as well as the relationship among a multiplicity of individuals, each of which Dōgen conceives of as an expression of the divine and/or the oneness of the cosmos. Dōgen’s philosophy presupposes the ‘way of emptiness’ (śūnyatāvāda) and Chengguan’s (738–839) ‘four dharma worlds’ (sifajie). To Dōgen, the former indicates the conventional nature of predication and signification, while the latter denotes the existential interwovenness of numerous individuals and the divine oneness of the cosmos.Such a philosophy implies that all truth claims and philosophical positions are mere intellectual and discursive constructions that are formulated against a perceived other. Therefore, Dōgen observes laconically that ‘when one side is expressed, the other is obscured’ or, as Dōgen says elsewhere, ‘when expression is expressed, non-expression is not expressed.’ Dōgen’s philosophical framework provides some interesting insights about one or more discourses on atheism: Again, the basic assumption is that all philosophical paradigms, systems, and positions are devoid of an absolute truth value, framed in a specific cultural and historical context which they express, and formulated vis-à-vis a perceived other.In this paper, I will look at Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844–1900) atheism from the perspective of Dōgen’s philosophical standpoint. Concretely, I will present Nietzsche’s position on his own terms, translate his philosophy into Dōgen’s terminology, interpret his philosophy from the standpoint of Dōgen’s philosophical approach, and assess the utility of such an exercise. I believe that such a project enables us to read theism through the eyes of atheism, atheism through the eyes of theism, both through the eyes of Dōgen, and Dōgen through the eyes of the a/theism debate. In this last section, I will introduce the language of Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945) who attempted a similar project in his The Logic of Basho and the Religious Worldview. The goal of this project is to determine what atheism denies, what atheism contributes, and why a multi-faceted and multi-cultural engagement of atheism is important today.

This book aims to renew theological thinking by extending and radicalizing an iconoclastic and existentialist mode of thought. It proposes a theology whose point of departure assumes and accepts the critiques of religion launched by Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, and Feuerbach but nevertheless takes theological desire seriously as a rebellious force working within, but against, an anthropomorphic, phallogocentric worldview. As a theology of language, it does not claim any privileged access to some transcendent divine essence or ground of Being. On the contrary, for Noelle Vahanian theology is a strictly secular discourse, like any other discourse, but aware of its limitations and wary of great promises--its own included. Its faith is that this secular theological desire can be a force against the constitutive indifference of thought, and it is a meditative act of rebellion. Aphoristic instead of argumentative, this book offers an original and constructive engagement with such seminal issues as indifference, belief, madness, and love.

Did post-Enlightenment philosophers reject the idea of original sin and hence the view that life is a quest for redemption from it? In Philosophical Myths of the Fall, Stephen Mulhall identifies and evaluates a surprising ethical-religious dimension in the work of three highly influential philosophers - Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. He asks: Is the Christian idea of humanity as structurally flawed something that these three thinkers aim simply to criticize? Or do they, rather, end up by reproducing secular variants of the same mythology? Mulhall argues that each, in different ways, develops a conception of human beings as in need of redemption: in their work, we appear to be not so much capable of or prone to error and fantasy, but instead structurally perverse, living in untruth. In this respect, their work is more closely aligned to the Christian perspective than to the mainstream of the Enlightenment. However, all three thinkers explicitly reject any religious understanding of human perversity; indeed, they regard the very understanding of human beings as originally sinful as central to that from which we must be redeemed.And yet each also reproduces central elements of that understanding in his own thinking; each recounts his own myth of our Fall, and holds out his own image of redemption. The book concludes by asking whether this indebtedness to religion brings these philosophers' thinking closer to, or instead forces it further away from, the truth of the human condition.

How can intense religious beliefs coexist with pluralism in America today? Examining the role of the religious imagination in contemporary religious practice and in some of the best-known works of American literature from the past fifty years, Postmodern Belief shows how belief for its own sake--a belief absent of doctrine--has become an answer to pluralism in a secular age. Amy Hungerford reveals how imaginative literature and religious practices together allow novelists, poets, and critics to express the formal elements of language in transcendent terms, conferring upon words a religious value independent of meaning.

