THIS is written with integrity and passion. Its conclusion may well be mistaken, but in that case it deserves a response. When Socrates was put on trial for his life on charges that included corrupting the youth of Athens, he said that he would welcome his arguments’ being refuted — as any good philosopher should. Caputo throws down a similarly convincing gauntlet.
The God of conventional theism is dead, the author argues. The God who lies at the end of a chain of arguments, who is the necessary Being above and beyond being, and who answers prayers and defends the weak, can no long be defended. Given this, the book seeks a way forward without reverting to atheism or pantheism. As the author puts it, “The name of God is not the name of some being up there or out there but of a form of life down here.”
The universe is destined, physics tells us, to end in death or extinction, including all that lies within it. This is not just the death of you or me, but of any advanced super-intelligence that we evolve (transhumanism) and of all stars and galaxies. Where is a way forward, then, for theology?
If a few words were to describe the book, it provides a challenging and inspiring vision that moves beyond Tillich’s “ground of our being” and provides hope and possibility when all may seem dark. But this possibility is not to be found in some future ontology, but in a present, always pregnant with possibility, that depends on human choices made in the present to make it real.
God is love, and love is God. It is in determining what (if anything) we truly love, unconditionally, that real wisdom and meaning is found. It is this possibility of love without reward, without hope of payback, that real religion should affirm. As the writer puts it, “Why feed the hungry? Because. Why bother? It is without why.”
Wherever real love is present, God is there; and wherever real love is absent, God is not. By implication, God is not to be found in many loveless religious institutions, and is to be found in “Love’s work” (as Gillian Rose made clear).
The book leaves the reader with a sense of hope in an impossibly dark long-term future. Traditional theology has always held that there is more to it than that, but those who reject Caputo’s approach will need a cogent exposition of what this “more” is and what difference it makes.
The subtitle of the book is Twelve brief lessons in radical theology. The theology is most certainly radical. The book is warmly recommended — not only for the argument that it puts forward, but also in the hope that this might prompt an intellectually rigorous alternative vision. The latter will not be an easy task.
Dr Peter Vardy is a former Vice-Principal of Heythrop College, University of London.
What to Believe? Twelve brief lessons in radical theology
John D. Caputo
Columbia University Press £22
(978-0-231-21095-9)
Church Times Bookshop £19.80