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The Insistence of God: A Theology of Perhaps
The Insistence of God presents the provocative idea that God does not exist, God insists, while God's existence is a human responsibility, which may or may not happen. For John D. Caputo, God's existence is haunted by "perhaps," which does not signify indecisiveness but an openness to risk, to the unforeseeable. Perhaps constitutes a theology of what is to come and what we cannot see coming. Responding to current critics of continental philosophy, Caputo explores the materiality of perhaps and the promise of the world. He shows how perhaps can become a new theology of the gaps God opens.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
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About the author
John D. Caputo
86 books146 followersJohn D. Caputo is an American philosopher who is the Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus at Syracuse University and the David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Villanova University. Caputo is a major figure associated with Postmodern Christianity, Continental Philosophy of Religion, as well as the founder of the theological movement known as weak theology. Much of Caputo's work focuses on hermeneutics, phenomenology, deconstruction and theology.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
September 18, 2021
Heidegger's most important contribution is probably not the deconstruction, phenomenology, ontology, and hermeneutics from “Being and Time”; but the Event construction as completely opposed to metaphysics from the “Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event)” and “Mindfulness”. Derrida, Badiou, and a few others tried to develop Heidegger's Event more concretely. Here Caputo is applying Heidegger's Event to God and a weak theology of God's insistence, calling, and of “perhaps”.
Meister Eckhart prayed to God to help him get rid of God. Tillich spoke of the God beyond God and the need to take Nietzsche's “God is dead” further in order to discover God. Caputo is here dismissing the God of the traditional/strong theology in order to make room for the God of the Event and of his new radical/weak theology.
Caputo is great in developing and standing behind such a radical theology that stays in the material, in the body, with the calling in the name of God, in historicity, in the unexpected, within time, with the gift, in the risky, in an “ontology” of the Event – and against 2,000 years of strong, dualistic, and metaphysical theology. Not so great is his compromise and stand with postmodernism, along with his willingness to affirm that everything is admissible these days.
Meister Eckhart prayed to God to help him get rid of God. Tillich spoke of the God beyond God and the need to take Nietzsche's “God is dead” further in order to discover God. Caputo is here dismissing the God of the traditional/strong theology in order to make room for the God of the Event and of his new radical/weak theology.
Caputo is great in developing and standing behind such a radical theology that stays in the material, in the body, with the calling in the name of God, in historicity, in the unexpected, within time, with the gift, in the risky, in an “ontology” of the Event – and against 2,000 years of strong, dualistic, and metaphysical theology. Not so great is his compromise and stand with postmodernism, along with his willingness to affirm that everything is admissible these days.
September 4, 2025
I’m going to try to keep this review coherent, but that’ll be tough as this book covers a lot of ground with a lot of depth, some of which I’ll have to ignore because it’s out of my depth, such as some of the critiques of other philosophers’ work.
Caputo’s primary claim: that we ought to subscribe to a weak theology, one where we don’t say that God exists (though perhaps God does exist), but where we affirm that God insists upon us, that the very idea of God is an imposition on humanity.
It’s a phenomenological theology (Caputo opts for the term theopoetics since it isn’t quite a “logic”) that utterly dispenses with the epistemological problems often associated with religious commitment. To ignore the question of God’s existence does nothing to lessen the responsibility we hold in responding to God’s call. In fact, Caputo’s assertion is in many ways a firm commitment to Christian (though not exclusively Christian) mysticism, particularly the thought of Maister Eckhart, who makes regular appearances in the book. God is unknowable, unsayable, unthinkable. And so, Caputo argues, any attempt to nail God down is to miss the mark and threatens letting humanity off the hook: as soon as we say that God said so, we can get away with all sorts of things. So to say that God insists is actually a way for Caputo to radicalize faith. It puts all theology in the subjunctive mood, grammatically speaking, into the realm of the perhaps.
In identifying God as an event, Caputo also draws attention to the moving of the Spirit through history, which is almost always an upsetting interruption or help in a way that can only be identified as help or redemptive after the fact. God comes in ways that we don’t understand or anticipate, and that is part of what makes God God. So the event of God is not something we can see coming, but we should be on the lookout for it, to bring it to be in the world and in each other.
