658106

The Homeless GodAuthor(s): Thomas M. DickenSource: The Journal of Religion, Vol. 91, No. 2 (April 2011), pp. 127-157Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/658106 .Accessed: 11/05/2011 14:15

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The Homeless God

Thomas M. Dicken / Versailles, Kentucky

introduction: john d. caputo and the weakness of god

In the remarkable letters he wrote from prison to his friend EberhardBethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer hinted at a dazzling array of ideas. Thoughhe did not live to develop them in detail, Bonhoeffer’s hints about“religionless Christianity,” the need to take responsibility in “a worldcome of age,” Jesus as “the man for others,” the “God of the gaps,” andother such things have haunted and influenced Christian thought forseveral generations. We never know for sure, of course, as we developone or another of these ideas, whether our development has very muchto do with what Bonhoeffer might have done with the same phrases, ifhe had lived. In some ways, the power of these phrases derives fromtheir epigrammatic nature. Yet these phrases have been fertile, shiftingthe thoughts of many of us away from established lines of thought intonew paths.

Among Bonhoeffer’s most provocative suggestions were thoughtsabout God’s powerlessness. Bonhoeffer wrote, “God allows himself tobe edged out of the world and on to the cross. God is weak and powerlessin the world, and that is exactly the way, the only way, in which he canbe with us and help us. . . . [I]t is not by his omnipotence that Christhelps us but by his weakness and suffering.” Often, a person wants adeus ex machina, a powerful, problem-solving God. “The Bible howeverdirects him to the powerlessness and suffering of God; only a sufferingGod can help”; otherwise we end up with a God of the gaps, a God whoprevents humans from coming of age, taking full responsibility for theirlives.1

Though John D. Caputo does not explicitly build on Bonhoeffer, hisThe Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event builds on a Bonhoefferianview of God’s powerlessness. Caputo’s striking dominant theme is to

1 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (London: SCM, 1967), 196–97.

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articulate a view of God as a “weak force.” He puts it this way: “Theperverse core of Christianity lies in being a weak force.” God has chosenthe weak things of the world. Weak theology is a theology of the cross.Prayer is crucial in our relation to God, but prayer needs to itself beunderstood as “weak.”2

Caputo borrows his metaphor of God understood as a weak forcefrom Gianni Vattimo but also from the similar term used by physicistsand astronomers in describing the ultimate constituents of the universe.Obviously, he does not mean that God is the weak force that physicistsare seeking to understand. But it is a helpful metaphor, forcing us totake seriously aspects of the Gospel story, enabling us to continue withthe Bonhoefferian theme in contemporary theology, and requiring usto adjust our religious feelings and theological thoughts to a very dif-ferent sense of God.

I propose to develop the implications of Caputo’s suggestions, ex-ploring a God who is homeless as distinguished from a God who isomnipresent. Caputo himself is primarily concerned in his book withthe “weakness” of God (as distinguished from omnipotence), as well asthe “foolishness” of God (as distinguished from omniscience). Caputo’sfundamental text is Paul’s claim that “God chose what is foolish in theworld to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shamethe strong” (1 Cor. 1:27).

Caputo’s central concern is with the weakness of God, in contrast toideas of God’s omnipotence. He says less about God’s foolishness, butit is clear that he follows the mood of Paul in 1 Corinthians. “Thefoolishness of God” is a critique of the “wisdom” of the philosophers,of those deemed to be wise by the world. It is God’s odd choice of theweak of the world, those of no account, to accomplish “weak” purposes,to shame the wise. God’s foolish love of the unlovable, modeled byJesus’s choice of conspicuous sinners for his companions, is the theme.It is a particular view of wisdom and foolishness that Paul is expounding.Caputo can also be very scathing toward the dominant theologies oftoday, which begin with God’s sovereignty.3

Caputo’s mention of homelessness is a passing comment, in the widercontext of his book. Caputo writes, “Suppose God most especially pitcheshis tent among the homeless, so that God has no place to lay his head?”4

In most theological thought, omnipresence tends to receive less at-tention than omnipotence and omniscience. It hangs out with them as

2 John D. Caputo, The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event (Bloomington: Indiana Uni-versity Press, 2006), 36.

3 Ibid., 45–47.4 Ibid., 33.

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a weak sibling. This may be because the other two clearly figure in majortheological debates. Omnipotence is often discussed in the context oftheodicy, that is, attempts to solve the problem of evil. If God is bothgood and all-powerful, why does evil exist? Thinkers produce many var-iations on what might be meant by “omnipotence” in order to resolvethis problem. Omniscience also often figures in discussions of theodicy.If God knows everything, surely a better world could be designed. Butomniscience also plays into discussions of the nature of time and eter-nity. If God knows the future in detail, is there any human freedom tochoose or change the future? What happens to human responsibility?If the future is already known, is it really future? Is it all really one bigeternal Now, in which past, present, and future are dissolved into God’spresent? Again, much attention has been devoted to these issues.

I do not mean to suggest that these issues of omnipotence and om-niscience are merely old chestnuts. It is the case, however, that lessattention has typically been devoted to omnipresence. Fewer theologicalpages are devoted to the topic.

My approach to this theme might be considered as a form of theo-logical graffiti, working outside accepted theological themes, makingunauthorized approaches that are grounded in a crucified Jesus. I focuson the homelessness of God as a theme that parallels the weakness andthe foolishness of God. This is a deliberate attempt to complete a graffiti-like response to those theologians who thrive on discussing the omnip-otence, omniscience, and omnipresence of God. Graffiti is somewhatlike the fragmentary, provocative nature of Bonhoeffer’s letters.

When I speak of practicing theology as a kind of graffiti, I follow inthe word steps of Caputo. In writing of his weak theology, “which iscomposed of graffiti that defaces standard theological writing, like abody that is scratched, scarred, and defaced, marred by lines of hungeror persecution, wounded and bleeding . . . we imagine weak theologyas a meditation upon God crossed out, cut and bruised, bleeding andbent in pain.”5 The explicit comparison of graffiti with the crucifiedbody of Jesus suggests a very different sort of theology is needed, if onebegins with a “crossed out” God. Marcella Althaus-Reid also approachestheology as a form of graffiti, pointing out that women in Latin Americahave often been “living graffiti.”6

I would like to speak of God as a lowercase god, one who must bespoken of in lowercase letters, much in the style of an e.e. cummingspoem. I have tried writing of God in these paragraphs as “god.” At times,

5 Ibid., 36.6 Marcella Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology: Theological Perversions in Sex, Gender and Politics

(London: Routlege, 2000), 97, 100.


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it seems to make my point more powerfully, or perhaps I should saymore weakly. Yet the conventions of the English language are themselvespowerful, and the point at times becomes muddled. Too often, thecapitalized God is conceived as the real God, while the lowercase godsuggests some primitive or inadequate, even idolatrous, understandingof god. What I really want to say, of course, is that the lowercase homelessgod, interpreted in the light of what we know about Jesus, is in fact thereal God. Other than in this paragraph, I follow the conventions of theEnglish language, but God should always be thought of as a lowercasegod. So we speak in our theological graffiti of God’s weakness, God’sfoolishness, God’s homelessness.

charles taliaferro

The vast majority of Christian theologians defend a much more tradi-tional view of omnipresence than I argue for here. It would take a longbook to begin to do justice to the traditional discussion. Instead, I willfocus on one fairly recent treatment, one that is informed by the historyof the subject and is itself clear and thoughtful.

Charles Taliaferro is really interested in omnipresence because of hismore compelling interest in omnipotence and omniscience. Much ofTaliaferro’s discussion of omnipresence is framed in terms of detailinghis views of omnipotence and omniscience. Omnipresence is necessaryif God is going to exert power everywhere. Omnipresence is really amatter of spelling out what might be involved for a being to be trulyomnipotent. Omnipresence spells out the implication of a God whoexerts power at every point throughout the universe.

Taliaferro is even more interested in relating omnipresence to om-niscience. For Taliaferro, God’s omniscience is not simply a matter ofknowing the truth about every possible proposition. He sees God’sknowledge as being an immediate knowing of what is the case. “God’spresence in the cosmos is realized, in part, by God’s being supremelyattentive, grasping what occurs at every place in the cosmos.”7 For Tal-iaferro, it “is not just a matter of what a subject knows, but how a subjectknows it.”8 God’s knowledge is a “maximally excellent cognitive power.”9

God’s omnipotence is inextricably linked to God’s omniscience, andboth are supported by God’s omnipresence.

Taliaferro’s approach is deeply dependent on Anselm of Canterbury.

