The Weakness of God

by John D. Caputo

Published 27 April 2006
Applying an ever more radical hermeneutics (including Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology, Derridian deconstruction, and feminism), John D. Caputo breaks down the name of God in this irrepressible book. Instead of looking at God as merely a name, Caputo views it as an event, or what the name conjures or promises in the future. For Caputo, the event exposes God as weak, unstable, and barely functional. While this view of God flies in the face of most religions and philosophies, it also puts up a serious challenge to fundamental tenets of theology and ontology. Along the way, Caputo's readings of the "New Testament", especially of Paul's view of the Kingdom of God, help to support the "weak force" theory. This penetrating work cuts to the core of issues and questions - What is the nature of God? What is the nature of being? What is the relationship between God and being? What is the meaning of forgiveness, faith, piety, or transcendence? - that define the terrain of contemporary philosophy of religion.

The Insistence of God

by John D. Caputo

Published 1 January 2013

The Insistence of God presents the provocative idea that God does not exist, God insists, while God's existence is a human responsibility, which may or may not happen. For John D. Caputo, God's existence is haunted by "perhaps," which does not signify indecisiveness but an openness to risk, to the unforeseeable. Perhaps constitutes a theology of what is to come and what we cannot see coming. Responding to current critics of continental philosophy, Caputo explores the materiality of perhaps and the promise of the world. He shows how perhaps can become a new theology of the gaps God opens.


Demythologizing Heidegger

by John D. Caputo

Published 1 November 1993

"Caputo offers a compelling plea for a reinterpretation of Heidegger that will make us more humane, and more attuned to the call of justice and mercy than to the call of Being." -Christian Century

"There is no other book that focuses on the religious significance of the many 'turnings' in Heidegger's thought, nor that addresses the question of Heidegger's politics textually rather than autobiographically." -Merold Westphal

A readable chronological consideration of Heidegger's texts that assesses his achievement as a thinker, while pointing to the sources of his political and ethical failure. Caputo addresses the religious significance of Heidegger's thought.