This has payoff in a few different ways. First, as already stated, it doesn’t let people off the hook for what God says. Second, it makes faith a risk (which, he argues, is the only way for faith to actually be faith). God perhaps (Caputo almost always uses the name God Perhaps instead of just God) is in Caputo’s weak theology a projectile, not a projection, an absolute other that comes to us in ways we cannot understand or anticipate, yet we must answer the call. In a way, Caputo is schematizing a method for idol smashing, idols inadvertently made in our own image. Finally, this is a way for Caputo to draw religious attention to the here and now of the material world. Following a sermon by Maister Eckhart, Caputo follows the example of Martha (whom Eckhart claimed actually got the better portion out of her encounter with Jesus as opposed to Mary, since she correctly identified Jesus’s human needs and met them while also welcoming him as the son of God) in saying yes to the material world, its material needs, while also saying yes to the rest. Yes, yes. A double affirmation.
God Perhaps, then, is in a chiasmic relationship with humanity: God needs humanity to exist (in Caputo’s schema, since the minds of humans seems to be where the God question is at play, it is reasonable to claim that God’s insistence is a potentiality that can manifest in existence when acted on by humanity) but that humanity needs God to be human. Hence, this is not a schema for dispensing of religion Quite the contrary. Part of Caputo’s goal is to make room for the event of God in spaces of our minds and hearts that are often overlooked. God can happen anywhere, he says, and God happening is an event of grace.
All of these things need to be qualified with a few bits of info that make Caputo, in my opinion, of much more interest to the student of religious thought. First, he left a position at Villanova in the philosophy department to teach at the less prestigious Syracuse University (roots in the Methodist movement) position teaching religion because he was tired of convincing philosophy students that the God question mattered. Second, he qualifies his own work as not quite existing either, saying that a weak theology of perhaps ought not be a dominant system of thought, but instead be a “hauntological” presence that is parasitic upon a host system of thought. Weak theology is a safeguard against bad, toxic religion. He describes it as a pill prescribed, that if it doesn’t kill the host (it is, again, a risk) it might just heal. It is a circumfessional theology that keeps confessional theology in check.
Caputo does an excellent job of maintaining the importance of the faith tradition of Christianity while posing some serious and worthwhile complaints. And while I could see this work being dissatisfying or outright distasteful for many, it strikes me as exceptionally earnest in its intent, and actually verbalizes my own discomfort with much confessional theology, a tradition which I still hold dear and affirm with an asterisk. And perhaps that is the last thing to say about this book: it presents not a denial of a faith but a strong affirmation (what he frequently calls the double affirmative “yes, yes”) of faith in the face of the unknown.
Caputo’s primary claim: that we ought to subscribe to a weak theology, one where we don’t say that God exists (though perhaps God does exist), but where we affirm that God insists upon us, that the very idea of God is an imposition on humanity.
It’s a phenomenological theology (Caputo opts for the term theopoetics since it isn’t quite a “logic”) that utterly dispenses with the epistemological problems often associated with religious commitment. To ignore the question of God’s existence does nothing to lessen the responsibility we hold in responding to God’s call. In fact, Caputo’s assertion is in many ways a firm commitment to Christian (though not exclusively Christian) mysticism, particularly the thought of Maister Eckhart, who makes regular appearances in the book. God is unknowable, unsayable, unthinkable. And so, Caputo argues, any attempt to nail God down is to miss the mark and threatens letting humanity off the hook: as soon as we say that God said so, we can get away with all sorts of things. So to say that God insists is actually a way for Caputo to radicalize faith. It puts all theology in the subjunctive mood, grammatically speaking, into the realm of the perhaps.
In identifying God as an event, Caputo also draws attention to the moving of the Spirit through history, which is almost always an upsetting interruption or help in a way that can only be identified as help or redemptive after the fact. God comes in ways that we don’t understand or anticipate, and that is part of what makes God God. So the event of God is not something we can see coming, but we should be on the lookout for it, to bring it to be in the world and in each other.
