Cloud of the Impossible, by Catherine Keller

Even if we do not always recognize it by name, process theology has become one of the most important theological movements in American Chris­tianity. The work of Catherine Keller has been fundamental in this development. From her position at Drew University, Keller has woven together a politically and ecologically concerned theology that is conversant with both contemporary philosophy and some of the most recent developments in the sciences. This often makes for difficult and dense reading, and her bewildering and creatively beautiful body of work is often more poetry than prose. But it is always worth the effort.

Keller’s most recent work continues her theopoetic project. Folding without collapsing together the negative theologies of the Pseudo-Dionysius; the anonymous Cloud of Unknowing; the works of Nicholas of Cusa; the un­speakable entanglements of quantum physics; the phil­osophies of Judith Butler, Gilles Deleuze, and Alfred North Whitehead; the democratically and sensually embodied poetry of Walt Whitman; and the thought of a host of political theorists and ecological ethicists, Cloud of the Impossible takes up the dream of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre that “another world is possible.” To borrow a phrase from John Caputo, for Keller this dream theology is “not what we say about God but how we do God,” in a way that is “materializing in and beyond speech a love-relation to your widest world.” In love, it seems, another world might be possible.

This is quite heady stuff, and for those of us who have a stake in process theology it is very exciting. Here is process theology as maker of worlds—worlds that are more loving, just, and peaceful, and maybe a little more beautifully sacred. But Keller quickly warns us against premature enthusiasm. A relational theology is possible today because the world we live in—this world of wars and violence, economic exploitation, and ecological collapse—is already a relational world. If process theology thinks the possibility of our relations, globalization is the practice of our relations. As Keller observes, economic globalization “entangles everything.” In its primary meaning, Keller argues, globalization “signifies the neoliberal corporate economics” of oil and is leaving in its wake an interconnected world that is suffocating and strangling “the shared life of creatures.” For many in this relational globalized world, it is becoming impossible to breath.