Archive for john caputo

Academic Conferences Overseas This Week

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , on April 12, 2012 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

Well I’m off to the other side of the pond for the next week or so to deliver academic papers at two conferences, the first in England and the second in Italy. The British conference is the Thomas Merton Society of Great Britain and Ireland meeting, which takes place every two years. The International Thomas Merton Society, the larger organization, hosts a conference in North America every two years and on the alternate year the TMSGBI hosts a conference in Europe. For the last several meetings the conference has taken place on the campus of Oakham School, an elite British boarding school that is Thomas Merton’s alma mater. It’s located in the very cozy little town of Oakham in County Rutland in the British Midlands. I have had the great privilege to present papers there for the previous two meetings and I’m very much looking forward to returning this weekend. I have made lasting friendships with Merton scholars from Europe and I’ve really come to enjoy my time spent in the town of Oakham. The title of my paper this year is: “Raids on the Impossible: The Poetics of Nonviolence in Merton, Caputo and Hauerwas.”

Following this conference in the UK, I’ll head to Italy where I’m presenting at a conference on interreligious dialogue located in the home land of the Franciscan family, Assisi!  The conference is titled, Where We Dwell in Common: Pathways for Dialogue in the 21st Century. This conference is drawing top scholars from around the United States and Europe. I’m humbled to be on the same program with such an outstanding collection of theologians and other academics. What is also nice is that a number of friends that I’ve met over the years at different academic gatherings and conferences stateside will be in attendance or presenting papers too, so I’m looking forward to catching up with them. While the schedule will surely be a busy one, just having the opportunity to spend a few days in the town of Assisi is exciting. It’s been eight years since I was last there and it is the first time that I’ve been to Assisi as a Friar.

So if my postings are somewhat infrequent, please pardon the delay. I’ll try to give a little play-by-play as best I can throughout the travels, so stay tuned! It will all depend on internet access at various locations throughout my travels and will also depend on my schedule during these conferences. Please keep me in prayer and remember all those who are traveling from various locations to reach both of these very important gatherings.

Peace and good!

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Rush Limbaugh: Worst Theologian Ever

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , on April 28, 2011 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

So this Easter Monday radio rant of Rush Limbaugh would be funny if it wasn’t so disturbing. It seems that filled with the Easter spirit, Limbaugh went on the air and rejected the question What Would Jesus Do in order to ask What Would Jesus Take? Placing Jesus Christ in the place of some sort of pseudo-libertarian or conservative economist. The taking, Limbaugh explains, has to do with what, if it were up to the Jesus, would the tax rate be? Yes, a very important theological question that is always on the minds of systematic theologians and scripture scholars around the globe.

Limbaugh’s belief is that “the left claims Jesus Christ is good for promoting liberalism.” Instead, he asserts, “what would Jesus take? That’s the question people need to ask…the answer: nothing!”

It’s curious that this ridiculous statement is made this week, because I happen to be discussing with my theology students precisely this question — WWJD? — through the work of John D. Caputo. Caputo’s masterful little text, What Would Jesus Deconstruct? The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church (Baker, 2007), is the way I’ve selected to wrap up the semester.

I wanted my students to read some very contemporary theological efforts that reflect the notion of fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding) that offers an engagement with postmodern continental philosophy. The idea is that after studying the rudimentary elements of Christian systematic theology for a semester, the students should be able to approach a contemporary text with the basic tools for comprehension and analysis.

Caputo uses WWJD? as the starting point, tracing the history of this largely evangelical slogan back to its roots in a 19th-Century book, In His Steps, by Charles Sheldon. The primary theme that emerges from Sheldon’s book, which originated as a series of sermons, was to highlight the Gospel call to social justice. That’s right, WWJD? has radical implications and is, in a sense, a very subversive question. That it has, in recent decades, become domesticated and diluted to fit the personal and subjective needs of certain populations does the question and its origin a disservice.

Captuo, engaging in deconstructive performance á la Jacques Derrida and with the grammatical and literary stylings typical of the brilliant Caputo, opens up for us a renewed way of looking at the meaning of that question, while identifying themes (Christology, Ecclesiology, Revelation, etc.) that benefit from such analysis. The end result is not the destruction, as many mistakenly associate with deconstruction, but the acknowledgement of that which is always already there — what does Jesus do? what did He do? A form of deconstruction that announced and enacted the Kingdom of God, not offering the (il)logic of the world.

