Questioning God

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Edited by John D. Caputo, Mark Dooley and Michael J. Scanlon

Indiana University Press

Due/Published September 2001, 372 pages, paper

ISBN 0253214742

What are the connections between phenomenology and religion? What does it mean to forgive in a postmodern age? Is forgiveness a paradox today? These fifteen essays (in the first part, specifically in dialogue with Derrida) 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 withforgiveness 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 volume. Questioning God moves readers beyond the parameters of metaphysical reason and modernist rationality as it unites postmodernattempts to conceive of God.

Contributors include: John D. Caputo, Jacques Derrida, Mark Dooley, Francis Schussler Fiorenza, Robert Gibbs, Jean Greisch, Kevin Hart, Richard Kearney, Cleo McNelly Kearns, John Milbank, Regina M. Schwartz, Michael J. Scanlon, Graham Ward

Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion--Merold Westphal, general editor

Contents

Introduction: God Forgive John D. Caputo, Mark Dooley, Michael J. ScanlonPart 1. Forgiving
1. To Forgive: The Unforgivable and the Imprescriptible--Jacques Derrida
2. On Forgiveness: A Discussion with Jacques Derrida Moderated by Richard Kearney
3. Returning/Forgiving: Ethics and Theology--Robert Gibbs
4. Forgiveness and Incarnation--John Milbank
5. The Catastrophe of Memory: Derrida, Milbank and the (Im)possibility of Forgiveness--Mark Dooley

Part 2. God
6. The God Who May Be--Richard Kearney
7. On Interruption--Kevin Hart
Response by Jacques Derrida
8. Questioning Narratives of God: The Immeasurable in Measures--Regina M. Schwartz
Response by Jacques Derrida
9. Idipsum: Divine Selfhood and the Postmodern Subject--ean Greisch
10. The Humiliated Self as the Rhetorical Self--Michael J. Scanlon
11. Questioning God Graham Ward
12. What Do I Love When I Love My God? Deconstruction and Radical Orthodoxy--John D. Caputo
13. The Scandals of the Sign: The Virgin Mary as Supplement in the Religions of the Book--Cleo McNelly Kearns
14. Being, Subjectivity, Otherness: The Idols of God--Francis Schüssler Fiorenza

Contributors
Index