Abstract
In this paper I introduce John D. Caputo’s view of the divine and argue against his claim that we can preserve faith in (an Abrahamic) God while dropping the idea of divine revelation. Despite Caputo’s apophatic point of view, he makes two claims with regard to God, or ’the divine’. First, he claims that we all have a divine call for justice and compassion in us. Secondly, he claims that God’s kingdom comes true if we make it happen and that this is something we can hope for. In the first half of this paper I will argue that Caputo does not have to reject the idea of revelation if we understand revelation as involving an interpretation of the experiences with the divine. In the second half, I will claim that Caputo even has to allow for divine revelation if he wants to stick to his positive statements about God. We can only know that a desire is divine if we have criteria to distinguish the divine from the profane or the diabolic. Based on Richard Kearney and John Hick I argue that particular traditions offer such criteria and that they ultimately depend on what is taken to be God’s will. Likewise, to hope that the kingdom of God comes and to act in a way that realizes it presupposes that the agent believes this to be the way God wants him to live—and God’s will must have somehow been disclosed.
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Notes
Although Caputo does make the affirmative claim that God is the effect of a certain faith, this does not amount to much because Caputo assumes that every experience is the effect of a certain faith, i.e. the effect of certain linguistic patterns and cultural assumptions (See Caputo 1997, p. 19).
However, Caputo believes that God is ineffable not because he transcends the phenomenal world, but because he is ‘(quasi-)transcendental’. Whatever ‘quasi-transcendence’ means, for our purposes it is enough that what it amounts to is God’s ineffability (Caputo 1997, pp. 10–14).
In the anthology Religion with/out Religion. The Prayers and Tears of John D. Caputo (2002) Caputo admits that in his 1997 book he gave the wrong impression that we could do without the concrete, institutionalized forms of religion. Rather than abolishing these concrete forms of faith, he wants to keep the tension between the unconditional claim for love, hospitality, justice, etc. (‘the messianic’) on the one hand, and the contingent, historical forms which try to actualize this claim (‘the messianisms’) on the other hand (See Caputo 2002, pp. 126–128, 147). However, my critique is not directed at Caputo’s attack on institutionalized forms of religion, but at his claim that there is no revelation of God or his will.
“The messianic in general clearly amounts to a nondogmatic doublet of dogma in the sense that is being described here, a structural possibility of religion without religion, the structural possibility of the religious unencumbered by the dangerous baggage of particular, determinate religions and their determinate faiths.” (Caputo 1997, p. 195).
Swinburne too can be seen as advocating this claim, even though he does not state this in an explicit way. For he argues that it is knowledge about certain things that makes divine revelation desirable (Swinburne 2007, pp. 80–85).
Here I follow Blaauw’s construal of a condition that is only indicated by Wolterstorff (See Wolterstorff 1995, p. 23; Blaauw 2009, p. 5). Blaauw labels this kind of ignorance “deep ignorance”. Moreover, I follow Blaauw in holding that revelation only occurs when ignorance has been actually dispelled. Wolterstorff has stated that revelation would dispel ignorance if attention and interpretative skills were adequate (Wolterstorff 1995, p. 23), but Blaauw convincingly argues that unsuccessful knowledge-transfer is not revelation (Blaauw 2009, pp. 8–9).
Blaauw writes “But can we know that Jesus is a divine subject? To claim that we can is, at the very least, quite controversial.” (Blaauw 2009, p. 11).
For example, Swinburne argues “that various public phenomena—the existence of the physical universe, its conformity to simple intelligible laws, those laws and the boundary conditions of the universe being such as to bring about human organisms, those human organisms being conscious (and so having souls), humans having moral awareness ..., make it (despite the occurrence of pain and other evil) quite probable—let’s say ‘as probable as not’—that there is a God.” (Swinburne 2007, p. 80).
Wolterstorff argues that Augustine’s case is a case of divine discourse, not of divine revelation because the content of a command (or other illocutionary acts) is normally not regarded as something that has been revealed (See Wolterstorff 1995, p. 20). I think Wolterstorff’s argument is valid, but I will stick here with a broad understanding of revelation which includes what Wolterstorff calls divine discourse, since traditionally divine revelation is taken to include both the revelation of certain truths as well as the revelation of God’s will.
“As Moses entered the tent, the column of cloud would come down and stand at its entrance while the LORD spoke with Moses. On seeing the column of cloud stand at the entrance of the tent, all the people would rise and bow down at the entrance of their own tents. The LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as a person speaks to a friend.” (Exodus 33:9–1; this is the translation given in the The New American Bible, Revised Edition (NABRE), available at http://usccb.org/bible/) For Wolterstorff’s criticism of a position close to Caputo’s, see Wolterstorff (1995), p. 30.
In a footnote to another passage, Huber states that “[t]o listen to the Gospel proclamation, especially when it is proclaimed as the ‘Word of God’, can in certain circumstances constitute a strong and profound religious experience, but not necessarily. In no case however will the listener’s experience be that of the Apostles when, for instance, they encountered the risen Lord. As its foundation faith has not our experience, but rather a testimony, a witness, that becomes accepted as true.” (Huber 2000, p. 71, n. 3).
