Hospitality and the trouble with God

John D. Caputo

pp. 83-97

in: Richard Kearney, Kascha Semonovitch (eds), Phenomenologies of the stranger, New York City, Fordham University Press, 2011

Abstract

The name of God is the name of trouble, the name of a disturbance. It solicits us and visits itself upon us, like an uninvited stranger knocking on our door. It is a provocation and an interruption, venerable but dangerous, healing but quite poisonous, grounding but no less destabilizing, an ancientarchebut very anarchical. From of old, it has perplexed us and driven us quite mad—with love and justice, with passion and rage, with madness of almost every kind. It gives the urge to kill or to risk being killed a perfect alibi.