Back to Rush. This little video clip below highlights a rather reasonable response that an MSNBC commentator offered to Rush Limbaugh’s horrendous theological claim. Take a listen to Limbaugh and to the response — I think the segment speaks for itself. In the meantime, if you are interested in a serious and enlightening elucidation of the WWJD? phenomenon and its theological implications for our time, check out Caputo’s What Would Jesus Deconstruct?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/42756956#42756956

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Photo: Medialite

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The Poetics of the Kingdom versus the ‘Logic’ of the World

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , on March 3, 2011 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

It will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog that I am a rather big fan of the philosopher and theologian John D. Caputo, whom I believe may likely be one of the most significant contributors to theology in this age — even if others haven’t realized it yet. As I continue to work on a forthcoming conference paper, I find myself again returning to some of his already-classic texts like his celebrated 2006 book, The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event (Indiana University Press).

To quote from Caputo is to do the scholar’s work a disservice because it really deserves to be read in its entirety. One of the things I most admire about Caputo is the way in which he conveys his insight and analysis. His style is unique and captivating, oftentimes flowing in and out of both colloquial and academic language. In one of my courses last semester a student of mine, after reading two chapters of a Caputo book, asked me if all contemporary theologians wrote like this — unfortunately, I informed him, most don’t, Caputo is special.

In any event, I want to share a little selection from The Weakness of God that, I believe, speaks to our time and world. Something that we need to keep in mind as we all strive to live the Gospel life, the life modeled by Christ, the life that announces the Kingdom of God.

In the New Testament, the “world” and the kingdom are antagonists because the logic of the world is a calculus, an economy, a heartless system of accounting or of balanced payments, where scores are always being settled. In the logic of the world, nothing is for free and nobody gets off scot-free. By the same token, in the logic of the world, everything is for sale, everything has a price, and nothing is sacred. The world will stop at nothing to get even, to settle or even a score; the world is pomp and power and ruthless reckoning. In the world, offenders are made to pay for their offense and every investor expects a return…

The kingdom comes to contradict the world and contest the world’s ways, and it always looks like foolishness to the world’s good sense, moving as it does between logic and passion, truth and justice, concepts and desire, strategies and prayers, astute points and mad stories, for it can never be merely or simply the one or the other…The kingdom comes to put the world in question, to put it on the spot, to put it into question…

There is much more to say and upon which to reflect, but for now I think these two passages from Caputo offer us a little destabilizing meditation that, in a helpful way, redirects out focus on the challenge of Christian living in the face of “logical” behavior as the world or intuition suggests.

As Caputo says elsewhere, the Kingdom of God is an experience of the turning-upside-down of reality, where the weak are the strong and the poor become rich. It is the experience or recognition of God’s rule (malkuth YHWH, as we say in Hebrew) that announces freedom to the captives, sight to the blind, justice for the oppressed and bad news for the wealthy, greedy, powerful, unjust and the like.

The poetics of the Kingdom, and poetic has to be the shape of its discourse because logic does not apply by conventional standards, is the call for more authentic Gospel life. It seems foolish and unreasonable, but isn’t that what we see in a God who becomes weakly human and suffers at the hands of the powerful for unjust reasons? It seems illogical and short-sighted, but isn’t that what we see in Jesus’s rejection of the worldly temptations in the desert?  It seems stupid and unrewarding, but isn’t that why Jesus tells us in his paradigmatic Sermon on the Mount (or Plain) that the reward is not of earthly origin, but eternal and for those the world would ostensibly not reward?

Like St. Francis of Assisi, whose self-referential title was “God’s fool,” it is time for us to become foolish in the sight of the world and abandon the logic of its injustice for the poetic experience of God’s kingdom. After all, nobody said it would be easy… in fact, there’s a lot of talk about crosses and suffering along the way, not exactly the world’s idea of accomplishment.