7 Charles Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1994), 283.

8 Ibid., 286.9 Ibid., 285.

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He acknowledges his view “is in accord with the Anselmian conceptionof God.” He points out that Anselm affirms “that God cognizes all thingsto the highest degree, a claim which is akin to maintaining that thecognitive power of an omniscient being is such that a being with greatercognitive power cannot be conceived.”10 Presumably, God’s omnipres-ence is also such that no greater presence can be conceived (whateverthat might possibly mean).

Taliaferro moves in a promising direction when he writes, “I believethat ‘presence’ is more at home when we speak of some person beingpresent to another, and this, I think, is a rich notion with many nuancesinvolving degrees of attentiveness, depth of affection, and responsive-ness. I may be said to be more present to you to the extent that I amattentive, caring, responsive, and so on.”11 These statements are prom-ising. However, Taliaferro does not explicitly apply this view of humanpresence to God. It is not clear that such personal “presence” is appro-priate at every point in the universe. If we take seriously this idea ofpresence, it is distorted when we add “omni” to the idea. It sounds morelike the presence of someone who is distracted, one who is “countingthe house.” (A friend once explained to me that people involved intheater will use this phrase to describe a person who is nominally chat-ting with you, but is actually scanning the gathering audience, to seehow large it may be.) Omnipresence is a very different idea from theidea of a real, personal presence.

Taliaferro’s root metaphor for the relation of God to the universe isthe relation of a human mind or consciousness to its body. God relatesto, and is present to, the world in a way that is analogous to the relationof human consciousness to the human body. This metaphor is usefulfor certain purposes, but it does not really illumine God’s omnipresence.The human mind is not present to, much less cognizant of, each partof the human body. Only in a very abstract way can I be said to beconscious of my pancreas or liver. Indeed, my consciousness is mostintense not when it is dispersed or jumpy but rather when it has a clear,sharp focus. Some of us think that the best moments in life come whenwe are so absorbed in one thing that we actually seem to lose awarenessor consciousness of ourselves. It is only later that, with something likea jolt, we realize we have been absorbed in watching birds come andgo from a tree branch, without ever noticing that we were doing exactlythat. In order to go from our own experience of consciousness to God’somnipresence, we inevitably move away from the phenomenology of

10 Ibid., 287.11 Ibid., 293.


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our own consciousness to an abstract conceptual analysis, imaginingwhat a “perfect” or “greatest conceivable” consciousness might be.

Taliaferro discusses at some length the issue of God’s passibility versusGod’s impassivity. Taliaferro leans toward a version of passibility in whichGod has certain feelings or emotions, such as sorrow over human suf-fering. But such sorrow, claims Taliaferro, is a perfection of God. Thisdiscussion of God’s feelings does not, however, lead to a real discussionof God’s presence in human life. This could have developed from hisbrief mention that humans are sometimes attentive, caring, and re-sponsive to other persons. But Taliaferro does not move in this direction.The mood of his discussion of God’s omnipresence is abstract and dis-tant. His discussion of God’s “presence” and human “absence” does nottry to make a case that, though God is always present and available,humans absent themselves (a possible line of argument). Instead, hediscusses ways in which humans might sometimes be absent from them-selves, but claims that God is always present to Godself, which is a verydifferent issue.

For Taliaferro, omnipresence is linked with omnipotence and om-niscience: “Part of what it means for theists to claim that God is every-where present in the cosmos is for God to know all parts and aspectsof the cosmos, and to be able to exercise omnipotent power with respectto all such parts and aspects.”12 In this article, however, I am followingCaputo’s lead in exploring the very different view of God as a weakforce, a foolish God who loves us crazily. If one wants to overcome thestrange ideas of omnipotence and omniscience, then there is no obli-gation to the linked idea of omnipresence.

Taliaferro is preoccupied with omnipotence, omniscience, and om-nipresence because he is really interested in God as creator. God needsto be present at every point in the universe in order to know of andcreatively act on each thing in the universe. The focus is on the cosmos,not on human experience. The preoccupation is with creation, notredemption.

It need not surprise us that Taliaferro’s view of creation is indebtedto the Genesis 1 account of God calling a world into being. Caputo’saccount of creation is much more in the mood of Genesis 2, namely,God the weak force working to influence and shape a world.13

There has always been a tension between seeing God as creator andseeing God as redeeming, loving presence. The creation has issues ofGod’s indifference, savagery, or even abusiveness. There is a difference

12 Ibid., 272.13 Caputo, Weakness of God, 55–83.

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or tension between a loving God who notices each sparrow that falls tothe earth and the God who creates a world of endangered and dyingsparrows. A strong tradition in Christian thought has emphasized theredeemer rather than the creator. Marcion, whose thought was veryinfluential in the early centuries of Christianity, denied that the Chris-tian God is the same as the creator.14 Karl Barth taught several gener-ations of theologians to begin with the grace of a loving covenant be-tween God and humans and to explore the creation from that vision.15

In that sense, and probably no other, the approach of this article mightbe considered Barthian. If our ideas of God are founded on an argumentfor a creator, we might never get to the loving presence of God. In thisarticle, I leave human and cosmic existence as a mystery. I begin withJesus as a lens through which to view the surrounding mystery. Of course,the term “redeemer” has its own problems, with all its traces of a specificview of the atonement, based on an original idea of repurchasing aslave. It is better to simply speak of the luring and healing presence ofGod.

Taliaferro discusses many significant philosophers. But he does notbuild on the historical Jesus or a biblical perspective. He seems to assumethat establishing omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence will givea philosophically respectable grounding to biblical faith. I claim, how-ever, that such a discussion leads us in the wrong direction and distortsa Jesus-based view of God. Nowhere does Taliaferro discuss DietrichBonhoeffer and his influential fragments that hold that only a powerless,suffering God can save us. Taliaferro’s God is a God that he seeks tomake conceptually clear by beginning with an Anselmian view of Godas “that, than which nothing greater can be conceived.”16

presence, omnipresence, and process thought

Process theology offers a modified view of God’s omnipotence and om-niscience. It tends to have greater affinities with Caputo’s view than witha position such as Taliaferro’s. However, Caputo’s views of omnipotenceand omniscience, and my view of omnipresence, are different from thoseof process theology. It is necessary to move beyond process theology.

In most versions of process theology, God is omnipresent and influ-ences each actual entity or occasion in the universe. This influence takes

14 Joseph B. Tyson, Marcion and Luke-Acts: A Defining Struggle (Columbia: University of SouthCarolina Press, 2006).

15 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Volume III, Part 1, trans. J. W. Edwards, O. Bersoey, andHarold Knight (New York: Scribner’s, 1958), 42–329.

16 St. Anselm, Proslogium, trans. S. N. Deane (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1945), 7–10.


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place by luring each entity to achieve the fulfillment or the enrichmentpossible for it. God is seen as working by final, rather than efficient,causation. It is the ideal possibility offered by God to each actual oc-casion or entity that shapes the unfolding universe. God’s choice ofconcrete ideals is informed by God’s knowledge, which is complete, butnonetheless limited to what is available to be known. Each entity hasmarginal spontaneity or freedom, so God only knows the future insofaras it is actually determined. The rich dimensions of the future that areyet to be shaped by both human freedom and very elemental forms ofspontaneity will only be known by God when they are available to beknown.17

Process theology has limited what can reasonably be meant by om-nipotence and omniscience. So far as I know, process theologians haveleft the idea of omnipresence alone. God exerts influence at (and isinfluenced by) each point of the universe. It is assumed that God in-cludes within the divine totality all the events of the world and thereforecan be described as omnipresent. However, such omnipresence is verydifferent from what I carve out as God’s real and distinct presence insome moments of human life.

Omnipresence seems to be a supporting player in a theological dramathat is more interested in omnipotence and omniscience. The significantconceptual moves are tied up with omnipotence and omniscience. Itseems that God needs to be omnipresent if God is going to be omnip-otent and omniscient. The dilemma of theodicy hangs over the attemptto define a process God. Both these moves—omnipotence as limited toluring and omniscience as defined by the freedom of entities—are de-signed to limit God’s responsibility for the emergence of the world;each finite occasion is a co-creator with God.