This has payoff in a few different ways. First, as already stated, it doesn’t let people off the hook for what God says. Second, it makes faith a risk (which, he argues, is the only way for faith to actually be faith). God perhaps (Caputo almost always uses the name God Perhaps instead of just God) is in Caputo’s weak theology a projectile, not a projection, an absolute other that comes to us in ways we cannot understand or anticipate, yet we must answer the call. In a way, Caputo is schematizing a method for idol smashing, idols inadvertently made in our own image. Finally, this is a way for Caputo to draw religious attention to the here and now of the material world. Following a sermon by Maister Eckhart, Caputo follows the example of Martha (whom Eckhart claimed actually got the better portion out of her encounter with Jesus as opposed to Mary, since she correctly identified Jesus’s human needs and met them while also welcoming him as the son of God) in saying yes to the material world, its material needs, while also saying yes to the rest. Yes, yes. A double affirmation.
God Perhaps, then, is in a chiasmic relationship with humanity: God needs humanity to exist (in Caputo’s schema, since the minds of humans seems to be where the God question is at play, it is reasonable to claim that God’s insistence is a potentiality that can manifest in existence when acted on by humanity) but that humanity needs God to be human. Hence, this is not a schema for dispensing of religion Quite the contrary. Part of Caputo’s goal is to make room for the event of God in spaces of our minds and hearts that are often overlooked. God can happen anywhere, he says, and God happening is an event of grace.
All of these things need to be qualified with a few bits of info that make Caputo, in my opinion, of much more interest to the student of religious thought. First, he left a position at Villanova in the philosophy department to teach at the less prestigious Syracuse University (roots in the Methodist movement) position teaching religion because he was tired of convincing philosophy students that the God question mattered. Second, he qualifies his own work as not quite existing either, saying that a weak theology of perhaps ought not be a dominant system of thought, but instead be a “hauntological” presence that is parasitic upon a host system of thought. Weak theology is a safeguard against bad, toxic religion. He describes it as a pill prescribed, that if it doesn’t kill the host (it is, again, a risk) it might just heal. It is a circumfessional theology that keeps confessional theology in check.
Caputo does an excellent job of maintaining the importance of the faith tradition of Christianity while posing some serious and worthwhile complaints. And while I could see this work being dissatisfying or outright distasteful for many, it strikes me as exceptionally earnest in its intent, and actually verbalizes my own discomfort with much confessional theology, a tradition which I still hold dear and affirm with an asterisk. And perhaps that is the last thing to say about this book: it presents not a denial of a faith but a strong affirmation (what he frequently calls the double affirmative “yes, yes”) of faith in the face of the unknown.
December 22, 2017
Writers should always assume that their readers really want to understand the topic presented in their book and should never talk down to their readers because the reader probably is interested in the topic and has read other books on the topic. This author does that and never holds back in his telling of his story and assumes that the reader really does want to better understand our place in the universe and what our being really entails. I get tired of reading the same old retreaded bromides in most pop science books or philosophical books, but this book is a happy exception to that rule. The author has a lot he wants to share and he is not shy about assuming that his reader really wants to understand.
The author will slip into philosophical speak and slip in a highly dense paragraph or two where he assumes the reader is familiar with philosophy. I found that incredibly refreshing. I don't want to remain stupid. I want to understand. We're thrown into this world and how we think about it determines partly how we experience it and the experiences we form determine how we think about the world. That's a Heideggerian formulation and the author thinks in those terms as well as appealing to Derrida, Kierkegaard, and Hegel and at times Kant.
I thought there were about five different big themes that Caputo was getting within this book. They all lie within this kind of thought: the logos is an event determined by mythos (that's actually a quote from the text); the insistence of the event is the call that leads to the response; Meister Eckhart's prayer to make him "free of God since unconditioned Being is above God and all distinction"; latter in the book, Caputo states the same sentiment in a slightly different framing by saying that to understand reality you must first not know the real in order to understand reality because your real causes your experiences and that determines how you understand the real; it's our "meaning in life" not our "meaning of life" that is relevant. A summary to all these themes is that Grace and chance are given to us without any teleological forethought and the world just is. The world worlds. But, within the world, the only one we know, our proper place is to perhaps see the possible of the impossible.
