What to Believe? - by John D Caputo (Paperback)

About the Book

In this lively and accessible book, addressed to believers, "recovering" believers, disbelievers, nonbelievers, and "nones" alike--to anyone in search of what they really do believe--the acclaimed philosopher and theologian John D. Caputo seeks out what there is to believe, with or without religion.

Book Synopsis

If you no longer "believe in God," the Supreme Being of classical theology, or you never did in the first place, is there anything you still ought to believe, anything you should cherish unconditionally, no matter what? In this lively and accessible book, addressed to believers, "recovering" believers, disbelievers, nonbelievers, and "nones" alike--to anyone in search of what they really do believe--the acclaimed philosopher and theologian John D. Caputo seeks out what there is to believe, with or without religion.

Writing in a lucid and witty style, Caputo offers a bold account of a "radical theology" that is anything but what the word theology suggests to most people. His point of departure is autobiographical, describing growing up in the world of pre-Vatican II Catholicism, serving as an altar boy, and spending four years in a Catholic religious order after high school. Caputo places Augustine's Confessions, Tillich's Dynamics of Faith, and Jacques Derrida and postmodern theory in conversation in the service of what he calls the "mystical sense of life." He argues that radical theology is not simply an academic exercise but describes a concrete practice immediately relevant to the daily lives of believers and nonbelievers alike. What to Believe? is an engaging introduction to radical theology for all readers curious about what religion can mean today.

Review Quotes

[What to Believe] leaves the reader with a sense of hope in an impossibly dark long-term future. The book is warmly recommended -- not only for the argument that it puts forward, but also in the hope
that this might prompt an intellectually rigorous alternative vision.

-- "Church Times"

An evocative, accessible, good-humored guide to living (and moving, and being) after the death of God.--Mary-Jane Rubenstein, author of Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race

Here is a book that countless people who have given up on the God of their childhood will relish. Tired of living in the shallow end of the theological pool, Jack Caputo invites us all to push out into the deep waters of radical theology without letting us sink. What you are about to read is God-years ahead of its time.--Rev. Robin R. Meyers, author of Saving God from Religion: A Minister's Search for Faith in a Skeptical World

John Caputo is one of the foremost postmodern philosophers of our time. In this brilliant book, he offers a provocative new way to think about God and an invitation to awaken to a new reality: we are entangled with God. Playful, witty, and radically profound, this is a book to return to over and over.--Ilia Delio, author of The Not-Yet God: Carl Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, and the Relational Whole

About the Author

John D. Caputo is the Thomas J. Watson Professor Emeritus of Religion and Humanities at Syracuse University and the David R. Cook Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Villanova University. His many books include What Would Jesus Deconstruct? The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church (2007), Hoping Against Hope: Confessions of a Postmodern Pilgrim (2015), and The Folly of God: A Theology of the Unconditional (2015).