Gunton and Altizer

[lbrisbois]

I know that Tom Altizer -- father of the 1960s death-of-god movement
-- operates at the outer-limits of conventional theology, but I was
wondering if anybody is familiar with his work, and how it might
relate to Gunton's trinitarian writings, especially Act and Being.

In terms of their commitments, Altizer and Gunton couldn't be farther
apart, but their theologies have a common point of departure in Karl
Barth, and a particular interest in the trinity.

I think that Altizer and Gunton would both agree that the traditional
doctrines of the trinity and the divine attributes derived from
neoplatonic philosophy, and resulted in a priori conceptions of God as
"absolute transcendence" (Altizer) or "the mere negation of the
finite" (Gunton, quoting Caird).

Altizer, of course, notoriously celebrates the trinitarian modalism
that has prevailed in historical/majority Christianity, and which has
dialectically unfolded into "absolute immanence" or atheism which he
sees as the "historical embodiment of the death of God." Altizer
argues that Hegel, Nietzsche, Milton, Blake, and a few others see
things the same way.

Gunton, it seems to me, might agree with Altizer's version of the
events leading to the spiritual crisis of the last few centuries, but
he would of course say that the "god" that has "died" was never the
true and living God at all. Indeed, the "god" that Altizer and Hegel
see as coming back to itself in the crisis of modernity is and always
was a projection of men. And that's not the God of Israel.

Altizer's theological commitments are troubling, and his theology
itself goes off track often, but I think he's still helpful in
thinking through the full implications of the doctrine of the trinity
that has prevailed at least in the west.