William Hamilton, the retired theologian who declared in the 1960s that God was dead, died Tuesday in his downtown Portland apartment at 87. Hamilton said he'd been haunted by questions about God since he was a teenager. Years later, when his conclusion was published in

, he found himself in a hornet's nest.

Time christened the new movement "radical theology" and Hamilton, one of its key figures, received death threats and inspired angry letters to the editor in newspapers that carried the story. He encountered hostility at

, where he had been teaching theology, and lost his endowed chair in 1967.

Hamilton moved on to teach religion at

in Sarasota, Fla., and then joined the faculty at

in 1970. He taught for 14 years, classes in religion, literary criticism and death and dying. He often spoke at churches, where Christians were struggling with the same questions that had spurred him to study theology.

The image of God as all-knowing and all-powerful couldn't be reconciled with human suffering, especially in the wake of the Holocaust,

.

"I wrote out my two choices: 'God is not behind such radical evil, therefore he cannot be what we have traditionally meant by God' or 'God is behind everything, including the death camps – and therefore he is a killer.'" Hamilton said he couldn't see an active God anymore.

"The death of God is a metaphor," he said. "We needed to redefine Christianity as a possibility without the presence of God." Hamilton saw himself as a Christian who no longer went to church.

"The death of God enabled me to understand the world. Looking back, I wouldn't have gone any other direction. I faced all my worries and questions about death long ago."

Hamilton graduated from Oberlin College in 1943 and served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He earned a master's degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 1949 and a doctorate in theology from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in 1952.

Hamilton had struggled with congestive heart failure for years. He had been hospitalized recently and died at home. He is survived by his wife, Mary Jean, and five grown children. No service is planned.

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