This may be unbearable, for example, for orthodox Muslims who deny that the Quran was influenced by any other source than the angel Gabriel who has allegedly dictated what came to be known as the Quran (See for example Quran, Surah 69.38–51, 21.10, and 26.192–195). Note, however, that Islamic studies specialists like Fazlur Rahman or Abdullah Saeed cautiously argue for a revision of the dictation theory of revelation (See Saeed 2006).
In a review of Caputo’s Radical Hermeneutics John Sallis writes that, “I shall take radical in the sense outlined in the Introduction to Radical Hermeneutics and openly deployed throughout in various connections and specifications, namely, as designating the character of a thinking and writing that refuses every comfort or security by which questioning would be broken off.” (Sallis 1989, p. 253).
This is not to say that revelation as the transmission of propositions, e.g. when God speaks to a human, would involve no interpretation. Words have to be interpreted, too. But, as Wolterstorff makes clear, one difference between non-manifestational revelation and manifestational revelations is that the recipient has to interpret a proposition which has already been formulated in the former case, whereas he has to interpret the (raw) facts and formulate a proposition by himself in the latter case. “Though interpretation is typically involved in the reception of propositional revelation as well as in the reception of manifesting revelation, there’s less of it [in the former]. The revealer has already interpreted the actuality revealed, by way of formulating the proposition; now all we have to do is interpret what he does as the assertion of that proposition. In manifestation, everything needs interpreting, both sign and signified; we are, as it were, confronted with reality raw.” (Wolterstorff 1995, p. 29) Wolterstorff gives the following example. “If God says that out of love for Israel He led the Israelites through the Red Sea, then we have God’s interpretation of those baffling facts—though we are still left with having to interpret some events as God’s saying that. If all we have is those baffling events themselves, then it is left to us—perhaps under ‘the guidance of the Spirit’—to interpret those happenings as God’s leading Israel through the Red Sea out of love for this people.” (Wolterstorff 1995, pp. 29–30).
“For the lethal threat posed by religious fundamentalists of every sort, from devout Christians who are ready to kill prochoice physicians, and Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland who have been killing each other for far too long, to Jews who are ready to kill Palestinians in the name of the Holy Land—in short, the madness that drives ‘people of God’ to kill in the name of God, the giver of life—is a far greater danger than deconstruction or dissent.” (Caputo 2002, p. 127).
The original subject in this sentence is not Caputo, but Kant. But from the context it is clear that Caputo—in the name of the deconstruction movement – agrees with Kant here.
“God wrongs no one if he gives longer lives to some than to others. And if A has the right to take something from B, he has the right to allow C to do the job for him. So the obligation not to kill is an obligation not to kill (except in the other circumstances mentioned above) unless permitted by God to do so.” (Swinburne 2007, p. 91) —“I should add that if someone is not to be culpable for acting on what they believe to be a divine command to do some action which, but for a divine command, would fairly evidently be wrong, they need a very strong belief that they have been commanded by God to do that action. For they have strong reason for not doing such an action; and only a very strong conviction of the presence of God and his voice commanding that action, or a very strong belief that it was an evident consequence of a public revelation that they had a duty to do the action, would suffice to make it on balance not (subjectively) wrong to perform the action.” (Swinburne 2007, p. 94) - I sharply disagree with Swinburne on this point and hold that claims of divine order to murder should be rejected, since they contradict God’s commandment to love your enemies e.g. in Luke 10:27–36.
As Nancey Murphy and others make clear, this act of interpretation is dynamic. Hence, not only are the believers’ experiences interpreted in accordance to the respective scripture, but the scripture too is “always interpreted in light of and applied to the community’s ongoing experience.” (Murphy 2005, p. 121).
The advent of the Other is “a prophetic call for a justice to come” (Caputo 1997, p. 74)—“viens is a call for justice not truth” (Caputo (1997), p. 98; see also Caputo (1997), pp. 70, 73, 89). “That desire for an absolute surprise, for a justice to come that will count our every tear, is, according to the (slightly unbelievable) premise of the present study, an old prophetic passion, a dream dreamt in prophetic expectation, a call shouted by a long line of prophets.” (Caputo 1997, p. 113) Caputo does not mention God directly here, but in chapter 12 Caputo quotes Derrida saying that the impossible, i.e. the Other is something we all long for: “For finally, if the gift is another name of the impossible, we still think it, we name it, we desire it. We intend it. And this even if or because or to the extent that we never encounter it, we never know it, we never verify it, we never experience it in its present existence or its phenomenon. (DT, 45/GT, 29)” (Derrida, quoted in Caputo (1997), p. 169) Hence, it is plausible that ‘the gift’, ‘the impossible’ and ‘the Other’ are just different names for (or aspects of) God. - See also the interview conducted 2005 by Mark Dooley, in which Caputo confirms that he believes that all humans possess the divine passion for “something the outlines of which are not entirely clear to us” (Leask 2007, p. 219). However, this passion may easily be suppressed. “I think that this passion is easily suppressed and that there are lots of times when we would be happy to avoid engaging that passion. It’s not a comfortable thing but something disturbing. But I would say it’s a depth dimension that constitutes us.” (Leask 2007, p. 219).
