(Ir)religiosity

Incarnational Eschatology: Eschaton sans Telos and the Logic of Downturn

In the preceding two sections, I described both the state of Empire in postmodernity, drawing upon the work of Hardt and Negri, and the ahistorical eschatological narrative imbibed by Empire, best seen in the work of Francis Fukuyama.  In this section, I shall turn to what I believe to be a robust constructive theological alternative to the eschatology of Empire.  Utilizing Rieger’s concept of the logic of downturn and Derrida’s notion of the impossible and absolute future, I will develop an eschatology that is intrinsic to the incarnation and, contra the escapism of both traditional Christian eschatology and the eschatology of Empire, deeply rooted in history and material reality.

“Christian eschatology,” writes Jürgen Moltmann, “must separate itself from the messianism of the modern world, and out of this world’s ruins must rescue the categories of redemption.”¹ From within the superstructure of global capitalism, Christian theology is faced with the public task of critically and consciously constructing a liberative and imaginative eschatology free from the messianism of Empire in all its homogenizing force.  As noted above, one of the hallmarks of Empire eschatology is its ahistorical transcendence, that is its detachment from the immanent place, from the actual affairs of socio-political reality.  As with Fukuyama, Empire can, on the one hand, make absolutist claims about the future and course of history and, in a quasi-theological manner, proclaim good news, on the other.  The future, then, or the eschaton, is enchained and fixed, determined by the present, and subsumed under the ideal and regulating orientation of the status quo.  It is therefore susceptible to ontological and epistemological closure insofar as Empire itself serves as its own transcendental signifier, adopting a posture of hegemonic totalization as the sole arbiter of truth and meaning.² My contention, however, is that Christian eschatology jettisons this determinism and rejects any static or fixed metanarrative.³ To be sure, this is not to say that a liberative eschatology has nothing to say about the future or the course of humanity history, on the contrary it has much to say.  But the crucial difference is that such an eschatology eschews the logic of Empire and the ethos of determinism by claiming that the future, insofar as it is part God’s unfinished and ongoing project of redemption and restoration, remains open and unrestrained by the oppressive ideologies of the present.  Thus, while Jean- François Lyotard might define “the postmodern” as that to which suspicion and incredulity are intrinsic, he also states that it is “as much a stranger to disenchantment as it is to the blind positivity of delegitimation.”⁴ There is thus a dual movement of delegitimizing the eschatology of Empire, on the one hand, and the opening, however small or qualified, of the aporetic, of the ambivalent, or what Derrida calls the impossible, on the other.⁵ It is here, in this small fissure in the bulwark of ontological closure and epistemological cessation, that a new eschatology can be resurrected from the underside of Empire.

The crucial initial move that must be made, however, is to separate eschatology proper from teleology, the latter being tantamount to the eschatological trajectory of Empire with all its forms of closure and the former being an open posture toward the unknown future and the in-breaking of the reign of God in the present.  Insofar as Empire points to a fixed and determined ahistorical telos, it is — as far as Christian eschatology is concerned — a “de-eschatologizing” force in that it “ignores the absolute that comes to it from outside itself in order that it be able to realize it in itself” so there is “no future, no next….[since] Empire is defined as eternal.”⁶ Eschatology, then, must unhook itself from the telos and messianism of this false and misguided trajectory such that it allows itself to remain open to coming of the Other, of the realization of an unknown yet fervently anticipated future — to borrow from Derrida, of that which is “to-come.”

[T]he effectivity or actuality of the [promise] will always keep within it, and it must do so, [an] absolutely undetermined messianic hope at its heart, this eschatological relation to the to-come of an event and of a singularity, of an alterity that cannot be anticipated.  Awaiting without the horizon of the wait, awaiting what one does not expect yet or any longer, hospitality without reserve, welcoming salutation accorded in advance to the absolute surprise….⁷

