What is Radical Theology?

“Isn’t Radical Theology just nothing more than mere adolescence?” My colleague asked me this question at the coffee machine last November. Earlier I told him about the subject I am studying, and in just a few seconds it became quite a sensitive conversation. He seemed interested at first, but in a blink of an eye he became agitated. I mumbled something about Hegel and the death of God, didn’t know how to respond wisely, took my coffee and went back to my desk…

I really have to prepare a better response, because more of my family and friends are curious about what I’m actually trying to comprehend.

What is Radical Theology? It definitely is a quest for new perspectives. And it really feels like a deep dive, from a high cliff, not knowing whether I will even touch the water or hit rock bottom. And when it’s water, will that be refreshing or will it almost drown me in the deepest “Altizerian” darkness? I take the leap to immerse myself. First a short run-up…

The first part informs about the history of the death of God. The second one explores what happens when we declare God dead, and what the implication is on Radical Theology. The final step examines the future of Radical Theology. Hopefully this leads to a solid response.

1. God is Dead

Is God Dead? Nowadays such a headline wouldn’t cause much trouble, but back in the sixties, when Time Magazine published an article (April 8th, 1966)[1] with this line on the cover, tempers flared. Can we consider this an event?[2] I don’t think so; though it was an important article, that would be too much honor for the magazine. But it surely moved further the philosophy and honored the initiators of the Death-of-God like Thomas J.J. Altizer and Gabriel Vahanian of which the last one wrote: “God is dead, not in sheer intellectual scaffoldings, but in the down-to-earth give and take of the human condition.”[3] So the death of God shouldn’t be only a punk shock-rocking intellectual exercise, or only a rebellion against the traditional system, but it actually affects real life. It’s all about life and how we live it. To really think that through, we have to dig somewhat deeper. For it’s about (let’s put a limit here) Western culture, tradition, daily life and the role of Christianity; about religion (or the personal relationship with God, as you wish). But the impact is on life integral.   

“God is dead. We are not talking about the absence of the experience of God, but about the experience of the absence of God.“[4] Does God hear us? Why doesn’t God intervene? Why do bad things happen to ‘good’ people?… these questions were usual and widely accepted in a way at that time. However, the search for experiencing God (in the appearance of the Holy Spirit) in more pentecostal and charismatic communities increased as well.[5] It was a response (and of course a longing) to compensate the lack of positive experience of (the power of) God, but it was also driven by finding proof of real manifestation of the Holy Spirit: praying harder, fasting more and pushing further; pulling God out of heaven. It might be too simplistic to state, but trying to sin less and asking for forgiveness to remove any possible obstacles for God to release His power was one of the purposes.[6] Vahanian and Altizer however, discussed the absence of God in another way. Not exactly already as an atheist point of view, but more like: “This means that we shall understand the death of God as an historical event: God has died in our time, in our history, in our existence.”[7] Though they were really not the first ones to conclude this, they made more explicit the heritage of intellectual forerunners Hegel (Phenomenology of the Spirit) and Nietzsche (the famous Madman in The Gay Science [8]). Because for Radical Theology, God really had to be dead. The old traditional God, the transcendent, the almighty, omnipotent and immutable One had died. This Death-of-God theology was in the first place[9] the movement from the transcendent God to an immanent God. But for Altizer the death of God entails even more. In short; he describes the process of kenosis as follows: God becomes man (God incarnates in Jesus Christ), God dies on the cross (for Jesus is God), and at last: God as the Holy Spirit being poured out, which is the ultimate self-emptying of God. God completely dissolves in the World.[10] Without the kenosis, of course, it would be the end of the story.

2. What’s after Death?

It’s important to note that Radical Theology emerged out of the death-of-God movement, (but) is not bound by it.[11] Here we are: after the burial of God, we stand silently and reverently by the grave. We take a moment to look out from the grave over the rest of our world. And thereafter, we have to move on. “A radical theology is committed to think God, or rather the “God after God”, of absolute transformation;…a God who embodies the apocalyptic revolutions and evolutions of existence in time, who embodies actual history, suffering, change, death -ultimately Death- and therefore Life.”[12] “It is no longer possible to speak of God in a classical theological language, or any form thereof, and this means that God can no longer be conceived as transcendent or immanent, either as ‘above’ or ‘below’, in the ‘heights’ or the ‘depths’.”[13] We can’t live any longer with the illusion that God solves our (existential) problems. And it’s sad: the One to Whom we belonged, isn’t among us anymore. From now on, we have to deal with life by ourselves, including the pain, the brokenness, the suffering, the desires and the lack, the guilt and the shame. We are separated and isolated. Are we able to fill the void[14] that remains after One’s death? Is there any support left? How do we cope with these facts?

