Hospitality in the contours of the kingdom of God

Abstract

This article is meant to assay in an open or non-conclusive way, a confrontation between John Caputo’s theology of the event and his idea of anarchic hospitality, and Vattimo’s weak theology and his notion of antimetaphysical hospitality, as I’ve decided to call it. The core of the discussion is a criticism to the formalism inherent to the anarchic and unconditional hospitality, since in this indefinite opening, what Caputo calls absolute alterity derives in a formal conception of alterity, therefore denying precisely what it is meant to defend, i. e., the welcome to the different. Whereas Vattimo’s antimetaphysical hospitality, on the other hand, seems to be more prone to redefine the outlines of the church, but on the basis of what he calls mediocre Christianity. In this way, he avoids the total dissolution of Christianity, which conceptually identifies itself with an inheritance to which we belong and with which we have to settle accounts, regulating its dissolution by the principle of charity.

Keywords: Hospitality. Anarchy. Deconstruction. Difference. Kénosis.