Reduction to the event in John Caputo’s radical theology

John Caputo’s ‘radical theology’ calls attention to the event stirring in the name of God. He utilizes a certain reduction in order to bring this into view which has developed from a Husserlian to a ‘radical’ form. I argue that his thematizing of the event is an important point of emphasis in post-modern philosophy of religion but that his reduction suffers from three problems. It presupposes that any theological discourse in terms of being is onto-theological, it relies on a naturalistic binary of possibility and impossibility to exclude the miraculous, and this strangely determinate horizon of possibility inhibits the givenness of the event. Caputo’s deconstructive concern for the event in the name of God could ironically be further radicalized by not employing his radical reduction.