The Insistence of God: A Theology of Perhaps (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion)

by John D. Caputo

I do not believe in the existence of God but in God's insistence. I do not say God “exists,” but that God calls—God calls upon us, like an unwelcome interruption, a quiet but insistent solicitation.

The work of theology is not to spell out the bells and whistles adorning a heavenly monarch but to meditate upon everything we are here called to, everything we are trying to recall, in and under the name (of) “God.”

I do not know what I desire when I desire God, where that non-knowing is not a lack but the open-ended venture in the human adventure, the promise/risk, the very structure of hope and expectation, not this Messiah or that, but a messianic expectation not immune from secretly hoping the Messiah never shows up.

God does not bring closure but a gap. A God of the gaps is not the gap God fills, but the gap God opens.

That is the premise of the present study. I pursue the possibility that “perhaps” belongs to another “regime” than that of mere opinion and hazy indecision,7 that it enjoys an “irreducible modality” all its own. I am in search of a “perhaps” that is not a category of logic but proves to be of a more subtle disposition, one uniquely accommodated to address the “event,” one that is indeed “the only possible thought of the event.”8

I am issuing a call for a new species of theologians, weak theologians who must be, just as Jesus says, as wise, shrewd, and prudent as serpents, the wise ones (phronimoi) of the “perhaps”—even as they must be as harmless (akeraioi) as the doves.

“Perhaps” does not mean the onto-possible, the future present, where it is only a matter of time until it rolls around at some later date. It does not belong to the system of categories organized around the binary pairing of necessary and contingent, presence and absence, being and non-being, knowledge and ignorance, belief and unbelief, certainty and uncertainty, actuality and potentiality, substance and accident, theism and atheism. Nor is this “perhaps” a simple compromise between these binaries, a safe middle ground that would maintain a strategic neutrality while still remaining within that order.

It belongs to a different register altogether, not the presential order of ontology but a weaker, more dovelike order, what Derrida amusingly (but he is dead serious) calls the order of “hauntology,” which means the order of the event which haunts ontology.11

The haunting specter of “perhaps” provokes a more radical opening in the present.12 It prevents the present from closing down upon itself, from being identical with itself, leaving it structurally exposed to the future, not the future present but the very structure of the to-come (à venir).

“Perhaps” twists free (sly as a serpent) from the grip of thinking in terms of the power of the actual, of the prestige of the present, and opens thinking to the weak force of the to-come. I hold my ground on the groundless ground of “perhaps” in order to stay alive to the chance of the event.

Yes, yes, to the “perhaps.” That is an act of faith (foi) that exceeds the simple binarity of belief (croyance) and unbelief, an affirmation more elusive than any positive position, deeper than any positively posited belief.

“Perhaps” is not a simple disinterest but a word of desire for something, I know not what, something I desire with a “desire beyond desire.”15

“Perhaps” is not to be confused with the “possible” as the counter-part of the actual, with a merely logical possibility or empirical unpredictability.16

To say “perhaps” is to abandon the shield of safety provided by power, presence, principle, and predictability, by actuality and the real. “Perhaps” risks exposure to a spooky, irreal, inexistent insistence, where insistence exceeds existence and existence can never catch up to what insists.

“Perhaps” is a principle without principle, an anarchic and unmonarchical arche, issuing in an odd sort of affirmative, grammatological and “aphoristic energy.”17

The un-certainty of “perhaps” does not constitute a defect, a failure to attain certainty, but a release from the rule of the certain, an emancipation from the block that certainty throws up against thinking or desiring otherwise.

“Perhaps” does not signify a simple lack of purpose but a way to stay on the tracks of something unknown, something structurally to come.

“Perhaps” shelters things from the harsh light of the concept or the program which prevents the event. Instead of constituting a failure of exact knowledge or of determinate decision, “perhaps” represents a greater rigor and a more resolute adhering to what solicits us, a refusal to allow the prima facie claims of the present to take hold, a refusal to be taken in by an accident of birth.

"Perhaps" is resolute openness to the coming event, a powerful posture of a faith characterized by humility and weakness.

