The Death Of God The Culture Of Our Post Christian Era

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Vahanian, Gabriel

History

Franklin Classics

Death of God

George Braziller

The death of God began, according to Vahanian, the moment Western man started to compromise with the Biblical concept of God transcendent, and to merge the identity of the Godhead with the identity of humankind. From this compromise evolved the belief in the possibility of heaven on earth, in human perfectibility, in the expectation that man, both individually and collectively, can control his termporal fate. Today, as a consequence, Western society not only exalts all possible material comforts, but requires as well easy, guaranteed, status-assuring religious affiliations. The present search for inner security is in direct opposition to the toleration of doubt that tests the strength of genuine religious faith. And Vahanian shows how our spiritual decline is reflected in much of the most important imaginative writing of today.

The Death of God: The Culture of Our Post-Christian Era

Literature & Fiction

Literary

G. Braziller

Conservative religious figures routinely warn against the dangers of secularization, just as proponents of the modern secular state decry the theocratic tendencies of religion. Both sides assume that the sacred and the secular are diametrically opposed. Gabriel Vahanian rightly calls such misbegotten assumptions into question. The problem lies elsewhere. In the light of the biblical dialectic of holiness and the secular, Praise of the Secular deftly "vindicates" the secular, weaving together philosophy, history, and theology in fine Derridean, yet reinforced, deconstructionist fashion. 
 Vahanian argues that religion, far from being opposed to the secular, finds its fulfillment in the secular world. Armed with a compelling interpretation of Christ's incarnation, he claims that "we have not grasped John's notion of the word become flesh, even of God as wording, until or unless we realize it must so expand as to demand the worlding of that very word, extending it into secular relevance." In other words the holy, if not the sacred, demands its own secularization. 
 In this poetically written and profoundly life-affirming work, Vahanian reinvigorates the secular against the claims of fundamentalism, which makes the relative absolute, and against the ideology of a kind of atheism ("secularism" is his term), which makes the absolute relative.

Praise of the Secular (Studies in Religion and Culture)

Politics & Social Sciences

Sociology

University of Virginia Press

Wait Without Idols

The death of God began, according to Vahanian, the moment Western man started to compromise with the Biblical concept of God transcendent, and to merge the identity of the Godhead with the identity of humankind. From this compromise evolved the belief in the possibility of heaven on earth, in human perfectibility, in the expectation that man, both individually and collectively, can control his termporal fate. Today, as a consequence, Western society not only exalts all possible material comforts, but requires as well easy, guaranteed, status-assuring religious affiliations. The present search for "inner security" is in direct opposition to the toleration of doubt that tests the strength of genuine religious faith. And Vahanian shows how our spiritual decline is reflected in much of the most important imaginative writing of today.

The Death Of God: The Culture Of Our Post-Christian Era

Literary Licensing, LLC

Religion & Spirituality

Andesite Press

"The death of God" began, according to Vahanian, the moment Western man started to compromise with the Biblical concept of God transcendent, and to merge the identity of the Godhead with the identity of humankind. From this compromise evolved the belief in the possibility of heaven on earth, in human perfectibility, in the expectation that man, both individually and collectively, can control his termporal fate. Today, as a consequence, Western society not only exalts all possible material comforts, but requires as well easy, guaranteed, status-assuring religious affiliations. The present search for "inner security" is in direct opposition to the toleration of doubt that tests the strength of genuine religious faith. And Vahanian shows how our spiritual decline is reflected in much of the most important imaginative writing of today.

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