A Badiouan Interpretation of Christ in Hosle's Rationalistic Philosophy of Religion

In the book God as Reason, Vittorio Hosle attempts at sketching a rationalistic philosophy of religion where he provides a rationalistic interpretation of Christian theology. While such an attempt provides Christianity a place in rational secular society, it needlessly reduces the unique, divine figure of Christ into a mere historical figure, thereby dissolving the very foundation of Christian doctrine. Admitting to the difficulties of traditional Christology, Hosle openly resorts to such a reductive interpretation of the figure of Christ. This paper, however, proposes an interpretation that could salvage the figure of Christ in Hosle's rationalistic philosophy of religion. Drawing from Alain Badiou's interpretation of St. Paul, I argue that the Christ-event can be interpreted as inevitably exclusionary, rationally contradictory, and specifically divine without resorting to any fideistic interpretations. Therefore, a fully human and fully divine Christ can properly be maintained within a rationalistic philosophy of religion.