The Folly of God: A Theology of the Unconditional (God and the Human Future)

The interests of theology -- God is not a supreme being -- The unconditional -- Proto-religion -- How long will religion last? -- In praise of weakness -- Weakening the being of the supreme being -- A theology of perhaps -- The call -- Mustard seeds not metaphysics: the theopoetics of the Kingdom of God -- Does the Kingdom of God need God? Inspired by Paul Tillich's suggestion that atheism is not the end of theology but is instead the beginning, and working this together with Derrida's idea of the undeconstructible, Caputo explores the idea that the real interest of theology is not God, especially not God as supreme being, but the unconditional. The Folly of God continues the radical reading of Paul's explosive language in 1 Corinthians 1 about the stand God makes with the nothings and nobodies of the world, first introduced in The Weakness of God (2006) and The Insistence of God(2013). The Folly of God is the first volume of the new God and the Human Future series, edited by David Galston. This series tests the very limits of “God questions”—the meaning of God, the existence of God, the future of God. Books in this series take seriously that such questions are mediated always through human language and scientific thought. In this sense, even God is historical. What, then, is the value of religion? Does God have a future? If so, in what changed or altered way?