Daily Archives: June 30, 2011

“God-is-Dead Syndrome”

Jacques Derrida responding to questions on God and Logos

Continuing with the “God is dead” thread in our Frye on God series, here he is in “The Double Mirror” associating the idea with developments in literary criticism:

What I want initially to talk about is my present preoccupation with the Bible, which I am trying to study in relation to secular literature and criticism. This involves relating it to issues in critical theory, so far as I understand them. I get a strong impression that many contemporary critics are talking about the Bible even when they avoid mentioning it. Many critical issues originated in the hermeneutic study of the Bible; many critical theories are obscurely motivated by a God-is-dead syndrome that also arose from Biblical criticism; many of the principles advanced by such theorists often seem to me more defensible when applied to the Bible than they are applied elsewhere. (CW 4, 83)

This God is dead stuff I think clears the way for what is to come. Once we have some idea why God can be said to be dead, we’re getting a better sense of what God is “not.”

You’ll notice that there’s a live “Frye on God” link in the Categories directly beneath this post. You can hit that link at any time to see the entries so far.