How to Pursue Religious Depth with John D. Caputo (Part 2)

How to Pursue Religious Depth with John D. Caputo (Part 2)

In our final episode of this season, Ilia Delio asks philosopher-theologian Jack Caputo more about religious depth in light of what he calls weak theology. Plus, Jack compares AI to angelology, and Ilia asks how theo-poetics can help us respond to the challenges posed by technology and the crises of our day.

ABOUT JOHN D. CAPUTO

“The name of God is the name of the impossible, and the love of God transports us beyond ourselves and the constraints imposed upon the world.”

John D. Caputo, the Cook Professor of Philosophy Emeritus (Villanova University) and the Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus (Syracuse University), is a hybrid philosopher/theologian who works in the area of “weak” or “radical” theology, drawing upon hermeneutic and deconstructive theory. His most recent books are What to Believe: Twelve Brief Lessons in Radical Theology (2023) and Specters of God: An Anatomy of the Apophatic Imagination (2022). His The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event (2006), won the American Academy of Religion award for excellence in the category of constructive theology.

Transcript

Robert: Welcome to Hunger for Wholeness, a podcast from the Center for Christogenesis. I'm your host, Robert Nicastro. In our final episode, Ilia asks philosopher theologian, Jack Caputo more about religious depth in light of what he calls weak theology. Then later, Jack compares AI to angelology, and Ilia asks how theopoetics can respond to the challenges posed by technology and the crises of our day.

Ilia: I do think that religious depth that Paul Tillich spoke so wonderfully about, I think that's really vital to actually building a world of breeder, justice and unity. And you mentioned, actually, we were talking before, like literature is one way to engage this theopoesis. I also think just action itself being like attentive, engaged action, conscientious action like being aware of being in relationship with others and the way we are in those relationships also.

Jack: Sure. One thing I always like to say when we get into this kind of question is, look, the unconditional is not somebody that you're going to meet someday. It's not something you're going to find. You'll never meet the unconditional in person, but you will meet persons who bear witness to the unconditional. So when someone puts themselves in harm's way or on behalf of something that they believe in profoundly, something that Martin Luther King walking across the—crossing the bridge in Alabama, no protections, facing the Alabama National Guard. They don't even know if they're going to make it to the other side of the bridge or they're going to get shot down. Now, there you've got witness testimony to something of unconditional worth. And then that doesn't need the name of God at all, right? I mean, there were people crossing that bridge with him who believed in the God of justice and with the prophets, and there were people who were complete atheists. They didn't believe any of that stuff, but they believed in justice and the event that takes place under the name of God, which some people call God and some people don't. But what is it? It's something of unconditional value. It's something of unconditional import, unconditional depth—it's the depth of being, the ground of being, the worth of being. Sometimes I'll say it's not ontological. It's axiological. It's the very worth of things that we'll put ourselves in harm's way for, or we are called to.

Ilia: What's so interesting is that there are some people who will do precisely that, that they're not necessarily religious or explicitly religious. They will put their lives in harm's way, whether it's for the greening of the earth or for the people at the border. I remember one time I read about a young woman in Israel who threw herself in front of a tractor trailer that was about to demolish a whole kibbutz, and she died for it. I wonder what drives a human person to take such a radical position, especially if they're not explicit. But obviously they believe in something, and maybe that's what you're getting at here, what the belief-full realism of a person may go much further than any explicit religious language or dogma.

Jack: That's right. The way I put that is to distinguished belief from faith. Beliefs are the sort of thing that are in your head because of an accident at birth. If we got switched at birth, the two of us, and we both woke up in the heart of Islam from the first breath we drew, the name of Jesus would be next to nothing to us. In fact, it might even mean something terrible. And we would have a completely different set of beliefs in our head. We woke up in the middle of some indigenous tribe in Australia even, faith on the other hand, is a fundamental orientation of our being. So someone could, this person who sacrificed their life, meet kind of the idea of God in their head, but they do have an understanding of what matters, of matters of unconditional concern. And so religion, Tillich said at one point that religion is sort of, plan B. Religion is there to sort of remind us of what's this supposed to be going on all the time, not just in religion. Religion is there as a remedy to our forgetfulness of the ground of being. If we were all appreciative of matters of unconditional concern, you wouldn't need religion. Then heaven, Jerusalem, there are no temples. Why? Because God is all in all already. So if God is all in, if these matters ultimate input were general or we were widespread, then you wouldn't need religion at all.

