2
A. Death of God
In Taylor's view, many contemporary philosophers of religion and
theologians are unaware of the death of God and continue to relate to him as if he were
still alive, well and relevant for our lives. For Taylor, this mistaken notion is what
prevents most Western theologians from embracing postmodernism. We must affirm
with Nietzsche that we have culturally killed God by our secular materialism, and accept
that God is irrelevant to everyday life. No longer are there any divine foundations for
society.
6
Taylor submits that we must abandon all previous conceptions that we have
had regarding "God."
7
B. Death of the Self
Taylor's deconstruction not only "welcomes the death of God" it also "embraces
the disappearance of the self. "
8
The humanist of modernism resists the death of the self,
failing to see it as an outworking of the death of God. However, the postmodern
deconstructionist sees this connection. For Taylor, nihilism can be seen favorably if one
simply accepts the loss of the self.
9
Perhaps the clearest way to present this position in more traditional theological
terminology would be to assert the fact that if God disappears, then the imago dei, the
self created in God's image, also disappears.
10
Taylor says that a death of God
a/theology is really a "radical Christology" which "finds its completion in the
crucifixion of the individual self and the resurrection of universal humanity."
11
C. Denial of history as directed process
6
See Terrence W. Tilley, Postmodern Theologies: The Challenge of Religious Diversity (Maryknoll, New York:
Orbis Books, 1995), p. 61.
7
See Taylor, Disfiguring, pp. 318-319 as quoted in Tilley, Postmodern Theologies, p. 65. By "God", Taylor is
referring to the personal God of Christianity. See Mark C. Taylor, Altarity (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1987), p. 136.
8
Taylor, Erring, p. 104. The notion of "self" to which Taylor is referring is the "narcissistic" subject of
modernism, the independent center of consciousness and identity unique and autonomous. Mark C. Taylor,
Erring (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 32-33, 86. James H. Olthuis describes this de-
throned self as the "self as the child of enlightenment, fully present to itself, self-conscious, sovereign, absolute
agent, given power over the world as object ... a production of this very world and processes it was said to
master." James Olthuis, "Crossing the Threshold: Sojourning Together in the Wild Spaces of Love," in Knowing
Other-Wise: Philosophy at the Threshold of Spirituality, ed. James H. Olthuis (New York: Fordham University
Press, 1997), p. 238.
9
Taylor, Erring, p. 33; Cf. Millard J. Erickson, The Word Became Flesh (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House,
1991), p., pp. 320-321.
10
David Ray Griffin, "Postmodern Theology and A/theology: A Response to Mark C. Taylor," in David Ray
Griffin, William A. Beardslee, and Joe Holland in Varieties of Postmodern Theology (New York: State
University of New York Press, 1989), p. 33. See also Mark C. Taylor in "Imagologies and Other Philosophical
Conversations With Mark C. Taylor," Interview by David Lionel Smith, January 1997. Available from
http://www.williams.edu/mtaylor/interviews; Internet.
11
Taylor, "Text as Victim," p. 73.