I think process theology’s view of these things is interesting and co-herent; I also think it is highly speculative. For people concerned withhow God might work in the process of evolution, it offers a credibleperspective. Indeed, I borrow the image of luring to describe one aspectof God’s presence in human life. Nonetheless, what I mean by God’sluring us in the inwardness of human life is separable from processtheology’s more comprehensive view. Humans experience themselvesas pulled or lured or inspired by a richer possibility in the struggles oflife. That may perhaps be an outgrowth of a more primordial luring byGod of lesser entities. I do not know if that is so and do not want torest my case on that assumption. I am opposed to process theology only

17 David Ray Griffin, God, Power, and Evil: A Process Theodicy (Louisville, KY: Westminster,2004).

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if its speculative context diverts attention from the need to be alert andattentive to God’s presence in human life. I have a different agendathan process theology has. Process theology seeks to be comprehensiveand speculative. I offer graffiti-like commentary inspired by the histor-ical Jesus (and influenced by all who are influenced by Bonhoeffer)that might offer a different set of clues for recognizing God when Godappears.

I am prepared to leave many aspects of traditional theology in mystery.For instance, I am not committed to any particular view of God ascreator, or even to the claim that God is a creator. I am most comfortablewith asserting that there is a mystery to my existence and a mystery tothe existence of the universe.18 I do not accept reductionist resolutionsof this mystery, nor am I compelled to move the mystery to a differentlevel by invoking a creator. It is within this mystery that I seek insight.

A graffiti theology will, among other things, be fragmentary. It doesnot claim to be a systematic theology.19 My concern is that theologianswith a strong philosophical bent often seem preoccupied with the cre-ator God. If they can’t make a case for creation, it’s as if God as suchbecomes precarious. Often, the discussion never moves along to theredemptive aspect of God, the occasionally present God who can beexperienced as healing and luring within one’s life. I’m interested inthose who argue for a weak creator, as Catherine Keller and Caputodo.20 I’m equally interested in the more maverick theologians (some ofthe Gnostics, for instance) who hold that creation is not essential toChristianity.21

It would take another article to explore the relation between Caputo’s“weak” and “foolish” God and limitations set on God’s omnipotence andomniscience by process theologians. Caputo is clearly influenced byprocess theology, in particular by Catherine Keller’s understanding ofcreation. Both process theology and Caputo speak of God’s activity ofluring. However, to speak of the weakness of God is clearly more pro-vocative than the process claim that God works through final causation.There seem to be these differences: (1) The language of weakness isdeliberately provocative and therefore has usefulness in forcing atten-tion to the issue. (2) Process theology presupposes complex metaphys-

18 Milton K. Munitz, The Mystery of Existence (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1965).19 See David Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralism in Theology (Chicago: University

of Chicago Press, 1996), 3–14.20 Caputo, Weakness of God, 55–97; Catherine Keller, Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming

(London: Routledge, 2003); William Robert, “Human, Life, and Other Sacred Stuff,” Journalfor Cultural and Religious Theory 10, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 7–11.

21 Tyson, Marcion and Luke-Acts, 33–34; Anthony Bartlett, Cross Purposes: The Violent Grammarof Christian Atonement (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity, 2001), 50–54.


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ical speculation, which can be both an advantage and a disadvantage.The language of God’s weakness is inspired by biblical language andBonhoeffer’s insistence on the powerlessness of God. The two ap-proaches involve different assumptions. Both sets of assumptions aredebatable, but they are very different. (3) For my purposes, languageabout the weakness of God coheres with language about the “home-lessness” of God. This kind of language sharpens our sense of what wemight be looking for that would count as God’s presence. Looking forfinal causation in the universe, as process theology does, requires adifferent sort of evidence and even a different picture of God’s presence.The two types of language involve very different agendas.

Language about a “foolish God” also involves a very different agendathan process theology’s limitation on God’s knowledge of the future. Itis one thing to say God cannot know future events still to be determinedby the spontaneity or freedom of finite occasions or events. To speakof God’s challenge to human wisdom and values as foolishness involvesa very different agenda, a frontal attack on smug human assumptionsabout what constitutes wisdom.

Language about a “homeless God” does not imply that God is onlyto be found by homeless people or among homeless people. It doesimply that God’s presence is unpredictable. God is known in surprisingtimes and surprising places. God’s presence cannot be controlled ormanaged. There is no reliable place or context for looking for God. Itis not necessarily a fault of humans when God’s presence is not expe-rienced. God’s absence is part of the mystery of God. Rather than beingthe fault of humans, it sometimes becomes an accusation against God,an accusation taken seriously in biblical writings. Speaking of a homelessGod may help us to recognize God when God is present, since suchdescriptors as “weakness,” “foolishness,” and “homelessness” redirectour attention and our awareness. One would not want to miss the pres-ence of God because a theology of superlatives blinded one to the hu-mility of God.

To speak of the homeless God has moral and political implications.It transforms any hierarchical scale of values. But this has already alwaysbeen a theme within some strands of Christian thought. Christians placea special value on the marginalized. Christian ethics has an option forthe poor, a preference for the weak. The impact of Jesus’s teaching andexample has built this into the Christian vision. (This is true of thoseChristians for whom this is true; of course there are Christians who havemissed this point.)

My insistence on the homelessness of God is not designed to pleadfor the special place of the poor in Christian ethics, already well argued

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by many theologians. Rather, my concern is to shift what we mean byGod, by God’s presence, and to redefine what we can learn to recognizewhen it is right there before us.

I do not speculate (in public at least) about what kind of Ur-grund—theistic, panentheistic, pluralistic, or other—might serve as a lo-cation or homebase for God, providing continuity between occasions ofhuman experiencing of God’s presence. Does the homeless God reallyhave an ontological home? The homelessness of God is a parable ormetaphor. I am more interested in developing this insight than in an-nouncing a systematic theology in which such insights might be footnotes.Surely, to claim that God is at home everywhere is equally metaphorical.

Gillian Rose has pointed out that, according to Halachah (Jewishlaw), the soil of death camps “is cursed not consecrated ground.” Theabsence of God from some places is integral to understanding God’spresence in other places. To think of God as homeless is to begin tonotice such things.22

There are two major problems with the role omnipresence plays inphilosophically oriented systematic theology: (1) Omnipresence is anaspect of the overall view of God as omnipotent, omniscient, and what-ever other traits are deemed necessary to fill out a view of God derivedfrom deductive thought about a perfect being. (2) A focus on omni-presence as an abstract idea draws attention away from an explorationof the ways God is experienced as actually present by humans. Omni-presence demands a deductive approach; presence requires noticingor being attentive to the ways humans know God’s presence.

Scholars of religion need to take note of the typical traits involvedin human experiences of God’s presence. I suggest that humans ex-perience God as they are lured (or restrained), a claim very compatiblewith both process theology and Caputo’s vision. The inner sense ofbeing lured may be felt as a yearning, or even, as St. Augustine wouldsay, restlessness. The experience of God’s presence also seems to ofteninvolve healing, often accompanied by tears. Healing is one thing that“being present” can often accomplish, on the human, as well as onGod’s, level. It is an example of “weak power” at work. Many experiencesof God seem to also involve anger with God. All of these—being lured,being healed in the midst of tears, being angry—are typical of biblicalaccounts of encounters with God.23 There are doubtless other typicalcharacteristics of such encounters.

The standard philosophical view of God limits us as we try to know

22 Gillian Rose, Love’s Work: A Reckoning with Life (New York: Schocken Books, 1995), 13.23 Jacques Derrida, Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins (Chicago: University

of Chicago Press, 2007), 126–28.


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the presence of God. We can look only in certain places or with certainexpectations if we begin with God as one than which no greater canbe conceived. The most striking imaginable contrast is present if webring such an image of God in line with the life we have heard aboutthat was lived by Jesus of Nazareth. The whole problem of kenotictheology is tied up with this obvious contrast and is discussed below.In addition, this view of God also limits us as we seek to find traces ofGod’s presence in our lives today.

Caputo prefers to talk about the God event as the moment in whichwe become aware of a new possibility in human life, in which we arechallenged by a vision that smashes any security or smugness. An earliergeneration, influenced by Rudolph Otto, talked about the numinous.Perhaps some consensus about this kind of language will eventuallyemerge. I think language about a God event is too easily confused witha process perspective in which every actual entity is an event. I will talkabout God’s presence, hoping to distinguish it from our awareness ofhuman presence. I use more realistic language about God than Caputouses. Caputo wants to define a kind of event that, when it occurs, iswhat he means by God. I want to speak of the presence of that which,other than when it is present, is shrouded in mystery.

Deeply influenced by Jacques Derrida, Caputo does not like the word“presence,” typically aligning it with such things as being, causality, orpower.24 It’s true that, as Derrida has taught us, presence can be partof a hierarchical and dichotomous view of the world, with presence/absence being part of the mosaic of subject/object, mind/body, cen-tral/marginalized, or privileged/unprivileged. Presence inevitably hastraces of privileged views of mind, subjectivity, or consciousness. How-ever, Caputo nonetheless forges ahead with “God” and “prayer,” whichare even more difficult to speak of without carrying the weight of allthat one opposes. He does this by way of an aggressive attack on theconventions of theological language.

