In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, David Pan talks with Martin Tomszak about his article “‘With Desire I Have Desired’: Enjoying the Face of the Other as Political Theology: John Caputo and Dorothy Day Situating Hospitality as Divine Encounter,” from Telos 198 (Spring 2022). An excerpt of the article appears here. In their conversation they discuss the basic tenets of the theology of divine weakness, as developed by John Caputo; how this theology arises out of Caputo’s reading of Derrida and his rereading of scripture, specially Luke’s description of the life of Jesus of Nazareth; how Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement translated this theology of divine weakness into practice; how this theology relates to the writings and praxis of Peter Maurin; and how Day and Maurin understood the idea of state sovereignty and why they were opposed to state-sponsored forms of welfare. If your university has an online subscription to Telos, you can read the full article at the Telos Online website. For non-subscribers, learn how your university can begin a subscription to Telos at our library recommendation page. Print copies of Telos 198 are available for purchase in our online store.
“With Desire I Have Desired”: Enjoying the Face of the Other as Political Theology: John Caputo and Dorothy Day Situating Hospitality as Divine Encounter
Martin Tomszak
Introduction
When attempting to undertake any exploration of the merits that deconstruction may have within the sphere of theology, the natural starting place is the work of John Caputo. Caputo has been instrumental in the formation of radical theology, theopoetics, and a hermeneutics of the event as new, or perhaps very old, ways of wrestling with how we are to traverse the delicate sphere of the Divine generally and the work of Jesus of Nazareth specifically. Thus, his expertise in the realm of theory will serve as a vital foundation for how we might begin to formulate a functional theoaktion and theo-ethic as we ourselves try to navigate what it means to be Catholic and live the Gospel message within the postmodern epoch through my chosen lens of the work done by Dorothy Day and the backdrop of Jesus’s ministry.
The notion of the “weakness of God” will receive special attention within this essay because in addition to its centrality to Caputo’s theopoetics, I see it as inherently represented in the Catholic Worker program in a way that moves beyond theory.[1] In what he calls the “theology of the event,” Caputo offers this term as a way of rethinking our approach to the Divine that moves us away from ontotheology, destructive concepts of sovereignty, and inscriptions of omnipotence, which are nothing more than metaphysical fantasies that have stifled the power (weakness) of the Divine. While Caputo builds off the work of Derrida, Vattimo, and Benjamin, his foundational text for such a development is Saint Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians, where the term “weakness of God” (1 Cor. 1:25) appears. The text serves as the launching point for a redefined Christology and soteriology in which Paul’s usage of ta me onta (literally, the things that are not or “the least of these”) is the axis upon which Jesus’s identity turns.[2]
It is this same axis that forms the center of the personalist understandings of the love for the other at the root of the Catholic Worker’s mission. I would like to explore what it might mean for the field if we recognize that what Caputo is hinting at already exists functionally in active radical lay communities. Dorothy Day’s declaration that the Divine is present in the ugliness of the world, in the vomit-covered and urine-stained drunk knocking at the St. Joseph House door, in the addict, in the whore, in the deranged, and in the single mother of three with nowhere else to go[3]—this is the pinnacle of what Caputo defines as “Divine weakness.” However, Day was able to shift from the “potential” of theopoetics, as Caputo calls it, to theoaktion, as I would like to describe it. This movement from potentiality to actuality is a necessary trajectory for the (de)construction offered by both Paul and Caputo. The works of mercy issuing forth from the realization of Divinity present in the Other move weakness from a category of thought to a catalyst for expressing our own vulnerability and solidarity in particular moments of encounter.
In developing this theme of genuine encounter, it is not that Day’s work “conquered” otherness but rather that it admitted the weakness inherent in our human condition, a condition that contains a reflection of the weakness present in the Divine. Works of mercy are in this case a response to the “So what?” question asked of post-structuralist theologians; they are the “Yes, yes” necessary to making such theological categories viable.[4] Let us see what fruit this unlikely marriage between a postmodern philosopher of religion and a midcentury activist bears.
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1. The central texts utilized in this study authored by John Caputo are as follows: The Insistence of God: A Theology of the Perhaps (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2013); What Would Jesus Deconstruct: The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007); The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2006); The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: A Religion without Religion (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1997); Hoping against Hope: Confessions of a Postmodern Pilgrim (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015); and The Folly of God: A Theology of the Unconditional (Salem, OR: Polebridge Press, 2016).
2. See also Catherine Keller, The Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming (London: Routledge, 2003), in which she begins to trace some of the anarchic tendencies and presence of weakness within the Genesis creation narrative, the implications of which are notions of constant beginning, never-ending creation, and the necessity for re-creation or re-centering. Ultimately, Keller argues that such a view of the narrative is a catalyst for deconstruction in the face of doctrine and dogma. This spirit very much resonates with what is being undertaken here.
3. Dorothy Day, introduction to The Long Loneliness (New York: HarperCollins, 1952).
4. While the central interlocutor here will be Caputo, Jacques Derrida’s “Hospitality” in Acts of Religion, ed. Gil Anidjar (New York: Routledge, 2002), might add nuance to the discussion of defining the term while also serving as a genealogical stepping stone toward Caputo’s work.
