Kierkegaard(1813-1855)

Kierkegaard's theological work focuses on Christian ethics, the institution of the Church,
the differences between purely objective proofs of Christianity,
the infinite qualitative distinction between man and God and
the individual's subjective relationship to
the God-Man Jesus the Christ, through faith.

Much of his work deals with Christian love.
He was extremely critical of the doctrine and practice of Christianity
as a state-controlled religion as was the case of the Church of Denmark.

His psychological work explored the emotions and feelings of individuals when faced with life choices.
In contrast to Jean-Paul Sartre and the atheistic existentialism paradigm,
Kierkegaard focused on Christian existentialism.

Quotations
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought, which they seldom use."
"The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays."
"Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced."
"There are two ways to be fooled.
One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true."
"The Bible is very easy to understand.
But Christians pretend to be unable to understand it
because we know very well that the minute we understand,
we are obliged to act accordingly."

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Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher of the late 19th century
who challenged the foundations of Christianity and traditional morality.
He was interested in the enhancement of individual and cultural health,
and believed in life, creativity, power, and down-to-earth realities, rather than those situated in a world beyond.
Central to his philosophy is the idea of life-affirmation,
which involves an honest questioning of all doctrines that drain life’s expansive energies,
however socially prevalent and morally entrenched those views might be.
Often referred to as one of the first existentialist philosophers along with Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),
Nietzsche’s revitalizing philosophy has inspired leading figures in all walks of cultural life,
including dancers, poets, novelists, painters, psychologists, philosophers, sociologists and social revolutionaries.

Nietzsche became especially influential in French philosophical circles during the 1960s&45;1980s,
when his God is dead declaration, his perspectivism, and his emphasis upon power
as the real motivator and explanation for people's actions revealed new ways
to challenge established authority and launch effective social critique.
In the English-speaking world, his unfortunate association with the Nazis kept him
from serious philosophical consideration until the 1950s and 60s,
when landmark works such as Walter Kaufmann's, "Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist" (1950)
and Arthur C. Danto's, " Nietzsche as Philosopher " (1965), paved the way for a more open-minded discussion.

Rudolf Bultmann(1884-1976)

Bultmann was convinced that the narratives of the life of Jesus were offering theology in story form,
rather than historical events and, largely inaccurate, quotations from Jesus.
Spiritual messages were taught in the familiar language of ancient myth,
which has little meaning today. For example, he said:
Jesus Christ is certainly presented as the Son of God, a pre-existent divine being,
and therefore to that extent a mythical figure.
But he is also a concrete figure of history, Jesus of Nazareth.
His life is more than a mythical event, it is a human life which ended in the tragedy of the crucifixion.

Nevertheless, Bultmann insisted that the Christian message was not to be rejected by modern audiences,
however, but given explanation so it could be understood today.
Faith must be a determined vital act of will, not a culling and extolling of ancient proofs.
His book "Jesus and the Word (1926)", expressed serious skepticism
regarding the New Testament as a reliable source for Jesus' life story.
Throughout the 1930s, he published numerous works and become widely known for his goal of demythologization,
the process of separating the historical Jesus from the christological descriptions and legends,
which Bultmann believed became attached to Jesus through the writings of
Saint Paul, the Gospel writers, and the early Church Fathers.
In 1941, he published a famous commentary on the Gospel of John.

Bultmann distinguished between two kinds of history: historic and historical".
The latter has a mythical quality which transcends mere facts.
Thus, the Crucifixion of the Christ was historic,
in the sense that it was an event that transcends the "crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth.
He was careful, however, to distinguish between the demythologization of the Christian texts and issues of faith.
For Bultmann, the essence of faith transcends what can be historically known.
One can never "know" as a matter of historical fact that "Christ is Lord."
However, in response to God's call through His Word, one can respond to Jesus as Lord with certainty, as a proposition of faith.

Bultmann took sharp issue with earlier biblical critics such as D. F. Strauss,
who, like Bultmann, identified the mythical aspects of Christian faith but also rejected them outright because they were unscientific.
For example, Bultmann rejected the historicity of the Resurrection, but not its spiritual significance.
An historical fact which involves a resurrection from the dead is utterly inconceivable,he admitted.
For him, the Easter event is not something that happened to the Jesus of history,
but something that happened to the disciples, who came to believe that Jesus had been resurrected.
Moreover, the resurrected Jesus is indeed a living presence in the lives of Christians.
Bultmann's approach was thus not to reject the mythical, but to reinterpret it in modern terms.
In his view the "final judgment" is not an event in history,
but an event which takes place within the heart of each person as he or she responds to the call of God in each moment.
Humans experience either Heaven or Hell in each moment, and faith means radical obedience to God in the present.

For Bultmann, to be "saved" is not a matter of sacraments and creedal formulas so much as it is to base our existence on God,
rather than merely getting by in the world.
True Christian freedom means following one's inner conscience,
rather than conforming to oppressive or corrupt social order.

