Atheism

Editorial Note
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Atheism is a genuinely modern phenomenon. It refers not only to a distancing from religious beliefs, even to the point of their programmatic negation. Atheism is also embedded in a slowly but sustainably changing worldview that emerged around 1500, with which human beings confront their surroundings: God, nature, political and social forms of community, and themselves. Atheism can be understood both as the source of this contrast and as the result of this objectification. In this respect, atheism and its historical significance for “the” West is essentially linked to other historical-philosophical concepts. These include the “modern era,” the idea of secularizing (early) modernity, the emergence of rationalism and individualism, and a naturalistic understanding of the cosmos.¹See Koselleck, Reinhart, „Neuzeit“. Zur Semantik moderner Bewegungsbegriffe, in: idem (Ed.), Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten, Frankfurt a. M. ¹¹2020, 300–348, esp. 315–317.

1. History of Atheism

Admittedly, ancient tradition also recognizes the atheoi as those who, under polytheistic assumptions, adhere to “false gods” (Plato , Apol. 26c). The Old Testament also mentions the “fools” (נָבָל) who deny God (Pss 14:1; 53:2; Deut 5:7). In addition, from a global perspective, the non-theistic traditions of Confucianism, Hinduism, and Buddhism in particular should be noted.²Cf. Ghosh, Raghunath, Indian Materialism, in: Bilimoria, Purushottama et al. (Eds.), History of Indian Philosophy, London/New York 2018, 99–109. However, with regard to the complex developments in the West, it can be said that it was only with the emergence of modern science,³On this, see Funkenstein, Amos, Theology and the Scientific Imagination. From the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century, Princeton 1986, ch. V. the discovery of unknown continents and foreign cultures, and religious plurality, which forced the relativization of absolute claims and the necessity of tolerance toward alternative worldviews, that the gesture of denial was prepared. This corresponds to the fact that the term “atheism” has only been documented since 1540.⁴Cf. Buckley, Michael J., At the Origins of Modern Atheism, New Haven 1987, 29. The term became common in the seventeenth century, but it was not used to articulate a comprehensive interpretation of the world until around 1850. Certain phases of atheism can be distinguished, some of which overlap. Nevertheless, at least a heuristic chronology is possible.

