Is God Dead?

Toward a Hidden God

Is God dead? It is a question that tantalizes both believers, who perhaps secretly fear that he is, and atheists, who possibly suspect that the answer is no.

Is God dead? The three words represent a summons to reflect on the meaning of existence. No longer is the question the taunting jest of skeptics for whom unbelief is the test of wisdom and for whom Nietzsche is the prophet who gave the right answer a century ago. Even within Christianity, now confidently renewing itself in spirit as well as form, a small band of radical theologians has seriously argued that the churches must accept the fact of God's death, and get along without him. How does the issue differ from the age-old assertion that God does not and never did exist? Nietzsche's thesis was that striving, self-centered man had killed God, and that settled that. The current death-of-God group* believes that God is indeed absolutely dead, but proposes to carry on and write a theology without theos, without God. Less radical Christian thinkers hold that at the very least God in the image of man, God sitting in heaven, is dead, and—in the central task of religion today—they seek to imagine and define a God who can touch men's emotions and engage men's minds.

If nothing else, the Christian atheists are waking the churches to the brutal reality that the basic premise of faith—the existence of a personal God, who created the world and sustains it with his love—is now subject to profound attack. "What is in question is God himself," warns German Theologian Heinz Zahrnt, "and the churches are fighting a hard defensive battle, fighting for every inch." "The basic theological problem today," says one thinker who has helped define it, Langdon Gilkey of the University of Chicago Divinity School, "is the reality of God."

A Time of No Religion. Some Christians, of course, have long held that Nietzsche was not just a voice crying in the wilderness. Even before Nietzsche, SÖren Kierkegaard warned that "the day when Christianity and the world become friends, Christianity is done away with." During World War II, the anti-Nazi Lutheran martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote prophetically to a friend from his Berlin prison cell: "We are proceeding toward a time of no religion at all."

For many, that time has arrived. Nearly one of every two men on earth lives in thralldom to a brand of totalitarianism that condemns religion as the opiate of the masses—which has stirred some to heroic defense of their faith but has also driven millions from any sense of God's existence. Millions more, in Africa, Asia and South America, seem destined to be born without any expectation of being summoned to the knowledge of the one God.

Princeton Theologian Paul Ramsey observes that "ours is the first attempt in recorded history to build a culture upon the premise that God is dead." In the traditional citadels of Christendom, grey Gothic cathedrals stand empty, mute witnesses to a rejected faith. From the scrofulous hobos of Samuel Beckett to Antonioni's tired-blooded aristocrats, the anti-heroes of modern art endlessly suggest that waiting for God is futile, since life is without meaning.

For some, this thought is a source of existential anguish: the Jew who lost his faith in a providential God at Auschwitz, the Simone de Beauvoir who writes:

"It was easier for me to think of a world without a creator than of a creator loaded with all the contradictions of the world." But for others, the God issue—including whether or not he is dead—has been put aside as irrelevant. "Personally, I've never been confronted with the question of God," says one such politely indifferent atheist, Dr. Claude Lévi-Strauss, professor of social anthropology at the Collège de France. "I find it's perfectly possible to spend my life knowing that we will never explain the universe." Jesuit Theologian John Courtney Murray points to another variety of unbelief: the atheism of distraction, people who are just "too damn busy" to worry about God at all.

Johannine Spirit. Yet, along with the new atheism has come a new reformation The open-window spirit of Pope John XXIII and Vatican II have re vitalized the Roman Catholic Church.

Less spectacularly but not less decisively, Protestantism has been stirred by a flurry of experimentation in liturgy, church structure, ministry. In this new Christianity, the watchword is witness: Protestant faith now means not intellectual acceptance of an ancient confession, but open commitment—perhaps best symbolized in the U.S. by the civil rights movement—to eradicating the evil and inequality that beset the world.

