I recently came across a book by John Capito, a catholic philosopher with an interest in religion and theology and now professor emeritus at Syracuse and Villanova Universities. The book’s title is ‘What to Believe, Twelve Brief Lessons in Radical Theology’ and the first chapter is entitled ‘God Does Not Exist’. I was intrigued because so often when I read or hear the word God, especially in liturgy, it sounds as though we are praying to a kind of superman somewhere outside the cosmos. This notion of God has become increasingly dissatisfying so to hear a catholic academic declare he was an atheist was refreshing and intriguing.
In the book he explains exactly what he means by this. He is an atheist if by God we mean “ the supreme being who sees all, knows all, can do all, who is watching every move we make and is coming to get us if we do not behave ourselves and to whom we turn when things take a turn for the worst”. His atheism is what he calls theological atheism. Capito is more accepting of Tillich’s understanding of God as the Ground of our Being or the Apostle Paul’s as that Reality in which we live and move and have our being. He sees this as an expression of panentheism in which God can be found in all thing but thinks it is only a stage in our understanding of God and that we have to make the next evolutionary step to what he calls radical theology.
For Capito there are two kinds of theology – that of bridge- builders, seeking a connection between humans and a supernatural being and ground- diggers who are trying to unearth the truth of what it means to say God is the very ground on which we stand. Radical theology is an example of ground-digging theology, at the heart of which is the question“what is really going on?” This is a discerning of the depth dimension of things or the dearest freshness deep down things as Gerard Manley Hopkins would put it. This is to be looked for in religion but also in art, music, philosophy, human history and relationships. Everything can reveal this dimension if we have eyes to see it but he warns that if in this digging “you see a binary opposition, look more closely and it will break down for one side is always inhabited by the other” for distinctions such as the separation of religion and the secular are false.
When it comes to God Capito takes up Tillich’s notion that God is unconditional but he stresses the unconditional is not God. The unconditional is in fact prior to God. He uses a phrase of Schilling who says, “God is the absolutely un-pre- thinkable, that which is present before thought so how are we to speak of it. We can only do so in thought and speech that is conditioned.“ The unconditional is not something we can meet because there is no-thing or person to meet or unite with. Rather it is the underlying support of the things we do meet, it is their underlying condition. Caputo tells the story of an old fish encountering two young fish and asking ‘ how is the water today boys’ and the younger fish asking once the older one has swum away ‘ what the hell is water’? Although the unconditional is always and everywhere, we cannot meet it directly and can only think of it in terms of symbols. It’s up to us to find worthy symbols and avoid unworthy ones.
Capito sees the word God as a symbol in which the unconditional is mediated and imaginatively constructed. He thinks that what is going on in the name of God is an event, an event which reaches back to an un- pre-thinkable time and will end in an axial age when this universe as we know it will have died and we know not what will be, if anything. At the heart of this event in which we are all participating is desire and Capito reflects on the first half of the famous phrase of St Augustine, ‘ you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless ….. There is within us a structure of expectation, of openess to what is coming. He uses the illustration of a desire for a hat, once bought, can lead to a desire for further purchases, something we all know so well. So he asks, what is really going on in this desire? It is acting as a lure. It is calling me, attracting me and demands a response. So too the name of God is the name of a call that acts as a lure that calls for a reponse. And how we respond to this will determine whether God is a worthy symbol or not. We are responsible for what is going on in that name. How we live is the basis for arguing for and against the existence of God.
There’s a lot I like about this theology. I like the idea of the word God being a symbol for what Caputo calls the unconditional. It allows me to use the word, to accept other people’s use of it without trying to translate or dismiss it and not to confuse the symbol with the reality. I like the idea of the name of God as an event which is open to future possibilities. For me the best image of God I can think of is of God as a magnet because I do feel an attraction to spirituality, to commitment, to service, all that is part of being a christian or religious. This fits well with Caputo’s theology. And perhaps above all I like the question, “what is really going on”, a question which is intriguing and challenging an one that will accompany me into the future.
In the book he explains exactly what he means by this. He is an atheist if by God we mean “ the supreme being who sees all, knows all, can do all, who is watching every move we make and is coming to get us if we do not behave ourselves and to whom we turn when things take a turn for the worst”. His atheism is what he calls theological atheism. Capito is more accepting of Tillich’s understanding of God as the Ground of our Being or the Apostle Paul’s as that Reality in which we live and move and have our being. He sees this as an expression of panentheism in which God can be found in all thing but thinks it is only a stage in our understanding of God and that we have to make the next evolutionary step to what he calls radical theology.
For Capito there are two kinds of theology – that of bridge- builders, seeking a connection between humans and a supernatural being and ground- diggers who are trying to unearth the truth of what it means to say God is the very ground on which we stand. Radical theology is an example of ground-digging theology, at the heart of which is the question“what is really going on?” This is a discerning of the depth dimension of things or the dearest freshness deep down things as Gerard Manley Hopkins would put it. This is to be looked for in religion but also in art, music, philosophy, human history and relationships. Everything can reveal this dimension if we have eyes to see it but he warns that if in this digging “you see a binary opposition, look more closely and it will break down for one side is always inhabited by the other” for distinctions such as the separation of religion and the secular are false.
When it comes to God Capito takes up Tillich’s notion that God is unconditional but he stresses the unconditional is not God. The unconditional is in fact prior to God. He uses a phrase of Schilling who says, “God is the absolutely un-pre- thinkable, that which is present before thought so how are we to speak of it. We can only do so in thought and speech that is conditioned.“ The unconditional is not something we can meet because there is no-thing or person to meet or unite with. Rather it is the underlying support of the things we do meet, it is their underlying condition. Caputo tells the story of an old fish encountering two young fish and asking ‘ how is the water today boys’ and the younger fish asking once the older one has swum away ‘ what the hell is water’? Although the unconditional is always and everywhere, we cannot meet it directly and can only think of it in terms of symbols. It’s up to us to find worthy symbols and avoid unworthy ones.
Capito sees the word God as a symbol in which the unconditional is mediated and imaginatively constructed. He thinks that what is going on in the name of God is an event, an event which reaches back to an un- pre-thinkable time and will end in an axial age when this universe as we know it will have died and we know not what will be, if anything. At the heart of this event in which we are all participating is desire and Capito reflects on the first half of the famous phrase of St Augustine, ‘ you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless ….. There is within us a structure of expectation, of openess to what is coming. He uses the illustration of a desire for a hat, once bought, can lead to a desire for further purchases, something we all know so well. So he asks, what is really going on in this desire? It is acting as a lure. It is calling me, attracting me and demands a response. So too the name of God is the name of a call that acts as a lure that calls for a reponse. And how we respond to this will determine whether God is a worthy symbol or not. We are responsible for what is going on in that name. How we live is the basis for arguing for and against the existence of God.
There’s a lot I like about this theology. I like the idea of the word God being a symbol for what Caputo calls the unconditional. It allows me to use the word, to accept other people’s use of it without trying to translate or dismiss it and not to confuse the symbol with the reality. I like the idea of the name of God as an event which is open to future possibilities. For me the best image of God I can think of is of God as a magnet because I do feel an attraction to spirituality, to commitment, to service, all that is part of being a christian or religious. This fits well with Caputo’s theology. And perhaps above all I like the question, “what is really going on”, a question which is intriguing and challenging an one that will accompany me into the future.
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