A view of God to consider : critique of Richard Kearney’s anatheism

Abstract

The preface gives the background of the postmodern religious context within which a “view of God to consider” has become problematic. The preface also gives the methodology as well as the rationale for the study. The article examines the anatheistic concept of God of the well-known philosopher of religion, Richard Kearney, in order to answer the question whether Kearney’s concept of God is to be regarded in our postmetaphysical age and why. Two books of Kearney are selected to analyse, namely The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion (2001) and Anatheism: Returning to God after God (2011). The article indicates that the anatheistic God is not easy to identify and that it mostly involves a risk or wager of hospitality to recognize this God who is amongst other, “weak, functionalist, the other, the stranger and the incarnated kingdom of peace and love”. It is argued that although this non-metaphysical anatheistic God has some positive aspects (creativities, plurality, not militant or dogmatic), it remains difficult to mull over (and accept) this view of God for various reasons (weakness, functionality, unrecognizability). Kearney helps one however through his anatheistic concept of God to think new about the possibilities to “return to God after God” in our post-metaphysical age.