He spoke at length about the Terrence Malick movie "The Tree of Life". Right after I had heard that section, I re-watched the movie. It really did give me insights into what the author, Caputo, is getting at, and it made me appreciate the movie and this book all the more. The possibility that God exist through the insistence of the events and existence that is around us. There is an ontological difference between the subjective and the objective, the word and the thing, the noumenon and the phenomenon; the possibility of the impossible or the insistence (call) of the event can be the thoughts between our thoughts. That's what gives us the perhaps, the perhaps of the possible of the impossible.
Heidegger said that philosophy ended with Hegel. Everything that could be said about metaphysics had been said (Heidegger would say). Therefore Heidegger used that as his starting off point for his reassessment of his post "Being and Time" thought. That is a big driver within Caputo's way of thinking. He takes Hegel and creates an event through the lens of Heidegger and Derrida (and even a little of Nietzsche) and explains being by considering the event that is real. Everything that 'is' comes from our incomplete understanding of the past which was shaped by our extrapolated expectations of the future as formed by our present. There are no promises from the world to us because a promise without a chance of failure is not a promise.
There's a whole lot of the Caputo that I would disagree with, but that's not important in why I would recommend this book. I'm tired of reading books that no longer challenge the reader and usually just consist of a reformation of something I've read elsewhere. This book is bold and takes chances and always assumes that the reader really wants to understand and never dumb down the conversation. When I looked up Meister Eckhart on Wiki for further explication, I saw that Matthew Fox was referenced. My wife really likes Matthew Fox and that made me realize that there were multiple markets for this book. Those, like her, who are nominally committed to their orthodoxy but are not satisfied with its status quo, and for those like me, who likes to see the world from a different perspective while not being talked down to because we really want to understand being qua being.
(Two further comments. 1) yes, this book is not written at a sophomoric level. But, it's a good place as any to start reading challenging books in order to be able to read other just as challenging books. 2) I had no problem whatsoever with the narrator. I thought he did a very good job. Who cares if he pronounces 'Dasein' incorrectly. I knew what he meant).
The author will slip into philosophical speak and slip in a highly dense paragraph or two where he assumes the reader is familiar with philosophy. I found that incredibly refreshing. I don't want to remain stupid. I want to understand. We're thrown into this world and how we think about it determines partly how we experience it and the experiences we form determine how we think about the world. That's a Heideggerian formulation and the author thinks in those terms as well as appealing to Derrida, Kierkegaard, and Hegel and at times Kant.
I thought there were about five different big themes that Caputo was getting within this book. They all lie within this kind of thought: the logos is an event determined by mythos (that's actually a quote from the text); the insistence of the event is the call that leads to the response; Meister Eckhart's prayer to make him "free of God since unconditioned Being is above God and all distinction"; latter in the book, Caputo states the same sentiment in a slightly different framing by saying that to understand reality you must first not know the real in order to understand reality because your real causes your experiences and that determines how you understand the real; it's our "meaning in life" not our "meaning of life" that is relevant. A summary to all these themes is that Grace and chance are given to us without any teleological forethought and the world just is. The world worlds. But, within the world, the only one we know, our proper place is to perhaps see the possible of the impossible.
He spoke at length about the Terrence Malick movie "The Tree of Life". Right after I had heard that section, I re-watched the movie. It really did give me insights into what the author, Caputo, is getting at, and it made me appreciate the movie and this book all the more. The possibility that God exist through the insistence of the events and existence that is around us. There is an ontological difference between the subjective and the objective, the word and the thing, the noumenon and the phenomenon; the possibility of the impossible or the insistence (call) of the event can be the thoughts between our thoughts. That's what gives us the perhaps, the perhaps of the possible of the impossible.