The institutional strength of the churches is nowhere more apparent than in the U.S., a country where public faith in God seems to be as secure as it was in medieval France. According to a survey by Pollster Lou Harris last year, 97% of the American people say they believe in God. Although clergymen agree that the postwar religious revival is over, a big majority of believers continue to display their faith by joining churches. In 1964, reports the National Council of Churches, denominational allegiance rose about 2%, compared with a population gain of less than 1.5%. More than 120 million Americans now claim a religious affiliation; and a recent Gallup survey indicated that 44% of them report that they attend church services weekly.

For uncounted millions, faith remains as rock-solid as Gibraltar. Evangelist Billy Graham is one of them. "I know that God exists because of my personal experience," he says. "I know that I know him. I've talked with him and walked with him. He cares about me and acts in my everyday life." Still another is Roman Catholic Playwright William Alfred, whose off-Broadway hit, Hogan's Goat, melodramatically plots a turn-of-the-century Irish immigrant's struggle to achieve the American dream. "People who tell me there is no God," he says, "are like a six-year-old boy saying that there is no such thing as passionate love—they just haven't experienced it."

Practical Atheists. Plenty of clergymen, nonetheless, have qualms about the quality and character of contemporary belief. Lutheran Church Historian Martin Marty argues that all too many pews are filled on Sunday with practical atheists—disguised nonbelievers who behave during the rest of the week as if God did not exist. Jesuit Murray qualifies his conviction that the U.S. is basically a God-fearing nation by adding: "The great American proposition is 'religion is good for the kids, though I'm not religious myself.' " Pollster Harris bears him out: of the 97% who said they believed in God, only 27% declared themselves deeply religious.

1966年时代周刊最佳封面—上帝死了吗？(1/7)

上帝死了吗？

                                                                  ——致藏身幕后的上帝

上帝死了吗？这个问题使信徒和无神论者都进退维谷，前者暗自担心上帝真得死了，而后者可能回答“不”。

上帝死了吗？这五个字暗含了“上帝存在”。这不再是怀疑主义者用来嘲弄无神论者智慧的问题，也不是自封为穆罕默德的尼采一个世纪前给出正确答案的问题。现在，甚至基督教内部从精神到形式都进行了大胆的革新，一小伙激进的神学家就严肃认真的主张：教会须接受上帝已死的事实，他们得继续下去，即便没有上帝。这和那老生常谈的“上帝现在不存在、过去也不存在。”的观点有什么不同呢？尼采认为是那些奋进、以自我为中心的人杀害了上帝，这个看法已根深蒂固。而主张现代上帝死亡论*的人们认为上帝的确是死了，建议建立并编写一套无神、无上帝的神学制度。较温和的基督教思想家们则主张上帝有些微人的影子，他在天堂，他去世了。这是今天宗教的核心任务，他们试图将上帝描绘为一个能感触人类情感，并进入人类思想的神。

如果不是其他什么原因的话，基督教否认者就会敲醒教会，让他们面对残酷的现实：他们信仰的基本——那个人性化的上帝，那个创造了这个世界并以他的爱维持世界的上帝，他的存在性现在正受到严重的攻击。“问题在于上帝本身，”德国神学家Heinz Zahrnt警告“教会正面对一场艰难的保卫战，寸土必争。”芝加哥大学神学院的Langdon Gilkey 说“今天神学基本的问题就是上帝的真实性。”

一个没有宗教的时代。当然，有些基督徒长期以来一直坚信尼采并非唯一发出警告的人。早在尼采之前，SÖren Kierkegaard 就预言“当这个世界和基督教成为朋友时，既是基督教终结之时。”二战期间，反纳粹路德教会的殉教者，Dietrich Bonhoeffer ，被关在柏林监狱时在给他一个朋友的信中曾预言：“我们正向着一个完全没有宗教的时代前进。”