• Atheism as an apologetic label: here, atheism as negation refers only to very specific dogmatic doctrines. An example: in the sixteenth century, someone who denied the full divinity of Christ and therefore also distanced himself from the classical doctrine of the Trinity could be called an atheist. Here, it is not the existence of God as such that is rejected. Rather, the focus is on an Arian (cf. Arius ) position, according to which the singular transcendence and absoluteness of God is taught, but the Son is subordinate to the Father as “unequal in essence.” It was precisely this deviation from orthodoxy that could be described as atheism in the early modern period.⁵Cf. Barth, Hans-Martin, Atheismus und Orthodoxie. Analysen und Modelle christlicher Apologetik im 17. Jahrhundert, Göttingen 1971, 97–106.
• Atheism as early modern naturalism: in the early seventeenth century, two strands finally came together: on the one hand, the empirical strand (Isaac Newton , Samuel Clarke ), which relied scientifically on observation and experiment; on the other hand, the rationalist strand (René Descartes , Nicolas Malebranche ) which assumed that the act of thinking was the foundation of everything that did not think.⁶Dupré, Louis, On the Intellectual Sources of Modern Atheism, in: IJPR 45:1 (1999), 1–11, 5f. This at least paved the way for the methodological suspension of the assumption of God’s existence. The credo of this (later) methodical atheism is therefore etsi deus non daretur. This is not yet a denial of God, but rather a more cautious motto according to which the hypothesis that God exists is scientifically bracketed or, in fact, declared inconsequential.⁷Cf. Schröder, Winfried, Atheismus. Fünf Einwände und eine Frage, Hamburg 2021, 60.
• The Enlightenment bequeathment of God through reason: both of these lines come together in Immanuel Kant’s  philosophy of religion and morality. It is no longer God who grounds knowledge and action, but rather God becomes epistemically a fundamentally unknowable non-object and morally a postulate that carries with it two characteristics. First, as the best explanation between happiness and duty, it should be understood in such a way that God (real or, as later, “as if”) must be accepted in order to conceive of both happiness and norm together. Second, God is understood as a postulate in such a way that he himself, as (or mediated through) the idea of the highest good, is subject to the unconditional law.⁸On this, see Kant, Immanuel, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft [A: 1793 / B: 1794], in: Weischedel, Wilhelm (Ed.), Kant Werke, Band IV, Darmstadt 2011, 645–879, B VI. In the work of Johann Gottlieb Fichte , this latter aspect is taken to extremes: God now becomes the epitome of the moral “world regime,” so that vera religio and true morality are ultimately identifiable. It was precisely this (threatening) equation that led to the so-called “atheism controversy” in 1799.⁹See Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, Der Grund unsers Glaubens an eine göttliche Weltregierung [1798], in: Medicus, Fritz (Ed.), Ausgewählte Werke in sechs Bänden, Band III, Darmstadt 1962, 119–133, esp. 130.
• Theism as an artificial religion: at that time, it was possible to be an atheist as a critical self-designation (as in the case of Denis Diderot ), whereby faith changed from a largely unquestioned certainty to an option that could in principle be denied and was no longer punishable.¹⁰Cf. Taylor, Charles, Sources of the Self. The Making of the Modern Identity, Cambridge, 1989, ch. 6. During this period, according to one of the theories put forward by recent research, theism developed as an attempt to answer the widespread crisis. In view of the quasi-atheistic alternatives in the form of materialism (Paul Henri Thiry d’Holbach ) or pan(en)theism (Baruch de Spinoza ), theism would have been a response intended to defend the faith under attack. This means that declaring God to be a supernatural, spiritual being with perfect attributes (classically: omnipotence, omnibenevolence, omnipresence, etc.) would not have been the theological standard at that time. Rather, it would have been a rationalistic construct around 1800, which itself was an apologetic response to the denial of God.¹¹Cf. Amesbury, Richard, Changing the Subject. Atheism, „Friendly Fire“, and Contemplative Philosophy, in: Dalferth, Ingolf U./Sass, Hartmut von (Eds.), The Contemplative Spirit. Dewi Z. Phillips on Religion and the Limits of Philosophy (RPT 49), Tübingen 2010, 267–291, 269.
• Atheistic criticism of religion: at the latest, in the aftermath of the Enlightenment, the scope of atheistic denial expanded. Now, religion was no longer criticized in separate parts, but as such: with the criticism of the Bible that had already emerged with Gotthold Ephraim Lessing  and the resulting question of the increasingly problematic truth content of the Old and New Testaments; with the post-Hegelian dissolution of God into the historical process; with God as a pure projection of human beings who deify the characteristics of their own species (Ludwig Feuerbach ); with Christianity as a rebellion of the weak who band together and refuse to accept that the strong have long since killed God (Friedrich Nietzsche ); as the concealment of mostly exploitative power relations (Karl Marx ); as the tradition of a merely sublimated father figure who must at least be murdered imaginatively (Sigmund Freud ); or as a resigned rejection of God in the face of unimaginable evil (including Theodor W. Adorno).
• Atheism as an ideology: as a product of classical criticism of religion, the second half of the twentieth century in particular saw the emergence of movements that were not only critical of religion but openly hostile to it. Two very different examples can be cited: on the one hand, there is the Marxist-Leninist ideology of the GDR, whose materialism left no room for forces outside the system or, in some cases, was critical of it (this applies to many, but by no means all, Eastern European states; think of Poland and its strong Catholic tradition). The marginalization of the church and faith has resulted in something that can be described as “godlessness.”¹²Cf. Krötke, Wolf, Gottes Klarheiten. Eine Neuinterpretation der Lehre von Gottes „Eigenschaften“, Tübingen 2001, 148–159. On the other hand, there is “new atheism” (as espoused by Richard Dawkins , D. C. Dennett , Sam Harris , and Christopher Hitchens ), which aims to rigorously reject religion. Religion, especially Christianity, is portrayed as a deluding module of stupidity, a vehicle for hostility toward science, and a tool for oppression, sexism, violence, and immorality. At the same time, the anti-religious stance can itself take on characteristics analogous to religion.¹³Cf. Harris, Sam, An Atheist Manifesto, 07.12.2005 (https://samharris.org/an-atheist-manifesto/), accessed on 23.07.2024. It has been repeatedly emphasized that “new atheism” does not engage with the internal dynamics of religion and thus offers little that is new beyond tradition criticism of religion. This may be true from a purely thematic point of view, although the nature of the debate, which has already subsided, does show new features in terms of its polemics and public impact.¹⁴Cf. Kettell, Steven, Faithless. The Politics of New Atheism, in: Secularism and Nonreligion 2 (2013), 61–72, 64.