While Empire may lay monopolizing claims on transcendence, its covert work is unmasked.  For eschatology proper recognizes that true transcendence comes from God qua Other⁸ and literally ruptures the present with the future such that the present is wholly transformed. It is less a strong, well defined decree about the nature of the future as much as it is an opening up to the unknown future, the adopting of a posture of humility in the face of the impossible future that is to come as heaven and earth are fused and God, as John of Patmos and the prophet Isaiah write, will be “making all things new” (Rev. 21:1-5; Is. 65:17). Here divine transcendence pierces the immanent fabric of Empire and irrupts the usual cycles of normalcy.  Transcendence, in this sense, has nothing to do with determinism or other-worldliness as in Empire; rather, it involves tangibly and palpably “transcending a particular form of immanence that is determined by the status quo.”⁹ This liberative form of divine transcendence is the linchpin of an eschatology which seeks to run counter to the fixed and totalizing forces of Empire’s narrative as it provides a means to penetrate its seemingly impervious shields and to therefore transform the present.  As Moltmann puts it in his landmark work A Theology of Hope, Christian eschatology is “forward looking and forward moving and therefore also revolutionizing and transforming the present.”¹⁰ Moreover, contra the Fukuyama thesis, eschatology does not result in the end of history nor is it determined by ahistory.  Again, Moltmann states it quite well:

Eschatology does not disappear into the quicksands of history, but it keeps history moving by its criticism and hope. […] It is neither that history swallows up eschatology nor does eschatology swallow up history. The logos of the eschaton is promise of that which is not yet, and for that reason it makes history. The promise which announces the eschaton, and in which the eschaton announces itself, is the motive power, the mainspring, the driving force and the torture of history.¹¹

A counter-hegmonic eschatology, perhaps more than any other theological loci, provides the impetus for present transformation by virtue of its being unhinged from a determined or definitive telos.  The eschatological horizon, then, is the work of divine transcendence in breaking loose the crusts of normalcy such that the vicissitudes of Empire are met with new, creative forms of resistance and antagonism that anticipate the arrival and realization of the reign of God.  It is an eschatology sans telos insofar as telos is that which is determined and ordered by the structures of Empire.

While this move to delegitimize the eschatological narrative of Empire and construct an alternative eschatology divorced from teleological determinism is an important initial step, it is surely not the only step.  Indeed, such a move alone still consigns eschatology to the realm of transcendence alone albeit of a more open and less fixed variety than that of Empire.  The most important move, however, follows the rupture of the present with the absolute, heterogeneous future and the irruption of Empire’s immanent status quo with divine transcendence and alterity. For if, as Moltmann maintains, “Christian eschatology is at heart Christology in an eschatological perspective,”¹² then an equally liberative understanding of Christ must accompany an understanding of eschatology as that which pierces the fabric of the present with the presence of God’s peaceable reign.  The gesture of the incarnation, I claim, provides the foundation and the internal logic for eschatology.  For if divine transcendence provides the basis upon which the narrative of Empire, given its own internal ambivalences and antagonisms, might be ruptured, then the incarnation provides the impetus for critical liberative social and political praxis against Empire.

Through the incarnation, divine transcendence is rendered immanent¹³ as God not only becomes human, taking on the form of fragile, finite flesh (Jn. 1:14), but becomes a particular kind of human in a particular location in space and time.  Against the throws of Empire, the God revealed in Jesus Christ is a God who chooses not to be born among the high and powerful but among the lowly and the ordinary at the fringes of the Roman Empire.  It is here, at this location, on the margins, that divine transcendence ruptures the normalcy and immanence of Empire.  As such, the incarnation marks the inauguration of the reign of God, the beginning of the rupture of the heterogeneous incoming of God’s absolute future even in the midst of Empire’s homogenizing totalization.

In Christ, the absolute Other of God is said to enter into the mundane world and set up a home among us. Here God is neither reduced to the world of objects nor remains in some space utterly beyond the world, but rather ruptures the present with the future, fractures the finite with the infinite, and tears through the temporal with the eternal, inhabiting the now in the guise of the not-yet. Here God’s Otherness is no longer located in some eschatological realm beyond the present order of the world but rather in an eschatological realm that infuses the present world, rupturing it and placing it into question. Here the razor sharp cut of God’s kingdom does not presuppose a hairline gap between the present world and the world to come, but rather is that which slices through the present world with the world to come, inhabiting our world with a divine realm that is not reducible to our time and space.¹⁴

