The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event (Indiana University Press, 2006) is the most recent work by John Caputo, the well-known postmodern philosopher and scholar of the French Deconstructionist, Jacques Derrida. It is a book not for the faint of heart, and yet it is a well-crafted work that seeks interplay between philosophical and theological concepts that usually aren’t given much attention in a genre more known for asking questions like, “Could God create a rock so big he couldn’t move it?”
Caputo’s main argument is that the Christian religion is one prefaced on weakness and that all our attempts at describing God as a metaphysical light and power show we might find on a Hollywood digital effects screen is more of a Nietzschean “will to power” than accurate theology. More specifically, our descriptions of God as sovereign and omnipotent really stem from our own fanciful desires for dictatorial power, my-god-is-bigger-than-your-god mentality, and continued commitment to the world’s economy based on hierarchy and pay-back. By looking at God as an event, or rather, unleashing the event which is housed in his name (a concept I can’t begin to explain), we find a “second order act” (9), or a theology for the weak, the powerless, the full of doubt, those looking to be wooed and called by God rather than forced as a mere pawn.
There are many things I like about this book, and though at times I sense Caputo goes to extremes (and often falls into a modernistic form of liberalism), he offers a fresh reading on texts we often glaze over. What Caputo understands well is at the heart of the message of Jesus is exactly what his disciples never would have expected. They were looking for a Messiah to overthrow the Roman government and return Israel back to the glory days of Solomon and David. Instead, they got a child born in “straw poverty” (as Bono likes to put it) who told his followers to turn the other cheek, forgive until they were blue in the face, love their enemies, and be sure to invite the most oppressed and disenfranchised to all their parties. Truly, the kingdom of the heavens is a kingdom of reversals where the first are last, the greatest are the servants, the exemplary disciples are little children, and justice is brought to the least of these. As Caputo states about this “sacred anarchy”:
“The kingdom of God obeys the law of reversals in virtue of which whatever is first is last, whatever is out is in, whatever is lost is saved, where even death has a certain power over the living, all of which confounds the dynamics of strong forces…The kingdom of God is the rule of weak forces like patience and forgiveness, which, instead of forcibly exacting payments for an offense, release and let go. The kingdom is found whenever war and aggression are met with an offer of peace… The kingdom reigns wherever the least and most undesirable are favored while the best and most powerful are put on the defensive” (14-15).
This is precisely the message of Jesus that puzzled so many who heard him – and continues to do so today. In a world in which we are constantly compelled to “one-up” the person next to us, climb the ladder so that we can stare down at all those below, and like the disciples, always ask “Who is the greatest?,” Jesus words come as a shock. This is a message Caputo describes well and needs to be proclaimed more often.
Caputo goes to great lengths to defend his theology of weakness by calling into question creatio ex nihilo, that most metaphysical heyday in which God best displayed his sheer power and brute strength by creating the world out of nothing. Leaning largely on Catherine Kellor’s Face of the Deep, Caputo exegetes the Genesis creation account essentially to point out that the wild land (tohu wa-bohu) and the see (tehom) were already in existence before God’s first spoken word (1:2-3). In short, then, God is more of an artist than a all-powerful creator, one who takes clay and molds and fashions and forms and transforms (metanoia). Caputo states:
“In the beginning, they are there, wind and waters and land, barren and lifeless, the wind sweeping over the deep, everywhere darkness…Then Elohim was moved to speak to them, and by addressing them to bring them to life, to awaken life in them…He calls them into life; he does not bring them into being, for the whole point is that they were there all along… Genesis is not about being, but about life.” (58)
I am intrigued by Caputo’s argument and agree that the Genesis account of creation has far more to offer than (what some believe) a proof that Darwin is wrong (considering Genesis was written several thousand years before Darwin came along, I hardly believe evolution was the author’s primary concern). However, Caputo’s argument isn’t enough for me to simply punt on my belief in the sovereignty of God (although it may need to be redefined). It is here Caputo makes a huge leap in thought, concluding, that by pulling the rug out of those who hold to creatio ex nihilo he has single-handedly brought down the entire construct of viewing God as “a strong force, a power of this world” (90). This not only has a kind of foundationalist feel, but Caputo also fails to take into account the vast amount of other passages of scripture that speak of God as powerful, sovereign, and as ruler. Even if we accept his rendering of Genesis 1 and that the Jews didn’t believe in creatio ex nihilo (since this metaphysical idea didn’t come around until the second century CE), any God who can call human beings and all that exists in the world “into life” certainly still has quite an astonishing ability.