The developments outlined here are not inevitable, meaning that they are contingent processes. However, atheism has now lost its former combative and indignant character as a movement that still dominates today. It is no longer the struggle and thus an active reference to religions that determines the debate in the West, but often forms of religious indifference that bracket the old opposition between faith and its denial.

Even if one acknowledges that (as in South America, for example) a resurgence of religion, even to the point of fundamentalist positions, can be observed, the fact remains that atheism has largely lost its former power as a religious diagnostic tool and as a criticism of religion slogan.¹⁵On this, see Sass, Hartmut von, Nachspielzeit. Zu neueren Texten theologischer Religionsdiagnostik, in: VuF 61:2 (2016), 84–100.

2. Types of Atheism

Different types of atheism can be distinguished. Such typologies often have an artificial quality, but this does not necessarily diminish their value as a guide. This value depends on the criteria used to compare the different types. I would like to offer three complementary typologies: (1) one that focuses on the substantive scope of the negation associated with atheism; (2) one that specifies the possible meaning of atheism along different dispositions toward life; and finally (3) one that examines the intellectual and spiritual-historical function of atheism in more detail.

(1) First, we will look at the nature and scope of the negation, the expansion of which we have been able to trace historically. This can also be expressed in more technical terms, independently of historical references. The following variants can be differentiated:

1. R believes that p (factual belief)
2. R does not believe that p (factual disbelief)
3. R believes that non-p (programmatic denial)
4. R believes neither p nor non-p (non-belief)
5. R does not know whether p or non-p or q (agnosticism)
6. For R, the difference between p and non-p is irrelevant (indifference)

Strictly speaking, atheism is only the case (iii) when p is replaced with “God exists” (or equivalents). In contrast, (ii) is a somewhat more cautious negation that, compared to (iii), is less concerned with convincing those who think differently.

(2) Then different types of atheism can be differentiated according to their disposition toward life. The Catholic theologian Jacques Maritain  suggested distinguishing between subjective and substantive definitions. Starting from the subject of atheism leads to the following variants:

• Practical atheist: this person claims to believe, but denies this through their actions.
• Pseudo-atheist: this person believes they do not believe, but unconsciously does so, especially since what their atheism denies does not concern God at all.
• Absolute atheist: this person actually denies the God in whom believers believe.¹⁶Cf. Maritain, Jacques, On the Meaning of Contemporary Atheism, in: The Review of Politics 11:3 (1949), 267–280, 267f.

From the perspective of the object and thus the content, Maritain distinguishes between two additional versions:

• Negative atheism: here, the idea of God is pushed aside and effectively replaced by something else (Maritain refers to this as a “void”);
• Positive atheism: this involves an active and conscious rejection of everything that reminds us of God, so that atheism becomes anti-theism.

For Maritain, this typology, which reflects the triad of God’s absence, godlessness, and denial of God, leads to a defense of the faith. This is supposed to result from the (supposed) inconsistency of comprehensive denial. Here, too, there are different possibilities:

• Denial as a religious act: those who deny God in the classical atheistic sense are themselves participating in a religious phenomenon (see above, such as the “new atheists”);
• Transitive worship: those who deny God must do so in the name of another value, which then takes the place of God as a new “god”;
• Performative claim: denying God is self-contradictory, analogous to the statement “I do not exist”; this is not a semantic contradiction, but an actual collision between speech act and content.¹⁷See, for example, Dalferth, Ingolf U., Die Krise der öffentlichen Vernunft. Über Demokratie, Urteilskraft und Gott, Leipzig 2022, 129, n224.

