Philosophical and culture-related thoughts: Real Death of God Theology

Voices on the Content of this Blog Entry:

Robert Lawrence Kuhn (Closer to Truth):
“Thoughtful and original construction — to me, it shows the immense richness and significance of the issue, even if I don't rank it highly among competing ultimate explanations ;-) — but what do I know?”

Paul Draper (American philosopher, known for work in philosophy of religion):
“While I don't find the deductions convincing, the overall view is interesting. I need to include it in my taxonomy of theisms and deisms. This seems to be the opposite of emergent theism/deism, where the world evolves into or produces God. Here, God devolves or transforms into the world. I'll call it demergent deism.”

Bill Vallicella (Maverick Philosopher blog):
“Mainländer’s ideas are indeed very interesting.”

Joseph Schmid (Majesty of Reason YouTube channel):
“This is fascinating!!”

The Death of God — A Philosophical Reconstruction

In the 1950s and 60s, a movement emerged within theology known as the God-is-dead movement — or theothanatology (from theos, God, and thanatos, death).

I believe the most plausible and coherent interpretation of the idea that God is truly and literally dead can be reconstructed from the pessimistic philosophy of the German thinker Philipp Mainländer (1841–1876) — poet, metaphysician, and radical metaphysical pessimist.

Mainländer advances a provocative thesis: “God is dead, and His death was the life of the world.” This statement, central to his metaphysical system, is articulated in his primary work, The Philosophy of Redemption. The following seven theses, directly quoted from Mainländer, encapsulate his reasoning:

“God willed non-being.
God’s essence was the obstacle to His immediate self-annihilation.
Therefore, His essence had to disintegrate into a multiplicity — a world — in which each individual part strives for non-being.
In this striving, these parts mutually hinder and weaken one another.
God’s entire essence passed into the world, transformed into a finite force.
The universe now has a single objective: non-being, achieved through the gradual dissipation of its total energy.
Each individual will eventually reach a point where its desire for non-being can be fulfilled.”

(Source: synkretic.com/issues/the-philosophy-of-redemption)

Although Mainländer employed an inductive method, deriving principles from outer and inner experience rather than formal deduction, the seven theses quoted above contain a latent logical structure that can be philosophically justified. What follows is a rational framework that reveals the dormant argumentative architecture implicit in his work, reconstructing his ideas into a deductive sequence for analytical clarity.

Even if one does not accept all the premises, I argue they are at least philosophically defensible and plausible.

A Deductive Reconstruction

Deduction 1: God’s Total Transformation

A1. The universe began a finite time ago.
A2. Such a beginning could only have been initiated by an act of God.

B1. Creation ex nihilo is metaphysically incoherent.
(“Saying God can create something from nothing is like claiming you can vomit up a skipped lunch with a powerful enough dry heave.”)
B2. A transformation of a transcendent substance into immanent things, however, is possible.

C1. God is absolutely simple (simplicitas): non-fragmented, motionless, timeless, without parts or internal structure. This view aligns with classical theism (Augustine, Aquinas, Anselm).
C2. Because God has no parts to transform, He must give His whole being in any creative act. In His simplicity, to give a part is to give the whole. He is an undivided “blob” of pure being: take any “part”, and you take everything.

→ D. Therefore, God has completely transformed Himself into the universe.
His infinite being has become finite existence.
His total, transcendent being is now entirely immanent.

Any attempt to resist this conclusion relies on an appeal to mystery, which should only ever be a last resort in philosophy. If the concept of divine simplicity is taken seriously, the transformation thesis becomes the only coherent alternative to creatio ex nihilo, which is itself deeply problematic.

On the Nature of This “Change”

One might argue that if God changed, something of Him must remain the same — a core assumption in Aristotelian metaphysics:

“Aristotle insists that in every change something remains the same.”
— J. L. Ackrill, Aristotle the Philosopher

But Mainländer's God is not a substance that merely alters states. He is an absolute unity — indivisible and without internal multiplicity. Therefore, His transformation leaves nothing behind. It is not a change, but a total ontological conversion: from pure transcendence to fragmented immanence.

He doesn't persist through the process — He ceases to exist. What remains is the echo, the reverberation, the broken pieces of that original unity: our world.

God's Radical Otherness

As Duns Scotus put it:

“God is infinite being, creatures are finite beings. Yet both are called ‘being’ in the univocal sense — not because they share a kind, but because we can apply the same concept to both.”

So perhaps the only commonality between God and the world is that neither is absolute nothingness. That’s it. Even that shared concept is more linguistic than ontological.

God, then, remains wholly Other.