Because it seeks access to the inaccessible, to the unprogrammable, to the uncertain, to the “event,” “perhaps” affirms a more obscure and radical faith (foi) not a well-defined and positive belief (croyance).18

“Perhaps” does not refuse to make a leap of faith. It recognizes that what passes for a “leap of faith” in “orthodoxy” is an assertion, an assertiveness, that is trying to make contact with the certain, vainly trying to contract a more abysmal affirmation into a creedal assent.

The faithful are of little faith; they fear the faith of this small word “perhaps,” the faithful being an assembly of believers in beliefs whose contingency they do not quite confront. “Perhaps” harbors a deeper faith while looking for all the world like doubt, like a lamb amid wolves.

“Perhaps” sounds like mere propositional indecisiveness, maybe this or maybe that, who knows which? But I am interested not in the propositional but the expositional, not in what we propose but in that to which we are exposed, in what poses itself before us, imposes itself upon us, posing and presupposing a possibility that leaves us groping for words.

"Perhaps" is the exposition of the imposition by humility upon us.

“Perhaps” is not a refusal to engage with reality but a response to the solicitation of the real beyond the real, not the real as the res, present and objective, but the real as the insistence of the ultra-real or hyper-real that insinuates itself into what passes itself off for reality.19

“Perhaps” unhinges us from the real, making the impossible possible. “Perhaps” is not a refusal to answer but the depths of responsibility, a recognition of the extent to which the question exceeds us and puts us in question.

“Perhaps” is not a refusal to answer but the depths of responsibility, a recognition of the extent to which the question exceeds us and puts us in question.

“Perhaps” sounds like it has renounced all truth and has consigned itself to a regime of opinion. But in truth the society of the friends of “perhaps” is also the society of the true friends of truth, not because they are in the truth, which means inside the secure confines of certainty and dogma, but in the sense of befriending it, seeking it, loving it, exposing themselves to its unforeseeable and dangerous coming, to the risk of the “perhaps.” They do not claim to be the truth but to be its friends.

Perhaps” is attuned to what Heidegger called the quiet power of the possible, where the power of the possible consists in the power of the impossible. “Perhaps” does not withdraw but reaches out; it does not refuse the real but reaches out to its outer limit, to the possibility of the impossible, opening itself to the coming of something, I know not what. Je ne sais quoi. Il faut croire.23

“Perhaps” says it is possible when it is impossible, believes when it is incredible, still hopes even after hope is lost. “Perhaps” is a steely, indefatigable, resolute openness to what seems to have been closed off—while looking for all the world like a sleepy indifference. Perhaps is sly as a serpent, innocent as a dove, a lamb among wolves.

One clue to what is going on in the present study is as follows: “Perhaps”—one must (il faut) always say perhaps for God. There is a future for God and there is no God except to the degree that some event is possible which, as event, exceeds calculation, rules, program, anticipations, and so forth. God, as the experience of absolute alterity, is unpresentable, but God is the chance of the event and the condition of history.24

“Perhaps”—one must (il faut) always say perhaps for God. There is a future for God and there is no God except to the degree that some event is possible which, as event, exceeds calculation, rules, program, anticipations, and so forth. God, as the experience of absolute alterity, is unpresentable, but God is the chance of the event and the condition of history.24

Whenever and wherever there is a chance for the event, that is God, perhaps. God can happen anywhere. But history has no future, and God has no future, indeed there is no history or God at all, unless there is a chance for the event. If there is a chance for the event, if the event can happen anywhere, that is God, perhaps. If there is a chance for history, that is God, perhaps.

As the observant reader may have noticed, I have (as is my wont) begun with the words of Jacques Derrida. Perhaps. I admit to having introduced a slight alteration in the text (sly as a snake), a small point, really (harmless as a dove): I have substituted “God” where Derrida said “justice.”

I admit to having introduced a slight alteration in the text (sly as a snake), a small point, really (harmless as a dove): I have substituted “God” where Derrida said “justice.”...

My claim is that a genuine grammar of assent is found in a grammatology of “perhaps,” which is the best suited to meet the needs of a coming theology, of a theology of the event, that is, of a weak theology that comes on the wings of doves.

