Questioning God

by Caputo, John D.; Dooley, Mark; Scanlon, Michael J.

• ISBN13: 9780253339812
• ISBN10: 0253339812
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-09-01
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr

Summary

This volume, based on the second of Villanova's "Religion and Postmodernism" lecture series, brings Jacques Derrida together with an international group of philosophers and theologians, including John Milbank, Graham Ward, Richard Kearney, Kevin Hart, Jean Greisch and others, to discuss questions of forgiveness and God in a post-modern time. In addition to containing the first appearance in print of Derrida's recent work on the topic of "forgiveness," this volume also presents the first confrontation of deconstruction with Radical Orthodoxy.What are the connections between phenomenology and religion? What does it mean to forgive in a post-modern age? Is forgiveness a paradox today? In 15 lively essays, Jacques Derrida and an international group of scholars of religion explore thinking about God within the context and the economy of exchange that seems to govern repentance. If forgiveness is, as implied in the word, a giving and a gift, then is it only to be given to those who earn it, to those who repent and make amends? What does it mean to reduce forgiveness to a simple economic exchange? Can we only really forgive the unrepentant, those who have not earned it? Can we only properly forgive the unforgivable? Can the sense of debt and reciprocity that comes with forgiveness ever be avoided? Specific topics such as imagining God as unthinkable, imagining God as non-patriarchal, imagining a return to Augustine, and imagining an age where praise is far more important than narrative, amplify the religious and philosophical dialogues taking place in this timely volume. Questioning God moves readers beyond the parameters of metaphysical reason and modernist rationality as it unites post-modern attempts to conceive of God.Contributors include John D. Caputo, Jacques Derrida, Mark Dooley, Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, Robert Gibbs, Jean Greisch, Kevin Hart, Richard Kearney, Cleo McNelly Kearns, John Milbank, Regina M. Schwartz, Michael J. Scanlon, Graham Ward.

Author Biography

John D. Caputo is David R. Cook Chair of Philosophy at Villanova University. He is author of More Radical Hermeneutics; The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida; Against Ethics; and Radical Hermeneutics. He is co-editor (with Michael J. Scanlon) of God, the Gift, and Postmodernism.

Mark Dooley is John Henry Newman Scholar in Theology at University College, Dublin. He is author of The Politics of Exodus and From Aquinas to Derrida.

Michael J. Scanlon is Josephine C. Connelly Chair of Christian Theology at Villanova University. His articles have appeared in Catholic Theological Society of America Proceedings, New Theology Review, and Augustinian Studies.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction: God Forgive	1	(20)
John D. Caputo
Mark Dooley
Michael J. Scanlon
PART 1. FORGIVING
To Forgive: The Unforgivable and the Imprescriptible	21	(31)
Jacques Derrida
On Forgiveness: A Roundtable Discussion with Jacques Derrida	52	(21)
Richard Kearney
Returning/Forgiving: Ethics and Theology	73	(19)
Robert Gibbs
Forgiveness and Incarnation	92	(37)
John Milbank
The Catastrophe of Memory: Derrida, Milbank and the (Im) possibility of Forgiveness	129	(24)
Mark Dooley
PART II. GOD
The God Who May Be	153	(33)
Richard Kearney
``Absolute Interruption'': On Faith	186	(23)
Kevin Hart
Response
Jacques Derrida
Questioning Narratives of God: The Immeasurable in Measures	209	(26)
Regina Mara Schwartz
Response
Jacques Derrida
``Idipsum'': Divine Selfhood and the Postmodern Subject	235	(28)
Jean Greisch
The Humiliated Self as the Rhetorical Self	263	(11)
Michael J. Scanlon
Questioning God	274	(17)
Graham Ward
What Do I Love When I Love My God? Deconstruction and Radical Orthodoxy	291	(27)
John D. Caputo
The Scandals of the Sign: The Virgin Mary as Supplement in the Religions of the Book	318	(23)
Cleo McNelly Kearns
Being, Subjectivity, Otherness: The Idols of God	341	(30)
Francis Schussler Fiorenza
Contributors	371	(4)
Index	375