Heidegger said that philosophy ended with Hegel. Everything that could be said about metaphysics had been said (Heidegger would say). Therefore Heidegger used that as his starting off point for his reassessment of his post "Being and Time" thought. That is a big driver within Caputo's way of thinking. He takes Hegel and creates an event through the lens of Heidegger and Derrida (and even a little of Nietzsche) and explains being by considering the event that is real. Everything that 'is' comes from our incomplete understanding of the past which was shaped by our extrapolated expectations of the future as formed by our present. There are no promises from the world to us because a promise without a chance of failure is not a promise.
There's a whole lot of the Caputo that I would disagree with, but that's not important in why I would recommend this book. I'm tired of reading books that no longer challenge the reader and usually just consist of a reformation of something I've read elsewhere. This book is bold and takes chances and always assumes that the reader really wants to understand and never dumb down the conversation. When I looked up Meister Eckhart on Wiki for further explication, I saw that Matthew Fox was referenced. My wife really likes Matthew Fox and that made me realize that there were multiple markets for this book. Those, like her, who are nominally committed to their orthodoxy but are not satisfied with its status quo, and for those like me, who likes to see the world from a different perspective while not being talked down to because we really want to understand being qua being.
(Two further comments. 1) yes, this book is not written at a sophomoric level. But, it's a good place as any to start reading challenging books in order to be able to read other just as challenging books. 2) I had no problem whatsoever with the narrator. I thought he did a very good job. Who cares if he pronounces 'Dasein' incorrectly. I knew what he meant).
May 3, 2015
(I may have skipped a couple of chapters so I could get done before my kindle unlimited free month expired...)
This was a book read at the right time for me. I couldn't have read it a few years ago and I could imagine other readers finding it deeply troubling. Perhaps it's deeply troubling that I don't find it deeply troubling, but 'perhaps' is the theme of the book. It's also difficult to read without some background in philosophy, especially Kant and Hegel.
I took down 11 pages of quotes including:
‘God does not bring closure but a gap. A God of the gaps is not the gap God fills, but the gap God opens. The name of God makes the present a space troubled by an immemorial past and an unforeseeable future.’
‘Radicality for me refers to our inescapable exposure to the unforeseeable…the hermeneutic art of seeing in the dark, the dark art of seeing what we cannot see coming. Radical theology is a memoir of the blind.’
'The space-bound and time-bound character of our understanding is never denied in theopoetics, but that bond is not treated as a limitation and made to serve the purpose of clearing a path for faith in a God outside space and time who sees and knows all and manages all things unto good. The worldly limits of our understanding are instead the way we have access to what is going on in and under the name of God'
'Faith is faith when it is groping in the dark'
'Theopoetics lives on the edge of the gaps opened by the insistence of God. Theopoetics treats the event as a ‘call,’ and every account of a call must include an account of the response. Theopoetics is the poetics of the particular events insisting in the name of ‘God,’ in which it hears a weak call, discerns a solicitation, yields to a certain pressure, a certain insistence.'
'"Perhaps" enables the chance of the gift and the gift of chance; it clears the space for the grace of a gift and the gift of a grace…[it] hovers over things, pronouncing an ancient but ever-wary benediction, like an Elohim who pronounces things ‘good’ all the while keeping his fingers crossed.'
This was a book read at the right time for me. I couldn't have read it a few years ago and I could imagine other readers finding it deeply troubling. Perhaps it's deeply troubling that I don't find it deeply troubling, but 'perhaps' is the theme of the book. It's also difficult to read without some background in philosophy, especially Kant and Hegel.
I took down 11 pages of quotes including:
‘God does not bring closure but a gap. A God of the gaps is not the gap God fills, but the gap God opens. The name of God makes the present a space troubled by an immemorial past and an unforeseeable future.’
‘Radicality for me refers to our inescapable exposure to the unforeseeable…the hermeneutic art of seeing in the dark, the dark art of seeing what we cannot see coming. Radical theology is a memoir of the blind.’