Though it is not my central point in this essay, it is true that God isalso often homeless in the academic world. To speak of God at all inthis environment often simply sounds quaint. The easiest way to speakof God in academic environments is with obvious irony, as when StephenHawking ends his discourse on the subject of time with the thoughtthat “then we would know the mind of God.”25

Yet there are advantages in this situation. To speak of God withoutirony and without quotation marks in academic circles is often to speak

24 Caputo, Weakness of God, 33–37.25 Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (New York:

Bantam Books, 1988), 175.

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so oddly that one can at least say what one wants to say. I try to do thesame with “presence.” I think that it is God’s omnipresence that is mostvulnerable to Derrida’s critique; omnipresence is aligned with powerand inevitability. I speak of God’s presence as intermittent, powerless,unexpected, defined by absence, impossible to describe without theradical fracturing of language. To speak of homeless presence is todecentralize God’s presence. “Homelessness” does for God’s presencewhat weakness does for God’s status.

Systematic philosophical theology hangs together in a certain way,represented by a wide array of historical works, involving many preciseinternal disputes. But there are other questions that want to be askedand other statements that need to be made. What if one wants to ask,Is God a white racist?26 Or say that there will be a judgment day andGod will be on trial?27 Or write about the abusive God of the Bible?28

Or explore the savage God?29 Or imagine God as a street person witha definite body odor, like Lord Shiva living as a beggar?30 Or ask, asJesus did, “Why have you forsaken me?” Or explore, as I do, the presenceof God in human life? Such questions, suggestions, or approaches havebeen offered in recent years by thinkers, most of them Christian orJewish, serious and thoughtful in their work.

To get at these questions and statements, one needs to stand outsidethe world of systematic theology or philosophical theology. One needsto be skilled at theological graffiti, standing somewhere to the side ofthings, writing in a fragmentary way. The graffiti-like questions posedin the preceding paragraph create the illusion that such graffiti is ev-erywhere, but in reality it is only in specific places. In that sense, thisnonsystemic approach is itself like God, appearing in specific placesbut also being in many places.

If we move toward this very different theological field of discourse,the question of presence becomes crucial. For instance, in Elie Wiesel’sgripping description of the hanging of a young Jewish man in a con-centration camp, a death that took thirty minutes to complete, thequestion that is inevitably asked is, “Then where is God?”31 This is amuch more concrete, passionate, tormented theological question. Weare no longer thinking abstractly about God. We want to know where

26 William R. Jones, Is God a White Racist? (Boston: Beacon, 1997).27 Fritz Zorn, Mars (New York: Knopf, 1982), 212.28 David R. Blumenthal, Facing the Abusing God: A Theology of Protest (Louisville, KY: West-

minster/John Knox, 1993).29 B. Jill Carroll, The Savage Side: Reclaiming Violent Models of God (Lanham, MD: Rowman &

Littlefield, 2001).30 Caputo, Weakness of God, 33.31 Elie Wiesel, Night (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), 60–62.


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God is. The issue is not God’s omnipresence; the issue is God’s pres-ence. When theology is done in the graffiti-like forms of memoir oressay, rather than philosophical systematic discourse, the twin issues ofGod’s presence and absence have dominated religious thought of thelast century.

The concept of a greatest conceivable God creates the philosophicalproblem of evil (triggered by the concepts of omnipotence and omni-science) as distinguished from the religious problem of evil (raised byissues of God’s presence and absence). Therefore, adjustments aremade to the concepts of omnipotence and omniscience in order tocreate a theodicy. When the focus is on the presence of God, as distin-guished from the omnipresence of God, the issue shifts away from om-nipotence and omniscience. Then the issue becomes “Where is God?”God’s omnipresence is not an answer to intense questions about God’sabsence. Questions about where God is shift seamlessly into questionsabout when God will be actively present. This was the situation whenJesus’s ministry began. New Testament scholar N. T. Wright poses thesituation this way: “The phrase ‘kingdom of god,’ therefore, carriedunambiguously the hope that YHWH would act thus, within history, tovindicate Israel; the question, why he was taking so long about doingso; and the agenda, for those with watchful hearts, not only to wait forhim to act, but to work, in whatever way was deemed appropriate, to-wards that day.”32

The dominant religious question of the past century—“Where isGod?”—and the dominant question of biblical times—“When will Godbe present?”—are both questions in which the presence of God is thecrucial factor. In these domains, God’s presence is not merely incidentalor subordinate to issues of God’s power or God’s knowledge.

the problem with kenotic theology

Paul’s theology is complex; one cannot simply quote him on the weak-ness and foolishness of God without immediately qualifying the claim.A crucial passage in Philippians is the classic statement of the kenosis(emptying) of God’s superlative being. It speaks of Jesus, “who, thoughhe was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing tobe grasped, and emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, beingborn in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he hum-bled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.Therefore God has highly exalted him” (Phil. 2:6–9).

32 N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 203.

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Jesus is sometimes spoken of as “God incognito.” Though God isomnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, Jesus is the presence of Godin the flesh, weak and humble and therefore in camouflage, as it were.Many sermons have been preached on the paradox inherent in thecreator of the universe being born in a manger as a helpless babe orthe omnipotent God appearing in a crucified man. Advent and Lentenhymns celebrate this mystery of God Incognito.

Such God Incognito views assume that we already know, somehow orother, what God is like, independent of Jesus. The problem then is toexplain the apparent dichotomy between the historical Jesus and thenature of God. The resolution is to say that the preexistent Christ emp-tied himself, becoming a God in disguise. This way of thinking suggeststhat Jesus is the revelation of God, indeed is God Incarnate, but isdiametrically the opposite of God in every crucial way.

I propose instead that we are surrounded by mystery, that God is amystery, and some of us experience in Jesus, about whom we have heard,a revelation of the deepest nature of reality. We live our lives based onthat expectancy and that lure. We experience the presence of God asGod occasionally makes a home with us. This transforms our vision ofthe world. We see reality from the perspective of foolish love, a weakinfluence, and a homeless spirit (as distinguished from a God who isomniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent). We are healed and luredby what we come to know as God, revealed by Jesus. We can never lookat the poor, the weak, the oppressed, the homeless in the same wayever again.

But does Paul hold on to this crucial insight? The kenosis appearsto be only temporary. The servant is exalted. I agree with Caputo: “Nowas a dyed-in-the-wool lover of weak theology and the weak force of theevent, I am of a mind to think that the cause is ill-served if you haveall along had a secret power up your sleeve. As a believer in the logosof the cross, I am inclined to think that Jesus really was crucified, thathe could not avoid it, and that it was not part of a long-term powerplay.”33

Of course, others have argued for a complete and unending kenosisof God, with no exaltation or recovery, from Meister Eckhart to ThomasJ. J. Altizer. For Altizer, the emptying of God in the crucifixion of Jesusis pivotal to his “death of God” theology. Things changed definitivelyin God’s being and in our world. I do not advocate the death of God.I also do not claim that God “changed,” “evolved,” or “died” duringJesus’s life and death. I claim that it is possible to “see” the homeless

33 Caputo, Weakness of God, 49.


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God through Jesus, as God “was in the beginning, is now, and ever shallbe, world without end.”34

The thesis that needs to be explored is whether Jesus is, in fact, therevelation of God exactly as Jesus presents himself. This is what God islike: just like Jesus. This is not some extraordinary card shuffle or magictrick. The claim is that God is in fact like Jesus. Or, more modestly, thatsome of us are led to believe that the mystery about which we can knownothing is in fact revealed in Jesus. Jesus is the crucial trace of God inour midst.

One of the most interesting interpretations of such an emergingmood was offered by John S. Dunne. Dunne argued that a profoundshift was taking place in the way humans understand and interpret theirlife stories. In A Search for God in Time and Memory, Dunne suggestedthat suffering has always been a fact of human life, but the issue hasbecome central in the search for God in the twentieth century. Hediscussed this shift in terms of a new understanding of the biblical Job.Instead of God being seen as cooperating with Job’s Tempter and Ac-cuser, God is now seen as taking the side of Job himself. “When religiousthought began, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to take Job’spart, it envisioned God taking Job’s part, sharing in the suffering, in-stead of making Job grateful by delivering him from suffering.”35

This image of God taking Job’s part has several implications. It meansthat Jesus is interpreted in light of Job, rather than in light of the newAdam, or Jonah buried for three days, or the new Moses giving a newlaw, or any of the other Old Testament images that have been used. Itmeans that God shares in Job’s suffering, rather than being complicitin inflicting the suffering.