Ilia: I think that's actually really true. And I've often wondered if Jesus of Nazareth was not—certainly didn't start a new church or a new religion, but actually was the end of religion. In other words, he came to a radical sense of God, a presence in his life that impelled him to act in that unconditional way. In other words, to put his life precisely out there for this unconditional love that he, you know—I've often thought that Christianity, we kind of missed the boat on it, that it really was about a new personhood. That it was an awakening of the person to a new power and presence, calling us into the moreness of life, not only interpersonally, but together in a new collective. And therefore, this temple worship is really about the sacredness of personhood and the things of life, the things of the earth. In Teilhard's language, this new religion of the Earth, that's what he anticipates up ahead if we become increasingly conscious of the divine milieu.

So I think if we took the New Testament in a different spin, a different light, we would not have anything like the church and patriarchy and hierarchy and all the archies that divide and conquer. We would have a probably what Teilhard called a more politicized, communal way of life on Earth. I think that's what we hope for, and we have the capacity, we always have. I think we have this presence of this name, that this power points to, this name of God, whatever that power is, we have an unconditional, I mean, we have an infinite capacity to create, to imagine, to bring into existence what doesn't yet exist. I mean, that is pretty fantastic.

I want to bring up the question of artificial intelligence, because I know you've been thinking about this area as well as myself. I guess my question is, can AI liberate us in a theopoetic way? Can it really help bring about a new presence that pulls us into a new reality of life personally, collectively for the future of the earth? Or is it going to be our greatest downfall as we become machines of life and we all wind up as married to robots and we just lose any kind of sense of depth at all as we flatten out into binary algorithms?

Jack: Yeah, that's the question. I sent you an email the other day, and I had mentioned Derrida's notion of the pharmakon. Did you see that? Maybe you were off at the conference. He has this analysis of—he wrote an essay called “Plato's Pharmacy,” which I thought you would love, given the fact that you are doctorally trained in pharmacology. And it's about the invention of writing. It's a story in Plato, it's a myth in Plato about the invention of writing. And the God, the Greek version of, or the Egyptian version of Hermes, who was the inventor of writing in Greek mythology, presents his creation, his new creation, which is writing to the king. And he says, he's produced—now, this isn't play, this is all in Greek. He says, he's produced a pharmakon for humankind, which will remedy human forgetfulness and enhance our memory. And the king says, "Oh, he says, I'm afraid of this." He says I'm afraid it will weaken the things that we know by heart, that are in our heart, and now there'll be in this depth written on this scroll.

And so he says, the Greek word pharmakon means both poison and cure, sort of the way the word drug does. If you overdose right, it'll kill you. So a pharmakon is a drug that will cure you unless it kills you first. And I think we've currently got that now. I mean, AI is really, that writ large on steroids. I mean, I think that it's power to enhance our health, our wellbeing, our knowledge of the world, our travel to outer space. I mean, I think that in which we live and move and have our being, which is the best way to describe God, I think, is the universe itself.

And we're now the way our ancestors left Africa and started exploring this tiny little globe and discovering a new world. Well, now we're starting to leave that tiny little globe, but explore not just the solar system, but the web telescope has brought us practically to the edge of the universe. And the more we are technologically enhanced by these systems, the more we'll actually be able to go there, visit, leave this place, and the mystery of the universe will become even richer and deeper and more mysterious, more complex. It is all very marvelous, and it's transforming everything. It's transforming all the fundamental assumptions of philosophy and theology, have entertained up to the present, have been the distinction between body and soul, human and non-human, living and non-living, physical and immaterial. All those preceptions, presuppositions of philosophy and theology have been challenged. We now have to start thinking about things in radically new way, as you say; it's not just a matter of catching up the Vatican II, it's way more expansive than that. It's way more transformative than that. It really is full new mystery of being.

