„Christianity cannot, and must not, look on modern atheism merely as something to be eliminated. It must instead accept atheism as a mediation to a new development of Christianity itself." This recommendation was not formulated by a Christian theologian, but by Japanese philosopher (of religion) Keiji Nishitani (1900-1990), pupil of the Kyoto School's de-facto founder Kitaro Nishida, as well as of Martin Heidegger, in his famous work "Religion and Nothingness" (1961, originally "Shūkyō to wa nanika?", literally: „What is religion?"; p. 36-37). The paper aims to evaluate from a Christian (more specifically Protestant) systematic-theological perspective how Nishitani's recommendation and „Religion and Nothingness" more broadly may become a helpful guideline in gauging the relationship between Christianity and Atheism today.