Hence we really need to imagine a new way of living for ourselves. A way to do this is via what psychoanalysts like Freud, Lacan and Jung[15] discovered. We should not rebuke what they found out, for whatever reason, but respectfully use and integrate their knowledge in theology. We should think about ourselves and think against ourselves. Moreover, imagination is a (necessary) way to think through (and try to understand) the absolute, the sacred, the holy, the beyond-the-unknown. Imagination is, in connection to Radical Theology, a way to design what is formless and to create what is elusive. It’s also the ability to see what is not yet. But it’s also the creation of meaning. We should learn to dissect the myth of Christianity from theology, and find out a way to handle the biblical texts and christian philosophy for daily life. And when we approach for example the biblical history no longer as chronicles, but as a myth, surely also with historical elements, but moreover as a complete and integral guideline, maybe theology can be again truly relevant to the public debate. This should be a guideline where historical elements are distinguished from the mythic, the symbolic, the psychoanalytic real[16] and archetypal truths.[17]

“For a genuinely radical theology is a theological thinking that truly rethinks the deepest ground of theology, a rethinking that is initially an unthinking of every established theological ground: only through such an unthinking can a clearing be established for theological thinking, and that is the very clearing that is the first goal of radical theology.”[18] “Genuinely radical theological thinking has always been an offensive thinking, and most offensive to the larger community of faith, or to an established religious world.“[19] Although this kind of thinking might be hurtful and offensive, we owe it to ourselves if we want to progress in Radical Theology. For this theological thinking to the deepest, means to deconstruct (not to destruct!) our own constructs, our built up view on truth and reality. It’s the way to clear things up. For certain; our God died; a Construct demolished, the Self, the Other, the Big Other, all annihilated at once. Therefore after the grief; we are obliged to ourselves to move on. We have to kill more of our idols, take our responsibility, try to become more free in our minds. And in the same movement, this theology also works precisely against the disappointment of thought, as well as the idea of social engineering. It’s always a paradox; radically thinking God as well as taking into account the idea that life is not fully controllable.

Therefore my approach to this kind of thinking (the school of apophatic and dialectics) is practicing Radical Theology with/without the ballast: avec-sans.[20] For I can’t deny and I can’t un-think the heritage, my origin, my upbringing, my culture and religious tradition. So that’s what I have (avec) and I am not able to lose it completely. On the other hand I’m pushing myself to think without being defined by it and without clinging to it (sans). I have to rethink and renew my life avec-sans God. This approach helps me in thinking and experiencing the death of God as an event in my personal life as well. This kind of thinking and renewing is unorthodox, and often offensive. Because a theology includes radically everything in life. And although Radical Theology is at the very least subversive in Christian context, in the secular context it’s indispensable.  

3. Reconstruction

Indispensable? It seems really more an academic exercise though. Nevertheless, I didn’t find out exactly how it can be otherwise; but I expect it can be. And I really hope so, as to speak with John Caputo’s title of his book: ’Hoping against Hope’, translated in Dutch by “hopelessly” - “foolishly” - “desperately” hopeful. “Religion and Reason… are Janus-faced monsters manufactured in modernity. Radical theology, as weak theology, weakens both the strong transcendental pretensions of Reason, on the one hand, and the strong supernatural pretensions of Religion, on the other hand… In radical theology, theology and culture, the religious and the secular, faith and reason,… they belong to a single circulatory system. Radical theology lies at the heart of what religion calls the secular order, just because it gives it a heart, a beating, restless heart, and a prophetic voice.”[21] In my opinion Caputo states the importance of Radical Theology, both for the secular as for the religious world. He also states that it shouldn’t be a merely academic exercise; but right there, where everyday matters of the greatest importance to ordinary people are at stake. Instead of becoming nihilistic, we find ways to our existential questions.

This movement is hence indispensable, yes, and on the other hand it’s elusive: always developing, on the move, focused on the now but surely on the future. “By our own reading of the lineage and tradition of radical theology, it is our firm belief that the radical theology of and for the future must be postsecular, postliberal, theo-political, onto-theological and eco-theological… This would be a new and different radical theology that just might have the capacity to change what it means to think and do theology.”[22] Theology, and certainly Radical Theology, is essential for this world and the world to come. The main challenge, however, lies in translating academic insights into practical application. Because the first part, getting rid of the idea that Radical Theology is only about the death of God, should be easy. Thereafter we have to go “beyond its fixation on death, beyond its end-world apocalypticism - such that its dormant political and ontological implications might finally be realized.“[23]

Radical theology might be the solution to bridge the gap between the secular and the religious, enabling dialogue in modern society, with self-aware, deliberate and critical people. It compels us to think a way for theology to survive both our time and future society; to be always in process. 

In a way, be it a “Caputosian” way, I really want to believe that there’s hope for the future. But only when our ‘constructs’ like tradition, religion and the language we already have, are being ‘deconstructed’ (death of God and its implications; we have to unravel what no longer holds) can we reconstruct. We have to use our imagination to create something new and honest for a new time, place and space. Yet instead of concrete, we have to use plastic (a concept of Catherine Malabou), to be able to reframe and reshape the construction at all times.