For example, Wolterstorff emphasizes that it was and is very common for Jews, Christian and Moslems “to speak of God as commanding, promising, blessing, forgiving, exhorting, assuring, asserting, and so forth. ... [Such attributions] are fundamental in the religious thought of these communities and in the theological reflections of their scholars – the most important reason for that being that reports of God speaking are fundamental in the sacred texts of these communities.” (Wolterstorff 1995, p. 8) As should be clear by now, ‘to speak’ here does not have to be understood analogue to the direct conversation between humans.
Based on a manifestational account of revelation, we would assume that these prophets construed certain experiences as divine rather than receiving already formulated propositions by God.
“As a Christian, then, one accepts that the sense of the presence of God within the Christian community is indeed an awareness of a divine presence; and one sees as confirmation of this the self-evidently valuable and desirable ‘fruit of the Spirit’ which St Paul listed as ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control’ (Galatians 5:22).” (Hick 2001, p. 173) The case of Abraham, however, shows that Hick’s criteria might not be as prevalent in the Christian tradition as Hick may think. Whether these criteria would rule out that God’s request to kill Isaac was a real religious experience/divine revelation is disputable. Some Christians might believe that Abraham’s auditions are veridical simply because they are included in the canon of the Bible. But this does not affect my argument. For even those Christians will assume that God reveals to them how they should live.
According to Caputo, l’invention de l’autre, a main element of deconstruction, is an interjection meaning “The other comes (at our heads)!”, thus being a request “Heads up!” (See Caputo 1997, p. 71). However, later Caputo says that the cognate ‘come’ (viens) is neither an order nor a request. “[B]ecause viens does not know what it is calling for, cannot describe what it wants, it cannot be subsumed by the usual categories of desire, imperative, order, cannot be fixed metalinguistically in one linguistic category or another, including that of prayer.” (Caputo 1997, p. 97).
This is also a thesis held by Richard Kearney in his book The God who may be (2001). Kearney’s thesis is that God (or God’s kingdom) is a possibility that has to be realized by humans (See Kearney 2001, pp. 1, 37–38).
Caputo does not make this identification in an explicit form. Here, I refer to Caputo (1997), pp. 162–188 where Caputo does not speak of ‘the Other’, but of ‘the gift’. But as I argued in footnote 19, these expressions are used to refer to the same thing. Even if Caputo sometimes gives the impression that (real) gifts are impossible in this passage (pp. 162–188), he gives three examples of potential gifts: 1. Abraham and his intended sacrifice/gift of Isaac, 2. the biblical story of a widow that gives away money that she needs herself, and 3. the ‘givenness’ of things, the occurrence of events, the existence of the world. Although Caputo does not mention it, similar cases of (real) gifts analogous to (1) and (2) would be all kinds of true self-sacrifice, e.g. relinquishing a career in order to take care of a relative, or dying for a higher good. Such cases happen if the subject lets go of its ego, i.e. its interests and is open for the Other. Caputo writes that a real gift is an affirmation of the Other. “A gift happens not as a duty, not as a principle of redistribution that binds me and coerces me to give up what I have, but as an affirmation of the other, a oui, oui to the coming of the other.” (Caputo 1997, p. 177).
“The kingdom is a way of living ... without why, living for the day, like the lilies of the field ... as opposed to mastering and programming time, calculating the future, containing and managing risk.” (Caputo 2006, p. 15).
“Asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he said in reply, ‘The coming of the kingdom of God cannot be observed, and no one will announce, ‘Look, here it is,’ or, ‘There it is.’ For behold, the kingdom of God is among you.” (Luke 17:20–21; translation taken from NABRE).
Consequently, Caputo rejects literal interpretations of biblical miracle stories. He denies that God breaks natural laws and suggests construing these stories “as a ‘poetics’ rather than as eyewitness accounts of well corroborated divine interventions on natural processes” (Caputo 1997, p. 169). He assumes that God is not a powerful entity that forcefully interferes in history, but rather a powerless voice that calls us without coercing us to put this call into practice (Caputo 2006, pp. 13, 16, 33, 39).
Schellenberg argues that ‘operational faith’ (for example faith in God) can be based not only on religious belief, but also on propositional faith, i.e., roughly, a voluntary assent to something desirable I do not have (conclusive) evidence for (Schellenberg 2005, pp. 137–139). When believers have faith that God wants them to live in a certain way, their evidence might not be sufficient to justify this claim. Nevertheless, their faith that a certain way of life is divinely ordained is, as I illustrate by means of Tolstoy’s short story, fundamental to the actualization of this way of life.
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Drafts of this paper have been presented at the Beseto Conference held at the Peking University on the 12th–13th October 2013, and the ’Religious Studies at 50’ conference held at the University of Leeds on the 25th–27th June 2014.
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Park, T. Faith in God without any revelation?. Int J Philos Relig 78, 315–328 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-014-9491-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-014-9491-0