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Gabriel Vahanian (1927-2012)

Vahanian will for ever be remembered in the history of theology as the author of a work of worldwide influence, The Death of God (1961). This work, with its provocative title, was a powerful critique of religion as it was experienced in American society in the 1950s. Vahanian showed that the God universally present in the USA is very far from the God of the Bible. In spite of its title, this book is a classic Protestant text, in the lineage of Karl Barth’s theology, insofar as it combats all idols, the false gods which take the place of the God of Jesus Christ. Barth never responded to The Death of God, unlike another of German theology’s giants, Rudolf Bultmann, who expressed his enthusiasm in a letter which can be read in the German edition of the book, Kultur ohne Gott (1973). During his time in America, Vahanian became a well-travelled speaker at conferences, becoming (thanks to translations of his works) the most famous French theologian in the world, except in his home country, where his influence has always remained limited.

Vahanian eventually oriented his theology around the theme of technology, which he shares in common with that other French Protestant theologian Jacques Ellul. But whereas Ellul espouses a pessimist and critical vision of what he dubs the “technological system”, Vahanian sees matters in a more optimistic light: using the concept of “utopia”, he indicates the mutual affinities which link Christian faith and technology – for example, the Christian who desires to remain faithful to the biblical tradition needs to change this world (here and now) much more than to change worlds (from this world to the afterlife). Vahanian’s theology stresses the God who reigns more than the God who saves. This theme is developed in his masterwork God and Utopia: The Church in a Technological Civilisation (1977).

A virtuoso theologian often accuse of being impenetrable – his work can be read as a great prose poem – in 1980, Vahanian published the highly-recommended Anonymous God: an Essay on Not Dreading Words, an accessible introduction to the major themes of his thought, including this trinitarian confession of faith, a magnificent synthesis of his theology and style:

I believe in God, the completely Close, more than each person is to himself, more than heaven is to earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, in whom humanity is the very condition of God, more than each person is of himself, more than the absolute is of the divine. Ore and genius of the Spirit, Jesus is born of humanity. Crucified and killed under Pontius Pilate, he accepts death better than we accept life, and instead of letting death be the end of his life, he makes us a gift of his life. He lives. He lives where human being, that activity of God the radical Other, reaches out to human being. He is the human face of God, the only hope of the living and the dead. He comes to set humanity free of our idols and to show us the true face of God.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Living, in whom, joining ourselves together, we become joined to the Body of Christ.

I believe the Church, the hope of God who is coming and the renewal of the world. I believe humanity, the hope of the new man and the advent of the God who reigns.

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