 

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A John Caputo Advent Reflection

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , on December 9, 2010 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

Advent is a time of hope and anticipation of the in-breaking of God in the world in the decisive Event of the Incarnation. As we reflect on this impossible possibility, I suggest that we take the advice of postmodern philosopher-theologian John D. Caputo and consider the Lord’s exhortation to allow praxis to flow from the theopoetics of the in-breaking of God’s Kingdom. The signs of which were proclaimed in the prophecy of Isaiah and echoed in Jesus’s missionary prolegomenon found in Luke’s Gospel:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18)

Caputo takes this notion of the biblical Kingdom of God (Malkuth-Yahweh) proclaimed in the words and deeds of Jesus to be the call for Christian praxis. It is through the lens of deconstruction, most associated with the philosophical insight of the late Jacques Derrida, that Caputo supports his assertion that Christianity is in itself deconstructive and we are called to be Christ-like in our recognition of the deconstructive power of God’s revelation.

For today, the last day of class for my RELG 240 course, I had my students read portions of John Caputo’s What Would Jesus Deconstruct: The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church (Baker Academic, 2007). In light of the Christian theological tradition they have studied these past few months, it is their task to critically engage Caputo’s text and present an assessment of the method and content.

I thought that this provides a great reflection worth sharing for us during Advent, to look at Caputo’s engagement with scripture and his notion of the theopoetics of the Kingdom as we prepare for the celebration of the Incarnation. Here is a little snippet of Caputo’s text that illustrates this connection between faith and praxis, drawing on Jesus’s own words and deeds to articulate our collective Christian mission anew.

That is why we require hermeneutics. It is our responsibility to breathe with the spirit of Jesus, to implement, to invent, to convert this poetics into a praxis, which means to make the political order resonate with the radicality of someone whose vision was not precisely political. We need hermeneutics, which means understanding linked to historical context, and deconstruction, which means an interpretive theory that is mad about justice, in order to make this translation…

That is why I have been calling on deconstruction to bring the good news of postmodern critique to the church. I think deconstruction is a congenial specter to the spirit of the kingdom and that is can sensitize the church to the Spirit that it breathes, or should breathe…

Jesus thought that when all the large points and the fine points of the Torah are taken into account, the law and the prophets come down to love of neighbor and of God, and he burned with anger when he thought the spirit of love was being undermined by inflexible rules or by hypocrisy. (95-96)

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Reflections on the Kingdom of God

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , on October 26, 2010 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

What is this Kingdom of God we read about so often?

The Good News according to Mark, the earliest of the Gospels, begins with an allusion to the nearness of this Kingdom with the arrival of Jesus, but, although the Kingdom is “making itself felt” (to borrow a phrase from Raymond Brown), it has not yet fully arrived.  The Good News according to Matthew is full of rich illustrations of the ways in which the Kingdom is breaking-in, is worth more than human wealth, is accompanied by obstacles and challenges to those who proclaim it and the like.  The Good News according to Luke presents us with the identification of those who will be welcomed into the Kingdom, a reality that appears “upside-down” to a world of injustice, greed and intolerance.  And the Good News according to John shows us the embodiment of the Kingdom in the person and saving work of Jesus himself.

The Gospels repeatedly state that Jesus’s mission, his ministry, is tied up with the proclamation of the Kingdom.  The language used is often times “at hand” or “near” to help emphasize the beginning-but-not-quite-yet aspect of the proclamation.  The Hebrew phrase, the Malkuth YHWH, captures a more dynamic image of what Jesus was announcing in his teaching and ministry: “God’s saving action.”

God’s saving action is both a present and future reality, or, as it is sometimes described, “already and not yet.”  The Kingdom of God is not a place as such, but a symbolic expression of what reality is like when God saves.  It is not simply an idea, but an actual action of God that is, as Brian Robinette has described, “performed, something to be realized or made real in and through the cooperative activity of God and humanity.”  

What exactly does this cooperative activity of God and humanity look like?  The answer is found in the parables and activity of Jesus.  The Kingdom of God is like…

Jesus re-shapes the typical human imagining of God’s saving action — too often times associated with ratcheted-up images of human might and force — through his words and deeds to help us see what it means to see reality, to see one another, to see the world as God sees them.

It is not the strong and powerful that God desires, but the just treatment of the poor and lost.  It is not the first and rich that God desires, but the last and humble.  It is not the scrupulously judicious and religious zealot that God desires, but the penitential believer who recognizes his or her own weakness and becomes open to love.

