Gabriel Vahanian should be credited for his bold exposition of the deepening bankruptcy and irrelevance of traditional Christianity which, in a sense, has precipitated the Church ‘aggiornamento’ (or updating) in the present age, and for transforming the transcendent ‘heavenly kingdom’ of God into an ‘immanent kingdom of God on earth’.
Gabriel Vahanian, whose works have already caught much attention in the philosophic-theological world, seems to have been the first one to use the phrase “death of God” in contemporary theology. He contends that ours is already a “post-Christian era”, in which man is no longer concerned with religion. He insists that secularity is the pervasive “religious mode of being” for man today. Thus, Christianity, because it has not outgrown its religious and supernaturalistic orientation, has no more bearing upon modern man’s aspirations. It belongs to a mythico-religious stage of human development; therefore, it has become anachronistic to a world that has come of age.
“God is man’s failure,” Vahanian declared. The notion of God is only a cultural concept, frozen by organized religion, which mummifies faith. It is this organized religion that tries to “objectify” and “domesticate” God, but which is against the true nature of a living God.
Vahanian contends that Christianity – in the theological, ecclesiastical and cultural aspects – has not progressed according to contemporary thought and milieu, but rather has stagnated in the mythical obscurantism of the past. Because of this, the contemporary world thus produces “theologians without a Church”. Ecclesiastically, Christianity as an institution has lost the true indigenous character of an immanent God and invented instead a transcendent, institutional God. Culturally, Christian tradition has become “idolatrous” and “ethnolatrous”, thus paving the way for religious pluralism and henotheism in the present age.
In view of this theological, ecclesiastical and cultural regressive character of Christianity, Vahanian prescribes the “death of God” as a necessary precondition to effect a needed transition from “radical monotheism” to “radical immanentism”. Christianity, since it has lost its historical and cultural relevance, must be repudiated – not necessarily a repudiation of religion, but of the “mythological, symbolic” character of Christianity. Hence, Vahanian calls for an “iconoclastic re-conversion” and a “cultural revolution” of Christianity; and for Christian “tradition” to be likewise repudiated for it has no more place in contemporary thought.
Now, vis-a-vis these radical prognostications of Vahanian, let me adduce the following critical postulations.
1. It is evident that Vahanian is proposing a radical reconceptualization of the Christian faith congenial to the temper of the modern man. But his formulation of the “death of God” as a necessary precondition to such reconceptualization does not necessarily suggest the nonexistence of a God nor does it deny the existence of an ontological God; it is simply a “proclamation of an absence of God”. Hence, his formulation is geared only towards a reconceptualization of the “notion” of God, dramatizing the deepening bankruptcy of traditional Christianity. If this significant message is heeded positively and without prejudice, it urges us to re-examine our religious institutions and their paraphernalia, and to reassess their relevance in the contemporary milieu, and finally pave the way for a more meaningful renewal in our time.
2. Vahanian, being a philosopher of culture, poses to be quite certain in claiming that “God is only a cultural concept”, and is firm in asserting the genesis of religion in culture. However, Vahanian failed to explore further the religious foundations of cultures, that the transcendental religious character of culture is undoubtedly “innate and universal”. Vahanian should have asked further about the very reason for such phenomenon.
3. Vahanian proposes a radical “demythologization” of religion. I do perceive, however, that this cannot be taken in absolute categories – that is, absolute demythologization of everything transcendent. This is quite impossible, just as the absolute negation or repudiation of anything transcendent is quite logically impossible. As experience would attest, even in the immanence of things, there are “signals of transcendence”, to borrow the phrase from Peter Berger.
4. Vahanian’s “theological, ecclesiastical and cultural” regression of religion cannot likewise be considered absolute regression – for reasons that in time and space, as evolutionists argue, there is always the element of development in the constant flux of “one and becoming”. Thus, even regression itself can be a developmental component of change, just as “thesis and anti-thesis” are to “synthesis”, or as “divergence and emergence” are to “convergence”.
In the last analysis, however, Vahanian should be credited for his bold exposition of the deepening bankruptcy and irrelevance of traditional Christianity which, in a sense, has precipitated the Church “aggiornamento” (or updating) in the present age, and for transforming the transcendent “heavenly kingdom” of God into an “immanent kingdom of God on earth”.
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