The God who neither is nor is not : a theological evaluation of Richard Kearney’s “God who may be”

Abstract

A recognised dialogue partner in the renewed philosophical quest for God, Richard Kearney subscribes to the move in contemporary philosophy of religion that places the God-after-God in a dialectical relationship with the metaphysical God of pure act and strives to overcome it. In The God who may be, Richard Kearney takes up the challenge of re-imagining God and traditional concepts of transcendence in a postmodern context, and in a way that takes issue with both idolatry and injustice. Between the two rival ways of interpreting the divine – the eschatological and the onto-theological – Kearney proposes the God-who-may-be as a third, “onto-eschatological” way that negotiates between these polar opposites. The study examines Kearney’s post-metaphysical reflection on God. More specifically, it probes into his utilisation of both eschatology and the imagination as a way of negotiating a third way, according to a “poetics of the possible,” between the polar opposite understandings of God as either Being or Non-Being. It aims to understand The God who may be within the larger context of his trilogy and his other publications on the subjects of the imagination, ethics, hermeneutics, and “thinking God” post-metaphysically. It considers Kearney’s God of posse from a theological perspective, with the guiding question of what may be gained and what will be lost along the way of the post-metaphysical wager. The hypothesis is that Kearney’s notion of the God of posse promises new possibilities for leading theology and its discourse about God beyond metaphysical categories to allow for an eschatological understanding of the existence of God. The study finds that Kearney’s God of posse does present some interpretational difficulties, but ultimately concludes that, if approached within the confines that Kearney lays out for himself – namely that of a poetic, phenomenologico-hermeneutical exploration of certain symbols of the Judeo-Christian tradition – that Kearney at least prepares the field for thorough and creative theological engagement with his proposals.