Some have imagined the Kingdom of God, the Malkuth YHWH, as illustrated best in the phrase “God is almighty.”  In a literal interpretation and limited human conception of God’s “saving action,” some believe that this is best described by God’s all-powerfulness, God’s all-mightiness.  But theologian John Caputo has suggested, and I believe rightly so, that we need to return again to the message of Jesus’s Kingdom proclamations.  Where does Jesus illustrate a world transformed by God’s saving action through power or mightiness?

God’s saving action, the realization that “God is almighty,” can be articulated in another way.  Instead of “might” meaning force or power, perhaps we can reconceive “might” as “possible.”  As in, “I might go to the store” or “It might rain.”  In this respect, God becomes a God of “all possibility,” a God not limited by the injustice of the oppressors or the sinfulness of humanity.  Instead, the news of the Kingdom of God is the announcement of a God who is, for us, a God of all possibility, ushering in the seemingly impossible (resurrection, forgiveness of sins, healing of the broken, etc.).

The Kingdom of God, then, becomes the announcement that God makes possible the impossible.  It is happening already whenever human beings cooperate with God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven.  And it is happening in the future, the source of our hope in a reality to come when all things are transformed by this God of all-possibility.

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Why John Caputo Rocks

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , on September 9, 2010 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

This is a totally random, completely biased and wholly positive posting about a contemporary philosopher/theologian that I admire.  Why am I writing a post about John Caputo? You might be asking yourself.  The answer, out of the blue I received word today that his Syracuse University faculty page was updated and that I should check it out.  http://thecollege.syr.edu/profiles/pages/caputo-john.html For the record, SU (despite the fact that I despise them during the NCAA basketball season) has done a great job posting Caputo’s syllabi, publication info and lectures online for some time.  Props to the Orangemen.

So, on the occasion, random as it was, of looking over Caputo’s revised webpage, I was reminded of how cool he is and thought that it might be nice to share some information about him with you.

Prolific does not begin to describe the intellectual output of John Caputo.  He has written well over two hundred scholarly and popular articles, nearly a dozen books and has co-edited several more.  What’s more is that this massive production of material is also very good.  Two of my favorite books of his are two recent ones (it seems that each new book quickly becomes my favorite): The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event (2006) and What Would Jesus Deconstruct? (2007).  Both are strikingly powerful books that integrate contemporary/postmodern continental philosophy with serious theological reflection.

He is currently working on a book that will likely rock my world yet again.  I was privileged to attend a lecture he gave last Fall that featured some of his work from the book (the theme was angelology and technology).  I was even more honored to be able to have dinner with Jack and his wife along with some members of the philosophy department here at Siena College last Fall (I had scheduled my interview with the Department of Religious Studies to coincide with this event).  I ended up sitting across from the Caputos and had a very wonderful conversation with both of them throughout dinner.  Before dinner, Jack was very gracious in having a conversation with me about his current work, while expressing a kind interest in what I was working on at the time (Postmodernity and Univocity: A Critical Assessment of Radical Orthodoxy’s Use of John Duns Scotus);he was very intrigued in my research and as the evening came to an end, made sure to encourage me again in following that trajectory.

John Caputo’s thought is heavily influenced by contemporary continental philosophy, most especially by the work of the late Jacques Derrida.  Caputo has been described as the eminent interpreter of Derrida’s thought in the English-speaking world.  Beyond simply (re)presenting the nuanced and complicated work of Derrida with clarity and insight reflective of Caputo’s own genius, he also has engaged in several ongoing correlative projects that seek to elucidate matters of great import to Christian theology in light of Deconstruction and other postmodern philosophical schools.  The outcome has been nothing less than inspiring.

In addition to his original contributions to philosophy and theology, John Caputo strikes me as a good model for today’s scholars.  Brilliant and well-respected, Caputo does not seem to let such tremendous accomplishments prevent him from being very approachable and humble (at least that was my experience of him).  He seems to be someone clearly interested in the scholarly pursuit of learning and encounters other scholars with an openness that allows him to consider perspectives and insights a more close-minded person would never experience.

I believe that his work should be read much more widely than it is now.  The Church and the world can benefit from the challenging ideas present in the books and articles of a man who appears deeply committed to making sense of God and God’s activity in the world.  If only every theologian could be like John Caputo.


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