Paul Tillich (1886-1965)

His work, following on that of Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and F.W. Schelling,
marks the pinnacle of post-Kantian German idealism.
Inspired by Christian insights and possessing a fantastic fund of concrete knowledge,
Hegel found a place for everything—logical, natural, human, and divine in a dialectical scheme that repeatedly swung
from thesis to antithesis and back again to a higher and richer synthesis.
His panoramic system engaged philosophy in the consideration of all the problems of history and culture.
It deprived all the implicated elements and problems of their autonomy, reducing them to symbolic manifestations of the one process,
that of the Absolute Spirit’s quest for and conquest of its own self.
His influence has been as fertile in the critical reactions he precipitated as in his positive impact.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)

His promising academic and ecclesiastical career was
knocked off course by the Nazi ascent to power on 30 January 1933.
He was a determined opponent of the regime from its first days.
Two days after Hitler was installed as Chancellor,
Bonhoeffer delivered a radio address in which he attacked Hitler
and warned Germany against slipping into an idolatrous cult of the Führer.
His broadcast was abruptly cut off,
In April 1933, Bonhoeffer raised the first voice for church resistance
to Hitler's persecution of Jews, declaring that the church must not simply
"bandage the victims under the wheel, but jam a spoke in the wheel itself." His other quotations:
" If I sit next to a madman as he drives a car into a group of innocent bystanders,
I can't, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe,
then comfort the wounded and bury the dead.
I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver."
"Silence in the face of evil is evil itself."
"Your life as a Christian should make non believers question their disbelief in God."
"Being a Christan is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about
courageously and actively doing God's will."

Paul van Buren(1924-1998)

Van Buren attended Harvard College, from which he graduated with a bachelor's degree in government, in 1948.
He then attended the Episcopal Theological School, and received a bachelor's in sacred theology in 1951.
It was after this that he was ordained as an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Massachusetts.
He received a Th.D. in theology in 1957 from the University of Basel in Switzerland studying under Karl Barth.
He wrote a number of books including "The Secular Meaning of the Gospel".

He built a faith focused on ethical behavior around the historical Jesus of Nazareth,
asking whether the Christian message can make sense in the world we are living in today.
He was trying to find an utterly nontranscendent way of interpreting the Gospel;
a way in which sense could be made of it.
He is seen as a founder member of the Death of God movement.

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William Hamilton (1924-2012)

no information found on the Internet.

Billy Graham (1918-2018)

Founder of the Billy Graham Evangelical Association with its bounded theology,
Graham was considered among the most influential Christian leaders of the 20th century.
A charismatic speaker and effective religious politician,
he, and his son, spearheaded the right-wing evangelical movement
and the doctrine which was the foundation of the Charismatic movement.

According to his website, Graham spoke to live audiences consisting of at least 210 million people,
in more than 185 countries and territories, through his online and personal"crusades".

Robert W. Funk (1926-2005)

An American biblical scholar, founder of the Jesus Seminar and the nonprofit Westar Institute.
Funk sought to promote research and education on what he called biblical literacy.
He had a strongly skeptical view of orthodox Christian belief, particularly concerning the historical Jesus.
He saw Jesus' parables as containing shocking messages that contradicted established religious attitudes.

He wrote:
The Gospel of Jesus : According to the Jesus Seminar (Polebridge Press 1999)
The Acts of Jesus : The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus (Harper San Francisco 1998)
The Five Gospels : The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (Harper San Francisco 1997)
Honest to Jesus : Jesus for a New Millennium (Harper Collins 1997)

The Jesus Seminar, renewed the quest for the historical Jesus.
In the course of those studies, the think tank stirred controversy among conservative Christians
even as liberal Christians applauded its scholarship for making Christianity believable and relevant.

Among the Jesus Seminar's assertions was that many of the miracles attributed to Jesus never occurred,
nor, the Jesus Seminar concluded in 1995, did Jesus rise bodily from the dead.
The scholars also agreed that there probably was no tomb
and that Jesus' body probably was disposed of by his executioners, not his followers.

The peeling away of layers of what the seminar considered to be myth and storytelling about Jesus
outraged conservative Christians, and faced much opposition.

Thomas Altizer (1927-2018)

The idea that God was dead had been around for centuries,
most prominently with Nietzsche in the late 1800s,
but after World War II and the Holocaust, it re-emerged in the United States
Dr. Altizer and others questioned whether a benevolent God could exist.

The subject burst out of the ivory tower in 1966, when a stark Time magazine cover pointedly asked:
"Is God Dead?"
The article focused mostly on how science and secularism were supplanting religion,
but in a country where 97 percent of adults said they believed in God,
it touched off a ferocious backlash, both against the magazine
and against Dr. Altizer, who was more visible than the others,
spoke to the press and had a certain theatrical flair.

"God is dead," he asserted with finality in a documentary
produced for National Educational Television after the Time article came out.
"This God is no longer present, is no longer manifest, is no longer real."

