Abstract

Ludwig Feuerbach was a German philosopher and secular theologian who studied under Hegel. In his book The Essence of Christianity, he argued that we have made God in our image—and necessarily so: only a God that is created in our image could be recognized as a God. Because of this, he thought that there were contradictions internal to Christianity which could not be resolved on Christianity’s own terms. In attempting to expose these contradictions, he developed a critical philosophy according to which religions and religious development are understood in fully anthropological terms. Indeed, his whole project aimed to show that “all theology is anthropology.”