De
Lubac traces the origin of 19th century attempts to construct a
humanism apart from God, the sources of contemporary atheism which
purports to have "moved beyond God." The three persons he focuses on
are Feuerbach, who greatly influenced Marx; Nietzsche, who represents
nihilism; and Comte, who is the father of all forms of positivism. He
then shows that the only one who really responded to this ideology was
Dostoevsky, a kind of prophet who criticizes in his novels this attempt
to have a society without God. Despite their historical and scholarly
appearance, de Lubac's work clearly refers to the present. As he
investigates the sources of modern atheism, particularly in its claim
to have definitely moved beyond the idea of God, he is thinking of an
ideology prevalent today in East and West which regards the Christian
faith as a completely outdated.
