God is dead! Only which one? Already for a long time the funeral announcements for a God are in circulation, whom we imagine as a superior agent or as a sovereignly existing spirit in the quasi-spacetime beyond. A theology that sees itself as atheistic is serious about the burial of God against all contemporary attempts at theistic revision. At the same time, it opposes programs that reduce religious faith to a moral way of life, a state of mind, or a self-relationship that remains entirely with itself. The atheistic alternative becomes visible when religious faith is understood as a concrete perspective on everything that surrounds us. Nothing new beyond the world is then asserted, but a completely new view of this one world is practiced. What this can mean in concrete terms is illustrated by this essay, which makes clear that atheism does not deny the meaning of faith - on the contrary: atheism and faith in God are not mutually exclusive. Rather, atheism specifies what God can still be today.
Essay
Hartmut von Sass, born in 1980, studied Protestant theology and philosophy in Göttingen, Edinburgh, and Berlin; assistant professor, doctorate, and habilitation in Zurich; subsequently deputy director of the interdisciplinary research institute Collegium Helveticum there; visiting fellow in Claremont, Oxford, Pasadena, and Berkeley; since 2019 titular professor of systematic theology and philosophy of religion and holder of a Heisenberg position at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