Indeed, this razor-sharp edge of God’s topsy-turvy reality cuts through the present — the eschatological immanence of Empire — and literally turns material reality upside down by placing the first last and the last first (Mt. 20:16; Mk. 9:35), by blessing the poor and chastising the rich (Lk. 6:20; 24) and, most of all, by demonstrating that “the least of these” are the very site of the divine (Mt. 25:35).  Joerg Rieger puts it like this: “as the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ turns things upside down, we might say that the incarnation is the logic of downturn.”¹⁵ Whereas the ahistorical eschatology of Empire points to a fixed and determined future, this eschatology — an incarnational eschatology — is rooted in historical reality, it involves corporeal bodies, and, most of all, it is driven by a logic of downturn that is the essence of the incarnation itself, a movement down and out, toward the margins and toward those that are invisible and repressed by the forces of Empire.  As the divine transcendence of God’s absolute future ruptures immanent reality and violently pierces the socio-political fabric of Empire, liberative theo-political praxis is galvanized by the logic of downturn and the move toward the Other at the margins.  As Karl Barth puts it in a line oft neglected by the purveyors of neo-orthodoxy, “God always takes His stand unconditionally and passionately on this side and on this side alone: against the lofty and on behalf of the lowly, against those who already enjoy right and privilege and on behalf of those who are denied it and deprived of it.”¹⁶

An incarnational eschatology, then, sides with the vulnerable victims of Empire and, through the logic of downturn, moves toward the margins in hopeful expectation of the in-breaking of the reign of God in history at the site of marginality. Yet, this is not the expectation of that which is completely absent, but the expectation of the coming of that which is already present and within us (Lk. 17:20-21).  To put it in Pauline terms, the reign of God is always already present yet always already absent and anticipated as we stand in between the already and the not-yet of history.  This reality is experienced “not as the absence of something that is to come, but rather the absence of a kingdom that is already here” where the “opening created by the eschatological kingdom of God is not an opening to the future but rather an opening into the present”¹⁷ by virtue of its “not-yet-ness.”  The reign of God is here but not here, present yet absent, already but still “to-come” with the advent of the impossible that is only made possible through one’s participation in the pockets of this reality that are already present in the midst of Empire.

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1. Jürgen Moltmann, God For a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 1999), 220. [↩]
2. M. Douglas Meeks (“Economy and the Future of Liberation Theology in North America,” Liberating the Future: God, Mammon, and Theology, ed. Joerg Rieger [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 1998], 45) calls this the “market logic” which has “defined the ground of certainty (what can be called true and factual), what can count as the development of human beings and progress of society, and the accepted conceptions or order, rule, justice, reason, harmony, and peace.  This spirit asserts itself in all spheres of sociality and increasingly proves itself as the one universal order of the world.” [↩]
3. Thus when Jean- François Lyotard (The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi [Minneapolis, Minnesota:  University of Minnesota Press, 1984], xxiv) defines the postmodern condition as that which exhibits deep “incredulity toward metanarratives,” I do not believe the horizon for Christian eschatology is destroyed.  It would seem, rather, that such a condition spells the end of the eschatology of Empire writ large, finding it wholly lacking in legitimization. [↩]
4. Ibid., xxiv.  He continues adding, “Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside? […] Postmodern knowledge is not simply a tool of the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable. Its principles is not the expert’s homology, but the inventor’s paralogy,” xxiv-xxv. Emphases mine. [↩]
5. For Derrida, the impossible constitutes an event that is not tantamount to logical contradiction (as in p or not p) but open to phenomenological alterity and the arrival of the unforeseeable.  As John D. Caputo puts it (The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event [Bloomington, Indiana: University of Indiana Press, 2006], 109-110), “the event is something for which no horizon of possibility of forseeability is able to prepare us, something that contradicts our mundane expectations, which is what we mean by the impossible. […] The event presupposes both a horizon of possibility and expectation and the possibility of shattering our horizons and expectations, the possibility of the impossible.” See also Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1997), passim and Caputo and Derrida, Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida (New York, New York: Fordham University Press, 1996), passim.  As far as the eschatology of Empire goes, the impossible is that which ruptures the constructions of possibility regulated by Empire through divine transcendence. [↩]
6. Míguez, Rieger, and Sung, Beyond the Spirit of Empire, 20-21. [↩]
7. Derrida, Specters of Marx, 81. Cf. Caputo, The Weakness of God, 255. Emphasis original. [↩]
8. Contrary to the typical neo-orthodox appropriation, Joerg Rieger reads Karl Barth’s understanding of God as wholly Other as providing the foundation for a liberative theology that turns toward the other who is repressed by society and Empire.  See Rieger, God and the Excluded: Visions and Blindspots in Contemporary Theology (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2001), 43-69. [↩]
9. Rieger, No Rising Tide, 70.  See also Mark Lewis Taylor, “Empire and Transcendence: Hardt and Negri’s Challenge to Theology and Ethics, Evangelicals and Empire: Christian Alternatives to the Political Status Quo, Bruce Ellis Benson and Peter Goodwin Heltzel, eds. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, 2008), 201-218; Míguez, Rieger, and Sung, Beyond the Spirit of Empire, passim; and Mayra Rivera, The Touch of Transcendence: A Postcolonial Theology of God (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox, 2007), passim. [↩]
10. Moltmann, A Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 1993), 16. [↩]
11. Ibid., 165. Emphases original. [↩]
12. Ibid., 192. [↩]
13. As Moltmann puts it (God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Sprit of God, trans. Margaret Kohl [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 1993], 170)  “the essential thing about the incarnation of the Son is that it is an event by which God binds himself [sic] to humanity.” Emphasis mine. [↩]
14. Peter Rollins, The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief (Brewster, Massachusetts: Paraclete Press, 2008), 54. [↩]
15. Rieger, No Rising Tide, 130. Emphasis mine.  Similarly, Hardt and Negri, in the sequel to Empire (Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire [New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2004], 237) note the contrast between the force of Empire imposed “from above” and the power of democracy in the multitude which is galvanized “from below.” [↩]
16. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 2:1, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance, trans. T.H.L. Parker et al. (New York, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957), 386-87.  Emphasis mine. [↩]
17. Peter Rollins, The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief (Brewster, Massachusetts: Paraclete Press, 2008), 51. [↩]