A Second Deductive Path

The universe had an absolute beginning.
Such a beginning must originate in God.
So the universe originates in God.
God can only create from His own substance (i.e. creatio ex Deo).
Thus, the universe is the transformation of divine essence into worldly immanence.
God’s total transformation is not impossible.
Whatever God creates will follow a necessary causal and/or teleological path. This means:
- The principle of sufficient reason underlies everything.
- There are no true alternatives.
- Determinism (and/or finalism) governs all action.
- Human actions also follow the nature from which they come. (agere sequitur esse)
Therefore, creation is bound to necessity.
It is irrational for a perfectly wise God to coexist with a wholly necessary world. Why?
- A deterministic universe would make divine oversight absurd or redundant.
- If everything happens necessarily, God’s role becomes meaningless.
- Even paradise, if it arises through process, is unnecessary for an omnipotent being. He could have created it immediately (Mainländer).

→ D. Hence, God did not coexist with His creation.
He became it. Entirely.

The Third Deduction: God’s Ontological Self-Emptying

God has transformed Himself either into:
(x) a temporally finite universe, or
(y) a temporally infinite and ever-moving one.

1.1 If (y) – an ever-moving universe – is the case:

Then God has become something ontologically inferior to His original state. Even if the universe were eternal and timeless, it would still be a fragmented multiplicity — a far cry from the original perfect unity of divine being.

(i) However, God’s perfect wisdom (even understood analogically) would prohibit an irreversible self-subordination to a lesser form of existence. God would not permanently enter into an inferior state of being.

1.2 If (x) – a temporally finite universe – is the case:

Then the universe either ends in:
a) a miraculous reconstitution of the “dead” God (who would remain unchanged and gain nothing from the process), or
b) in absolute nothingness (nihil negativum).

(ii) But God does nothing in vain — no superfluous or purposeless act can be attributed to Him.

2. Therefore, God's essence has been transformed into a plurality of individual forces, each unconsciously striving toward a shared final goal: non-existence — a kind of metaphysical nirvāna. This state is not to be confused with a possible world. It is, rather, the total absence of God, the universe, and any conceivable world.

Some might object: “But isn’t nothingness itself just another possible world — an empty one?”

Yet as David Bentley Hart rightly clarifies:

“An empty world, conceived as merely one possible state of reality among others, is not nonexistence, but only a kind of existing thing devoid of qualities (whatever that might mean).”
— The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss

True nothingness is not an alternative reality. It is the absolute negation of all possible realities.

Divine Simplicity and the Necessity of Becoming

I.

Mainländer writes:

“God did not have the power not to be all at once.”

In other words, God could not immediately eliminate Himself without leaving behind some trace of His having existed — a metaphysical residue of His “having-been-ness”. Therefore, absolute nothingness required an intermediate state — a temporally extended process of self-dissolution.

II.

Why this delay?

“Where something existed of itself, it cannot immediately become nothing.”
— Thorsten Lerchner (on Mainländer)

God’s essence — pure being, absolute givenness, unconditioned subsistence — is the most real and dense form of existence conceivable. That kind of being resists immediate annihilation by its very nature. Mainländer's God, like the God of classical theism, is absolutely simple — esse per se subsistens — existing through and in Himself, not derived from anything else.

Subsistence implies Simplicity and vice versa:

“God is simple because composition always implies conditionality, causation, actualisation of potentiality and a non-identity of the parts with the whole.”
— Thomas Marschner

Thus, divine simplicity — a metaphysical precondition for absolute subsistence — becomes the very reason God cannot spontaneously annihilate Himself.

As Anthony K. Jensen notes:

“God’s own essence as Übersein was the obstacle that precluded at least the instantaneous execution of the one pre-worldly act.”
— The Death and Redemption of God

God’s omnipotence, then, is not omnipotent with respect to Himself:

“God’s power was omnipotent in that nothing outside of Him constrained it. But it was no omnipotence with respect to His own power. The simple unity was unable, by means of itself, to cease to exist.”
— Mainländer, synkretic.com/issues/the-philosophy-of-redemption

III.

Therefore, God had no option (even if only analogously speaking) but to become a universe in decay — a world destined for total entropy and eventual non-being.

God, the Non-Finite, had to become finite, so that the finite could, in turn, dissolve into nothingness. There was no alternative path.

No divine sustainer is needed. God does not remain behind the scenes to maintain the cosmos. The “suicidal explosion” of divine being was also the first and final act of creation.

Creation persists temporarily due to the residual divine power that animates it — a slowly depleting inheritance stored in the very structure of things:

“The first impulse still lives on.”
— Mainländer

This is elaborated by Lerchner:

“Finite things are temporarily self-sustaining because they draw on the bundled remains of the dead deity.”

This also explains why the universe does not collapse instantly: everything is, for a time, still “running on divine fumes.”

In Mainländer’s metaphysics, God initially had no will, only a pure state of simple being. The moment the will to non-existence arises, He ceases to be. The act of willing and the transformation of God into the universe are one and the same event. Due to His simplicity, it cannot be otherwise.

“God cannot help but transform Himself into His will to nothingness.”

This will is not non-being itself — it is the drive toward it, which manifests as the world. The world may thus be seen, metaphorically, as God’s metaphysical suicide in slow motion — God as the decaying world. Yet, this is only a metaphor: although Mainländer at times identifies the world with God, as pantheists do, he is anything but pantheistic. He abhors such views. The identification is poetic, not ontological. God as ‘person’ is truly dead; what remains is his testamentary will — the sum and resulting movement of all individuals within the multiplicity, which is real and no mere appearance, no Maya.

