In my last post I coined the term “faitheism” which, if I do say so myself, is quite clever. The combining of concepts that at first glance appear contradictory is a pretty Christian thing to do (at least if the union of divinity and humanity in the person of Christ has anything to say about […]
Category: John Caputo
Theodicy and “Faitheism”
In his book In Search of Radical Theology, John Caputo offers a unique theodicy to address the fact that the Kingdom of God has not arrived (a theodicy is literally a “defense of God,” usually in response to the so-called problem of evil). There are a couple ways of dealing with this disappointing fact, the […]
Cheat Codes, Grace, and Shiny Happy People
I just picked up a copy of John Caputo’s book, In Search of Radical Theology, and the following passage sort of jumped off the page: Our quasi-Augustinian confession, confessing that there is no big supernatural or transcendental something or other coming over the hill to save us, is the saving. It reminded me of something […]
A Theopoetics of Exile: Avoiding the Void
Those who have been following my work will know that I have been highlighting the concept of “Exile” as a kind of catch-all category to describe ideas like divine weakness, folly, and (what Luther called) the theology of the cross. Further, I am placing Exile in contradistinction from “Empire,” which is the source of ideas […]
VATICAN’T (Catholicism Without All the Uplifting Parts): Week 9 — God’s Risky Atheism
As we wrap up our Vatican’t series I’d like to explore a bit further something I alluded to in my last post. Speaking of the effects of the Jesus story upon humankind, I wrote: Or to put all this in (much) less orthodox terms, maybe there is no external divine Agent accomplishing any of this, […]
VATICAN’T (Catholicism Without All the Uplifting Parts): Week 5 — Divine Atheism
In our last post in this series we saw that Jesus, by his anguished cry of dereliction from the cross (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”), utterly and completely subverted the American Gospel which promises that we can avoid the void if we just do X, Y, or Z. Rather than seeking to […]