Hamilton told The Oregonian newspaper in 2007 that he had questioned the existence of God since he was a teenager, when two friends — an Episcopalian and a Catholic — died from the explosion of a pipe bomb they were building, while a third — an atheist — escaped without a scratch.

Theologian William Hamilton, a member of the Death of God movement of the 1960s that reached its peak with a Time Magazine cover story, has died in Portland, Ore. He was 87.

Hamilton died Tuesday from complications from congestive heart failure at the downtown apartment he shared with his wife, his family said.

Hamilton told The Oregonian newspaper in 2007 that he had questioned the existence of God since he was a teenager, when two friends — an Episcopalian and a Catholic — died from the explosion of a pipe bomb they were building, while a third — an atheist — escaped without a scratch.

It caused him to question why the innocent suffer, and whether God intervened in people’s lives, he said.

“The death of God is a metaphor,” Hamilton said. “We needed to redefine Christianity as a possibility without the presence of God.”

The idea was not a new one, said fellow radical theologian Thomas J.J. Altizer. Poet William Blake and German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel had long ago raised the question.

“We didn’t just come out of nowhere,” said Altizer, who was co-author with Hamilton of the 1966 book, “Radical Theology and the Death of God.”

Hamilton “was what we call a radical Christian, or if you like, an atheistic Christian,” Altizer said from his home in Mount Pocono, Pa. “He dedicated a good part of his life to renewing, making actual and right now, the way of Jesus.”

Hamilton’s talent was putting these difficult ideas in a way that could be understood by the general public, Altizer said.

Before their book, Hamilton brought his ideas to a national audience on the Sunday morning CBS television show, “Look up and Live,” at one point airing excerpts from the Ingmar Bergman movie, “Winter Light,” which was about a pastor who decides God has died.

The book and the ensuing 1966 Time magazine article “Is God Dead?” became part of a national questioning of establishment values that included the Civil Rights Movement and protest against the Vietnam War.

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