'The space-bound and time-bound character of our understanding is never denied in theopoetics, but that bond is not treated as a limitation and made to serve the purpose of clearing a path for faith in a God outside space and time who sees and knows all and manages all things unto good. The worldly limits of our understanding are instead the way we have access to what is going on in and under the name of God'
'Faith is faith when it is groping in the dark'
'Theopoetics lives on the edge of the gaps opened by the insistence of God. Theopoetics treats the event as a ‘call,’ and every account of a call must include an account of the response. Theopoetics is the poetics of the particular events insisting in the name of ‘God,’ in which it hears a weak call, discerns a solicitation, yields to a certain pressure, a certain insistence.'
'"Perhaps" enables the chance of the gift and the gift of chance; it clears the space for the grace of a gift and the gift of a grace…[it] hovers over things, pronouncing an ancient but ever-wary benediction, like an Elohim who pronounces things ‘good’ all the while keeping his fingers crossed.'
February 25, 2014
It is a book that exposes us to a prayer, to a call, to anticipate the coming of an event we have not seen nor could ever imagine. Caputo is calling us to the life already in life, insisting and haunting us to take a chance on the chance of grace, to partake of the gift of grace. To embrace the promise of gift, which is also the "insistence of the event that persists in the name of God, that opens one up to the "possibility of the impossible, harbored in and by the name (of) God," perhaps.
August 31, 2018
Another excellent addition to Caputo's weakness of God theology. Prose is a little clunky and dramatic at times, but a well-informed, poetic defense of a radical theological understanding of God.
December 1, 2017
Calling... breathtaking...
August 25, 2022
This was a challenging read by a highly articulate philosopher/theologian whose ideas have been very influential. I found them intriguing and very thought-provoking.
December 8, 2022
I like reading Caputo. However, this book in my opinion gets a bit redundant and delves too much into the philosophical weeds.
February 16, 2024
Brilliant work. The justice of Derrida is now the radical God of the Gap that the Event opens, where theopoetics appears as the only hope to describe that enigma of possibility.
November 2, 2015
I have given this book 4 stars because I do not feel qualified to give it 5 due to the fact there are references and terminology of which I am ignorant. Listening to this on Audible made it difficult for me to check out various words, sources etc. Having watched and listened Jack Caputo on YouTube etc I was attracted to his sincerity, genuineness and winsome approach so I thought I would give it a try and it was worth the effort! The style of the book for me is not technical at all but natural and at times quirky - playful with words. I found there to be much repetition but that was OK for me as it gave me more time for comprehension.
Centred around the story of Mary and Martha, the main theme is "The insistence of God" through "the event" whose existence is realised through our acceptance of that event as a "perhaps". This vulnerability which 'perhaps' effects, as unpalatable as it may be, brings with its uncertainty true faith in the "possibility of the impossible". This 'perhaps', no longer an adverb but a noun is the living earthly reality in which God is realised - perhaps. This 'perhaps' is neither the negation of God of the (new) atheist nor the apophatic idea of the mystic. References and comparisons are made between Kantian and Hegelian positions as well as the Speculative Realism of Quentin Meillassoux which I could not fully grasp. I suspect that much of the terminology used by the author is referenced from his commitment to the philosophy of Jacques Derrida and a knowledge of at least Derrida's book "Of Gramatology" would help in understanding this present book. Theologically I have many differences but in searching for the truth in this book there are great rewards the greatest of which for me is that living on the knife edge of uncertainty is more akin to authentic faith than holding onto conceptual 'certainties' with which religion so easily tends to rely on. Secondly the philosophy espoused in this book lends me to a faith in the "possibility of the impossible" - an openness to what could be. Thirdly I am encouraged to value each event - this event - as precious, unique - even as a 'perhaps' carrying within it embedded an invitation to co-operate - participate, collaborate, conspire with a zest comparable to that Spirit which moved Jesus in fellowship with the Father. I'm not sure if that is what JC would intend for the reader to draw from the book but hey! - "perhaps" so! Things to follow up might be Theopoetics, Weak Theology, Speculative Realism, Kant, Hegel and Derrida.