Ilia: But... here comes the but.

Jack: But it is so far wreaking havoc with our lives. It's throwing us the distinction between reality and appearance into confusion. It's throwing us, exposing us to conspiracy theories. It's iron mining the capacity of democracy to cooperate. And so the poisonous effect is quite profound. I mean, it is dripping with theology, isn't it? Because it's like the Adam and Eve myth. It's like the base show. They all want to be as gods. It's wanting to eat of the tree of life and extend life indefinitely. As you know, I'm struck by the analogy between artificial intelligence and angel-ology; very, very similar things that Thomas Aquinas says about angels and the angelic intelligence. He says everything except he doesn't have the word super-intelligence. If it had the word super intelligence, he would've loved it. It would've been perfect for him because the angels are these beings that have this instant comprehensive, instantly communicated, instantly shared mega knowledge about things. So we want to live like the angels. We want to be like the gods. So it's all exhilarating and also profoundly dangerous.

Robert: If AI's are angels, then what messages do they bring us; messages of salvation or condemnation? Next, Ilia and Jack, discuss how theopoetics can help us pursue religious depth as we move forward into the future. And later, in light of the ontological and ethical challenges presented by technological progress, how do we continue to build a better world?

Ilia: So this angel-ology—how do you call it? Angelology? What's so interesting about that is because I've often thought that artificial intelligence creates sort of a new architectonic or a new world that mimics the medieval world. That's kind of what you're saying with the angels, those with intelligence. So I think I've said this to you that one of the maxims of AI is a transhumanism; is technology will fulfill what religion promises. So now it does hold out like, "Who needs this notion of God?" "Well we can become our gods ourselves." So that is the power. There's a power here that's very alluring. So like you mentioned Adam and Eve, that idea that now we have discovered for ourselves is unbridled unlimited power. And the chips are getting smaller. I mean, what's going on today?

AI is mind-boggling, really, that even this kind of technology with Zoom will be completely obsolete probably in 10 years as we'll have chips in our glasses, in our clothes, and we'll be completely biohacking ourselves. We'll have implanted chips. We'll be communicating and not just around this globe, but we'll be communicating probably with other forms of intelligent life in the universe. It seems so out farfetched and outrageous, yet that's the whole thing. It's like there is a capacity here to create some unthinkable, unimaginable worlds that don't yet exist. Yet, as you're pointing out that this capacity for this unbelievable new life carries with it also the capacity for utter destruction for not just the cure, but a poison that can really become just annihilating.

We have the capacity to annihilate ourselves. Something very simple would just be a computer pathogen which probably isn't that hard to do anymore. So we're at a very tenuous and very vulnerable point in our planetary life, both not only here in community, but the whole ecological community. So one of my concerns—and I think you would share this, is that, "So why theopoetics is not just a nice topic for discussion?" Why it may be the most important area that we begin to understand and begin to incorporate? Because without that depth dimension of a power, a presence, calling us into something more, and taking responsibility for that, we do risk, I think serious consequences.

Jack: What we're heading for is a point where theopoetics will yield to cosmopolitics. That is the exercise of imagination will take away cosmic proportions. And the mystery, the depth of being, will be genuinely cosmic. We're sort of growing up and leaving Africa, or leaving the planet and entering into a cosmic sphere. So the mystery of being will take on those proportions,

Ilia: Right. I mean, that's where we're heading.

Jack: And then the question is whether religion is tied to this notion of the human, and whether it will just simply fold under the pressure of the transhuman and the posthuman. I mean, one guy said—the way he put it was you'll no longer have beings born of Adam and Eve and no longer in need of being saved by Jesus. That is, once you affect even something like post-human status, the incarnation looks obsolete—cur deus homo if you have no homo anymore. No-homo homo becoming man in order to become God. That paradigm will disappear.

