Reviews for The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event

The average rating for The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-08-13 00:00:00 R. Rivadeneira Helping God Escape Our largely secularised world prides itself on its freedom from the deadly virus of religious dogmatism. This condition, one might believe, frees us also from the need to know anything about theology. But it is the remnants of religious doctrine which lurk in our presumptions about what constitutes reality that are often more potently destructive than any explicit dogma. These remnants are largely unconscious, undiscussed and impenetrable except in a theological genre. I believe that 'power' is one of the most important of these theological remnants. And John Caputo is arguably the world's leading thinker about how we might make them explicit, and thereby a matter of some debate, and perhaps even choice. Caputo puts the matter bluntly: "One of the most fundamental fantasies of religion is the fantasy of power." Among other things it is this fantasy that religion perennially tries to sell to those in power, for its own advantage, that destroys religion from within. And it is this fantasy which The Weakness of God seeks to reveal as such. Power is an inevitably theological problem in that no matter where or how it is exercised - politically, militarily, socially, within the family, the firm, or the charitable organisation - it provokes the question of its legitimacy and its ultimate source. The assertion that the legitimate font of power is the monarch, or the law, or the president, or even The People, begs the question 'Why?'. Historically therefore, one way or another, Ultimate Power, God in some guise, is invoked as its justification. Caputo's idea is to stop thinking about God as a massive source of ontological or dynamic power that connects via spiritual high tension lines to governments, ruling hierarchies, and individuals. He invokes instead the (rather undogmatic) Judaeo-Christian idea of the "power of powerlessness", a weak force (for lack of a better vocabulary) which is exerted by the "unconditional claim" that we have on each other as human beings. God, for Caputo, is neither a set of doctrinal propositions nor a fixed point of belief, nor a sovereign power or authority. God is a "call, a promise, and a hope". In traditional theology God is termed 'not a thing'. Caputo conceives of God in a similar way, as an 'event'. "The name of God is powerful because it is the name of our hope in the contract Elohim makes with things when he calls them 'good', when he calls them to the good...The name of God is the name of an unconditional promise not of unlimited power". Caputo is not a closet atheist or anti-traditionalist. Neither is he a biblical literalist. But he is keenly sensitive to questionable interpretations. For example, a rather persistent doctrine of creation ex nihilo, from nothing, doesn't stand the test of comparison with biblical testimony. In Genesis the movement is not from non-being to being at all; it is from being to the good. Thus this presumed fundamental power of God can be seen as a philosophical rationalisation - of someone's existing power to be sure. Caputo spends a great deal of thought on the biblical Kingdom of God. "The Kingdom of God is the event called by the name of God,... [it is] the contradiction of the 'world' (cosmos) which is the order of power and privilege and self interest, of the business as usual of those who would prevent the event." Caputo's message, despite the apparently archaic but precisely apt terms in which it is expressed, is for 'prophecy'. "A prophet belongs not to the order of being...but to the order of the event, of the call, ... a troublemaker who speaks for justice now." The task of the prophet is to release what is happening within the name of God in the world. So, if you're thinking that, I don't know, maybe the Democratic Party in the USA, or the Labour Party in Britain, or the Social Democrats in Europe, could use a new foundation for their political life, perhaps there is something in Caputo that touches a nerve. Is there even a possibility for a political party of weakness ro exist?

Review # 2 was written on 2009-10-20 00:00:00 Victor White My initial attraction to this book was largely based on the title. As anyone familiar with liberation theology can attest, the dominant understanding of God and his relationship to humanity is based upon a narrative articulated and perpetrated by the powerful. As such, religion -- especially in its institutionalized form -- always reinforced hierarchical social arrangements. God's power is a reflection and a projection of the power of the elite. In undermining this dominant theological narrative, liberation theology has to look at God from the point of view of the oppressed. Hence, it has to begin not with the omnipotence of God, but with his weakness. John D. Caputo is a professional philosopher and a leading figure in offering theological interpretations of the thought of Jacques Derrida. In this work, as in others, he engages in a "deconstruction" of traditional Christian theological narratives. Caputo focuses on a few key principles. First, God's "reign" is a Kingdom. God's power is typified in the act of creation ex nihilo. God's power is such that he can change the past, and lastly, that God's forgiveness takes place within an economy of restitution. In "undoing" these principles (arche), Caputo maintains a few themes of his own. Namely, the name of God signifies not a being but an event; the Kingdom of God is a kind of "divine anarchy;" and that the insufficiency of logic-based discourses should be replaced by a "poetics of the impossible." The book itself is not without its own weakness. At times it feels really repetitive. The author probably could have whittled it down a hundred pages or so. Also, it assumes some knowledge of the major disputes of 20th Century Continental philosophy. The core arguments can probably be grasped by the layperson if she is patient and doesn't mind glossing over various lemmas and forays into the more esoteric aspects of philosophy. But a comprehensive reading requires at least a familiarity with the likes of Derrida, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Marion, Benjamin, Zizek and Deleuze. My main problem with the book however, has to do with the implications of Caputo's idea "divine anarchy." A theory of Divine anarchy should function like any other anarchist theory, which is to say, it should outline a specific framework for action. As is typical of of a philosopher, Caputo is more interested in theory than action. While the book offers excellent theoretical material for deconstructing dominant theological narratives, it doesn't offer a formula for liberation. Given this limitation, within its scope it is still a worthwhile book. The section of forgiveness is especially beautiful.