I’ll put all my cards on the table:  I think Kierkegaard is unfortunately habitually misread today.  The common reading as dictated by the philosophical and theological canon and undoubtedly displayed in undergraduate intro. courses couches (and caricatures) Kierkegaard as a prime example of religious fidelity gone awry.  His “teleological suspension of the ethical” represents all that is wrong and dangerous with religion after the Enlightenment and such a position is decidedly irrational, lacking the proper grounding in ethical reasoning.  That is one reading.  To be sure, it is important and one that should be not ignored, but it is, however, not the only one nor is it, in my view, the best one.

I was re-reading some articles and interviews by John Caputo in preparation for Emergent Outliers’ first book club meeting tonight (you should join us!) when I ran across an interesting reading of Kierkegaard that avoids that usual, banal approach and obliquely offers a critique of modern ethics.  Commenting on Derrida‘s reading of Fear and Trembling, Caputo writes that:¹

“Responsibility is the issue of the singularity of the situation of the responing subject (for which “Abraham” is a place-holder) standing alone before the “wholly other” (for which “God” is a place-holder) while the demands of the “other others” (for which Isaac is a place-holder) press in upon and interrupt the intimacy of this exclusive tête-à-tête ["head-to-head"].  Thus, to decide responsibly is always a matter of sacrificing “Isaac,” the ones who hold the Isaac position, by which he [Derrida] means, of sensitizing oneself to my responsibility to all the other others who also lay claim to my responsibility, even as I respond to the other one before me.  Unlike de Silentio, Derrida’s analysis does not turn a suspension of my ethical duty in the face of the religious call that overrides it, but on the conflict of ethical duties that structures every ethical choice, which makes the paradox of the akedah [the binding of Isaac] the paradigm of everyday ethical decisions right on down to the smallest detail….”

Interesting.  So instead of fixating on Abraham’s suspension of ethics perhaps it is helpful to read the narrative in a different manner, one that recognizes the sacrifice and conflict that is inherent in every ethical decision.  One must always, in every situation (even the most mundane and seemingly insignificant), chose between opposing responsibilities as there always other others.  That is the paradox of ethics and a paradox that most popular approaches to ethics (the deontological, utilitarianism, etc.) seem to avoid precisely because they are impermeable systems conceived in the abstract, demanding fidelity to a certain set of presupposed to premises which may or may not relate to the situation at hand.  I suspect that this is what Caputo is getting at in his book Against Ethics (though I have not read it in it entirety) and I believe that this is what the usual readings of Kierkegaard miss:  that modern ethical systems, while helpful as guidelines, will always be deconstructible insofar as they posit a set of disembodied propositions that must be applied to situation that always already has other cards that have been played ahead of time.

Such a critique virtually renders moot the tiring discussions we’ve all had over which ethical system is the best because all systems are in agreement that the most proper approach should be conceived in the abstract, relying on the so-called impartiality of Reason and  constructed outside palpable relations with the wholly Other and other others.  But the  true ethical dilemma is the one that catches us by surprise as we realize the impossible choice we must make between two responsibilities, two others who have already laid claim to us.  Such an event, not at all unlike the one faced by Abraham, simply cannot be solved by a intangible system alone.