All Things Strive for Nothingness

According to Mainländer, all things — all matter, all forces — strive toward non-being, but they impede each other from reaching that goal. In a paradoxical way, we are held in existence not by a benevolent deity but by mutual obstruction.

Consider gravity, for example:

“Gravity does not cease its striving toward an unextended central point, though to reach it would be to negate itself and all matter.”
— Schopenhauer, echoed by Mainländer

If anything were to reach the precise center of gravitational pull, it would be compressed to an extensionless, motionless point — total annihilation. Gravity, thus, is a force not of unity but of self-erasure.

Anthony K. Jensen summarizes this well:

“Matter is a conglomerate of forces which, if not resisted by counterforces, would immediately self-annihilate.”
— The Death and Redemption of God

In other words: existence survives by mutual resistance to annihilation.

Black Holes: Cosmic Symbols of This Striving

Even physicists describe black holes in terms that echo Mainländer's vision:

“They always win in the end... it’s Death triumphant.”
— Gregory Benford

“It’s this monstrous, mysterious thing... that eats everything.”
— Andrew Hamilton

“Whatever falls in is no longer accessible to our world.”
— Brian McNamara

Black holes are the closest physical analogue to Mainländer’s metaphysical vision: the hunger of reality for non-being.

Final Note:

For Mainländer, there is no second world, no afterlife, no resurrection. When something is lost, it is truly lost. No divine memory preserves it. No metaphysical archive stores it. What has perished, perished utterly.

Fifth Deduction.

I. God as the Most Perfect Being

God (analogically speaking) exists as the most perfect and blissful being:

“We can conceive of no more complete and better being than that of a simple unity.”
— Philipp Mainländer
synkretic.com/issues/the-philosophy-of-redemption

This perfect simplicity entails an existence of timeless bliss — “happily static and statically happy,” in the words of Bertrand R. Brasnett:

“If the Eternal be conceived as in complete and perfect bliss, happily static and statically happy, there is no reason in logic or in life why he should ever be moved to engage in creation.”
— The Suffering of the Impassible God

II. The Paradox of Divine Freedom

Mainländer holds that God possessed true libertarian freedom: the absolute ability to either remain in eternal supra-existence or to end that existence altogether.

Importantly, continuing to exist is not a “decision” in the usual sense — supra-existence is already given. The decision to remain is not a positive act but the absence of willing non-being. Hence, the only genuine exercise of freedom is to will the cessation of existence.

“Only one deed was possible for God — one truly free deed, because He was under no compulsion: to enter absolute nothingness, the nihil negativum, i.e., to annihilate Himself completely.”
— Mainländer

III. The Only Reason for Creation

If God were ever to create, it could not be to gain anything, since He lacks nothing. Therefore:

Creation can only be the means by which God ceases to be.

Since non-being cannot be achieved directly — due to the nature of divine simplicity and ontological fullness — it must be approached through temporality, via a mediated process. Thus, creation is not an end in itself, but a necessary detour toward absolute annihilation.

IV. The World as a Sign of Divine Will to Die

The universe — the sum of all dynamic individual beings — is the “medium” through which God enacts His willed self-dissolution. Despite His perfection and untroubled bliss, He chooses — from a position of pure freedom and self-sufficiency, entirely unpressured by inner or outer conditions — non-being.

This will to non-existence is not human self-denial projected onto God. It infinitely transcends human categories of moral or emotional self-sacrifice.

“So why the primal unity fractured itself, why the One became many, remains a mystery for us.”
— Frederick C. Beiser, Weltschmerz

This is one of the very few justified appeals to mystery — not because the decision was irrational, but because genuine metaphysical freedom is inherently opaque to finite minds.

“There is an arbitrary dimension to choices that are free in the libertarian sense.”
— Kronen & Reitan, God's Final Victory

God, being utterly alone, could only be moved by Himself, from within His own simplicity — which is nothing other than His freedom.

Divine Freedom and Logical Consistency

Some philosophers have noted that a perfect being cannot lack anything and therefore cannot be motivated to create. Theodore Drange states:

“To deliberately create anything requires some sort of lack, and that is incompatible with being a perfect being.”
— Nonbelief & Evil

Mainländer confirms this insight — with a twist:

If creation cannot result from lack, it must stem from an absolute, free decision to cease to be.
Therefore, God creates only in order to annihilate Himself — not the pursuit of a purpose, nor the desire to bestow life.

This is not a defect in His being. A perfect being cannot improve; thus, choosing non-existence is not a sign of deficiency but of radical sovereignty.

Does Ceasing to Exist Indicate Greater Perfection?

