Post-theism is a variant of nontheism that proposes that the division of

theism Theism is broadly defined as the belief in the existence of a supreme being or deities. In common parlance, or when contrasted with ''deism'', the term often describes the classical conception of God that is found in monotheism (also referred ...

vs.

atheism Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

is obsolete, that

God In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...

belongs to a stage of human development now past. Within nontheism, post-theism can be contrasted with antitheism. The term appears in

liberal Christianity Liberal Christianity, also known as Liberal Theology and historically as Christian Modernism (see Catholic modernism and Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy), is a movement that interprets Christian teaching by taking into consideration ...

and post-Christianity.

Origin

Frank Hugh Foster Frank Hugh Foster, Ph. D., D.D. (June 19, 1851 – October 20, 1935) was an American clergyman of the Congregational church. He was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, and graduated at Harvard in 1873. In his activities, he was assistant pr ...

in a 1918 lecture announced that modern culture had arrived at a "post-theistic stage" in which humanity has taken possession of the powers of agency and creativity that had formerly been projected upon God. Denys Turner argues that

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

did not choose atheism over theism but rejected the binary Feuerbachian choice in '' The Essence of Christianity'' altogether, a position which by being post-theistic is at the same time necessarily post-atheistic. At one point, Marx argued "there should be less trifling with the label 'atheism'", as he insisted "religion in itself is without content, it owes its being not to heaven but to the earth, and with the abolition of distorted reality, of which it is the theory, it will collapse of itself."Karl Marx, ''Letter from Marx to Arnold Ruge In Dresden'' (1842)
/ref> Related ideas include

Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his c ...

's pronouncement that " God is dead" and the transtheism of Paul Tillich or Pema Chödrön.

Notable post-theists

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...

Notes and references

Sources

* H. J. Adriannse, "After Theism" in: H. A. Krop, Arie L. Molendijk, Hent de Vries (eds.)
Post-Theism: Reframing the Judeo-Christian Tradition
' (2000), . *

Christoph Schwöbel Christoph Schwöbel (19 February 1955 – 18 September 2021) was a German Lutheran Theologian and Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Life Christoph Schwöbel was born in Frankfurt am Main. He studied Lu ...

, "After Post-Theism" in: S. Andersen (ed. ) ''Traditional Theism and its Modern Alternatives'' (1994), 161–196. * Vincent Brümmer, "The Enlightenment Project and the Human Image of God" in: Hans-Georg Ziebertz (ed.), ''The Human Image of God'', BRILL, 2001, 55–72.

External links

Post-colonialism and Post-theism
by Christopher Bradley (2007)

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20200704003608/http://www.emory.edu/INTELNET/fi.postatheism.html Post-Atheism: from Apophatic Theology to "Minimal Religion"by Mikhail Epstein In the book: Russian Postmodernism: ''New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture'' (with Alexander Genis and Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover, in the series ''Studies in Slavic Literature, Culture, and Society'', vol. 3). New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1999, 528 pp.345-393. Nontheism Theism Postmodernism Humanism Philosophy of religion {{postmodernism-stub

Origin

Notable post-theists

See also

Notes and references

Sources

External links