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Abstract
Philosophers of religion have distinguished between ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ atheism. This article considers further conceptions of atheism, especially the idea that atheism can facilitate a faith in God purified of idolatrous assumptions. After introducing Bultmann’s contention that a ‘conscious atheist’ can find something transcendent in the world, this contention is interpreted through reflection on Ricoeur’s claim that the atheisms of Nietzsche and Freud serve to mediate a transition to a purified faith – a faith involving heightened receptivity to agapeic love. The troubling question of what differentiates atheism from belief in God is then discussed in the light of Simone Weil’s meditations on God’s secret presence.
Notes
1. Sutherland, Atheism and the Rejection of God, 1.
2. For critical discussion of New Atheism, see, for example, Haught, God and the New Atheism, and Amarasingam, Religion and the New Atheism.
3. Among the exceptions to this oversimplifying trend is Moore, “Varieties of Sense-Making,” along with several of the other contributions to French and Wettstein, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 37, which is a special issue on ‘The New Atheism and Its Critics’.
4. See Flew, “The Presumption of Atheism,” esp. 14. See also Martin, Atheism, passim, and “General Introduction.” These uses of ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ atheism ought not to be confused with an earlier usage coined by Jacques Maritain in his “On the Meaning of Contemporary Atheism.”
5. My use of the phrase ‘possibilities of sense’ owes much to the work of D. Z. Phillips. See, for example, Phillips, Religion and the Hermeneutics, 57: ‘The aim of the hermeneutics of contemplation is […] not a matter of apologetics, but of contemplating possibilities of sense. Whether those possibilities are appropriated, personally, is another matter.’ Cf. Burley, “Approaches to Philosophy of Religion.”
6. See, for example, Hyman, “Atheism in Modern History,” 29; Turner, How to Be an Atheist, 9. The term ‘standard theism’ has been especially prevalent in the work of William L. Rowe. See, for instance, Rowe, “Evil and the Theistic Hypothesis,” 95, and “Friendly Atheism,” 83–84. This and similar terms have also been used by others, however. See, for example, Leftow, “Immutability,” section 3; Andre, “Was Hume an Atheist?” 142. Although Rowe himself is patently aware that there are ‘varieties of atheism’ (see, most indicatively, Rowe, “The Problem of Evil”), his and others’ uncritical acceptance of the notion of ‘standard theism’ tends to obscure the conceptual complexities at issue.
7. Cf. Williams, “Analysing Atheism,” 5: ‘To come to the point where you disbelieve passionately in a certain kind of God may be the most important step you can take in the direction of the true God.’
8. Jules Lagneau (1851–1894), quoted in Evdokimov, “Christ in the Church,” 178; cf. Evdokimov, The Struggle with God, 69. See also Gleason, The Search for God, 14: ‘Curiously enough, the atheist is often a great help to the believer, unintentionally cooperating in the necessary purification of faith by providing the salt that prevents the believer’s idea of God from becoming corrupt.’
9. Bultmann, “Protestant Theology and Atheism.”
10. That indifference is the greatest threat is a point on which many Christian thinkers agree. As Cardinal Paul Poupard put it in Citation2004, ‘The Church today is confronted more by indifference and practical unbelief than with atheism. Atheism is in [d]ecline throughout the world, but indifference and unbelief develop in cultural milieus marked by secularism’ (Poupard and Pontificium Concilium de Cultura, Where Is Your God?, 12). Cf. Bullivant, “Atheism, Apologetics and Ecclesiology,” 95.
11. Bultmann, “Protestant Theology and Atheism,” 332.
12. Jean Paul Richter, “Discourse of the Dead Christ from Atop the Cosmos: There is No God,” in his Siebenkäs (1796–1797), quoted in Bultmann, “The Idea of God and Modern Man,” 84. For discussion of this essay of Bultmann’s, see Staten, Conscience and the Reality of God, 2–10. For Nietzsche’s famous madman passage, see Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §125.
13. For discussion of the viability of atheist moralities, see Martin, Atheism, Morality, and Meaning; for a theological perspective sympathetic to the view that belief in God is not essential for morality, see Holloway, Godless Morality; and for contemplation of both religious and non-religious perspectives on morality, as represented in works of literature, see Phillips, From Fantasy to Faith.
14. Bultmann, “Protestant Theology and Atheism,” 332.
15. The literature on Bultmann’s ‘demythologization’ project is vast. The primary source is Bartsch, Kerygma and Myth. A concise overview is provided by Boisclair, “Demythologization.”
16. Bultmann, “The Idea of God and Modern Man,” 90. Cf. Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 282: ‘The transcendence of epistemological theory has nothing to do with the transcendence of God. God is beyond in the midst of our life.’ Bultmann, in the same essay, also cites with approval Paul Tillich, Gerhard Ebeling, Gabriel Vahanian, Ronald Gregor Smith and John Robinson.
