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ABSTRACT
This paper is an analysis of John Caputo’s philosophical interpretation of ‘the event’ as a form of revelation with specific reference to political theology and in dialogue with the theological notion of ‘interruption’ by the fundamental theologian Lieven Boeve. Following Charles Taylor’s interpretation of the post-secular, the argument is that Boeve’s ‘radical hermeneutics of religion’ is more postmodern than Caputo because it presents religion as co-constituted with language, particularity, and contingency and grounded within the specificity of the Christian narrative.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. The Sacred is “something more,” surprising, radically other, the impossible, which makes it somewhere between spiritual and the religious, when spirituality is understood as seeking and religion means creeds, traditions, codes, and rituals. See Kearney, Reimagining the Sacred, 16. While the sacred and the holy are often used interchangeably, there are differences. The Holy is a concept that refers to the “really real” of religious phenomenon independent of cultural and social coordinates – objective and outside of the self. It is an experience found around the world of something “out of the ordinary” in religious people, places, and things. The holy is also the “really real” here in the saint and pilgrimage site. And the religious people who use this term think they know what the term means when they use it. See Robert Orsi, “The Problem of the Holy” in The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies, 85–86.
2. Taylor, A Secular Age, 3.
3. Ibid., 555.
4. Smith, How (Not) to be Secular, 3–4.
5. It is important to note that postmodernism and postsecularism are not the same thing. Postmodernism can be defined as a mode of discourse that is skeptical of all metanarratives and assumes the death of metaphysics, the dismissal of objective facts, and the inescapability of ideology in an age of simulacra. Postsecularism is a term marking the resurgence of religious belief and practice and its return to the public square at the end of secularism. However, they do roughly overlap in terms of chronology and regarding the relativity of truth claims and proliferation of choices.
6. Ibid., 21.
7. Kearny, “Transcendent Humanism in a Secular Age: Dialogue with Charles Taylor,” in Reimagining the Sacred, 76.
8. Smith, How (Not) to be Secular, 99.
9. Ibid., 22.
10. Taylor, A Secular Age, 300.
11. Ibid., 542.
12. Ibid., 548.
13. “Transcendent Humanism in the Secular Age: A Dialogue with Charles Taylor,” 77.
14. Taylor, A Secular Age, 769.
15. “Transcendent Humanism in the Secular Age: A Dialogue with Charles Taylor,” 78.
16. Taylor, A Secular Age, 20.
17. See note 15 above.
18. Ibid., 85–86.
19. According to Justin Sands, “fundamental theology is understood as a theological discipline operating through two movements. First is an inward, reflective exploration of the foundations of Christianity as faith based on God”s revelation. In this movement, fundamental theology seeks to understand Christianity”s reception of revelation through Scripture and tradition. Second, it operates through an outward dialogical exploration of understanding revelation (and subsequently doctrine) by engaging sources and disciplines that do not adhere to revelation as a basic principle.” See Reasoning from Faith: Fundamental Theology in Merold Westphal”s Philosophy of Religion, 174–175.