One might argue that the exercise of freedom — especially the act of willing non-being — is a higher perfection than merely existing in a state of passive bliss. But this creates paradoxes:

Perfection is traditionally linked to being, not non-being.
The act of freely choosing to cease to be negates that perfection.
If freedom is perfection when exercised, then God must exercise it. But then, His freedom necessitates His self-destruction — which is a contradiction.

Therefore, ceasing to exist does not indicate greater perfection.

Objections and Their Limits

Even if one rejects Mainländer’s theology, objections often misunderstand the radical nature of divine simplicity. His God is not Thomistic. He does not necessarily will Himself. He is not the Good Itself, but a Being who can choose to reject even Himself.

The Catholic dogma — that God necessarily wills Himself, and wills others only freely — does not apply to Mainländer’s God.

Thus, God may indulge in perfect self-love and still rationally conclude:

It is better not to be — not for lack, not for sorrow, but from an uncompelled realization that non-being is preferable to even perfect being.

Application to Human Suicide?

David Bentley Hart once wrote:

“One cannot even choose nothingness, at least not as nothingness; to will nonexistence positively, one must first conceive it as a positive end... in the end, even when we reject the good, we always do so out of a longing for the Good.”
— That All Shall Be Saved

But applied to God, this logic breaks down. Mainländer’s God does not long for ‘the Good.’ He is — or rather was — the Good from our perspective, but only from ours. From His own perspective, He was simply and neutrally what He was — and thus free to deny Himself. The act of willing non-being is not a disguised longing for the good, but an authentic metaphysical judgment. We cannot impose anthropocentric frameworks upon this divine act.

Final Reflection

Mainländer’s theology presents a radical alternative to classical theism:

God does not will Himself necessarily.
He can freely generate a will.
That will can choose annihilation.
Creation is not an act of fulfillment but of termination.

God does not cease to exist because of a lack but because He freely chose that it is better not to exist at all.

Further Supplement: On Divine Will, Pantheism, and the Fragmentation of Unity

I. A Critique of Classical Theism and the Goodness of God

The following critique, raised by Jeffrey D. Johnson, strikes at the metaphysical core of Thomistic theology:

“How is it possible for God to will his own existence by the same undifferentiated and timeless act of willing the universe without the universe being eternal and necessary?”
— The Failure of Natural Theology

This question highlights a tension within classical theism: If God’s act of will is timeless and singular, and that act includes the willing of creation, then creation must also be co-eternal and necessary. That would also collapse the distinction between God and the world — a pantheistic implication.

The same tension emerges when theologians assert that God is goodness itself. As Anthony Kenny observes:

“Unlike the predicate ‘blue’, ‘good’ is an attributive adjective: one can be a good doctor or a good knife, but not good in the abstract. To claim that God is ‘pure goodness’ ignores the linguistic structure of the word ‘good’, introduced by Plato and heavily criticized by Aristotle. It is strange to see this Platonic notion survive in Aquinas’s Aristotelian system.”
— Christianity in Review: A History of the Faith in Fifty Books

II. Mainländer’s Alternative: The God Who Chose Not to Be

Mainländer's God could not “improve” or become “more Godly”; He already encompassed all possibility. Hence, His only true decision was the one Hamlet faced: to remain as He was, or not to be.

“Why God made the choice He did is ungraspable, but the result, evident in the world today, is transcendental proof of which path was taken. God willed not to be.”
— Anthony K. Jensen, The Death and Redemption of God

Freedom to cease to exist must, then, be included in divine perfection. God, in this conception, may be imagined — anthropomorphically — as a being who, through absolute self-reflection, recognizes the vanity of existence, even His own. Nothing remains hidden to such a being; everything, including Himself, appears as surface. And in this realization, He grows weary of being.

This leads to a figurative interpretation: If existential reflection is a sign of human depth, then it must, in divine potentiation, be even more profound in God. God is the ultimate existential philosopher — not despairing, not depressed, but serenely and wisely sacrificing Himself for a metaphysical good: non-being.

Sixth Deduction: Against Pantheism and Toward Finite Individuality

I. The world originated from a unique, supreme being endowed with ultimate power and wisdom (even if only analogously).

II. The world is a creation — the product of this being’s intentional act.

III. The world cannot be a pantheistic manifestation of God. In pantheism:

“The individual is nothing — a mere puppet of a Being hidden in the world… no act is truly theirs, no responsibility truly borne.”
— Mainländer

Pantheism fails to account for the reality of individual subjectivity. As Mainländer stresses, the individuation we experience is not mere illusion or appearance (à la Kant) but an essential feature of reality.

IV. Three Arguments Against Pantheism

1. The Reality of Individuality

The sheer inner richness of our experience — appetite, resistance, will, spontaneity, agency — refutes the pantheistic claim that we are mere modifications of a single being. Individual subjectivity cannot be an illusion:

Cogito ergo sum — even the illusion of subjectivity requires a subject.

If we are entirely dependent on another being (as in pantheism or strong scholastic theism), we collapse into that being. As Bill Vallicella puts it:

“If the creature is dependent on God both for its existence and for its nature, the creature collapses into God.”
— Maverick Philosopher

Thus, true individuality — observed all throughout nature — cannot be reduced to mere modes of one infinite subject.

