Idolaters at providential prayer: Calvin's praying through the divine governance

Over the past few decades in particular, there has been an increasing tendency among theologians to ask after what may be called "the religious significance of atheism:' Does atheism have more to say to theology than simply demanding and displaying its utter dissolution? For Paul Ricoeur, among others, "atheism does not exhaust itself in the negation and destruction of religion:' Indeed, he continues, "atheism clears the ground for a new faith, a faith for a post-religious age: 'What is meant by such a claim? The notion of ground clearing could imply that there is a necessary movement that begins prior to theological reflection. Such a move would, of course, raise all kinds of difficult questions about natural theology. Yet there is way of reading Ricoeur's assertion here which is more theologically interesting than this. Herein Marx's notion that religion is the opium of the masses, for instance, would become utilisable by theologians themselves concerned to critique "religion: 'Atheism's protest against suffering, and against the silence of the quiet (quietism) gives a voice to those oppressed by, or at least not-liberated through, religion. This critique would function to hear the silence of the religiously engaged before the evil against them, and the silence of their "god" that fails to provide them with their flourishing.