“The God…who answers prayers, and defends the weak, can no longer be defended.” Indeed, “[t]he God of conventional theism is dead.” This, at any rate, is critic Peter Vardy’s take on John Caputo’s argument in What to Believe? Writing in Britain’s Church Times, the reviewer adds, “Given this, the book seeks a way forward,” and finds it.
“‘God’ is not what they were telling us,” Caputo insists. “God is infinite possibility,” he declares. But for that to be realized, “the burden of actualization falls on us. […] God is not an independent agent-doer of mighty deeds…. The agency is our responsibility.” It’s as Jesse Lava has it, writing for The Christian Century, “Caputo’s God can’t live without us. […] [T]he responsibility for improving the world lies with us.”
And we do this how? By making the kingdom of God come true—”make it real, make it happen.” We are to “bring it about in people’s lives, down here on the ground, in obscure pockets of the world, in dirt-poor church halls and third-world health clinics serving the poorest of the poor.”
Just remember progressive Christian author Robin Meyers’ alert: “What you are about to read is God-years ahead of its time.”
What to Believe? Twelve Brief Lessons in Radical Theology
By John Caputo
Columbia University Press, 2023