His theology was esoteric and not easily understood,
leaving most people, including many clergy,
to react viscerally to its basic premise.

Confusing matters was that the few theologians in his intellectual circle
(including William Hamilton, Paul M. Van Buren and Rabbi Richard Rubenstein)
did not agree among themselves on how God had died, why he had died or what his death meant.
They were essentially writing God out of the picture, but they did not consider themselves atheists;
Dr. Altizer called himself a Christian atheist, further muddying the waters.

He was said to be one of the country’s most hated, misunderstood,
radical and prophetic voices of the past century,
but what no one considered was that his prophetic voice
was substantially, if not materially, true>

Bishop John Selby Spong (1931-2021)

Spong was a liberal Christian theologian, commentator,
and author who called for a fundamental rethinking of Christian belief
away from theism and traditional doctrines.
He was known for his progressive and controversial views on Christianity,
including his rejection of traditional Christian doctrines.

"I am a Believer. God is infinitely real to me even though I cannot define that reality.
I am also an exilefrom the traditional understanding of the orthodox church.
I see Chrsitianity as an evolving force and want to be part of that evolution."

In A New Christianity for a New World, Spong argued for a fundamental rethinking of Christian belief
away from Theism and outlined his ideas for doctrinal changes within Christianity in the modern world.
In "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism," Spong challenged the literal interpretation of the Bible
and argued for a more nuanced approach to scripture; he also argued that St. Paul was homosexual.
In "Why Christianity Must Change or Die" Spong contended that Christianity must adapt to the changing world
or risk becoming irrelevant.

Spong's influence on the theological debate can be seen in the work of other theologians,
such as Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and Karen Armstrong,
who also challenged traditional Christian beliefs and called for a more inclusive and progressive faith.

Karen Armstrong (born 1944)

Karen Armstrong OBE FRSL is a British author and commentator of Irish Catholic descent.
She became a nun at an early age, but came to doubt the precepts of religion.
Eventually she left the religious life and turned her back on faith issues.
However she still maintained an active interest in the search for God.
Now reknown for her books on comparative religion,
her work focuses on commonalities of the major religions,
such as the importance of compassion and the Golden Rule.

In A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (1993),
she traces the evolution of the three major monotheistic traditions from their beginnings in the Middle East
up to the present day and also discusses Hinduism and Buddhism.

In The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions (2006)
she continues the themes covered in A History of God and examines the emergence and codification
of the world's great religions during the so-called Axial ages.

Armstrong is a fellow of the Jesus Seminar,
the group of scholars and laypeople which attempts to investigate the historical foundations of Christianity.
She has written numerous articles for The Guardian and for other publications.

Armstrong says she has been particularly inspired by the Jewish emphasis on practice as well as faith:
"I say that religion isn't about believing things. It's about what you do. It's ethical alchemy.
It's about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness."

She maintains that religious fundamentalism is not just a response to,
but is a product of contemporary culture and for this reason concludes that:
"We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world.
Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness,
compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries.
Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity.
It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensable to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community."

MARCUS BORG (1942-2015

Borg was a leader in the Jesus Seminar, which worked to construct the life of Jesus through historical critical methods.
They looked at ancient texts and voted on the relative authenticity of about 500 statements and events concerning Jesus.
The seminar portrayed Jesus as a Jewish wise man and faith healer who traveled the countryside,
dining with and healing people whom Jewish dogma and social norms treated as outsiders.
Jesus was a prophet who preached about the possibility of liberation from injustice.

Not all theologians and religious scholars agree with the seminar’s approach and findings.
Yet others passionately agreed and many Christians credit Borg and others such scholars with reviving their faith.

Borg had been national chair of the Historical Jesus Section of the Society of Biblical Literature
and co-chair of its International New Testament Program Committee and president of the Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars.
“Adult theological re-education at the congregational level is an urgent need within American churches today
It is essential to Christian formation. And from my own experience and from a number of studies,
I know that it has been a source of re-vitalization in hundreds of congregations around the country.”

He was the author of 21 books, including Jesus: A New Vision (1987)
and the best-seller Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time (1994);
The God We Never Knew (1997);
The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions (1999);
Reading the Bible Again for the First Time (2001),
and The Heart of Christianity (2003).

His latest books are
Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most (2014)
Speaking Christian (2011); Putting Away Childish Things (a novel – 2010);
Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary (2006);
Conversations with Scripture: Mark (2009);
and three books co-authored with John Dominic Crossan,
The Last Week (2006), The First Christmas (2007), and The First Paul (2009).
He is the co-author with N. T. Wright of The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions.

He called God “real and a mystery,” in Convictions and asked his readers to
“Imagine that Christianity is about loving God.
Imagine that it’s not about the self and its concerns,
about ‘what’s in it for me,’ whether that be a blessed afterlife or prosperity in this life.”

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