InDialogues between Faith and Reason, John H. Smith traces a major line in the history of theology and the philosophy of religion down the \"slippery slope\" of secularization-from Luther and Erasmus, through Idealism, to Nietzsche, Heidegger, and contemporary theory such as that of Derrida, Habermas, Vattimo, and Asad. At the same time, Smith points to the persistence of a tradition that grew out of the Reformation and continues in the mostly Protestant philosophical reflection on whether and how faith can be justified by reason. In this accessible and vigorously argued book, Smith posits that faith and reason have long been locked in mutual engagement in which they productively challenge each other as partners in an ongoing \"dialogue.\" Smith is struck by the fact that although in the secularized West the death of God is said to be fundamental to the modern condition, our current post-modernity is often characterized as a \"postsecular\" time. For Smith, this means not only that we are experiencing a broad-based \"return of religion\" but also, and more important for his argument, that we are now able to recognize the role of religion within the history of modernity. Emphasizing that, thanks to the logos located \"in the beginning,\" the death of God is part of the inner logic of the Christian tradition, he argues that this same strand of reasoning also ensures that God will always \"return\" (often in new forms). In Smith's view, rational reflection on God has both undermined and justified faith, while faith has rejected and relied on rational argument. Neither a defense of atheism nor a call to belief, his book explores the long history of their interaction in modern religious and philosophical thought.

In The Call to Radical Theology, Thomas J. J. Altizer meditates on the nature of radical theology and calls readers to undertake the vocation of radical theology as a way of living a fully examined life. In fourteen essays, he explores how the death of God in modernity and the dissolution of divine authority have freed theology to become a mode of ultimate reflection and creative inquiry no longer bound by church sanction or doctrinal strictures. Revealing a wealth of vital models for doing radical theological thinking, Altizer discusses the work of philosophers such as Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Marion, Derrida, and Levinas, among others. Resources are also found in the work of imaginative writers, especially Milton, Blake, and Joyce. In the spirit of Joyce's Here Comes Everybody, Altizer is convinced that theology is for everyone and that everyone has the authority to do theology authentically. An introduction by Lissa McCullough and foreword by David E. Klemm help orient the reader to Altizer's distinctive understanding of the role of theology after the death of God.

Theologian Thomas J. J. Altizer became both famous and infamous as the chief spokesman for death-of-God theology in the 1960s. In the years that followed, he has created a theological tradition that has influenced all succeeding generations of theologians. Living the Death of God is Altizer's theological memoir. Taking us from his transformation as a theological student to his present life of solitude, Altizer recapitulates the voyage to create a truly new theology. The memoir recounts each stage of this voyage, from being overwhelmed by Satan to a conversion to the death of God and an extensive and even ecstatic preaching of the death of God. However, this is the death of that God who is the wholly alienated God, a death realizing anew the crucified God or the apocalyptic Christ. Written with Altizer's characteristic elegance, this book is fascinating on its own account, but can also serve the reader as a companion or introduction to Altizer's body of work.

Eminent theologian Thomas J. J. Altizer breaks new ground by exploring the ultimate transfiguration of the Godhead as a question of the Nihil or nothingness and God. The Nihil is essential to the full actualization of the Godhead in that it fully occurs in both a primordial and an apocalyptic sacrifice of the Godhead. Virtually unexplored by philosophical and theological thinking, the Nihil is luminously enacted in the deepest expressions of the imagination, and most clearly and decisively so in the Christian epic tradition. Altizer looks at the works of philosophers and theologians such as Spinoza, Barth, Hegel, Nietzsche, and epic writers such as Dante, Milton, and Blake to ultimately posit a God that is necessarily a dichotomous God.

The last half century has seen both attempts to demythologize the idea of God into purely secular forces and the resurgence of the language of Godas indispensable to otherwise secular philosophers for describing experience. This volume asks whether pietymight be a sort of irreducible human problematic: functioning both inside and outside religion.S. Clark Buckner works in San Francisco as an artist, critic, and curator. He is the gallery director at Mission 17 and publishes regularly in Artweek and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Vanderbilt University. Matthew Statler is the Director of Research at the Imagination Lab Foundation in Lausanne, Switzerland. His current research is focused on practical wisdom as it pertains to organizational phenomena such as strategy making and leadership. He also has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Vanderbilt University.