“God without Sovereignty” and “Sacred Anarchy” of the Kingdom: Weak Theology as a Theo-political Project

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the political dimensions of John Caputo’s “weak theology”. We analyze his understanding of the weakness of God and trace the evolution of his theo-poetics as an adequate method of theological hermeneutics. We argue that in Caputo’s early works, theo-poetics is based on the Kantian reading of Derrida; this means the opposition between faith and knowledge, and emphasizing the undecidability. The political implications of a theology which is focused on the “God to come” are linked to messianic hope, and the promise of an event of justice. At the same time, justice is not interpreted as a thing that exists in the present or foreseeable future. Caputo proclaims the non-programmable future of event: justice “to come”, democracy “to come”, or hospitality “to come”. In later works, Caputo turns to Hegelian theo-poetics based on the concept of Vorstellung. It focuses on the world-life and the event of poieisis. The ontological aspects of the new mode of theological thinking are characterized through the transition from God’s existence to insistence. We analyze the concept of the Kingdom of God as “sacred anarchy”, and indicate that this Kingdom establishes the order that is opposed to hierarchical logic. The interpretation of the Kingdom of God based on the radical theology of the cross characterized as the deconstruction of the metaphysics of power, the mythology of the higher heavenly powers, and the politics of sovereignty. The ethical and political implications of the concept “Kingdom of God” are analyzed as a pragmatic and prophetic transformation of the world. We argue that the theo-poetics of the sacred anarchic Kingdom is a way of thinking on the hyper-reality of the impossible in the real world. The “politics of the cross” that is presented in the last works of Caputo can thus be characterized as a project of actualization and materialization, that is, the material embodiment of God in the world.