2. Logical Incoherence of Simultaneous Unity and Multiplicity

Mainländer criticizes Schopenhauer’s version of pantheism for claiming that the One Will can be wholly present in a fly and wholly present in a human being at the same time — a claim that violates the law of non-contradiction:

“Simple unity is utterly incompatible with multiplicity, if both are to exist at the same time.”

Multiplicity of manifestation is only possible sequentially, not simultaneously. A fully simple will cannot exhaust itself multiple times at once. Not even a somewhat more complex metaphysical foundation, if it is fully present in a fly, can also be fully present in a human being.

3. Theodicy and Divine Intelligence

One might think that Schopenhauer’s critique of pantheism is applicable here, too:

“It would be an ill-advised God who transformed Himself into this cruel world — filled with hunger, suffering, slavery, factory misery, and meaningless violence. Such a being would hardly qualify as ‘all-wise’.”
— Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. II, §69

But in Mainländer’s model, the situation is radically different: God is dead. There is no deity remaining to bear responsibility for suffering. The divine act was a metaphysical suicide, and the world is only metaphorically the slow unfolding of that death.

Furthermore, in some sense, every being took part in that original decision. Each individual willed its own fate, within the singular pre-worldly unity:

“Everything that affects me... I willed it. Not gradually, but in the primal act, within the divine unity, I determined that it should affect me.”
— Mainländer

While suffering is real and widespread, there remains a path of voluntary simplicity aligned with the divine trajectory toward dissolution:

The ethical ideal is the “Holy Spirit” — a life of sexual abstinence and voluntary poverty. This path harmonizes with the divine course of nature and avoids the agonistic striving of “Satanic” hedonism.

VI. Classical theism and pantheism ultimately converge. Despite surface differences, both reduce the individual to an expression of divine being.

VII. But the world is a multiplicity of real individuals — not modes, not shadows.

VIII. Hence, God cannot have chosen to continue existing or to merely modify His mode of being, or else the world would never have come into existence.

“He cannot have chosen to exist as a super-being alongside His creation.”
— Sebastian Gardner

IX. Therefore, God must have fragmented Himself, metaphorically speaking, into a multiplicity of real, finite, individual forces.

X. This fragmentation was not a mere internal complexification of God’s being (as in deus sive natura), but a literal disintegration into multiple things-in-themselves — a shattering of the One into the Many.

“The disintegration of simple unity into a world of multiplicity... all subsequent movements are merely further fragmentation.”
— Mainländer

Conclusion of the Deductions

Instead of a dead individual and a living God, we have living individuals and a dead God.

This is Mainländer’s metaphysical inversion of classical and pantheistic theologies. Creation was not a glorious emergence of finite beings from a transcendent source, but a deliberate act of self-nullification. The divine chose non-being, and in doing so, became the world, which now moves inevitably toward dissolution — not because it is cursed, but because it was born of a sacrifice.

Supplementary Reflections on Creatio ex Deo in Light of Mainländer’s Philosophy

To further clarify and strengthen the plausibility of creation from God’s own being (creatio ex Deo) within the framework of Mainländer’s metaphysical system, we can draw upon a set of recent philosophical reflections that challenge the coherence of creatio ex nihilo and lend support to an alternative model — one remarkably compatible with Mainländer’s.

I. Four Contemporary Reflections on Creatio ex Deo (You don’t get something for nothing!)

(1) W. P. Swainson (on Jacob Böhme):

“The Supreme does not create out of nothing. Ex nihilo nihil fit — out of nothing, nothing comes. He produces from His own eternal nature and eternal wisdom, wherein all things dwell in a latent condition, all contrasts exist in a hidden or non-manifest state.”
— Jacob Boehme: The Teutonic Philosopher

(2) Maverick Philosopher (Bill Vallicella):

“Classical theists hold that God created the world ex nihilo, out of nothing. [...] But if God creates out of nothing distinct from himself, this allows that, in some sense, God creates ex Deo, out of himself. In this way, creatio ex nihilo and ex nihilo nihil fit can be reconciled.”

This formulation acknowledges the intuitive appeal of the Principle of Pre-existent Stuff (PPS): that nothing can come from nothing, and therefore some metaphysical substance or ground must pre-exist creation. If nothing is distinct from God, then the only possible metaphysical material is God Himself.

(3) Daniel Soars (on Aquinas):

“If the world emerges neither from sheer nothingness nor from any pre-existent some-thing, it must emerge ex Deo — from God. [...] Aquinas rejects this conclusion, but only by denying that God can serve as a ‘material cause’. Yet if we abstract from materiality as ‘physical stuff’, it seems legitimate to call God the innermost cause — the substantial ground — of the creature.”

This argument shows that creatio ex Deo is not metaphysically incompatible with Aquinas’s system, provided one rethinks the notion of material cause as immaterial substance or ontological ground.