Caputo’s theological lens becomes clear when articulates disbelief in Jesus’ miraculous raising of Lazarus from the dead, for it would have been too powerful of an act for his weakness theology (cf. chapter 11). This is not to get into an argument as to whether all the miracles of the Bible actually did occur (and even if they did, the time periods in which they did are in such small proportion to the rest of redemptive history). It just seems easier to believe the narrative as it is written than to conjure up the “real story” and try to reinterpret all the texts of scripture that don’t seem to fit into the theological framework one would like to create. Again, here Caputo smacks of modernism by forcing his theology of weakness upon the text and makes them fit (and at times, he simply throws out passages he doesn’t like).
Though Caputo addresses many other issues and topics (his exegesis of 1 Corinthians 1, which is central to his theology of weakness, is well worth the read), it all comes to a head with the problem of suffering and evil. Although this long-time question of philosophical theology is not the heading of any chapter in the book, it becomes quickly obvious that the main reason Caputo is arguing for a theology of weakness is to attempt an explanation of the problem of evil. Here, I will let Caputo speak for himself:
“Omnipotence leaves God holding the bag and forces us to offer lame excuses for God to the effect that evil is a little nothing that has leaked into being and that God is only responsible for the being, not the leak, while we, wicked things that we are, are almost all leak, so that a flood is a fitting way to end it all.” (76).
“If you think of God in terms of power, you will be regularly, systematically confounded by … the unevenness of God’s record on behalf of the poor and the oppressed… it is in the end an outright blasphemy to say that God has some mysterious divine purpose when an innocent child is abducted, raped, and murdered...” (90-91).
“God does not steer hurricanes away from the mainland and out to sea, anymore than God has a favorite in the Super Bowl, the NCAA Final Four, or the World Soccer Cup tournaments. God is not a powerful but invisible hand who magically bends natural or historical forces to divine purposes so that in the end things turn out just the way God has planned…” (178-179).
“For the believer, Auschwitz – every Auschwitz… – is an inexplicable and unjustifiable violence against life, against Elohim’s creation… And if sometimes some good somewhere comes out of it, it would be an obscenity to suggest that that is either an explanation or a justification.” (181)
Caputo’s point is well-taken. Amidst the “irreparable losses” (243) of Auschwitz, the Cambodian Killing Fields, Rwanda, Darfur, and every other atrocity in history, it seems trivial and downright blasphemous to hear the president of an NFL team say it was God’s will and blessing that they win the Super Bowl. Really, is God so concerned with his name being glorified on a football field that he fails to notice the 6600 dying of AIDS each day in Africa?
To try to rationalize the senseless death of millions is to be greatly insensitive to those who suffer. However, I’m not sure Caputo’s view is any more consoling. And even more, it is this one issue that seems to steer Caputo’s entire theology, as if because he cannot figure God out and because the circumstances are so deplorable, he must arrive at certain conclusions about God (a kind of a tail wagging the dog scenario, it seems).
For sure, the “strong theologies” of Augustine, Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards do not provide adequate or satisfying answers to the problem of evil, but I’m not sure by veering over to the other extreme will leave us in a better position. Here again, I sense a bit of modernistic either/or, black/white in Caputo. God cannot be strong, so he must be weak to him. Why can’t he be both? This, of course, is what we find in scripture. Jesus is both the Lamb and the Lion. He is the most humble being in the world and yet also holds the world up by his hands. He is the eternal who took on temporal flesh (which is what most confounded the Apostle John).
All in all, Caputo’s work is a worthwhile read. Again, though I sense an unswerving allegiance to modern liberalism (as well as to the genius of Jacques Derrida), the issues Caputo raises are worthy of contemplating and his arguments challenging. Caputo calls into question the status quo interpretations of the scriptures, providing a fresh read that lays bare many of our philosophical presuppositions we often unconsciously bring to the table of biblical interpretation.
