Reading Through More Caputo

I have just finished reading the first chapter (and the proceeding Series Preface, Foreword, and Introduction) of John D. Caputo’s What would Jesus Deconstruct? Thus far it is disappointing. I hardly sense the same rigorous passion and playfulness in this book than in another work By Caputo that I read earlier this semester, On Religion. The first chapter of that book both angered me, with its universalistic implications, and enraptured me. From start to finish I swayed back and forth between ferocity and love. This book does not feel like it will have the same playfulness, the same vigorous sense of life. “There is not an ounce of excitement, not a whisper of a thrill. This relationship has all the passion of a pair of titmice. I want to be swept away.” Instead I’m met with Caputo’s self-consciousness. He seems afraid to let loose or seem too heretical from the start so that he won’t scare of his readers. This hesitancy makes the chapter dull and repetitious. Hopefully in the latter chapters I will rediscover the man whose thoughts both excite and enrage me and whose heretical, radical edge keeps me laughing.