Ilia: Teilhard was really clear on this though. He did clearly say religion is not a human phenomenon, it's a cosmic phenomenon. So he actually locates religion at the beginning of the Big Bang, so to speak, in the beginning of cosmic life. So religion in his view, is part and parcel of cosmic life. He clearly says in the human phenomenon that we're just a kind of a species in via. We're part of this cosmic phenomenon of unfolding life, but we're certainly not the end of it. He never quotes, of course, at the nations or anything like that, because in his view, this divine making, this God making, the theopoesis is complexifying of what's taking place even beyond earth. He has some explorations in 1950 or whenever he's writing that work of what we would call the neurosphere on a new level of intergalactic life. Like conscious life will just continue on in the cosmos.

Jack: He actually talked about it in intergalactic life and cosmic proportions.

Ilia: He does. I use intergalactic, but he does speak about other galaxies and other possible forms of conscious life. Yeah, he does. And the human phenomenon.

Jack: Yeah. Well, that's where it is. I mean, I think that's where we're going. I mean, I'm not going to see it, but that's where things are going. I mean, it just may be that the name of God will turn out is linked inextricably to human being, and we're entering a new constellation that things will just be different. The entire paradigm will be different. I think there will always be mystery. I think mystery is an irreducible notion. Who's that guy that says the island of language grow larger, the shores of ignorance grow longer?

Ilia: Oh, okay.

Jack: Who is that guy? He's a famous physicist, I can't think of his name. And I think that's true, that the more we learn, the larger the island of knowledge, the more mysterious things will be. I mean, we see that already with quantum science. I mean, these guys think we can do the math. We just don't know what we're talking about. We can't imagine this world.

Ilia: Exactly.

Jack: So we've already run into something like that.

Ilia: Yeah. So this question of mystery is—Well, I mean, my class just watched the movie Oppenheimer. I don't know if you saw the movie.

Jack: Oh, yeah, I saw that. Great movie.

Ilia: And here discovering, he engages in quantum physics and just awakens to a halt new understanding of matter that leads then to the discovery of the hydrogen bomb and then the moral implications of that. One aspect of that film is just the sheer science of mystery, the engagement that matter is there's something indifferent going on here than what we previously thought, what Faraday thought, or what even Newton might've thought. That's what's so engaging about science and nature. Why science really does—it just brings us into its midst of ongoing discovery. Yet it goes back to the question of being responsible for that, which we discover and are we ready? Are we ready for the mystery to unfold, to reveal itself to us?

Jack: Yeah. So there's a question of AI and theology and physics and philosophy. Also AI and ethics which is just as big a deal as the ontological question. The fact it's a more urgent one right now.

Ilia: It is. There's so many conversations now taking place in a lot of publications, but it has emerged in our midst and has evolved so quickly. I think we haven't had sufficient time to really begin to think, "What are we dealing with?" It won't slow down unless it's by some kind of political force or some kind of unforetold consequences of our discoveries. But as far as I can see, it's on a very rapid trajectory. I mean, I look at what's happening in robotics and the way chips are getting increasingly on the nano scale like nanotechnology; 10 to the ninth. I mean, it's invisible. So literally it's invisible AI that will be permeating every aspect of our existence. And when it comes to religion, I have to kind of just chuckle a little bit and smile, because we're still wondering about Vatican II in 1965 or what happened at the Council of Trent, or what did Thomas really say in relation to Bonaventure?

I'm saying they're really urgent questions right now, theological questions, philosophical questions in the face of AI and its rapid development that really demand our attention. So I don't know if we just fear. There's a lot of fear around AI, especially if you listen to Yuval Harari; his new book called Nexus where he sounds the alarm bells on AI and the potential devastation for our civilization just basically wipe us all out. And here's the thing, we have the capacity to wipe ourselves out, don't we? I mean, we have the capacity to destroy everything, but then we also have the capacity to build a better world. My concern is how do we access what this power that we name as God, or whatever we want to name it—I like to name it as love or compassion. It's pulling us into something that we can take a stand on and live for, that which we live for and really commit ourselves to it.