But this image also implies a new spirituality, a new relation betweenhumans and God. Instead of a relationship in which humans are sub-missive to God and grateful to God for God’s blessings, a spiritualityof loving God is suggested. “Here, for the first time in the history ofanswering Job, a relationship to God was envisioned that was basicallynot one of gratitude.”36

Dunne sees this at work in Søren Kierkegaard’s parable of the kingwho disguised himself as a commoner, in order to win the love of ahumble peasant girl, without his royal trappings interfering with the

34 Luca D’Isanto, “Kenotic Existence and the Aesthetics of Grace,” in Secular Theology: AmericanRadical Thought, ed. Clayton Crockett (New York: Routledge, 2001), 167–86. Thomas J. J. Altizer,Living the Death of God: A Theological Memoir (Albany: SUNY Press, 2006), 12, 109, 135, 164.

35 John Dunne, A Search for God in Time and Memory (Notre Dame, IN: University of NotreDame Press, 1977), 185.

36 Ibid.

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relationship. Disguising himself as a beggar, he was able to win her love,without any risk that she might be bedazzled by the reality of his royalty.Only after winning her love does the king drop his disguise.37

“The point of God taking Job’s part, according to religious thoughtlike that of Kierkegaard, is not really to answer Job but to bring aboutsomething entirely different, a relationship with man based on love andmutual understanding instead of gratitude.”38

As John Dunne puts it, Kierkegaard “assumed that the king wouldmerely disguise himself as a commoner (as he would do in a fairy tale)to win the maiden’s love.”39 However, Dunne points out, some want tosay the king does not merely disguise himself, but “the king really be-comes a commoner. . . . He renounces the kingship.”40 This approachesthe claim I am exploring. Some people might object that, if such avision is applied to God, then God is no longer God.

If, as Dunne suggests, we live in a time in which we await God, partof the reason is tied up with this profound shift in understanding God.Many people still look to the God who might take away our suffering,instead of sharing our suffering. There is a danger that Kierkegaard’sking who disguised himself as a commoner to win the love of a maidenmight be rejected. The problem, Dunne writes, is that “if God takesJob’s part, he seems to be no longer God.” Many will reject this pow-erless God reaching out in love. “Why should he be rejected? Becausehe was once a king and is so no longer.”41

Dunne doesn’t specifically speak of atonement, but his preoccupationwith a new relationship between God and humans, based on love ratherthan gratitude or submission, is, in fact, a vision of how atonementwould not be based on gratitude for the forgiveness of sin, but insteadon a mutually understanding love.

Such a shift radically alters the relationship of the human to God.The attraction of this idea is that, if God is one of us, then one canlove God, rather than merely being grateful. But Dunne points out thatsome might well be disappointed that God is like us. A human “mightprefer to be eternally grateful to God for ridding him of suffering ratherthan to have God share in the suffering and to be capable of being inlove with God.”42

37 Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,1962), 32–34.

38 Dunne, Search for God, 186.39 Ibid., 183.40 Ibid., 187.41 Ibid.42 Ibid., 184.


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anselm

This approach to God, through weakness, foolishness, and homeless-ness, might be thought of as the “anti–Anselm of Canterbury approach.”Anselm called God “that, than which nothing greater can be conceived.”This definition, he claims, was revealed to him in a time of prayer,though he also claims it is rationally persuasive. Anselm famously arguedthat this definition included within itself the insight that it would beself-contradictory to claim, as the atheist does, that there is no God. Itis not my purpose to argue the pros and cons of the ontological ar-gument, a debate that continues up to today. I am more concernedwith the way a greatest conceivable God becomes an umbrella definitionof God, piling on as many superlatives as can be conceived: omniscient,omnipotent, omnipresent, and on and on. All these descriptions comefrom the tradition of philosophical thought about God, rather thanfrom staying close to the revelation of God in Jesus. Anselm’s definitionlocked our sense of God into an interminable series of omnis, removingus from the synoptic Gospel accounts of Jesus. It has harmed our un-derstanding of Jesus as a revelation of God.

The concept of God as a perfect, greatest conceivable reality seemsto exist in a sort of pristine philosophical purity. The fact is that it fitsnicely into certain cultural realities and certain theological visions. Hav-ing great, seemingly limitless power, unsurpassable knowledge or in-formation, and pervasive influence fits nicely with certain value systems.I leave it to those more skilled at this sort of thing to determine whichgenders, social groups, religious organizations, and political programsmight benefit from such a vision of God. The culture of Anselm’s owntime, however, was based on a hierarchical vision that benefited fromexactly this kind of definition of God.

Anselm also formulated the substitutionary sacrifice theory of theatonement, in his Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man).43 This theoryassumes a God who is modeled after the ruling lord in a medieval feudalsystem. It is presented today in many churches as if it is the “Gospeltruth,” rather than a time-bound expression of medievalism. The visionof Jesus’s death as a substitutionary sacrifice has become the dominantinterpretation of the atonement in both Roman Catholic and Protestanttheology. Liturgies and sermons in most Christian churches create themood that the substitutionary sacrifice theory is obviously the true oronly Christian view of these things. Yet if one reads around in thoughtful

43 Anselm of Canterbury, Why God Became Man, trans. Joseph M. Colleran (Albany, NY: MagiBooks, 1969).

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theologians of the past century, it seems as if their major concern is toget out from under the weight of Anselm’s theory. Today, many thinkersare creating a much more compelling account of the atonement, onemuch closer to the accounts of the Gospels. For instance, their con-structive views would be more compatible with the suggestions by JohnDunne, outlined above, than with Anselm’s views.44

Briefly, these are some of the issues.1. Anselm’s theory assumes that the fault of Jesus’s death lies with

humans: it is human sin that necessitates the atonement. However, JackMiles proposes that, in the Gospels, Jesus came, as God Incarnate, inorder to repent for God’s silence. Miles summarizes his view: “In a word,confronting his sinful but suffering people, God may be not just mer-ciful but also penitent.”45 Jesus’s first act as penitent God is to be bap-tized for the forgiveness of sin. “God Incarnate has begun his redemp-tive work with an act of public repentance.”46

2. Many of the thinkers who work in this area see the substitutionarysacrifice view of the atonement as a major stumbling block for victimsof abuse. Submission to an abuser, especially one who claims to be actingviolently because it is an expression of love, perpetrated “for your owngood,” is encouraged by a view of a God who desires the suffering ofa son and an obedient Jesus who submits to violence.47

3. God’s power is not some kind of abstract omnipotence, leavinghumans powerless. Rather, God’s weak power is a resource on whichwe can draw, finding our own strength. God’s power is not competitivewith our power. God’s power needs to be seen as empowering. Thesethinkers are influenced by Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s argument that thecrucified Jesus reveals a powerless God. Humans must take responsibilityfor their lives in a world come of age.48

4. Many writers follow Rene Girard in affirming that Jesus does notsubstitute for us in offering a sacrifice to God. Christian sacrificial lan-guage encourages the idea that sacrifice is good and rewards scape-

44 Bartlett, Cross Purposes ; Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, Proverbs of Ashes:Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us (Boston: Beacon, 2001); RobertG. Hamerton-Kelly, The Gospel and the Sacred: Poetics of Violence in Mark (Philadelphia: Fortress,1993); Jack Miles, Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God (New York: Knopf, 2001); Raymund Schwager,Must There Be Scapegoats? Violence and Redemption in the Bible (New York: HarperCollins, 1992);J. Denny Weaver, The Nonviolent Atonement (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001); James G.Williams, The Bible, Violence, and the Sacred: Liberation from the Myth of Sanctioned Violence (Har-risburg, PA: Trinity, 1992).