Theology in the strong standard version belongs to the sovereign order of power and presence and favors a grammar of great omni-nouns and hyper-verbs. It strides confidently within the assured and strident categories of theism and atheism, belief and unbelief, existence and non-existence, existence and hyper-existence, nature and supernature, presence and super-presence, visible and invisible, changing and unchanging, absolute and relative, true and false.

Weak theology, on the other, is content with a little adverb like “perhaps,” which can do no more than interrupt or intercept, deflect or modify other, more prestigious substantive and verbal things, introducing modalities, conditions, degrees, and exceptions, focusing on ...

When I say “God, perhaps” I am proposing the subject matter of a weak theology but I am not advocating agnostic indecisiveness.

On the one hand, I am trying to open thinking and practice to God, to the event that is playing itself out under the name of God, to what we desire in and under that name, to the truth of God.

But, on the other hand, in saying “perhaps,” I am not allowing the claim made by the event to be contracted to that name, to be identified with that name, to be “identified” as “God.” At the point at which the event is identified, it is undermined.

Once I say I know the name of the event, once I can say, this is God, the event is God, then the event ceases to be an event and becomes something that I have added to my repertoire, brought within the horizon of my experience, knowledge, belief, identification, and expectation, whereas the event is precisely what always and already, structurally, exceeds my horizons.

The event is always to come, to be named, always not yet.

What I mean by the event is the surprise, what literally over-takes me, shattering my horizon of expectation. God is a name for the event, but the very idea of an event prevents us from saying the event is God, because the very idea of the event is that I cannot see it coming.

For the event, names are always lacking, even the name of God. But that is not because the event is a hyperousios, the unnamable hyper-presence of mystical theology, with which deconstruction is sometimes confused, but because the event is still coming, is structurally to-come, à venir, while I am always saying, praying “come,” viens. That is the very idea of a religion without religion, as opposed to the strong religion that reposes on the power of principles and propositions, the prestige of proper names, of properly sacred names, of sacred proper names found in sacred books.

The event, as such, is undeconstructible... "perhaps".

The possibility of the impossible is one of God's most venerable biblical names, the proper referent, if there is such a thing, of “perhaps,” maybe even of God, perhaps.

Onto-theologic trades in the hard and fast, the dogmatic, the decisive scission that cuts off being from non-being, which occludes the may-being of “perhaps.” “Perhaps” is the weak force of a possibility (of the impossible) not the strong force of actuality, the weakness of a solicitation not the strength of a command, the faintness of a suggestion not the power of an imperative, the fragility of a call not the audacity of an order.

“Perhaps” is the weak force of a possibility (of the impossible) not the strong force of actuality, the weakness of a solicitation not the strength of a command, the faintness of a suggestion not the power of an imperative, the fragility of a call not the audacity of an order.

The discursive form that can accommodate itself to “perhaps” is not a logic but a “poetics,” so a grammatology is a poetics of “perhaps.” “Perhaps” is like a sheep among wolves, or like a d...

But when I say “God, perhaps,” I am inscribing the Tetragrammaton in a general grammatology, inscribing God in spacing and timing without remainder. I am signing on to the futural, to becoming, while confessing that this becoming is not underwritten by some divine steadfastness or providential warranty, as it is in Hegel.

My “perhaps,” “maybe,” peut-être cuts deeply into the name of God so much that the name (of) “God” takes place in the very element of the peut-être itself, of the “event” of the promise which is no less a threat, of the maybe which is also a maybe not. We are not the least assured that God will be there, not the least assured that God may be at all, not the least assured that the “name” of God offers anything more than a hope, a prayer, a faith in something coming, something I know not what, a hope that may turn out in fact to be a nightmare, a monster, which happens time and time again when people act “in the name of God.”

If we made a list of all the names in the name of which murder is committed, the name of God would, perhaps, head the list, in close competition with “truth” and “justice.”

That means that the name of God is the name of a call in which we are called upon to respond, which we may or may not do, whether or not we think there is anyone or anything out there making such a call. The name of God is the name of a deed, of what is to be done, something that may or may not be done, something that demands to be done with or without God, something that may be done under other names, something structurally to-come where what happens rests upon our response and may end up being a disaster.