Exploring Emerging Theology: The Connections between Emergence and John D. Caputo’s The Weakness of God

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to grab the RSS feed or subscribe via email to receive updates on this topic and many others!

An Emerging Theology

“The SS seemed more preoccupied, more worried, than usual. To hang a child in front of thousands of onlookers was not a small matter. The head of the camp read the verdict. All eyes were on the child. He was pale, almost calm, but he was biting his lips as he stood in the shadow of the gallows … ‘Where is merciful God, where is he?’ someone behind me was asking … Behind me, I heard the same man asking: ‘For God’s sake, where is God?’ And from within me, I heard an answer: ‘Where He is? This is where – hanging from this gallows.’ That night, the soup tasted of corpses.” – Excerpt from “Night,” by Elie Wiesel in which he recounts his time spent as a young boy in Auschwitz.

I don’t have a personal copy of John D. Caputo’s The Weakness of God: A Theology of Event but this wonderfully advanced technological age in which we all are living and playing has afforded me the opportunity to read most of it for free online. Sure, Google Books intentionally discards pages here and there so that paupers like me will be forced to actually go and purchase books, and I will, but in the meantime I am happily perusing large sections of this very, very enlightening work for free.

If you are curious about postmodern movements within Christianity, or are interested in understanding what’s called the Emerging Church, or more recently “Emergence,” then you too should make good use of the free resources available to you online. After all, if you truly seek to understand, then it would be most beneficial to you to cease with all of the reckless assumptions and actually start digging so you can speak in less generalities and more depth. It’s better to be intelligently informed than stereotypically presumptuous. Right?

Consider, for example, the flimsy charge that Emergent aficionados are sorely lacking in theology. This is simply not true. The individuals who fling this charge around obviously do not do so with pure maliciousness as their driving intent, but it can and often does seem that way. I personally think that these folk have good intentions and wonderful hearts to match, but are themselves sorely lacking in view, concept, and expressive breadth of theology. Said differently, and perhaps more bluntly, theirs is a very, very narrow and limited view and understanding of theology. I don’t think they have taken the time to try and understand that postmodern expressions of faith are not founded upon meaningless or theological lack, but may in fact be invested with more meaning than they have ever encountered or are even comfortable with engaging. We all react to the introduction of new or divergent information differently, but the majority of us react hesitantly, at least initially. When we are dealing with theology, the reactions are even more visceral because of all of the personal investment we have made into our pet theologies. So, when people prematurely brand postmodern expressions of theology or the Emerging Church as lacking theology, what I hear them saying is “This is not my theology; I am not familiar with this information. Therefore, it must be lacking or corrupt or wrong. My theology is so deep (read: familiar) that it has to be right and yours is wrong, if it even exists at all!”

That’s an unfortunate response, obviously. It’s unfortunate because (1) It is a response rooted in visceral emotions and reactions (things that most anti-postmodern Christian folk will cite as spiritually corrupt and untrustworthy); (2) It’s visceral and reactionary as a result of the lack of investigation and inquiry upon which it is founded; (3) The charged – in this case postmodern expressions of faith and the Emerging Church – are recklessly branded as something they are not while their message and expression are buried beneath a smothering blanket of assumptions and ignorant stereotypes.

So, while the charge of theological lack may be continuously flung at the Emerging Church by otherwise well meaning and good-hearted individuals, it simply is not true.

I realized this even more this afternoon as I read through Caputo’s The Weakness of God. If you have any understanding of the Emerging Church at all, and carry that understanding into your reading of Caputo, then deep connections will be made between the two and a lot of your dots will start to be connected. I would be very surprised if you could walk away from either Caputo or the Emerging Church and still claim that they have a lacking theology.

The Emerging church has a deep theology, in spite of the anti-postmodernist cry of theological vacancy.

Consider, if you will, as we consider Caputo and the connections between his work and the Emerging Church, that [T]heology begins with an initial understanding of God propped up by basic assumptions and presuppositions, be they good or bad. Could it be that we – culturally shaped creatures that we are – actually shape and form Theology around a preexisting image or notion of God, for good or for ill? Could it be that all subsequent theologies are in some shape, way, or form are informed by that big image or notion? Could it be possible, that out big image or notion of God is so familiar to us that all other images or notions seem void? Could it be that some notion and images of God are in fact more sensible than others? Could it be, that the anti-postmodernists fail to see theology where there is in fact deep theology because it exists outside of their peripheral range? Could it be that where some claim there is no God, God exists in ways to which they are blind? Could it be that the charge of theological vacancy only exists because those who fling it missed all that postmodern expressions of faith actually say about God?

Caputo’s “Weak Theology,” which incidentally has nothing to do with “weak theology,” as in “a lack of theology,” but rather a “theology of weakness,” as can be seen in 1 Corinthians 1:25 “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men,” and Philippians 2:5-8 “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross,” is clearly represented in postmodern Christian circles. What is it? Caputo says it better than I ever could, so, I let his work speak for itself.

