Come to think of it, Nietzsche’s famous phrase: God is dead, has a peculiar ring to it. It is not an unqualified statement of atheism, a simple denial of the existence of God; it is rather the announcement that someone who was alive at some time has died. God existed, he exists no more. A straight atheism would have tried to prove that God is not, does not exist, cannot exist. Not so Nietzsche: for him God has died. The one who is acclaimed by a long tradition as the Immortal, has disappeared from the scene, his time is over. God is dead.

It would be too easy an answer if we decided that, in any case, Nietzsche is dead. We can perhaps qualify Nietzsche’s statement and say that in view of the faith of ever so many theists, God is not really dead yet. But, somehow, we have to agree that something is wrong with God. It would be accurate to say, resuming Nietzsche’s imagery, that if God is not really dead, he is at any rate sick. If he has not disappeared yet, it is at least clear that his appearance is not quite what it should be. And it seems timely to ask: what is the matter with God? Or, again more closely to Nietzsche’s language: what has become of God ?

I think we can dispense with arguing the actuality of the problem. Ever since the Bishop of Woolwich wrote his Honest to God, it has been clear that God has become a problem generally, also within the fold of the Christian churches. Bonhoeffer’s program of a life in a world come of age ‘as if God did not exist’ also finds a rather amazing following.