March 2015
Westar Institute Spring Meeting
Santa Rosa, California
The Seminar on God and the Human Future gathered at the Spring 2015 meeting to launch a five-year project on what we mean by the word God. Westerners speak of God as many things—the Supreme Being, Creator, Lawgiver, source of all that exists, the energy or force that pulses through all reality, the “ground” of being. We speak sometimes, too, of a “God of the gaps,” that which surpasses human understanding. Rainer Maria Rilke called God “the primordial tower,” which we circle without ever figuring out who or what we are. Which concept of God makes the best sense today? Is God needed in the Kingdom of God?
This celebration of the work of radical theologian John D. “Jack” Caputo invites listeners to consider a new way of thinking about God as weak but potent, as “the great perhaps.”
Features presentations by John D. Caputo, Sarah Morice Brubaker, Jeffrey W. Robbins, and Joseph Bessler, with additional comments, questions, and discussion from the scholars of the Seminar on God and the Human Future. Read more about the Seminar on God and the Human Future
John D. Caputo is Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus at Syracuse University and David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Villanova University. His book The Weakness of God (2006) won an American Academy of Religion award for excellence. His other books include On Religion and What Would Jesus Deconstruct?
