What does Christian atheism mean?

Two opposing camps can only have a fruitful debate if they agree on what they disagree on. A militant atheist like Richard Dawkins is right to denounce scientific ignorance in some religious contexts. But at a deeper level his argument fails, because the deity he rejects is a puffed-up thing, and not the Creator as conceived in the classical tradition.

Similar considerations apply to Slavoj Žižek Christian atheism. When the claim that religion is nothing more than a pious fantasy is both your starting point and your conclusion, then reason becomes the first casualty. This approach is as circular as beginning a book on socialism by claiming that all left-wing thoughts and efforts are inherently flawed.

If God is the basis of reality and not the main figure in a field of material actors, how should the divine presence be modeled? A better analogy is provided by light. The light in which we look is not in itself just another element in a list of objects we see. Light is only ‘seen’ to the extent that it is reflected from opaque objects. From a monotheistic point of view, the same applies to the divine light. As the philosopher Denys Turner puts it, “The light that is God can only be seen in the beings that reflect it.”

This consciousness is shared across much of the religious spectrum. However, two crucial but overlooked features of Christianity set it apart from the spiritual mainstream. One concerns the way believers relate to God. Christians do not (or should not) think that their earthly life is an obstacle course set up by a heavenly head teacher who will give a progress report at the end of the journey. The whole point of the doctrine of justification is that Christians repent because they are forgiven, not to obtain forgiveness. Second, Jesus’ followers do not hope to be considered good servants. Because the source of all is viewed as an eternal exchange of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the language of the Trinity opens up a much more intimate view of divine-human relationships. The New Testament speaks of the convert’s status as an adopted daughter or son, not as a servant. Part of the rationale for belief in the Holy Spirit lies in beliefs about a humble, hospitable God who not only removed His crown to share our flesh, but is also open to sharing His life. A figure like Ayaan Hirsi Ali understands this point. Before her recent conversion to Christianity, she once said she wanted a God she could have a conversation with.

This kind of clarification seems necessary to provide coordinates for assessing a book as baggy, idiosyncratic and dogmatic as Christian atheism. Any work that contains the word “Christian” in its title—especially one that purports to offer a radical reformulation of church doctrine—should be based on sound research in the relevant field. According to his latest publication, Žižek has done little or no homework. Although fashionable topics play a large role in the index (the author is a Marxist, Hegelian and Lacanian psychoanalyst as well as a self-proclaimed rock star philosopher), references to orthodox Christian thought are insignificant. He is not serious about anyone of Turner’s stature. The text as a whole is chronically under-edited.

Žižek has taken one idea from the Gospels and that serves as a leitmotif. Because the incarnation brings God to earth, he thinks, Christianity essentially overthrows religion from within. It undermines itself on a greater scale than secularism ever could. The committed atheist should thus invoke the message of Jesus as a springboard to liberation, given the failure of some secularists to escape the religious paradigm fully enough. After abandoning religious chains one moment, they fall prey to other external guarantors of meaning, including natural necessity and evolution.

Unlike Dawkins, then, Žižek values ​​what he sees as Christianity’s dissident credentials. Yet his conclusion that only atheism offers an unfettered view of reality rests on assumptions that Jesus repeatedly questioned. So much modern unbelief is based on rebellion against the master-slave relationship that is supposedly embedded in the faith. In this way Christian atheism is both unoriginal and iconoclastic. The subtitle seems equally stale. Christians view the material world as an emanation from its transcendent source and can affirm that it matters as tenaciously as anyone else.

This also applies to meaning. Žižek has missed a bigger opportunity, given the toxic divide clearly visible in Western intellectual discourse. Scylla claims in the form of hard empiricism that all truths are scientific truths. This throws the normative character of ethics and aesthetics, as well as religion, overboard. The Charybdis of postmodernism regards truth as such as a superstitious relic at the service of power relations.

Christianity has overcome these and other intellectual storms. The churches provide rich resources to help us move forward, both socially and individually. For example, while Marxists have some plausible criticisms of late capitalism, a Christian can rightly respond that the promotion of “value” in economic relationships must include a sense of spiritual value. This point is not lost on some other influential postmodern thinkers, most notably Alain Badiou. Žižek prefers to ride old hobby horses. He ignores a host of alternative perspectives and has not even bothered to describe – let alone evaluate – the Christian repertoire in other than typically cartoonish terms.