The Death of God - Atheism and Theism

[Jiva]

Recently I’ve been reading a few books regarding postmodernism and whether atheism and theism can be reconciled as broad opposites. In other words I’ve been reading my way through Mark Taylor’s Erring and John Caputo’s The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida. Both return to Nietzsche quite often, yet Taylor seems to accept Nietzsche’s declaration of the death of god and work from this point onwards, something that I think Caputo quite rightly criticises him for as too final.

One of the focal points in Caputo’s book is an analysis of Jacques Derrida’s interpretation of Kierkegaard in The Gift of Death – of which I’ve only read a section so far – which states that love and hate (and life and death by extension) only lose their paradoxical opposition outside of time in a particular instant. Derrida terms this an “atemporal temporality” that would appear as madness to a normal person. To get to my point, Derrida poses this using the example of Abraham binding Isaac: in the instant of sacrifice and in god’s presence alone, his actions are incomprehensible to us, yet I think the point is that in the contradiction of feelings – i.e. by sacrificing that which he most loves – the paradox between love and hate (life and death) is resolved, but also strengthened by being fully affirmed. (Yes, my summary probably sucks. The relevant section of The Gift of Death is on Google Books, pages 61-66.)

My thoughts are whether this could be extended to Nietzsche’s declaration of the death of god, whether it could be re-oriented towards a simultaneous and paradoxical, continuous living and dying of god? Nietzsche was famously hyperbolic in essentially everything he did (he catered to his audiences, after all) and perhaps he was attempting to move the traditional life/death dichotomy of negative theology and/or Jesus’ death as god’s sacrifice to humanity towards something more interactive and less conclusive.