…I am duty bound to warn the reader in advance not to expect too much. With all this talk of the stirring of event, I do not mean to stir up expectation of power. For however much prestige and power a name may accumulate, an event is a more wispy and willowy thing, a whisper or a promise, a breath or a spirit, not a mundane force. As such, this hermeneutics of the event will at best offer a somewhat undernourished theology as opposed to the hearty and robust ones that populate the tradition. I am tendering something in the spirit of what Derrida calls “a non-dogmatic doublet of dogma.” This theology of event lacks corpulent articles of faith, a national or international headquarters, a well-fed college of cardinals to keep it on the straight and narrow, or even a decent hymnal. Think of it as a “theology without theology” that accompanies what Derrida calls a “religion without religion,” as a “weak theology” that accompanies Vattimo’s “weak thought,” or perhaps even as the weak messianic theology should accompany Benjamin’s “weak messianic force.” In advocating weakness I am patently running together Derrida, Vattimo, and Benjamin, but I am also shamelessly citing St. Paul on the “weakness of God” (1 Cor. 1:25), all in the hope of inciting a holy riot, as Paul himself was sometimes wont to do. If Slavoj Zizek is in search of a robust and pulpy theological orange juice, he must do his shopping elsewhere. I confess, this theology of the event does not serve up the Sache selbst in all its palpable presence, which I love as much as the next chap, but only a tearful concession that the Sache selbst always slips away (The Weakness of God, p.7).

I think most anti-postmodernists like theological orange juice, specifically for the pulp. I also think that most Emerging Church folk deeply resonate with the theology of “God as Event” as advanced by Caputo, which admittedly contains no pulp, but is nonetheless deeply theological. Further, the theology of “God as a Mundane Force” has had it’s run, and it was a good run, but it’s kaput just about everywhere with the exception of late night Christian television and churches that could be on late night Christian television. The concept of “God as Mundane Force” doesn’t offer much to people in an age wherein deity(ies) aren’t malevolently or benevolently twisting history. No. Today’s experience of life and living does not lend much credibility to the “God as Mundane Force” idea. In light of all of the mass devastation, violence and basic human need, one can’t help but wonder why this “Mundane Force” refuses to intervene like “he” used to in the stories? And please don’t preach to me the stories of God’s overtly nationalistic intervention in the Old Testament as some sort of proof of your “God as Force” theology while countless human beings in Africa are dying tortured deaths for lack of a simple thing like rain. I won’t even mention the 2004 Tsunami, 9/11, or any of the smaller but equally devastating events that people are introduced to at the personal level every second of every minute of every day. The notion of “God as Force” is not helpful at all for those of us who are honestly trying to attribute/extract some sort of tangible meaning from real events born in our real world in which we are all living very real lives. Does that mean God is not present in these situations? No. The Divine is, as The Void Collective, experimental faith collective in Waco, Texas, recently expressed: GODISNOWHERE.

The Gospels themselves emphasize The Weakness of God and a Theology of the Event. Again, consider Caputo’s thoughts on the matter.

On the classical account of strong theology, Jesus was just holding back his divine power in order to let his human nature suffer. He freely chose to check his power because the Father had a plan to redeem the world with his blood. … That is not the weakness of God that I am here defending. God, the event harbored by the name of God, is present at the crucifixion, as the power of the powerlessness of Jesus, in and as the protest against the injustice that rises up from the cross, in and as the words of forgiveness, not a deferred power that will be visited upon one’s enemies at a later time. God is in attendance as the weak force of the call that cries out from Calvary and calls across the epochs, that cries out from every corpse created by every cruel and unjust power. The logos of the cross is a call to renounce violence, not to conceal and defer it and then, in a stunning act that takes the enemy by surprise, to lay them low with real power, which shows the enemy who really has the power. That is just what Nietzsche was criticizing under the name of ressentiment (The Weakness of God, p.44).

I personally find the above excerpt from The Weakness of God to be invested with a deep and rich theology of God. In fact, it may just be too deep and too rich for the majority of American Christians who require their God to kick ass and supernaturally intervene in every and all situations that they deem as “uncomfortable.” Your co-workers giving you a hard time at work? Pray harder and God will show up and fix it! Your health is failing? Call your god and alert him of the situation and expect to be supernaturally healed! Are you worried about the security of your country? Demand that God blesses it! Is the moral standards of your society in the toilet? Pray that God awakens it before he unleashes punishment upon it! This is what Caputo refers to as “Strong Theology.” And so it goes …

But what if God is not like that at all? What if God is actually manifest in suffering and devastation? What if God in Jesus did not “chose to check his power” but in fact had none to check? Does this question render God non-existent? No! It simply urges us to think differently about God and God presence in a world that is rarely visited by the God of “Strong Theology.”

So, in this one theological example, what you find is a deep theological expression about God that is thoroughly postmodern. Caputo and the Emerging Church share much congruence; it’s true. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the Emerging Church reads and is informed by Caputo. Whichever you chose, one thing is for sure: The Emerging Church has a deep, robust theology. There is no theological lack or void in the Emerging Church. Just because it’s not familiar to you, or you disagree with it, doesn’t mean it’s not there! You would do well to stop assuming as much, for your own sake more than others.

Related posts:

• The Great Emerging Church Failure

• A De-centralized and Emerging Ecclesiology

• Emerging and Classic Brethren in Christ Ecclesiology

• Pagitt’s Three Categories of Emerging Ministry

• Four Types of Emerging Churches