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Vattimo and Theology (Philosophy & Theology)

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It seems that if you want to look enlightened these days you have to declare that you are either 1) an atheist, or 2) spiritual but not religious. If you fall into the atheist camp then your most ballyhooed polemicists are Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, or anyone else with a Ph.D. in science (or English literature) who not only knows that there is no God, but who can also prove it in a classroom, in an essay, or in five minutes on the O'Reilly Factor.

If, however, you're not quite ready to chuck the whole concept of God, but you can't stand anyone else telling you what to do or what to believe (i.e., religion), then you are unwittingly an heir to the philosophy of the subject of this book, and that would be, Mr. Gianni Vattimo. Never heard of him? Well, neither had I prior to reading this. But his "secular preaching" is ubiquitous among the post-Christian elites of the Western world. He's like the thinking man's Deepak Chopra, Oprah Winfrey, and William Young, author of The Shack (see my review of The Shack).

Putting sarcasm aside, and to the point, Vattimo maintains that only two valid concepts remain from Christianity. The first is the notion of "kenosis," or self-emptying. The second is that of "caritas," or charity, or more commonly put, love. In the Christian model of God's self-emptying, in His becoming a man in the person of Jesus Christ, we have the ultimate example of Him letting go of all the attributes normally ascribed to Him, for example, omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and even, for Vattimo, the very essence of his Being. Therefore, if God has neutered himself of His strongest traits, so too must we as humans let go of all those things we strongly hold about ourselves, and even those things that we claim to "know," to include all scientific and theological truths. Furthermore, he goes on to explain that our ability to know such truths, even if they did exist, is so skewed by our socio-temporal embeddedness, that we cannot make those claims with any certainty. The bottom line is, there is no valid theology of "this" or "that," of God, or Jesus, or the Church. We cannot possibly make those claims and therefore we shouldn't.

The only other "truth" of traditional Christian theology he affirms is the notion of love. But the "love" that Vattimo speaks of is not the kind of love written about in 1 John 5:3 "For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous," because as he has already argued, God's commandments, such as they are defined by the Church, expired in the aftermath of the ultimate "kenosis," the Incarnation. Love, properly understood and practiced, is totally accepting, non-judgmental, and free of moral specificity and obligation. Judging, harm to others, or infringements of another's personal rights are the only impediments to valid "caritas" for Gianni Vattimo.

As you can see, these beliefs sound very appealing and freeing and are gaining currency in Western culture. That is why Catholic theologian, Thomas Guarino, engages Vattimo head-on in his latest volume. But rather than angrily dismissing him, or branding him a heretic, Guarino looks for common ground, he seeks to create theological and philosophical inroads as a means of dialogue with those estranged from organized religion. While Guarino is clear about the incompatibility of this thought with certain aspects of orthodox Christianity, like St. Paul to the Athenians, he graciously avows to them, "In fact, the unknown God you revere is the one I proclaim to you." (Acts 17:23) This work is timely and necessary. Bravo Tom!