20. Boeve, “Negative Theology and Theological Hermeneutics,” 1.
21. Ibid., 1–2.
22. Kearney, “God After God: An Anatheist Attempt to Reimagine God,” in Reimagining the Sacred, 15.
23. Ornella, “The End is Nigh,” The New Visibility of Religion and Cultural Hermeneutics, 136.
24. Kearney, “Epilogue: In Guise of a Response,” in Reimaging the Sacred, 250.
25. Sands, Reasoning from Faith, 174.
26. Dalferth, “Introduction: Understanding Revelation,” 2.
27. Putt, “Friends and Strangers/Poets and Rabbis, The Future of the Continental Philosophy of Religion, 34.
28. Caputo, The Folly of God, 51. Cf. Caputo, The Weakness of God, 291–292.
29. Caputo, The Weakness of God, 4.
30. Caputo, The Folly of God, 126.
31. Caputo, The Weakness of God, 3.
32. Ibid., 20.
33. Ibid., 12.
34. Caputo, Philosophy and Theology, 37.
35. Ibid., 38.
36. Ibid., 50.
37. Caputo and Keller, “Theopoetic/Theopolitic,” Crosscurrents, 105.
38. Ibid.
39. Caputo, The Folly of God, 19.
40. Caputo and Keller, Theopoetic/Theopolitic, 106.
41. Ibid.
42. Caputo and Keller, Theopoetic/Theopolitic, 107.
43. Caputo, “The Invention of Revelation,” Revelation (Claremont Studies), 83.
44. Caputo, The Insistence of God, 93.
45. Putt, “Friends and Strangers/Poets and Rabbis,” 52.
46. Caputo, “The Invention of Revelation,” 82.
47. Ibid., 81.
48. Caputo, The Folly of God, 85.
49. Putt, “Friends and Strangers/Poets and Rabbis, 38.
50. Ibid., 40.
51. Caputo, The Folly of God, 45.
52. Caputo, “The Invention of Revelation, 86.
53. Caputo, The Folly of God, 8.
54. Caputo, “The Invention of Revelation,” 77.
55. Caputo, The Folly of God, 50.
56. Ibid., 84.
57. Ibid., 78.
58. Caputo, The Weakness of God, 267.
59. Caputo, “The Invention of Revelation,” 78.
60. Caputo, The Weakness of God, 268.
61. Ibid., 270.
62. Putt, “Friends and Strangers/Poets and Rabbis,” 52–53.
63. Caputo, The Folly of God, 127.
64. Caputo, The Weakness of God, 45.
65. Ibid.
66. Cf. Kearney, “What”s God? A Shout in the Street: Dialogue with Simon Critchley,” in Reimaging the Sacred, 149–174.
67. Caputo, “The Invention of Revelation,” 82–83.
68. Caputo, The Folly of God, 28.
69. Ibid., 55.
70. Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct?, 88.
71. Crockett, Radical Political Theology, 2.
72. Caputo, Philosophy and Theology, 64–65.
73. Paolozzi, “The Reality of Revelation,” Revelation (Claremont Studies), 93.
74. Gutting, Talking God, 41–42.
75. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, 89.
76. Boeve and Brabant, “Conclusion,” Between Philosophy and Theology, 218–219.
77. Cf. The Weakness of God, 32–33.
78. Cf. Urbaniak, “Christ-Event in Tracy and Badiou,” 1003. He makes the general point that the iconoclasm of radical postmodern philosophers crushes religious icons with the idols.
79. Putt, “Friends and Strangers/Poets and Rabbis,” 43, 49.
80. Caputo, The Folly of God, 75–76.
81. Westphal, “Continental Philosophy of Religion,” 492.
82. Boeve, Lyotard and Theology, 7–8.
83. Ibid., 22.
84. Boeve, God Interrupts History, 7.
85. Ibid., 201.
86. Cf. Godzieba, A Theology of the Presence and Absence of God.
87. Boeve, Lyotard and Theology, 49.
88. Ibid., 125.
89. Boeve, God Interrupts History, 1.
90. Boeve, Lyotard and Theology, 95.
91. Boeve, “Negative Theology and Theological Hermeneutics,” 4.
92. Boeve, Lyotard and Theology, 98.
93. Boeve, Interrupting Tradition, 109.
94. Boeve and Brabant, Between Philosophy and Theology, 226.
95. Ibid., 216.
96. Boeve, “Negative Theology and Theological Hermeneutics,” 12.
97. Boeve, Interrupting Tradition, 107.
98. Boeve, “Negative Theology and Theological Hermeneutics,” 10–11.
99. Boeve, Interrupting Tradition, 156.
100. Deconstruction is an aspect of the broader phenomenon of postmodernism and focuses on how “things (texts, institutions, traditions, societies, beliefs, or practices do not have definable meanings and determinable missions, that they are always more than any mission would impose, that they exceed the boundaries they occupy. What is really going on in things … is always to come.” See John. D. Caputo ed., Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida, 31–32.
101. Boeve, “The Interruption of Political Theology,” 66.
102. Ibid.
103. Boeve, “Revelation, Scripture and Tradition,” 416.
104. Ibid., 421.
105. Ibid., 422.
106. Ibid.
107. Ibid., 423.
108. Ibid., 425.
109. Ibid., 433.
110. Ibid.
111. Boeve, “Creating Space for Catholic Theology,” 855.
112. Ibid., 835.
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Notes on contributors
Craig A. Baron
Craig A. Baron (Ph.D. Duquesne University) is an associate professor of Theology and chairman of the Humanities department at St. John’s University, New York City, where he specializes in fundamental theology and the philosophy of religion. His articles have appeared in The Heythrop Journal, Crosscurrents and Questions Liturgiques.