After Bishop John AT Robinson published his controversial book Honest To God in 1963, its contents featured in the “God Is Dead” movement of that decade. Several years later, just before I became a teenager, my very learned pastor allowed me to read his copy. Now, decades later, after seminary studies, pastorates and other relevant exposures, this writer feels adequate to pose the problem: “If God is dead, who killed Him?”

Theologians and other scholarly readers will immediately recall solutions proposed by Friedrich Nietzsche, credited with coining the “God is dead” phrase in his 1882 work The Gay Science. An informative article published October 22, 1965 in Time magazine, analyses the movement and credits Thomas JJ Altizer with stating: “God has died in our time, in our history, in our existence.” Altizer was then associate professor of religion at the Methodist-owned Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Time branded the 1960’s death-of-God theology “a new kind of godless Christianity” and declared it “a uniquely American phenomenon”, while acknowledging that Germany and other European states had adopted secularism long before US scholars promoted it. In this opening decade of the 21st century some scholars and laymen are killing God – again. Jamaican readers will wonder if God is a “Cunny Bud” like their national bird nicknamed the “Doctor Bird”, a “hard bud fi dead”.

Nietzsche did not kill God and was not the first human to pronounce God dead. The Bible blames the death of God on someone named Nabal, in Hebrew. In English in Psalm 14:1 (also 53:1) he is called “The Fool”. The Hebrew connotation insinuates that his middle name is “Immoral”. Yet, the original Hebrew texts do not credit Nabal I Fool for doing the impossible act of slaying God. The more accurate translation depicts Mr Fool as saying “No!” to God (Elohim). Basic theology attributes God with immortality and so for one to say that God is dead is like saying the words you are now reading are not really there. Ergo, mankind can only murder God philosophically.

Honest proponents of death-of-God theology are not all atheists. Logically, since atheists do not believe in God’s existence, it might be difficult for them to kill a non-existent Being. Some “God is dead” advocates are agnostics but they cannot really know what they are talking about. Gnostics and apostates who join the death-of-God bandwagon proffer some truths even as they borrow ideas from God-fearing believers who rightfully denounce flawed God-concepts. For example, Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), the proclaimed father of existentialism, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), the anti-Nazi martyr, were not advocating the killing of God when they denounced Christianity as practised in their times. For the same reason I admire Rastafari for slaying that “white God” historically forced on Jamaicans. Deists who embraced freemasonry and Eastern religion practitioners simply saw the need to dispose of their false gods, foisted upon them by Europeanised Christianity. Unfortunately, American deists and Protestants-dubbed the Founding Fathers – after they denounced or killed their oppressive British God and escaped to the so-called New World, managed to invent a new devilish deity who blessed their killing of Native Americans and praised Christopher Columbus for stealing foreign lands. Today the US, as evidenced by its numerous God-blessed wars decimating people globally, especially non-whites, has become the seat of Satan whence Euro-American hypocritical Christianity is spread worldwide.

Of course, each person, utilising the spiritual lenses they possess, will have to draw their own conclusion while answering the question: “Who killed God?” The Bible suggests that in one sense the Romans and the Jews did murder God in the Person of His Son, Yeshua Messiah. That is deep theology needing an entire article for analysis. It must be questioned here, however, how an immortal God could He have died in Yeshua. The quickest way to respond is to invite readers to research the Hypostatic Union of Christ and the mystery of the Kenosis.

In the final analysis the true God cannot die, especially because He can only be grasped through faith. It is somewhat difficult to simultaneously believe in God and not believe in Him. Doubting one’s salvation and being uncertain about one’s peace with God are not the same as denying God. Sincere believers who wrestle with the certainty of God’s existence can only find answers through faith, which is watered with knowledge of God’s word. Moreover, those who grow in faith and knowledge of God receive inner Holy Spirit witnesses and outer practical evidences of the reality of Deity. In the Metu Neter Volume I, Ra Un Nefer Amen corrects the God-concept of Euro-Americans and takes spirituality back to its African roots. In Knowledge Of The Holy, AW Tozer helps believers to see the true God more clearly. Each individual must find God for themselves. Despite the big businesses that churches have become, true spirituality is strictly a relationship between one person and his God. In Your God Is Too Small, JB Phillips identifies reasons why so many people, both believers and unbelievers, are quick to declare the death of God. I wonder if all the Nabal I Fools in this world are willing to risk saying “No!” to God until the day they transition beyond death. Who killed your God?

INMerv@hotmail.com