Numéro thématique
- CUVILLIER Élian, RENAUD-GROSBRAS Pascale - Avant-propos
- CAPUTO John D. - L’audace de Dieu : prolégomènes à une théologie faible
- CAPUTO John D. - L’insistance de Dieu
- CAPUTO John D. - Insistance et hospitalité : Marthe et Marie dans un monde postmoderne
- DELECROIX Vincent - La Bible à la lettre. Délittéralisation et lecture littérale chez Caputo
- CUVILLIER Élian - Puissance de la faiblesse divine. Relire 1 Co 1,18-25 en compagnie de John D. Caputo
- CAUSSE Jean-Daniel - Il vient. Dialogue avec John D. Caputo et sa théorie de l’événement
- NAULT François - John D. Caputo, penseur de l’éducation : philosophie, hantologie, théologie
- RENAUD-GROSBRAS Pascale - Pour une théologie du mouvement : l’épreuve de la pratique pastorale
In this article, John D. Caputo explains how God does not exist, God insists, which gives humankind a great responsibility in order for God to exist. « Perhaps » is an open door to risk, to the unexpected of a possible existence, and constitutes a theology of what may come, what can come and cannot be seen coming. A weak theology is thus sketched, in dialogue with post-modern philosophy, calling for an audacity that mirrors that of God.
In this second chapter of his book The Insistence of God, the author pleads for a theology of « perhaps » against a comforting religion, for unrest in the expectation of a coming event against a religion that offers answers and certainties, for the contingency of beliefs against the eternal thruth of dogmas; thus Caputo offers some elements of a deconstructionist theology, or rather of a deconstruction of theology. The insistence of God is defined as the insisting call by which God calls to humans, without whom God dies. Insofar as we expose ourselves to the trouble this call creates in us, prayer becomes the gap between God’s existence and insistence. Thus theism and atheism are the two sides of the same attempt to escape the trouble of the call of a God who does not exist but who insists, a God whose name is the metonym of the event. Master Eckhart, Angelus Silesius, Kierkegaard and Derrida are some of the authors called upon to point the path of this theology.
In this third chapter of The Insistence of God, Caputo defines hospitality as the ability to answer « come » to the call of the other. An other who is not identical, but tout autre, another who is the hostis, the stranger who might just as well be hostile. Thus, with Derrida, hospitality may become « hostipitality ». The very structure of God’s insistence is precisely the incapacity to be certain. This incapacity is no failure, but on the contrary the capacity to bear uncertainty. This reflection on hospitality, built upon and around a reading of Luke 10,38-42, constitutes a panel of variations upon the « impossibility of the possible », another way of saying « God ».
What could be the role played by the biblical reference within the task of a deconstruction of metaphysics undertaken by Caputo? Biblical language is not only – maybe not at all – what is affected by the crisis of metaphysics: it also participates in it and maybe makes it possible. What onto-theology has built is also what deconstructs it. Consequently, the ambivalent status of the word is at stake. A postmodern theology requires a « deliteralization » of such a language, which is also a des-ontologization; but it forces at the same time to turn back to a close and ad literamreading against its religious and ontotheological translation. The way Caputo comments the two narratives of creation in Genesis represents more than an example of this double operation: if the status of the biblical word is linked to its des-ontologization, the narratives of creation, read literally, provide its very occasion by deconstructing the almighty Creator and sovereign ruler of Being. Literally read, such a word opens the field for thinking the event that makes deliteralization itself possible.
This article first tackles Caputo’s understanding of the Apostle Paul, recognizing his debt towards him (with the idea of the weakness of God) as well as his critique (namely that Paul quickly abandons the notion of a weak God). If Caputo is right in asserting that, after insisting on the radical notion of the weakness of God, Paul does reinstate the figure of a strong God eventually victorious over his enemies, it is necessary to nuance this assertion, as well as to keep the tension between those two contradictory elements. Then Élian Cuvillier offers a critical reading of 1 Co 1,18-25 and discusses Caputo’s assertions about the challenge theology is currently facing. He concludes with the necessity to continue the task of de-mythologizing the Pauline language.
Advent and expectation are at the heart of John D. Caputo’s philosophy of religion. Thus, « God » is the name of what is coming, what is always a-coming, which is why Caputo dismisses the theme of the death of God in favour of the birth of God, more in keeping with a philosophy of the event. The author discusses this question, indicating how Christianity is built upon a double absence or double kenosis which constitutes its understanding of the event. He then stresses and discusses three aspects of Caputo’s structure of the event – It cannot be foreseen, it is traumatic, it needs to be welcomed – before discussing how Christological messianism, close yet distinct from Derrida’s messianism, allows for the articulation of three tenses for the verb « come »: « he has come, » « he comes, » « he will come ».
This article explores some recent propositions by John D. Caputo regarding the question of education. This provides for an occasion to tackle some themes developed by Caputo in recent years and to encounter his style, or method, although this method is all but methodical, being rather an adventure in thinking. The question of a « theology of education » is finally broached and discussed with the question of the possible place for a radical theology within the University.
Practicing theology shakes up the immobility we desperately dream of, that which often orders our concepts and our locis theologicis. The author describes how practical theology, particularly as it is applied in pastoral ministry, is in itself movement. Movement is a chance for theology, not by any deliberate choice, but because it pertains to its very object: what is coming is the horizon of our hope