There is an increasing trend of materialists/atheists appropriating the language of Christianity for ideological reasons. It is not simply that Christianity, as an ancient and rich source of a wide range of philosophical and scientific thought provides some "models" or "linguistic schemas" for materialist appropriation. These interpreters are interested in a much more profound meaning of Christianity: Christianity as the religion of the exit from the religious.
It has been said that the only authentic atheism is one which has taken part in the Christian experience. What does this mean? A brief theological excursus is in order.
What took place when Jesus first appeared in Mary's womb? The writer of the gospel of John said: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God." Later he said, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among men." The incarnation of God himself took place in Mary's womb. It is no wonder she was called "Theotokos" or "God-bearer" by later Christian thinkers. What was necessary for this to occur? St. Paul says in his letter to the Philippians that Jesus had to "make himself nothing", literally, to "empty" himself, what theologians refer to as Christ's kenotic emptying. Empty himself of what? Of his divinity, his divine power. This kenosis is key for Death of God theologians like Thomas Altizer. It was here that they see a definite (de) evolution in God's being. God became man in Christ Jesus. He was indeed a man, but a man who was a God emptied of his power. The next step is crucial: the God-man was crucified. He was put to death. These interpreters see in Christ's "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me" a confession of helplessness, a sign of his final kenotic existence. (It is interesting to note that the Gospel of Peter records Jesus as saying: "My power, my power, why have you forsaken me"). What took place on the cross was not just the death of a man, but the death of God. God merely remained consistent in finishing the final kenotic gesture and emptying the cup of his being to the last drop and then smashing the cup.
It is at this moment that Christianity prepares a way for the exit from the religious. Heaven lies vacant, the Christian God has emptied out any meaning the word "God" has ever had. There is no "big Other", no final Guarantor of meaning, no Master behind the curtain pulling the strings (and is Zizek not correct in saying that even in Stalinism there remains a big Other in the guise of "History"?). The stage lies silent and the audience suddenly realizes they're the main act from now on. Right away some people understand and start forming emancipatory communities. It's up to people to change the world, to emancipate humanity. The Spirit of Christ is now interpreted as the will and the action of the emancipatory people. Did Jesus not say, "where two or three are gathered in my name I am there with them"? Suddenly a light dawns on a radically new egalitarian community. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, there is no female and male..." The Spirit, to quote Hegel, "rises up out of the foaming ferment of finitude." Here now is the only locus of the Spirit: the new universal community. It is literally the people's fidelity to the Event.
The universal collective is soon challenged, however, by a particularist appropriation of Jesus. What this Christian God has done is more than some can bear. No, God cannot be allowed to die. So they constructed the myth of his resurrection. The radical message, the gospel, was soon embedded in an institutionalized ideology. The original heresy was committed: they identified the Church as the body of Christ, forced the particular at the expense of the universal.
The atheist challenge to Christians is clear here: Sacrifice the "Church" as its original founder once sacrificed himself, so that the kenotic will of God may be fulfilled. It's time to reclaim the radical core of Christianity: Christianity as the original and most complete atheism. It's time to form a new world order.