(4) Michael Tze-Sung Longenecker:

“The Pre-existent Stuff Principle (PSP) has intuitive force: for anything that begins to exist, there must be stuff out of which it is made. [...] If the universe began to exist, the pre-existent stuff must be non-physical and immaterial. [...] Christians cannot posit any distinct eternal material; therefore, the only coherent option left is that God created the universe out of Himself.”

II. Mainländer’s God and the Logic of Creatio ex Deo

These reflections dovetail remarkably with Mainländer’s metaphysical theology, wherein God does not create from nothing but from His own being. For Mainländer:

God is absolutely simple.
He has no parts which could be separated and externalized.
Therefore, the act of creating is necessarily the act of entire self-transformation: God becomes the world.
The world is not His artifact; it is His “corpse” — the structured remains of a God who willed not to be.

This makes Mainländer’s system a radical and coherent form of creatio ex Deo, one in which divine self-annihilation is the metaphysical condition for the world’s becoming.

III. Plotinus and the Ancient Barrier to Divine Self-Nullification

In contrast to Mainländer, Plotinus — and with him much of ancient and late antique philosophy — insisted that the One could give rise to multiplicity without losing anything of itself:

“Somehow, everything is in the One, but there it is totally indistinct and undifferentiated.”
— Eyjólfur K. Emilsson, Plotinus

Plotinus's solution lies in the emanation model: the One radiates being without diminishing itself — like the sun shining while remaining full. But this was not a proof, only a dogmatic metaphysical axiom rooted in what might be called a cognitive prohibition: the thought that the highest principle could perish was, for ancient thinkers, unspeakable.

This dogma resembles what German poet Christian Morgenstern mocked as:

“Weil nicht sein kann, was nicht sein darf.”
(“What must not be, cannot be.”)

Mainländer’s system boldly transgresses this barrier. If the One is absolute simplicity, then it cannot produce otherness without ceasing to be itself. All differentiation must occur within, and if simplicity excludes internal structure, then the act of self-fragmentation entails total dissolution of the source.

IV. From Undifferentiated to Differentiated: A Necessity of Loss

Let us then pose a revised principle:

If everything in the One is indistinct and undifferentiated, and if a real world of distinction and differentiation is to emerge, then that differentiation must occur within the One itself, leading to the loss of simplicity, and hence, the loss of the One.

This directly affirms Mainländer’s proposition:

“God is dead, and His death was the life of the world.”

The differentiated world is the manifestation of God's lost simplicity — not a mere appearance, but the real consequence of the One’s absolute dissolution.

V. Summary and Philosophical Implication

The creatio ex Deo model — as developed through both contemporary critique and Mainländer’s metaphysics — offers a radical but coherent alternative to classical theism and its reliance on creatio ex nihilo:

Ex nihilo nihil fit holds as a metaphysical principle.
The only non-arbitrary way to honor it is to accept that creation must proceed from the only existing metaphysical ground: God Himself.
But if God is simple, creation is not emanation but self-shattering.
The world is thus the mortal residue of divine self-negation.

In short:

The world exists not because God wanted to manifest His glory, but because He willed His own extinction. Creation is not the act of a living God, but the lingering echo of a God who chose not to be.

Supplements: Divine Simplicity, Self-Limitation, and the Ontological Collapse of God

I. From Self-Determination to Self-Destruction

The notion that God's existence portions itself by means of self-determination and self-limitation, resulting in the immediate emergence of created beings, seems, at first glance, compatible with traditional metaphysical models of emanation or divine will. However, once we accept two key premises — that God is both infinite (non-finite) and absolutely simple — the logical outcome of this self-limitation becomes clear: God cannot divide Himself without remainder.

Hence, God's self-limitation is also His total annihilation.

Why?

Because if God is simplicity itself, then any finite mode of being must necessarily arise from a total transformation of that simplicity. No partial manifestation is metaphysically possible. The simple cannot limit itself partially, only absolutely — a point strongly echoed in classical sources.

“For comprehending all in itself, [God] contains existence itself as an infinite and indeterminate sea of substance.”
— John Damascene (cited in Aquinas, ST I.13.11)

This image of the infinite sea offers a helpful metaphor: it is not a sea with boundaries or location, but a spaceless fullness. If one draws from it even a single finite thing, the whole is transformed. There can be only one act of drawing — and that act drains the sea entirely.

II. The Logical End of Divine Simplicity: The Vanishing One

Thus, in the words of Sebastian Gardner, we must conceive of:

“A vanished One possessed of absolute simple individuality,”
or
“a One which is transcendent, pre-mundane, and defunct.”

God’s act of creation is simultaneously His disappearance. To create, in this model, is not to emanate or project, but to transform fully into otherness.

This provides a coherent metaphysical explanation of the transformation of the absolute unity into the world of multiplicity — a transformation not of expression, but of substitution: the world is what remains after God is gone.