Centred around the story of Mary and Martha, the main theme is "The insistence of God" through "the event" whose existence is realised through our acceptance of that event as a "perhaps". This vulnerability which 'perhaps' effects, as unpalatable as it may be, brings with its uncertainty true faith in the "possibility of the impossible". This 'perhaps', no longer an adverb but a noun is the living earthly reality in which God is realised - perhaps. This 'perhaps' is neither the negation of God of the (new) atheist nor the apophatic idea of the mystic. References and comparisons are made between Kantian and Hegelian positions as well as the Speculative Realism of Quentin Meillassoux which I could not fully grasp. I suspect that much of the terminology used by the author is referenced from his commitment to the philosophy of Jacques Derrida and a knowledge of at least Derrida's book "Of Gramatology" would help in understanding this present book. Theologically I have many differences but in searching for the truth in this book there are great rewards the greatest of which for me is that living on the knife edge of uncertainty is more akin to authentic faith than holding onto conceptual 'certainties' with which religion so easily tends to rely on. Secondly the philosophy espoused in this book lends me to a faith in the "possibility of the impossible" - an openness to what could be. Thirdly I am encouraged to value each event - this event - as precious, unique - even as a 'perhaps' carrying within it embedded an invitation to co-operate - participate, collaborate, conspire with a zest comparable to that Spirit which moved Jesus in fellowship with the Father. I'm not sure if that is what JC would intend for the reader to draw from the book but hey! - "perhaps" so! Things to follow up might be Theopoetics, Weak Theology, Speculative Realism, Kant, Hegel and Derrida.
May 1, 2018
I think Caputo’s The Weakness of God is his more thought provoking book, turning the typical conception of powerful theism on its head. His third book is good as well, but a headache that I need to revisit.
This book is a sorta “cosmo-poetics”, Capturo says, and it reads in repetition - where much like when reading Nigel - I’m wondering what point I have missed. when I’m fact, it’s just a simple point he is trying to drive home.
In simplicity, this book seems to be a theistic conception of some aspect of Derrida’s work, as Caputo acknowledges. Having not read Derrida, I enjoyed it, but feel I need to read it again.
In essence, it seems to focus on the danger of Event versus Simulacrum. “Test all spirits”, for you don’t know if the name of god you engage is actually an event, or the evil that comes of assuming wrong.
An Event is a perhaps. God is the name of the arch-Event. God is perhaps.
For the post religious, this is a healthy read to help cure any traumas that have become god, doing away w neurotic needs of certainty, perhaps.
This book is a sorta “cosmo-poetics”, Capturo says, and it reads in repetition - where much like when reading Nigel - I’m wondering what point I have missed. when I’m fact, it’s just a simple point he is trying to drive home.
In simplicity, this book seems to be a theistic conception of some aspect of Derrida’s work, as Caputo acknowledges. Having not read Derrida, I enjoyed it, but feel I need to read it again.
In essence, it seems to focus on the danger of Event versus Simulacrum. “Test all spirits”, for you don’t know if the name of god you engage is actually an event, or the evil that comes of assuming wrong.
An Event is a perhaps. God is the name of the arch-Event. God is perhaps.
For the post religious, this is a healthy read to help cure any traumas that have become god, doing away w neurotic needs of certainty, perhaps.
December 8, 2015
Oh, this was a hard book to read. Very hard. Partly because much of it is poetic in style and argument--evocative rather than closely argued (my comfort zone). Partly because many of the philosophers and theologians he engages are known to me mostly through secondary literature, and much of that read a long time ago--especially his engagement with Kant and Hegel. Partly because many of the philosophers he engages are unknown to me. Partly because I fell under his spell over and over again, only to discover that what I hoped he'd finally say he did not. Partly because the book challenges so much of what I really, really want to believe. An amazing book. It will haunt my theological musings for a long while. Highly recommended.
March 4, 2014
amazing contribution
May 19, 2016
Caputo's Radical theology at its finest.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews