Not the ‘what’ of God but the ‘how’
As I’ve mentioned before — or maybe I haven’t mentioned it before, I can’t remember — I reserve the right to blatantly disagree with myself and change my mind on this blog. That’s just the nature of things.
A while back I wrote a post in which I attempt to provisionally answer Augustine’s timeless question: What do I love when I love my God? One commenter pointing out that my answer was very anthropocentric. No doubt he is right. I’d probably modify my language were I answering it today.
Last night I was reading On Religion by John Caputo and I ran across a quote that made me wonder about the premise of the question. No that’s not right. Not the premise of the question per se, but perhaps the way the question has been couched by virtually every commenter since Augustine firs posed it.
The name of God is the name of the ever open question. Unlike reductionists, who think that the name of God closes every question down, that it supplies a ready-made answer for every possible questio, the name of God in my post-modern Itinerarium is the name of infinite questionability, of what is endlessly questionable, for no name can cause my head to spin more than the name of what I love and desire. But what do I love when I love my God? In loyalty to St. Augustine, whom I also love, I have retained the “what,” but of course, if I dared to correct a Saint, which I would never do, if I were an obscure copyist in an Irish monastery in the tenth century working on the Confessiones, I would in all fear and trembling have furtively amended the what to a how. How do I love when I love my God? For love is a how, not a what.
Captuo goes on to argue that God is not merely a name to by examined by theologians and metaphysicians, but a deed — or deeds plural, that is more like it — to be carried out, a doing to be done, and action to be enacted, a how to be put into practice. For it is in doing justice and doing love that God exists, not in the hopelessly modernistic arguments for or against the existence of God as a simple proposition, for God cannot be constraint my reductionist propositions and premises.
Perhaps then both ends of the spectrum, of God as Being-Itself (Paul Tillich) and God as that which is without Being (Jean-Luc Marion), are as equally problematic as is the false dichotomy of theism and atheism. To ask whether God is or is not is to miss the higher movement at play and to reduce the name of God to pure empirical proposition. Rather, in this view, God is in facere veritatem ( the doing of truth), to borrow Caputo borrowing Augustine. Truth is brought into existence in the happening; likewise God is brought into existence in the event. God is a God-Who-May-Be, to use Richard Kearney’s expression, because God rejects as false both modern reductions of theism and atheism, of possibility and impossibility, real and unreal. This God is utterly Beyond, a God of a/theism, a God of im/possibility, and a God of the hyper-real, that is the Real beyond real, whose name is brought to bare in the happening of truth, the doing of justice, and the enacting of a possibility otherwise thought to be impossible — that is love.
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Dude, I read that book last week and it blew my mind in 100 different ways. I'm not sure how far you are in to it, but Caputo keeps revisiting that Augustinian question throughout the text… I'm still stewing on a bunch of stuff that he brings up.
Jake Bouma
21 Apr 09 at 4:44 pm
Yeah, man. I finished it last night. It such a good book. I think I may read through it again, it's got so many rich lines. And it's good to see an important philosopher of religion presenting his thought in a way that your average church goer can understand. I like reading esoteric texts as much as anyone, but it's important to come down out of the clouds every once in a while…..
Blake Huggins
21 Apr 09 at 4:57 pm
See Augustine's De Beata Vita – specifically Cupiditas and Caritas. I hope to have what I want AND want the right thing.
db
phantomjourneymister
21 Apr 09 at 5:05 pm
[...] Huggins made a very important point today, one I’ve been meaning to mention: As I’ve mentioned before — or maybe I haven’t [...]
Perogative to Change My Mind | Ground of Being
21 Apr 09 at 1:05 pm
Am i reading Blake Huggins or am i reading Pete Rollins?!
ExistentialPunk
21 Apr 09 at 8:05 pm
I know, right? I'll say this though — you're probably never reading "me." I'm not sure that such a thing exists. I am the sum total of everyone I've ever been in dialogue with be it in person or through their writings (both in print and online). I have totally unoriginal in this way.
Blake Huggins
21 Apr 09 at 8:10 pm
[...] Blake Huggins at Irreligiosity posted a quote by John Caputo that made me think of the point of my most recent post. (The server at Irreligiosity appears to be down. Seems like I’m not the only one having issues.) The name of God is the name of the ever open question. Unlike reductionists, who think that the name of God closes every question down, that it supplies a ready-made answer for every possible question, the name of God in my post-modern Itinerarium is the name of infinite questionability, of what is endlessly questionable, for no name can cause my head to spin more than the name of what I love and desire. [...]
Ephemeral Thoughts » The Name of Infinite Questionability
2 May 09 at 10:42 am
[...] Not the ‘What’ of God, But the ‘How’ (blakehuggins.com) [...]
I Am Yours and You Are Mine « The Official Blog of Ryan Johnston
8 Jun 09 at 5:53 pm
[...] Not the ‘What’ of God, But How | Blake Huggins [...]
Some More Caputo Resources « Emergent Outliers
15 Jul 09 at 11:18 am
Trinity as a grammar.
phantomjourneymister
4 Sep 09 at 7:23 am
The REAL miracle at the first Pentecost? Acts 2:8 Love in any Language, fluently spoken here.
phantomjourneymister
4 Sep 09 at 7:29 am
Trinity as a grammar.
phantomjourneymister
4 Sep 09 at 1:23 pm
The REAL miracle at the first Pentecost? Acts 2:8 Love in any Language, fluently spoken here.
phantomjourneymister
4 Sep 09 at 1:29 pm
[...] starting to wonder how this may change my ideas and definitions about [...]
Before Abraham was, I AM at (Ir)religiosity
14 Sep 09 at 5:55 pm