III. David Bentley Hart and the Limits of Classical Theism

Consider a set of reflections by David Bentley Hart in The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss. Hart illustrates the traditional metaphor of creation by subtraction:

“Created things exist by subtraction: that is, they are finite and diffuse expressions of an infinite and indivisible reality... God is the infinite ‘ocean of being,’ while creatures are finite vessels containing existence only in limited measure.”

But Hart’s language subtly betrays the deeper implication of what he resists: if things come into being by subtracting from God — if creation occurs by God limiting His plenitude — then we are already on the threshold of creatio ex Deo.

Hart attempts to safeguard divine immutability and untouchability:

“Nothing is added to God by creation; all finite things are already embraced in God’s being in a more eminent way.”

But this raises a contradiction. If something finite “emerges”, it must do so through a loss of undivided simplicity. Hart’s final retreat into mystery — “Si comprehendis, non est Deus” — cannot conceal the plausibility of divine alteration, which his metaphors inadvertently support.

IV. The Ontological Problem of Divine Modulation

Hart’s reluctance to affirm divine transformation leads to conceptual instability. If we ask:

How could divine simplicity “modulate” itself without ceasing to be simple?

— the answer is: It cannot.

If God is truly simple, then any modulation — even the slightest — amounts to ontological rupture. There is no gradual self-expression for a simple being; only all or nothing.

This brings us back to a Mainländerian formulation:

The act of self-determination is the act of self-abolition.

V. A Stronger Alternative: Seven Propositions in Defense of Total Divine Transformation

There exists a metaphysical state in which God alone is — ontologically prior to all creation.
The universe began to exist — the past is finite.
A finite past implies a first temporal effect, which must originate from a non-temporal cause — namely, God.
God is unity itself, i.e., absolute simplicity.
All possible creation exists undifferentiated in God prior to creation.
Creatio ex nihilo is incoherent; therefore, creation must be ex Deo.
But if creation occurs from the simple God, then the act alters God, and due to simplicity, any alteration is total. Therefore, creation equals God’s annihilation.

VI. Whether God Has Parts or Not: Either Way, He Perishes

Even if we concede, contrary to simplicity, that God has parts, the outcome is the same. As Michael Tze-Sung Longenecker notes in A Theory of Creation Ex Deo:

“If God creates the universe out of His proper parts, then He loses the functions or features those parts confer. If even the smallest part is missing, the whole perishes.”

Creation is therefore always an act of loss — and for a perfect, self-sufficient being, even a small loss is incompatible with divinity.

Whether partless or composite, any donation of being on God’s part leads to His own undoing.

VII. Mainländer’s Apparent Reference to Divine Parts

At times, Mainländer seems to imply internal distinction within God — e.g., between “supra-essence” and “supra-being”. Yet this duality is not a real composition, but a conceptual distinction for human understanding. Absent this, God would be indistinguishable from absolute nothingness. Strictly speaking, it is not even a conceptual distinction, as the prefix 'supra' — meaning 'beyond' — makes clear.

Even if conceptual duality refers to something real, it still leads to the same conclusion: once a part of God is transformed or sacrificed, God as a unified being no longer exists.

VIII. Schopenhauer and the Impossibility of Created Freedom

A further philosophical consequence is that God cannot create free beings — a conclusion drawn by Schopenhauer, which supports Mainländer's metaphysical logic:

“To create a free being would require giving it existence without essence — an impossibility.”
— Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. I, §§9, 13

To act follows from being (agere sequitur esse). If a being is created, its constitution is determined. Hence, no creature can be truly free, and the creator cannot avoid responsibility for its actions.

Thus, we might say:

God’s freedom precedes His being — not the other way around.

In Mainländer’s system, God was originally without will — He became willing only once, and that will was the will to not be.

Supplement VII: Divine Necessity, Human Freedom, and the Final Collapse of Classical Theism

I. The Inescapable Burden of Theodicy and Divine Responsibility

Schopenhauer underscores a deep and unresolved problem: if God is the creator of all things, then He is also the creator of the conditions for evil. As early as Augustine, this tension was recognized with philosophical honesty:

“Tell me, pray, whether God is not the author of evil?”
— Augustine, On Free Will

Later, Luther forcefully echoed this deterministic dilemma:

“If we grant that God is omniscient and omnipotent, then it follows obviously and incontestably that we did not create ourselves [...] but only through His omnipotence.”
— Schopenhauer, Essay on the Freedom of the Will

Hence, if all things, including the human will, arise from divine omnipotence, then the will itself becomes a function of divine necessity — an extension of God’s own determination.

II. The Feser Analogy: Fictional Freedom and its Collapse

Edward Feser, a proponent of classical theism, attempts to preserve human freedom through analogy:

“Characters in a novel act freely within the story, even though the author writes all their actions.”

This analogy, however, collapses under scrutiny. As Gunther Laird points out:

Fictional characters appear to have freedom only within the narrative frame.
But they do not possess ontological freedom; they are wholly subject to the author’s will.
Therefore, if the world is God's narrative, our supposed freedom is fictional — a simulation, not reality.

To say we are free within a story authored by God is to admit that, from the standpoint of metaphysical reality, we are not truly free at all.

