Atheist theologians

"Is not every unbeliever who has a reason for his atheism and his decision not to believe a theologian too? Atheists who have something against God and against faith in God usually know very well whom and what they are rejecting, and have their reasons. Nietzsche’s book The Antichrist has a lot to teach us about true Christianity, and the modern criticism of religion put forward by Feuerbach, Marx and Freud is still theological in its antitheology.

Beyond that, moreover, there is a protest atheism which wrestles with God as Job did, and for the sake of the suffering of created beings which cries out to high heaven denies that there is a just God who rules the world in love. This atheism is profoundly theological, for the theodicy question -- "If there is a good God, why all this evil?" -- is also the fundamental question of every Christian theology which takes seriously the dying Christ’s question to God: "My God, why have you forsaken me?"

- Jürgen Moltmann, "Godless theology".

Not all atheism is the same. There are atheists who are closer to the kingdom than they realise when their very repudiation of God is on moral grounds. They refuse to believe in God not primarily because such an idea of illogical or unnecessary, but because doing so would be immoral in a world so filled with suffering. Such people are often asking the right questions to which the gospel is such good news.