Abstract
Simply to speak of theology today is to raise a question, and that question is the question of the possibility of theology itself. Is theological speech possible in our world? Is it actually possible for us to speak of God? Can we speak of God and truly say anything at all? These questions and others are driving us to the realization that we can only speak of God by realizing a new identity of theology. One route to such an identity is the realization that what we once knew as theology has become a soliloquy, a narcissistic soliloquy in which the speaker speaks only to itself. Thereby, too, the God which is evoked is the absolutely solitary God, the God which is only insofar as it is solely and only itself. We can name that God only by way of total obedience, an obedience to the wholly other, and that other can be spoken only in the language of pure otherness. But a language of pure otherness can be spoken only in solitude, a solitude in which the speaker is only itself, for actually to speak of the God which is only itself is to speak in a solitary and isolated speech. Finally, that speech becomes isolated even from itself, and thereby ceases to speak. Yet the silence of that cessation is not a simple ending of speech, it is rather a blockage of speech, an impotence of speech wherein a primal identity becomes unmanifest because unsaid.
Recommended Citation
Altizer, Thomas J. J.
(1980)
"The Anonymity of God,"
University of Dayton Review: Vol. 14:
No.
3, Article 4.
Available at:
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/udr/vol14/iss3/4