45 Miles, Christ, 160.46 Ibid., 28.47 Brock and Parker, Proverbs of Ashes, 29–50, 165–215.48 Ibid., 199–215.


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goating behavior. However, biblical insights move away from a God whodesires sacrifices of either humans or animals.49

5. Anselm’s theory of the atonement is generated by the apparentconflict between God’s honor and God’s love or mercy. Humans haverebelled against and disobeyed God; God’s honor demands their pun-ishment. Yet God’s love seeks a way of forgiveness. The resolution isthat Jesus becomes a substitutionary sacrifice for the sins of the world.However, recent writers say, the conflict between God’s honor and God’slove should not be read as a conflict within God’s being. Rather, it isa conflict between God’s love, apparently imported from aspects ofbiblical faith, and God’s honor, which fits seamlessly with the prevailingpower structure in the feudalism of Anselm’s time. God’s honor de-manded satisfaction. The power of feudal lords, and even more theking, is given philosophical honing at its apex by an image of God’shonor, the greatest conceivable honor, presiding over it all. Anselm’stheory of the atonement is consistent with his understanding of Godas that than which no greater can be conceived. Anselm’s image of Godhas internal conflicts that create “the problem of evil” and a view ofJesus’s atonement that has its own internal conflicts.50

6. The substitutionary sacrifice view suggests that a violent act ac-complishes God’s will. The long history of Christian involvement inviolence is supported and nourished by any view that sees God workingthrough violence. The strong peace tradition of Christianity demandsa different view of the atonement.51

7. Within this prevailing culture, it is no wonder that Christianitytook a decisive turn toward violence in the First Crusade. The violenceshown toward Jews and Muslims, affirming the honor of Christianity,plays out a theology in which the Christian warrior is approved by Godas much as the Christian at prayer. Anselm concluded Cur Deus Homoin 1098 CE, just as the First Crusade was at its most intense. The claimhere is not that Cur Deus Homo created the Crusades. It is more accurateto put it as Anthony W. Bartlett does: “Those who ‘took the cross’ inthe First Crusade participated in the symbolic world that also producedthe Cur Deus Homo.”52

49 Hamerton-Kelly, The Gospel and the Sacred; Schwager, Must There Be Scapegoats?; Williams,The Bible, Violence, and the Sacred.

50 Anselm of Canterbury, Why God Became Man, 88–91.51 Weaver, Nonviolent Atonement; Bartlett, Cross Purposes, 62–89.52 Bartlett, Cross Purposes, 96.

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biblical images

Jesus pointed out that, though the foxes have holes and birds of theair have nests, he had no place to lay his head (Matt. 8:20). He andhis ragged band of followers moved around the country like an itinerateband of thieves, moving from city to city. He was dependent on thehospitality of others. Many of the critical incidents that the traditionremembered occurred in the homes of others, when Jesus benefitedfrom their hospitality. The story of Jesus’s birth, as told in the Gospelof Luke, seems designed to build on the theme of homelessness, de-picting Jesus as born in a stable since “there was no room in the inn”(Luke 2:7). If Jesus’s lifestyle is a revelation of God, why not pushforward with the image of homelessness?

Robert Funk noted that Jesus was a walker. Being a walker is integrallyrelated to being homeless. Indeed, Funk called Jesus a “saunterer.” Hepointed out that the word contains traces of a deeper, theological mean-ing. Funk borrowed the insight of another determined walker, HenryDavid Thoreau. Idlers wandered through Europe in the Middle Ages,begging alms on the pretext of going a la Sainte-Terre (to the Holy Land).Children would joke, “There goes a Sainte-Terrer”—a saunterer. Jesus,of course, traversed Galilee and Judea constantly, offering parables thatspoke of ordinary people and common events, parables that evoked theultimate horizon of God’s kingdom, a different sort of holy land.53

What might it mean to suggest that Jesus reveals a homeless God,God as saunterer? It suggests a God who is on the move, seeking outplaces to be present. If we conceive God as a homeless walker, we’resuggesting God as one who moves from place to place. In philosophicalterms, it suggests a God in process. In biblical terms, God is not de-scribed as omnipresent. God’s presence is specific and on the move.Jacob can be startled that God “was in this place,” something Jacob hadnot previously realized (Gen. 28:16). God promises an angel will “gobefore” the people of the Exodus (Exod. 23:23, 32–34). Moses is re-assured that “My presence will go with you” (Exod. 33:14). The ark ofGod, a very specific focus of YHWH’s presence, is moved by David toJerusalem, as he dances on his own journey alongside it (2 Sam. 6). InElijah’s experience, God was not in the wind, or the earthquake, or thefire. God’s presence was in a still, small voice (1 Kings 19:11–12). Inthe Gospel of John, Jesus even compares the presence of the Spirit withthe wind, which “blows where it wills, and you do hear the sound of it,but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes” ( John 3:8).

53 Robert Funk, Jesus as Precursor (Missoula, MT: Scholars, 1997), 96.


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A classic statement of Hebrew faith begins “A wandering Arameanwas my father” (Deut. 26:5). Biblical “ethics” emphasize the need forhospitality to the sojourner, for the people of Israel have been sojourn-ers, and, indeed, it is explicitly said that they are strangers and sojourn-ers along with God (Lev. 25:23).

The point is not to “proof-text” any of these examples. There aremany such instances and each of them would need to be explored inits context. It seems clear, however, that biblical views of God do notfocus on an abstract omnipresence. Rather, the presence of God is veryspecific and on the move. One could perhaps say that God is alwayspresent but we are not aware of it. But in religious experience, thepresence of God is specific and highly powerful. A lot gets lost if webegin to speak of an abstract or generalized omnipresence. We alsoneed to recognize that the experience of God includes the so-calleddark night of the soul, the powerful sense of God’s absence. Most no-tably, it includes Jesus’s own experience of forsakenness, when he asked“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Luke 15:34).

Human experience of God seems to fluctuate between a sense ofGod’s presence and a sense of the absence of God. Sometimes we prayand seem to be in God’s presence; other times we yearn for a God whois not there. God is near us in the sacraments; at other times they seemlike empty forms. A spirit or presence seems to brood over nature; othertimes nature seems barren, indifferent, or cruel. We can do what MotherTeresa did and spend our lives among the poor and oppressed, hopingthat the homeless God will be near us as well as near the homeless. YetMother Teresa’s writings tell us more about the absence of God, thedesperate yearning for God, than about the presence of God.54 Thepresence of God is never guaranteed. Sometimes God is at home inour lives. Many times, probably most times, God is not there. Somethinglike that seems to be the truth about our experience of God.

It is, of course, the “omnis” that do us in. Writers such as Caputohave suggested a God who is a weak force, in distinction from theomnipotence of the traditional picture. And the “foolishness” of God’slove revolutionizes our thought about the omniscience or wisdom ofGod. But God has also traditionally been depicted as omnipresent. Thisdepiction seems to come from a theological obsession with superlatives,rather than from human experience or most biblical accounts. Probablythe strongest biblical support for omnipresence would be Psalm 139:

54 Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the “Saint of Calcutta” (New York:Doubleday, 2007).

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Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?If I ascend to heaven, thou art there!If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there!

(Ps. 139:7–8)

True, the psalmist writes of encountering God wherever he seeks toflee from God. But that is an odd and unique approach to God’s om-nipresence, not unlike the prophet Jonah’s encounter with God whenhe sought to flee in any direction away from Ninevah. More typical ofbiblical and human experience is the absence of God from places wherewe try to find God. The experience of some people involves encoun-tering God in odd places, even when trying to ignore, neglect, or fleeGod. It is clearly also true that many people experience God as lackingor absent in their lives, even when they seek God. There are manycomplex dimensions of experiencing any human presence, and evenmore so in experiencing God’s presence.

It seems critical to a faithful account of Jesus’s vision that God is tobe found among the weak, marginalized, poor, unclean, hungry, and,indeed, the homeless. God is aligned with the oppressed. The idea ofGod’s presence uniformly distributed throughout all points of spacesounds more like some odd theory of physics or astronomy, rather thanan attempt to capture the nature of human experience of God. Perhapsthe most typical human experience pertaining to God is the absenceof God. A sense of God’s presence tends to be a surprise rather thanthe norm.

It is difficult enough to talk with precision about human presence.Martin Buber, for instance, introduced the idea of “I-Thou” relationsinto our vocabulary, in order to capture some of the aspects of humanpresence. We don’t really have a vocabulary for talking about God. Ourlanguage is built on describing worldly realities, and even then the ideaof presence tends to be slippery. Applying this to God becomes evenmore demanding.

God’s concern is with the weak, the sick and dying, the poor, theoppressed, the marginalized, the homeless. Indeed, God is with thosewho are so often invisible, living under bridges or hidden away in re-mote wings of hospitals or nursing homes, refugees, exiles, the hunted,the rejected, immigrants, all who develop necessary skills at being boththere and not there, an invisibility that mirrors the invisibility of God.


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language about god

How do we speak of God? What kind of language can evoke an aware-ness of what is meant when we speak of God? How do we point to Godwithout merely calling attention to our pointing finger? To call God“homeless” demands an exploration of how language about God is be-ing used. A traditional approach speaks of the two ways: the via analogiaand the via negativa.