I think one thing about an AI world is the lack of commitment, because everything is so easily at our touch and go. I turn on this line here, and I turn this off here, and Google's building classes where you can do multiple fields of activities in any one sitting. So I could watch three television programs, read my book, have a conversation with you, and write a paper all at the same time. Our brains aren't built for this. So our biological brains have not evolved in any significant way. So that's the problem with AI. We will become increasingly dependent on it because biologically we are becoming dinosaurs in the face of it. I think that's what people do fear. And how do we slow down? How do we slow this down to orient a kind of fill out the depth of what we are? This depth dimension that I think we're fitting it out. This depth dimension has become sort of flattened out like a pancake. How do we reclaim that depth?

Jack: Kierkegaard says, "Life does not give you permission to put it on pause and step out and reflect. It just keeps going." He said that in the 19th century.

Ilia: Who said that, Jack?

Jack: Kierkegaard. The great existential passion of life is the rush of life. He says it doesn't give you time to reflect. You can't just step out and say, "Wait a minute, let me think about this." It keeps on.

Ilia: Yeah. But that's why we have a lot of mental—I mean, we have a lot of anxiety issues and mental disorder. People have a hard time coping and it's why we go for a political candidate that will seem to want to manage everything for us, precisely because it seems like the rush of life is unmanageable for us and we want a manager. This goes back to the omnipotent God idea. We want a God who's going to save us. So this is the difficulty of the whole thing. We can't take responsibility of our lives because our lives are just being pulled and pushed and we feel out of control. I think that place of mystery—and I think this is where in Catherine's work, and others dwelling in learning to walk in darkness, dwelling in the mystery, being at home in the ambiguity and the unknown, and that which is unfolding.

Jack: I think that the Carl Sagan “pale blue dot” thing, that's good. That whole moment there when he's reflecting on this soul died, and he says, "It should make us more concerned about everyone else, concerned about this little glue of ours and solicitous for one another. It should bring us together and deepen our concern for the world and for one another." And here's a guy who's technically, officially an atheist, right? But he's talking in deeply, deeply religious tunes when he does that thing. And when you see this globe against the expanse of the cosmos, that's a religious construction. That's a religious reflection. I think religion—and if we can still use that word and save that word, that's a profoundly religious moment.

Ilia: I mean, it reminds me of Psalm 8, "When I look at the heavens and the moon and the stars, which you arrange, who are we?" It is that place of humility in this vast expansive cosmos that wonder about our own lives. Are they small and insignificant? Are we just a little speck that's going to be just a blink of an eye 10 billion years? Or do we have significance? I mean, that's the bottom line question.

Jack: Yeah, well you have my signal and that is that we are, I think, a blink of the eye, cosmically speaking. I mean, if the universe goes on as it's projected to go on, the first 13.8 billion years is just itself a small fraction. I mean, the universe will go on for trillions of years from what I'm reading, but reading to understand it, in which case we will be just a moment. But I think that moment, which is uncircumscribed by its limits, its transitoriness, makes it all the more precious. I think we are a moment here when the universe becomes aware of itself and can think about itself. And it may be, I mean, apparently from what they're telling us, this whole thing will at some point, just dissipate. The entropy is increasing and cosmically speaking over trillions of years, we are in just a moment. But it's a precious moment. It's a moment of life, truth, joy, beauty if we can keep it, preserve it, and nourish it, and savor it without destroying it.

Robert: This ends our conversation with Jack Caputo and this season of interviews on Hunger for Wholeness. If you're not already doing so, be sure to follow Hunger for Wholeness and the Center for Christogenesis on social media, for updates about our future plans, events and content. A special thanks to our partners at the Fetzer Institute and our team at the Center for Christogenesis. As always, I'm Robert Nicastro. Thanks for listening.