(3) Types of atheism can ultimately also be differentiated according to their practical status and their function in the history of ideas:

• Methodological atheism: here, religious belief is not denied, but suspended with a view toward scientific work. Consequently, theological assumptions must not be made without discrediting methodologically guided work. For example, mechanics can do without the hypothesis of the existence of God, or the field of study would become methodologically problematic if it left room for theological assumptions that would become physically relevant.¹⁸Cf. Pannenberg, Wolfhart, Typen des Atheismus und ihre theologische Bedeutung, in: idem, Grundfragen systematischer Theologie. Gesammelte Aufsätze 1, Göttingen 1967, 347–360, 348.
• Philosophical atheism: according to one intellectual version, evidence or at least circumstantial evidence against the assumption of God’s existence must be provided. Programmatically, the existence of God is rejected here; either because God is unknowable (epistemic), or because the concept of “God” remains incomprehensible (semantic), or because this assumption is considered meaningless and unprovable (anti-supernaturalistic), or because the existence of “God” is contradictory in light of claims about his goodness, omnipotence, and the factual existence of evil and perniciousness (anti-metaphysical), or because God and religion are accessed negatively because of their effects (political, moral, social), or because the world is experienced in such a way that God no longer occurs in it (existential).
• Atheism and humanism: here, atheism is still present as a void that is either filled with something new or in which the absence of God is recorded.¹⁹See the instructive article Vainio, Olli-Pekka/Visala, Aku, Varieties of Unbelief. A Taxonomy of Atheistic Positions, in: NZSTh 57:4 (2015), 483–500, 493–496. This form can be described as humanistic atheism. Here, fundamental concerns of faith and religion are secularized, transformed, and inherited accordingly. One example is the concept of being created in the image of God, which lives on in a certain way in the modern idea of the inviolable dignity of human beings.

3. Theological Reception of Atheism

The concept of theological or religious atheism, as well as the idea of an atheistic system of belief, is not clearly defined. On the contrary, the connection between belief and its traditional negation that is expressed therein may often seem counterintuitive. Atheism is considered to be the result of an erosion process that can be traced back to external forces and consequently undermines belief.

However, a genuine theological interest in atheism has developed that takes two forms. One stems from the insight that – analogous to secularization – atheism is not foreign to Christianity, but either stems from its development itself or that faith contains atheistic elements. But then we are dealing with dynamics inherent in faith.²⁰On this, see Geyer, Hans-Georg, Atheismus und Christentum [1970], in: idem, Andenken. Theologische Aufsätze, ed. Hans Theodor Goebel et al., Tübingen 2003, 91–111, 103f. The stronger form of theological atheism involves an attempt to integrate atheistic elements into a theological program; for example, criticism of theism (a-theism), the dialectic of faith, which is not free from unbelief (challenge), criticism of the discourse on the existence of God, and the attempt to express its mode of being in a new and different way (criticism of metaphysics).

Without attempting to be exhaustive, here is a brief outline of some key projects in atheistic theology:

• God-is-dead-theology: the formula of the death of God, which can be traced back to Georg W. F. Hegel  and Friedrich Nietzsche , refers to a concrete horizon of experience in which God has not only become superfluous or problematic, but in which the subject takes God’s place. However, there is a genuine christological core that American theologians such as Thomas J. J. Altizer  and William Hamilton  have rediscovered: at the heart of Christianity lies the death of God on the cross and, with the incarnation of the Logos, God’s self-dissolution into the world.²¹See, e.g., Hamilton, William, The Death of God Theology, in: The Christian Scholar 48:1 (1965), 27–48. However, Reformation theology already addresses this death of God by asking, conversely, what this death means for God and the concept of God.
• Depotentiation of God: primarily under the pressure of epistemological, ontological, linguistic-philosophical, and moral-theological objections, there has been a restructuring in the doctrine of divine attributes: either by abandoning the premise of God’s inability to suffer (Jürgen Moltmann ); or by rejecting the assumption of his immutability (process theologies; Trinitarian approaches); or by limiting God’s omnipotence in favor of his weakness or even powerlessness (Dietrich Bonhoeffer , John D. Caputo ), reinterpreting it (Paul Tillich , John Robinson ), or subordinating it (e.g., as the power of love; Eberhard Jüngel ). All of this can be addressed as a-theistic theology because essential provisions of theism are rejected.
• Representation of God: here, the idea that the once powerful God has been pushed out of the world is taken seriously. It is not he who represents humanity on the cross, but rather, following the example of Jesus, God himself must now be represented in the fallen world. This applies under the atheistic condition that there is no longer any supernatural protection and that faith has no “metaphysical advantage” over its alternatives. Faith manifests itself in radical action for the world, which God has completely renounced. Hoping for God’s intervention must be replaced by politically engaged Christianity in order to remain faithful to the cause of Jesus. Dorothee Sölle  explicitly characterized this as an atheistic faith.²²See the classic work Sölle, Dorothee, Atheistisch an Gott glauben. Beiträge zur Theologie, Olten/Freiburg i. Br. 1968, esp. 79 and 83f.
• God’s absence as his presence: the absence of God (the deus absconditus) does not necessarily imply his non-existence. Yet this is precisely how what Friedrich Hölderlin  called the “absence of God” came to be understood later on. What can be tragic about this concept is that although God’s non-existence is acknowledged, his absence is deeply felt because it cannot be replaced by anything else. However, it is precisely in this absence that God may be experienced as present (Jacques Derrida , Mark C. Taylor ). The writer Martin Walser  has familiarized himself with this dialectic, taking up motifs from dialectical theology (especially Karl Barth ). It is not enough to say that God does not exist unless one adds that and how he is missing. Those who do not do so have – like the conventional atheist – „no idea,” according to Walser.²³Cf. Walser, Martin, Über Rechtfertigung, eine Versuchung, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2012, 33.
• Immanentization: this includes approaches that conceive of transcendence as an element of the world, not as something that transgresses it. These are either programs that conceive of religion and faith entirely without God in order to elaborate intrinsic “values” (e.g., life, dignity, freedom, beauty) that are articulated in a religion (Ronald Dworkin ) or that understand “faith” as a certain basic orientation (of gratitude, humility, hope; Alain de Botton ).²⁴Cf. Dworkin, Ronald, Religion without God, Cambridge, 2013, ch. 1. Or they are attempts to locate God within the self-transcending immanent: as a void, as a potency, as a break, as that which is foreign, as an irritation, whereby faith is characterized as a certain way of understanding life in the face of this (completely) Other and of leading it charitably.²⁵Cf. Braithwaite, Richard B., An Empiricist’s View of the Nature of Religious Belief, Cambridge 1955.
• Theological atheism: programmatic features of traditional atheism can also be used productively: the atheistic rejection of theism and all its often hidden derivatives; the rejection of the idea of God’s “existence” in favor of the idea that God literally redefines everything;²⁶Cf. Sass, Hartmut von, Inverse Apologetik. Zur theologischen Verarbeitung des Atheismus, in: EvTh 74:4 (2014), 292–310. the integration of the negation of faith or doubt into this faith itself (cf. Mark 9:24). Constructively, such a theology will have to strive to offer alternative, sometimes theism-critical forms of articulation for God’s reality and work; for example, as an atmosphere, as an event that happens, as a performance in which the believer is not uninvolved, but in which he participates by experiencing it.²⁷On this, see Sass, Hartmut von, Atheist und trotzdem gläubig – geht das?, 25.12.2022 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdudxPTpFAQ), accessed on 16.04.2026.

All these (and other) “atheistic” approaches are polarizing. For some, they are problematic reductionisms that hardly do justice to the substance of the Christian faith. For others, they are attempts to find new theological ways of taking both our later modern present and the inherent logic of religious faith seriously.