Ian T. Ramsey suggested that when we make use of analogies, whichhe called “common-sense models,” some kind of “odd qualifier” needsto be added in order to hint at the necessary shift that occurs when weapply an analogy to God.55 We call God our “heavenly Father” or wespeak of God’s omniscience or God’s omnipotence. Some analogiesseem innocent enough, but when we think about them carefully, it’snot at all clear what they might mean when applied to God. Odd qual-ifiers, such as the prefix omni -, may distort rather than illumine whatwe mean by God. I suggest the opposite approach: an odd model witha commonsense qualifier.

“God” is in and of itself an odd word, with a long, complex historythat deliberately tries to point to that which is not commonplace. Yetwords such as “weak,” “foolish,” and especially “homeless” derive fromthe commonplace, even the gritty, side of life. We begin with “God,”the word that always already points to the ultimate, the liminal, themysterious, the numinous, but we modify it with surprising qualifiers.We move away from the greatest conceivable being, to a God modeledby one who washed his disciples’ feet. The combination of a common-place qualifier such as “homeless” with the term “God” produces anoddness that begins with a common enough term and modifies it in asurprising and unusual way. All this is grounded in the indisputabletruth that Jesus himself is an odd and surprising revelation or modelof God. Many qualifiers are available from the remembered life andteachings of Jesus. Many have already been used by others in varioussettings. In this article, I focus on one possibility, the “homeless” Godbecause I am not aware of its having been explored in depth by othersand because it provides leverage in probing the idea of omnipresence.

The other major approach used by theologians is the way of negation.Much of our language about God is framed in terms of negations:immortal, invisible, “in light inaccessible” in the words of one of my

55 Ian T. Ramsey, Religious Language: An Empirical Placing of Theological Phrases (London: SCM,1957).

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favorite hymns.56 Mystics, in particular, engage in “unsaying,”57 speakingof God by carefully saying what God is not: immortal, invisible,inaccessible.

In distinction from these negations, John D. Caputo insists that wesay what God is, but in a way radically different from those who viewGod only in the superlative terms influenced by dominant theologies.Why can’t we simply do the best we can, saying what we believe Godto be, staying close to the model we have in Jesus, but trusting ourability to catch the spirit of words that are more like graffiti than liketraditional theology? Whatever we do, our words are going to be humanwords. As Caputo says, this graffiti theology is very different from neg-ative theology, which “for all its modesty is very strong; it is the tall,strong, silent type.” He proposes that we describe God as “the one wholies down with nullity and insignificance, who clings steadfastly with thenothings of the world, the lowly bodies and nobodies below being.”58

I. M. Crombie has suggested that Christians need to speak of God inwhat he called “authorized parables.” They are authorized because theyare derived from the words and acts of Jesus. But we must rememberthey are parables. “What we do, then, is in essence to think of God inparables. The things we say about God are said on the authority of thewords and acts of Christ, who spoke in human language, using parable;and so we too speak of God in parable—authoritative parable, author-ized parable; knowing that the truth is not literally that which ourparables represent, knowing that now we see in a glass darkly, but trust-ing, because we trust the source of the parables, that in believing themand interpreting them in the light of each other, we shall not be misled,that we shall have such knowledge as we need to possess.”59 We knowthat our parabolic talk is not literally accurate, but we have also decidedwhom it is that we trust when we speak of God.

Jesus spoke of God in parables and he sometimes enacted or actedout parables, such as washing his disciples’ feet or riding into Jerusalemon a donkey. He lived life as a homeless man, finally buried in a spacedonated by a stranger. To speak of God as homeless is to speak in termsof what might be called an authorized analogy, an odd but authorizedqualifier, or an authorized parable.

56 The hymn, “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise,” composed by Walter C. Smith in 1867,may be found in The New Century Hymnal (Cleveland: Pilgrim, 1995).

57 Michael A. Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1994).

58 Caputo, Weakness of God, 36.59 I. M. Crombie, untitled article in Classical and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of

Religion, 2nd ed., ed. John Hick (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970), 483–84.


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If it is necessary to speak of God in superlatives, one might choosethe biblical way of the superlative polyptoton: in the Old Testament,such phrases as “King of kings” or “Song of songs” are used. It is notsaid that God is some kind of “omni-King.” Rather, the claim is thatGod is the King among kings. In this way, it could be said that God isthe homeless One among the homeless. God becomes the quintessentialhomeless one. Such a device is in keeping with the tradition of hyper-bole (often used by Jesus in his parables) and oxymorons.60

the presence of god

The kenotic view assumes we already know something about God. Per-haps we know about God from philosophical reflection on the ultimate.Perhaps biblical history has given us a perspective on God. The problemis how to relate Jesus as the revelation of God to the God we supposedlyalready know. Jesus does not seem to be an expression of a philosophicalvision of God; many whose view of God was based on the great eventsrecorded in scripture held Jesus not to be the Messiah who was ex-pected. Paul’s kenotic theory explains that the overwhelming grandeurof God was emptied during the span of Jesus’s life, only to be takenback when Jesus was exalted by God.

I begin with a far more skeptical stance. We do not know anythingabout God. We live surrounded by mystery. We do not really knowanything of importance about ultimate things. There is nothing to beemptied, since we don’t know what it is that might be emptied. Thereare various ways we could go if we begin with mystery. One could simplylive with it. Some of us, however, have come to see the ultimate throughthe lens of Jesus’s life and words. That might be a decision or a leapof faith. Some of us trust Jesus because we have learned we can trusthim. Some of us may have been indoctrinated that way. Indeed, it’shard to imagine that we could know the story of Jesus without beingsomewhat indoctrinated. It might be the simple acknowledgement that,as a matter of fact, that is what we believe. One thing is clear: this isnot the sort of thing one can prove to someone else. One can, of course,witness to this faith.

The claim is not that only Christians experience the presence of God,which would be a silly claim. Others may use another vocabulary. Godmay be present in and described by various vocabularies, includingvocabularies lacking the word “God” or similar words. It would be in-teresting, for instance, to explore the Shechinah (the divine presence)

60 Anita Albus, The Art of Arts (New York: Knopf, 2000), 36 n. 7.

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tradition in Judaism.61 Such an exploration would yield results muchcloser to my position than to claims of traditional omnipresence. Myclaim, however, is that some of us are set free to know the presence ofGod by reflection on the life of Jesus, especially by meditation on thesauntering, homeless style of Jesus. The claim is that God’s presencemay be known more intensely if we are set free from expecting merelya uniformly omnipresent God.

When it is suggested that human experience of the absence of Godis the fault of humans, since God is, by definition, always present andavailable, this is a tactic of blaming the victim. As with Anselm’s theoryof the atonement, the blame rests with humans. I hold that the truthis more complex. God’s presence is a mystery that is grounded in God’sreality. We need to explore instances when humans seem to have beenaware of God’s presence. Are there persistent traits in such experiences?Such questions can be answered only by direct attention to humanawareness of God, not by abstract speculation.

If we turn from speculation about God’s omnipresence to attentivenessto God’s presence, we enter a very different field of discourse. Omni-presence requires a skill with certain forms of philosophical and theo-logical discourse. One’s ability to speak the language affirms that onehas the credentials and that one belongs in the academic community.

In a parallel way, Martin A. Berger, speaking of the artistic and mu-seum communities, writes that “commenting on art in the vocabularyand tropes that reveal an understanding of currently valued trends,individuals signal to other empowered people their membership in theclub.”62 Listening to accounts of God’s presence is very different fromdiscussing omnipresence. They can be terrifying. It is sometimes as ifa tornado has roared through. The language can be raw. I choose asan example an account by Rebecca Ann Parker, an accomplished theo-logian who does, in fact, belong to “the club.” But her account of God’spresence requires a very different sort of telling and listening.

When I was raped as a child, there was a moment that I have been able toremember in which I was quite sure I was going to die—and perhaps I was, infact, close to being killed.

I was being orally raped. I couldn’t breathe. I was just a small child! Fouryears old. And the weight of the man on top of me was crushing. In that momentI knew that there was a Presence with me that was “stronger” than the rapistand that could encompass my terror. This Presence had a quality of unboundedcompassion for me and unbreakable connection to me . . .

61 Leah Novick, On the Wings of Shekinah (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical, 2008).62 Martin A. Berger, Sight Unseen: Whiteness and American Visual Culture (Berkeley: University

of California Press, 2005), 101.


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This Presence could not stop the man from killing me, if he chose to. And,at the same time, it could stop him. Because, I knew, if he noticed it he wouldbe stopped. He would not be able to continue. You couldn’t. It was clear tome. You couldn’t be aware of this Presence and do what the man was doingto me. He only could do it by not noticing, not knowing. So, this Presencedid have the power to save me from death and there is a way in which Ibelieve it did . . .