III. The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) and the Necessity of Determinism

Even Feser insists on the universality of the PSR:

“To reject the PSR is to undermine the possibility of any rational inquiry.”
— Five Proofs of the Existence of God

But if PSR holds universally, then it must apply also to the human will. As Fichte (via Neuhouser) and Schopenhauer argue:

“If we can always find a reason for the will’s choice, we demonstrate that the opposite action was not possible. Therefore, the will is not free.”

There cannot be uncaused choices within a rational system that also affirms PSR. Hence, the very structure of reason entails that freedom of will is an illusion.

“To a given man under given circumstances, are two actions possible, or only one? The answer of all who think deeply: only one.”
— Schopenhauer, Freedom of the Will

IV. The Collapse of Volitional Indeterminacy: Hart and the Illusion of Hell

David Bentley Hart, despite his theological commitments, admits this much:

“There must be a ‘why’ in any free choice — a sufficient reason.”

If true, then freedom collapses into rational necessity. No sane, informed, and rational agent could freely choose eternal misery over beatific union with God.

Therefore, the notion of hell as a free choice is incoherent:

“To call that madness ‘freedom’ [...] is to talk gibberish.”
— Hart, The Obscenity of Hell

Libertarian freedom is metaphysically impossible in the universe.

V. Biblical Fatalism: The Mouse and the Cat

The Bible itself affirms divine determinism:

Jeremiah 10:23: “It is not in man who walks to direct his steps.”

This view inspired Mainländer’s metaphor:

“The individual is like a mouse created by the cat (God), which then toys with it until she bites off its head.”

In this image, human agency is reduced to performance within a divine theater, fated, controlled, and ultimately discarded. So theism cannot be true. If neither theism nor any form of pantheism can be true, then Mainländer's metaphysical vision must be correct.

VI. The Mistaken Assumption of Eternal Divine Will

Western theism has long assumed that the Perfect Being must will to exist eternally. But this is a value judgment, not a logical necessity.

Nothing prevents God from “concluding” (timelessly) that non-being is preferable.
Absolute nothingness may not possess any qualities, but for a perfect being, it may still be the “better” option — a final act of value-based self-negation.

This introduces the possibility of a divine decision for death, a metaphysical suicide that is not irrational, but sovereign.

VII. Buddhism, Christianity, and Philosophical Suicide

Even Buddhism, which now enjoys significant global influence, echoes this shift:

“The definition of Nirvana shifted from being merged with ultimate reality to extinction.”
— Yancey & Quosigk

And Christianity, paradoxically, flirts with the same idea in the death of Christ:

“[Jesus] is the cause of His own death [...] His suicide is built into the Christian story.”
— Jack Miles, Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God

The logic of self-willed divine death runs as an underground current even in the heart of Christian theology.

VIII. Cosmological Arguments Do Not Require God’s Continued Existence

Philosophers such as George Smith, Peter Cole, and Peter Forrest argue persuasively:

Cosmological arguments may show that God once existed.
But they do not entail that God still exists.

“There is no reason to assume that the first cause still exists.”
— Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God

“Why should God not be the originator and now no longer exist?”
— Cole, Philosophy of Religion

IX. Developmental Theism: Necessary Existence as Initial, Not Eternal

Peter Forrest’s “developmental theism” provides a helpful framework:

God necessarily exists at the first moment of time.
Time itself may begin with God's initial act.
But nothing logically prohibits God from ceasing to exist thereafter.

“There is nothing incoherent in the idea that a simple being might cease to exist.”
— Forrest, Developmental Theism

This opens the door to a Mainländerian view of divinity: a necessary beginning that chooses not to persist.

X. The Philosophical and Scientific Advantage of Mainländer’s God

Mainländer’s model offers several profound advantages:

Eliminates transcendental intrusion into immanence.
Fits perfectly with entropy: the universe is in progressive decay because its origin is an act of dissolution.
Unifies cosmology with teleology: entropy is not chaotic but purposeful in its drive toward nothingness.

“Entropy is a teleological process.”
— Intelligent Design sources, ironically aligned with Mainländer

Mainländer’s system offers the investigator of nature a clean metaphysical slate, as he says:

“I consider the pure, immanent domain, totally freed from the spectre of transcendent essentialities, to be a second gift that I am making to the investigators of nature.”
— Mainländer, Philosophy of Redemption

XI. God as Contingent Termination: The Final Image

Mainländer’s God or Simple Unity:

Is not “personal” in the human sense, nor impersonal like a rock.
Transcends all categories, but analogically closer to a person.
Is free in the highest possible sense: the ability to annihilate itself without compulsion.
Exists necessarily in all possible worlds as the starting point, but not as an eternal presence.
Is contingent not in its origin, but in its willed whither.

This God is the source of all, but also the first to choose non-being. Not out of despair, but from a sovereign and freely chosen affirmation that the best thing to do with perfection is to relinquish it.

Mittwoch, 17. Mai 2023

Real Death of God Theology