对于很多人来说，那个时代已经来临了。几乎地球上每两个人中就有一个生活在极权主义的铁蹄下，他们谴责宗教是安抚大众的麻醉剂。这些言论激起了维护自己信仰的人们勇敢的反抗，但是也使数百万人否认了上帝的存在。在非洲、亚洲和南美，不止百万的人看来根本就没有机会知道还有个上帝这回事儿。

普林斯顿的神学家Paul Ramsey 说“我们的宗教是自有记载以来历史上第一个努力在上帝已死的基础u上建立文化的宗教。”在传统基督教的大本营，灰白色的哥特式大教堂寂寥的屹立着，默默地看着被背弃的信仰。从Samuel Beckett 堕落的流浪汉到安东尼奥尼的厌倦流血的贵族，再到现代艺术中平凡的角色都反反复复的说等待上帝的救赎是徒劳的，因为生命毫无意义。

对于有些人来说，这个想法是痛苦存在的根源：当犹太人在奥兹维辛集中营失去了对幸运之神的信仰时，Simone de Beauvoir 写到：

“对我来说认为世界没有创造者比认为世界有个满负矛盾、对立的创造者轻松的多。”但是对另外一些人而言，有关上帝的话题，包括他是否已死，都不再重要了。“从个人的角度来讲，我从来没有正视过有关上帝的问题，”一位冷淡的无神论者，法国大学的社会人类学家，Claude Lévi-Strauss博士礼貌的如是说；“我很可能用尽一生才知道我决不可能解释整个宇宙。”耶稣会神学家John Courtney Murray 说另一种无神论者是无暇顾及式的无神论者，那些人是忙得根本没时间考虑上帝的事儿。

伴随着其他新无神论J，ohannine Spirit 同样也有了革新。罗马教皇约翰22世和梵蒂冈2世的开放精神为罗马天主教会注入了一丝新鲜活力。

虽然不太引人注目，但却不乏果敢，通过一系列在宗教仪式、教堂结构和部门上大刀阔斧的试验，新教已渐渐传播开来。这种新新的基督教教义显而易见：新教的信仰并不单单是对古代教义去其糟粕、取其精华，还包括公开许诺根除邪恶和困扰这个世界的不平等，可能最好的代表就是美国的民权运动。

教会的力量在任何其他国家都不会比在美国更强大。在美国，公众对上帝的信仰就像在中世纪的法国那样牢不可破。根据Pollster Lou Harris 去年的一项调查显示美国有97%的信奉上帝。虽然神职人员同意战后的宗教复苏已经结束，但是还有大量的信徒继续加入教会，以示他们的信仰。  1964年国家教会委员会报道宗教信仰人数上升了2%，比人口增涨低1.5%。现在美国有一亿两千万人信奉宗教；最近一项民意调查显示这些信徒中44%的人每周都去教堂作礼拜。

对无数的信徒来讲，信仰就像直布罗陀的岩石一样坚不可摧。Evangelist Billy Graham（福音布道家葛培理）就是这样的一个人。“我的亲身经历令我知道上帝的存在。”他接着说“我知道我了解他。我和他交谈，和他同行。他照顾我、在我生命的每一天他都与我同在。”另一个罗马天主教剧作家William Alfred，他的非好莱坞剧——Hogan的山羊——讲述了爱尔兰移民实现美国梦的奋斗史。“一个告诉我没有上帝的人，就像6岁的男孩告诉我没有激情四射的爱情一样，他们只是没有经历过。”

尽管如此，还是有很多神职人员对现代的信仰的实质和特点表示怀疑。路德教会的历史学家Martin Marty 说星期天教堂的板凳上坐满了真正的无神论者，伪装的无信仰者，他们在周末闲暇时的行为就好像上帝真的不存在似的。耶稣会士Murray这样界定他的结论：美国基本上还算是个虔诚的基督教国家，但美国最关键的主张是“宗教对孩子有好处，虽然我自己也并非多么虔诚。’”Pollster Harris 也证明到：虽然97%的人信奉上帝，但只有27%的人是真正发自心底的。

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