I know that had he killed me, it would have been because he completelydenied the Presence. Such denial is possible and happens all the time.63

I am in no position to assess the accuracy of Parker’s memory of herfour-year-old self. I’m simply pointing to the kind of language that amature and theologically accomplished Parker is driven to use in speak-ing of God’s presence: a very different world of discourse than talkabout God’s omnipresence.

This description fits within the framework of a God whose presenceis known as luring. If we are attracted to the good, we are lured. Butif there are depths beneath which we cannot sink, then that is still thework of luring, though the restraint placed on our depravity is typicallydescribed as an experience of God’s judging. There is Parker’s adultexperience of healing, as she recounts this story. There is also thepresence that, in different ways, played a role in the experience of boththe child, who was sustained, and her rapist, who was restrained. Parkerwrites, “Awareness of presence can be fleeting, dimly perceived, jum-bled, and intermittent. Violence can fracture this knowing. It can de-stroy the numinous quality of life, as truly as it can place in clear termsthe light of presence.”64

Rita Charon directs a medicine and literature program at ColumbiaUniversity. A primary purpose of this program is to expose medicalstudents to the world of literature, improve their own narrative skillsin thinking about their work, and foster their ability to do close readingsof their own medical narratives, as well as of more traditional literature.Part of this training involves the students in writing “parallel charts,”accounts that cover the same medical arena that generates traditionalcharts, but which use their growing narrative skills to think in differentways about their experience. Charon shares five of these one-pagecharts, based on some experience during the previous week’s medicalwork. They are each very much worth reading, confirming Charon’sattempt to enhance both medicine and literature by their interaction.Some are tough to read, moving, and disturbing. However, one unusual

63 Brock and Parker, Proverbs of Ashes, 211–12.64 Ibid., 213.

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parallel chart, identified only as “Nell’s” chart, seems pertinent to thisdiscussion.

One day last week, during hour two and a half of rounding, I saw a young manwalking down the hospital towards me. The seven of us on my team werestanding in a circle, the two interns, the two attendings, the resident and myfellow student; I was the only one facing his direction. He was unassuming, ofaverage height and build, with wavy brown hair, green eyes and glasses. He hadno shoes on, only gleaming white socks. He kept trying to catch my eye, likehe knew me, as he walked towards us down the hall. He had a mischievoussmile on his face. When he was only two feet from the group, he winked atme. Quickly. Joyously. As if we were in on some great joke together. I don’tknow if it was my sleep deprivation or the blood rushing from my brain afterstanding so long, but I thought to myself what if this young man, who seemsto want to let me in on his prank, was God? The idea filled me with joy. It wasrevitalizing. What a strange thought to have! Why would I think that, I askedmyself? First, this is exactly where God would want to hang out, in a hospitalamongst the sick and the dying and amongst those always around the sick andthe dying. And this is exactly how God would want to appear, as a patient,though one inexplicably cheerful in the face of suffering. And why not? He’sin on the joke that the rest of us aren’t. Finally, God would definitely not wantto wear shoes. I can’t picture God in shoes.

I was hoping that God would visit some of my patients. Let them in on whatwas so funny. I hoped he would stop by the room of my 35-year-old patientwith CF, now three years older than she ever should have been. God could puton His contact isolation precautions and go in for a chat, put His socked feetup on the windowsill. He could explain why a 35-year-old woman is in thehospital drowning. Why she is the youngest person on the floor by forty years.Why she is counting the rest of her life in months.

After God told that patient His joke, maybe he could move down the halland look in on another patient of mine. His ALS has left him trapped in acoffin that once was his body, no longer able to eat, to urinate, to move andalmost to breathe. Any day and that will be gone too. He can understandthough, his mind is still there. He would want to know God’s joke. I think hewould appreciate it. If it’s a good day, my patient might be able to wink backat Him.

And last of all, I hope God comes back my way and lets me in on the secret.Maybe then I can know how to handle pain and sickness on a daily basis, howto welcome death in the second case and accept it in the first. How to sit withsuffering, anger and regret without wanting to avoid it and save myself. Thesecret must be how to sacrifice the idea of justice for peace, how to substitutescience for fear.

But God doesn’t stop to tell me the joke. Not just yet. He only smiles mys-teriously, winks and shuffles off down the hallway.65

65 Rita Charon, Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness (New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 2006), 169–70.


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I was astonished as I first read this account. It has strong traces ofirony and anger, as well as humor. It’s easy to explain it away, if onewants to dismiss the account, as a result of the sleep deprivation ex-perienced by the young doctor-in-training, the explanation Nell herselfconsiders. But she writes of this as a profound experience, not a passinghallucination. For my purposes, the most important aspect is that Iseemed to experience the once-removed presence of God in my ownact of reading the account. The important question, which I do notprobe here, is whether it is possible to experience the presence of Godthrough stories or narratives about God, rather than directly, as in theaccounts of Parker and Nell. Since all I have of Jesus is a narrative aboutJesus, my implicit claim is that it is possible to experience God througha narrative. I would also hold that other narratives may also be signsof God. John Dominic Crossan has explored this issue in some depth.He claims that we can’t go from a story to a presence, that God is on“the edge of language,” but, as Victor E. Taylor has argued, there is anambiguity on this even in Crossan.66

On the face of it, it is no more absurd to think God was present inNell’s experience than to think God was once present in a wanderingyoung man who healed a few people and told odd stories, a claimmillions of people believe today. Some of Nell’s questions are the ques-tions I would want to ask of God. Obviously, I like the hint that “(T)hisis exactly where God would want to hang out, in a hospital amongstthe sick and the dying and amongst those always around the sick andthe dying. And this is exactly how God would want to appear, as apatient, though one inexplicably cheerful in the face of suffering. Andwhy not? He’s in on the joke that the rest of us aren’t. Finally, Godwould definitely not want to wear shoes. I can’t picture God in shoes.”This is a wandering God, even a sauntering God, one who obviouslywould hang out with those who were not able to be in their homes. Anaccount such as this does not fit into the authorized vocabulary fortalking about God. It is not an essay about God’s omnipresence. Rather,it is a tough account of God’s presence, told in a language that is notcertified by those who belong to “the club.” Moving from a view ofGod’s omnipresence to a search for God’s presence opens us to verydifferent kinds of experience. To experience God’s presence is not agiven; presence is grace.

66 Victor E. Taylor, “Theography: Signs of God in a Postmodern Age,” in Crockett, SecularTheology, 190, 196; John Dominic Crossan, The Dark Interval: Towards a Theology of Story (Sonoma,CA: Polebridge, 1988), 29–30.

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conclusion

In this article, I have distinguished between the presence of God andthe omnipresence of God. The presence of God is not merely a sub-category of omnipresence. The intense sense of the presence of Godin human experience is not the sort of thing that can be omnipresent.Many models have been borrowed from Jesus’s life to describe God. Ipropose homelessness as a relatively unexplored model or metaphorfor God. Such a metaphor provides leverage in overcoming the per-vasiveness of the idea of God’s omnipresence. Using this metaphorpresupposes that Jesus’s life is not something that disappears as Jesusis exalted or ascends. A radical approach to kenosis presupposes thatJesus’s life and teachings are not a temporary illusion, to be waved awayin an exaltation. God really is like Jesus as he lived on earth. The sortof language used to describe an experience of the presence of Godtends to be raw, blunt, and disturbing. To describe the experience, onegropes for words that are different from standard academic discourseabout the omnipresence of a greatest conceivable God. One could missthe presence of God if one is too preoccupied with standard academicdiscourse about God.

The idea of “presence” plays a role in other fields, such as art. MichaelFried’s art criticism emphasizes the issue of “theatricality,” the assump-tions art makes about the reality of its viewer or watcher. Art can playto the viewer in a literal or theatrical way, or, in a deeper way, it canbe present to the viewer, filling the range of experience for a few mo-ments. It is a complex matter as to what happens in the time a vieweris absorbed into the presentness of a work of art. Fried’s discussion iscomplex and would take us far afield. But he ends his crucial essay onthe subject with a dazzling sentence that continues to be debated amongart historians: Presence or presentness, he writes, “is grace.”67 As JamesElkins points out, the startling word here is not “presence,” but“grace.”68 Artists often talk about the presence of a piece. But to ac-knowledge that any real presence is grace broke open the way artistsand critics talk in their field. To understand that God’s presence is rareand is gracious is the theme of this article.

67 Michael Fried, Art and Objecthood (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 168.68 James Elkins, Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings

(New York: Routledge, 1998), 178–80.

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