1. The idea that God is a being – the supreme being, of course, but still a being – does not belong to the Jewish or Christian Biblical tradition but to the Greek philosophical tradition following Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Refusing to accept the existence of such a being need not interfere with one’s relationship to Jewish or Christian Biblical traditions, neither of which draw heavily on Aristotle.

2. For at least a century, theologians have been arguing that the radical monotheism of the Bible stands against the philosophical tradition of the supreme being. The supreme being is not absolute, whereas the God of the Bible is. Even a supreme being, it is argued, is subordinate to being itself. If so, then even though there may be no beings higher than the supreme being, the latter is not ultimate after all. A radical monotheist IS a kind of atheist, since the former cannot proclaim any image or description of God – any determinate ‘god’ – as truly God. The Romans knew this. That’s why they called the Christians ‘atheists’ and feared that the latter’s unbelief would anger the gods and endanger the city.

3. The claim that someone who rejects the supreme being hypothesis cannot legitimately call themselves a theologian has some merit on the surface. Although almost all Christian theology either rejects the supreme being hypothesis outright or subverts it, theology is not ultimately a Christian invention. Aristotle’s Metaphysics is first work to conceive of theology as we know it: a discipline, a way of thinking. I think it’s legitimate to insist that theology think about the divine in a certain way, rather than simply, for instance, writing fictions about the gods. But it does not follow that engaging in theology as a way of thinking need lead everyone to Aristotle’s Supreme Being. It led Anselm, among others, someone very different.

4. Depending on what one means by “God,” belief is intellectually irrelevant and hardly a moral virtue. When I’m in the midst of a hurricane, it matters little whether or not I believe in hurricanes, nor is it a moral virtue to believe in them. The stories and poetry of the Bible do not focus on an invisible and inactive supreme being that may or may not exist and belief in which is an option. These stories and poetry instead point to a certain kind of experience, or rather a certain dimension of all experience to which some experiences awaken us. To ask whether or not we “believe” in this is nonsensical; we experience it whether we like it or not. Thus it is said that even the demons in hell ‘believe.’

5. Therefore, before we castigate theologians who proclaim themselves atheists, we would do well to ponder what we mean by “God” and articulate it as clearly as possible. Once we have done that, it makes sense to ask whether theologians are grappling with that, and to ask whether those theologians who aren’t grappling with that are really writing theology. Of course, even beginning to think about what we mean by “God” might pull the rug out from under us, thus shocking us into an awareness of what theology is really all about.