One might say there are as many versions of Christianity as there are Christians, and so there are numerous ways of looking at the symbology and metaphors presented in the New Testament alone. One way of looking at the whole narrative describing the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which has captivated my mind for some time now, is the so-called Death of God theology, or Theothanatology.
I have contemplated upon the whole idea of Christian atheism ever since I started to look into the religious philosophies of people like Leo Tolstoy. After his accepting of the teaching of Christ into his life around the time he turned fifty, he could be considered to be a Christian atheist and a Christian anarchist, bringing the religion perhaps as down to earth as it can be brought. He rejected all supernatural elements present in the Bible as stories (something many Rabbis would not not disagree with when it comes to the Tanakh), and considered all the supposed miracles performed by Jesus as latter additions to the life's story of the redeemer.
This view of Christianity being something more material (or on the other hand more spiritual) than the conventional versions accepted by the masses was by no means a new one, as it has been explored by the likes of William Blake, Kierkegaard and Hegel, among many others. And while their approaches to the idea have some similarities and some disagreements, I do not pretend to actually know what has been going on in the minds of these men when they have thought and written about the Death of God, for just like God must be ultimately unkown to men, so must also be the minds of our fellow men. However, I'd like to explore my thoughts on the subject here a bit.
One of the most famous proclamations of atheism is of course "God is Dead", a choice of words which has been used by others before Friedrich Nietzsche. And to take it literally in the most uncomplicated atheist way is perhaps taking the German philosopher way too simply. Perhaps in the same way John Milton revealed his love of Hell when writing of Heaven, Nietzsche reveals his deep love or influence of religion when writing about it with hatred and inferiority.
After all Nietzsche was brought up in a strictly religious environment, his father being a Lutheran priest, and perhaps in the same way Luther condemned the superstitions and corruptions of the Catholic Church, Nietzsche comdemns Lutheranism yet reveals how steeped in religious thinking he is. As is the case with all Europeans of course, having been products of Christian societies for centuries.
However, considering the otherworldly claims of Christianity, atheism to us means something very different than it does to for example a Hindu person, especially in the 19th century. Perhaps Nietzsche was not attacking God per se, but indeed the God of his surrounding authorities and culture. Not to say this is juvenile, but that is exactly how I attacked christianity when I was a teenager, without being raised religious.
What many fans of the phrases like "God is Dead" and terms like the "Antichrist" miss, is just as Nietzsche was searching for his ultimate self-actualization, viewed by him as the Übermensch, so have been countless Christians throughout the ages, the mystics being a great example of universal philosophies, self-enquiry and experience, through the lens of Christianity.
The way I personally see it, when "God is Dead", it does not simply mean that the theistic "God does not exist", but more like God has been brought down to earth, or even having sacrificed himself in the act of the crucifixion, therefore pouring his essence into the world, explored as Kenotic Christology by the likes of Kierkegaard. Altho man has cursed the God in the sky, he has accepted the God all around him, thus proving that God was always here.
When getting rid of a tyrannical God, or if God commits an act of self-sacrifice, the tranformation is so vast and total, perhaps this was the apocalypse or eschatological change, the Kingdom of God preached by Jesus and John the Baptist.
One of the more modern explorers of this philosophy have been the theologian Thomas Altizer and the philosopher Slavoj Žižek, sometimes giving speeches on the subject together.
Something Žižek has said (at least to my understanding) is that the only way to be a real atheist is to go through Christianity, to become like Christ on the cross and understand that there really is no bigger picture, unlike basic atheism which can deny theism yet still leave much to cosmic meaning, or fundamental order and laws in nature.
While Žižek seems to talk about this terminology as describing imminence, the Christianity of Altizer is a bit more complicated in my view, although he was deeply influenced by Buddhism, especially the concept of emptiness or Śūnyatā. However, this emptiness does not mean nothingness, but more like no-thingness, the state of no separation from where all things emerge as dualities. This of course brings God under the concepts of pantheism or nonduality, themes also explored by Christian mystics such as Jakob Boehme and Meister Eckhart.
In the moment of crucifixion, God is not going to save us, because God is beyond good and evil, God is everything. When his son proclaims "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" on the cross, his death (as well as the death of his father according to some) is the second to last phase in the process we have been exploring, for after this there is still resurrection. But this is not a resurrection to some phantasmagorical or spiritlike state to some place where life goes on and on endlessly (which would be quite hellish in my book), but a resurrection to the here and now, to the reality of God. We are not going to go to heaven after we die, since we are already there.
Perhaps this is the original apocalypse. The Reign of God is very different from the Kingdom of God, a state which is already here, within and without.
And what is religion if it is not felt, touched, experienced, lived. Not after death but right here in life.
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