17. Bultmann, “Protestant Theology and Atheism,” 333.
18. See Bultmann, “The Idea of God and Modern Man,” 88 n. 22.
19. Robinson, Honest to God, 127–128.
20. Ibid., 129–130.
21. Ricoeur, “Religion, Atheism, and Faith,” 441.
22. Ibid., 455.
23. ‘To think is to dig deeper until one reaches the level of questioning that makes possible a mediation between religion and faith by means of atheism’ (ibid., 460; cf. 447).
24. Ibid., 446–447.
25. It should be noted, however, that Ricoeur distinguishes between ‘the image of the father’ as idol and this image as symbol: ‘Once overcome as idol, the image of the father can be recovered as symbol’ (ibid., 467). When taken to symbolize God’s love for creation, the image becomes valid.
26. Ibid., 466–467.
27. Ibid., 467.
28. Ibid., 466–467.
29. Ibid., 466.
30. ‘In terms of its total extension and radical comprehension, poetry is what locates the act of dwelling between heaven and earth, under the sky, but on earth, within the domain of word’ (ibid., 467).
31. Vanhoozer, Biblical Narrative, 132.
32. Bultmann, “The Idea of God and Modern Man,” 95.
33. Ibid.
34. Weil, Waiting on God, 96.
35. Robinson, Honest to God, 114–115.
36. Ibid., 115.
37. Compare Rowan Williams’ paraphrase of Simone Weil: ‘It is I who must become a “tool”, a passive instrument in the hands of love’ (Williams, “The Necessary Non-existence of God,” 58).
38. See Wynn, Renewing the Senses.
39. Contrary to so-called ‘non-cognitive’ conceptions of religious belief (à la Richard Braithwaite, for instance), this conception is committed to the truth of faith; the renewed perception of the world, manifested in ethical receptivity and responsiveness, is treated as revelatory and not as a mere edifying fiction. Contrast Braithwaite, “An Empiricist’s View of the Nature of Religious Belief.” However, in case it is not already clear, I should add that none of what I am arguing here is intended to imply that those who do not believe in God are somehow precluded from manifesting forms of ethical receptivity and responsiveness. I am arguing merely that, from the religious point of view that I am elucidating, those forms will be qualitatively different from the ones that constitute the life of faith.
40. Weil, The Notebooks of Simone Weil, Vol. 1, 126. See also Weil, Gravity and Grace, 114.
41. Webster, Eberhard Jüngel, 79.
42. Von der Ruhr, “Christianity and the Errors of Our Time,” 210.
43. ‘[T]o argue that God exists is to deny him’ (Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. 1, 205). On Meister Eckhart, see for example Milbank, “The Double Glory,” 190–191. Cf. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 296: ‘God does not exist, He is eternal.’
44. Weil, Gravity and Grace, 20; also in idem, Notebooks, Vol. 1, 136.
45. Thibon, editorial footnote in Weil, Gravity and Grace, 20 n. 1.
46. Williams, “The Necessary Non-existence of God,” 54.
47. Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, 84e. This passage from Wittgenstein is put to a slightly different, though related, use in Winch, Simone Weil, 205–206.
48. ‘Love must therefore direct itself at what is not – at the reality of unconditional love itself’ (Williams, “The Necessary Non-existence of God,” 60). A fuller treatment of Weil’s thought on these matters would require a very detailed discussion of Rowan Williams’ careful essay.
49. Weil, Waiting on God, 95.
50. Ibid.
51. Here I have in mind Stewart Sutherland’s argument that an ‘artistic picture’, such as that presented in Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, may be needed to reveal the ‘diversity’ and ‘coherence’ of a religious form of life. See Sutherland, Atheism and the Rejection of God, esp. 87.
52. An abridged version of this paper was presented at the Tenth Conference of the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion, University of Oxford, on 12 September 2013. I am grateful to those who engaged me in discussion on that occasion, notably Richard Amesbury, Gorazd Andrejč, Max Baker-Hytch, Vincent Brümmer, Daniel Gustafson and Mark Wynn. The essay has also benefited from the insightful comments of two anonymous referees for this journal.
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Mikel Burley
Mikel Burley is Lecturer in Religion and Philosophy at the University of Leeds. His research interests include interdisciplinary and cross-cultural philosophy of religion as well as the relation between different varieties of faith and atheism. His recent and forthcoming publications include: Contemplating Religious Forms of Life: Wittgenstein and D. Z. Phillips (New York: Continuum, 2012); “Atheism and the Gift of Death,” Religious Studies 48, no. 4 (2012): 533–546; ‘Contemplating Evil’, Nordic Wittgenstein Review 1 (2012): 35–54; and Rebirth and the Stream of Life: A Philosophical Study of Reincarnation, Karma and Ethics (London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming). He is also a co-editor of Language, Ethics and Animal Life: Wittgenstein and Beyond (London: Bloomsbury, 2012).