And so God lives on after the death of God. Nothing is ever simply dead.[24]

Conclusion

So what does Radical Theology mean to me? On the one hand it’s a theory to find vision and direction, and on the other hand it’s an exploration and development of a practical implementation. It’s finding a way to cope with reality, finding meaning. In my opinion it’s also a way of thinking, necessary for societal discourse, truly unorthodox and subversive, for it urges to cross borders between philosophy, theology, literature, politics, psychoanalysis- and anything else (as Caputo states). In societal or political debate, often economically based and driven, a philosophical/theological view is necessary, and if we want to contribute, it should be in a non-‘biblical’ way, since most of the time Christian or purely biblical‑moral arguments lead to a stagnation of discussion. My approach in thinking Radical Theology is dealing with the paradox; practicing theology with-without the ballast: avec-sans. And I think that’s comparable, in a way, to Radical Theology itself. In Altizer’s theology: God dies (sans), but stays (kenosis- avec). And Caputo’s theology: God insists (avec), without existing (sans).

So a few months later, at the coffee machine again, I met my colleague. While I was getting my cup filled, he asked me if I had a better answer yet, and he really seemed interested. “I don’t think it’s something like mere adolescence,” I told him,”but I really can imagine that it sometimes might feel like a transition, a passage, like coming of age. It is vulnerable and it dismantles traditional certainties.” I continued: “Though more important is that theology, and for certain God, is not so obvious anymore, God is not a given. Therefore I study Radical Theology: a process that investigates what happens when classical or traditional images of God seem outdated and sometimes even seem misplaced. It’s about how the divine is no longer above the world but present within it. Radical Theology deals with living in a world where old certainties evaporate. It deconstructs, it doubts and is always on the move. We have to find new meaning, new forms of community, and we have to rethink our ethics. We have to continuously learn to cope with vulnerability and uncertainty, also towards the future. You can imagine; conversation is necessary, but it’s often a solitary exercise. That is where we have to find our way as well. And in my opinion, it has nothing to do with an activistic lifestyle, becoming a better, morally lofty person or ‘living your best life’.”

Silence. He mumbled something unintelligible, took his coffee and went back to his desk. And I didn’t even start about the death of God…

Notes

[1] https://time.com/isgoddead/ Note: the original article isn’t available for the public anymore in Time Magazine. Still to find here: archives.https://archive.org/details/time-magazine-1966-04-08-is-god-dead/page/n41/mode/2up

[2] John D. Caputo, The Weakness of God, A Theology of the Event. (Indiana University Press), 2006) introduction

[3] Gabriel Vahanian, The Death of God. (George Braziller, 1961),187

[4] Thomas J.J. Altizer and William Hamilton, Radical Theology and the Death of God. Dutch translation: Radicale Theologie en de Dood van God. (Amboboeken 1966), 42

[5] Since the Azusa Street Revival in 1906, but surely a significant increase in the sixties

[6] For an impression; I recommend: F.F. Bosworth, Christ the Healer, and Bill Johnson, When Heaven invades earth. For example.

[7] Thomas J.J. Altizer and William Hamilton, Radical Theology and the Death of God, 117, Dutch translation: Radicale Theologie en de Dood van God

[8] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche. (Grapevine India, 2025), 323

[9] For example Gabriel Vahanian and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but also Paul Tillich in a way.

[10] Besides, I’m aware that I’m not quoting any Bible verses; avoiding that kind of Bible‑battling has precisely to do with one of the core principles of Radical Theology.

[11] Jeffrey W. Robbins, Radical Theology, A Vision for Change. (Indiana University Press, 2016), 145

[12] Lissa McCullough, Introduction to “The Call to Radical Theology”, xviii

[13] Altizer, Satan as the Messiah of Nature, The Whirlwind in Culture: Frontiers in Theology, 129

[14] https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/584/826/b93.jpg (unknown)

[15] For an impression on “imagination” in this context, highly recommended are: Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, Slavoj Žižek, How to read Lacan and Carl Jung, Answer to Job.  

[16] Slavoj Žižek, How to read Lacan. (Granta Books, 2006), 8,9, for a real clear explanation.

[17] For a quick introduction: Edward F. Edinger, Ego and Archetype. (Penguin Books, 1972)

[18] Thomas J.J. Altizer, The Call to Radical Theology. (SUNY press 2012), 1

[19] Thomas J.J. Altizer, The Call to Radical Theology, 4

[20] When I was a young child, we had sayings like: “I want my fries with-without mayonnaise.” And “I’m going to play outside with-without coat.” Translating this into English doesn’t really get the point. To honor Jaques Derrida, originator of the concept of ‘deconstruction’ it fits perfectly in French.

[21] John D. Caputo, In Search of Radical Theology. (Fordham University Press, 2020), 27, 28

[22] Robbins J.W. and Crockett C., A radical theology for the future: five theses, Palgrave communications. 1:15028 doi: 10.1057/palcomms.2015.28. I’m aware this reference contains a lot of information; for a good explanation, this article comes highly recommended.

[23] Jeffrey W. Robbins, Radical Theology, A Vision for Change, 159

[24] John D. Caputo, In Search of Radical Theology, 205

Rick van der Pol, from the Netherlands, completed the course “Radical Theology and Imagination” at GCAS in March 2026.

Image Credit: Church, 2020 - by author