That is, I believe, an unsung lesson of Kierkegaard and one that Caputo and Derrida can both return to after the desert of modern criticism:  that there is always already conflict inherent in every ethical situation, conflict that cannot be fully resolved and conflict that demands a choice between rival responsibilities and irreconcilable others.

1. The quotation is taken from an article Caputo wrote in the 2002 Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook titled, “Looking the Impossible in the Eye: Kierkegaard, Derrida, and the Repetition of Religion, pg. 8-9.  Caputo writes on the same subject at length in The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida:  Religion without Religion, but the article provides the most concise and lucid description of his larger, more complex argument. [↩]

I had every intention of reading through Žižek’s latest book on violence and relating it to my thoughts in the previous posts.  But I’ve been super busy and had some trouble getting my hands on the book (trouble with Amazon, but that is a different story).

Incidentally, I was reading through Caputo and Derrida‘s Deconstruction in a Nutshell last night for a totally different project and ran across a provocative quote.  I thought I float it and see what your reactions are.

A little background.  The book has two parts.  Part I is the transcript of a round table discussion that took place at Villanova University in 1995 between Jacques Derrida, John Caputo and others.  The point of the discussion was to dispel many of myths and false understanding of Derrida’s thought and the project of deconstruction.  The book is fascinating in that respect.  If you’ve ever tried to read Derrida you know that he is not the easy thinker to understand.  The discussion provided a rare moment of transparency.  Part II is an extended commentary on the discussion by John Caputo.

The immediate context of this quote has to do with the setting and format of the discussion.  Captuo notes that the discussion is, in a way, violent towards Derrida.  Derrida, a native French speaker, was asked to spontaneously and succinctly answer, in English, questions regarding a philosophy that he has not only dedicated his life toward, but one that he repeatedly insists defies short, sound-byte type definitions.  Captuo playfully asks forgives for the “multiple violence” placed on Derrida, for forcing him to answer in a foreign language (OK, I have to admit that I find Derrida’s English to be much better than mine!) questions about his thought that simply cannot be adequately expressed in an hour and a half.

Ok, enough of that.  Here’s the quote.

“There is no pure non-violence, but only degrees and economies of violence, some of which are more fruitful than others.”

Interesting.  No doubt he is right.  I find it particularly interesting — and I’ll probably pick this up in a later post — that many of us tend to focus on nonviolence only apropos to physical violence.  Which is ironic considering most of us will never have a real chance to exercise that nonviolence by choosing not to act physically violent towards the other.  We do, however, have all sorts of chance to act nonviolently and fail to do so.  In fact, I would argue that most times we simply fail to recognize the violence in which we participate or perpetrate.  It never shows up on our radar screen.

I’m not saying this to suggest that I am categorically against nonviolence.  Quite the opposite.  I am, for all intents and purposes, a theoretical pacifist, falling just shy of absolute pacifism (I’ll take this up later on too).  I use the word theoretical here to point toward the absurdity of my calling myself a nonviolent person in reference to a specific type of violence (physical) while simultaneously engaging and participating in numerous other forms of violence.  It could even be argued that nonviolence, in terms of its opposition only to physical violence, serves as a sort of religious fetish that precludes us from confronting the other forms of violence in which we participate.  If that is true then perhaps we should hold our physically nonviolent dogma a bit more loosely in order to become more holistically nonviolent.

But I’m already getting ahead of myself.  I’m interesting in what you think of the quote.  Agree?  Disagree?  Don’t care?  What are your thoughts?

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As I’ve mentioned before — or maybe I haven’t mentioned it before, I can’t remember — I reserve the right to blatantly disagree with myself and change my mind on this blog.  That’s just the nature of things.

A while back I wrote a post in which I attempt to provisionally answer Augustine’s timeless question: What do I love when I love my God?  One commenter pointing out that my answer was very anthropocentric. No doubt he is right.  I’d probably modify my language were I answering it today.

Last night I was reading On Religion by John Caputo and I ran across a quote that made me wonder about the premise of the question.  No that’s not right.  Not the premise of the question per se, but perhaps the way the question has been couched by virtually every commenter since Augustine firs posed it.

The name of God is the name of the ever open question.  Unlike reductionists, who think that the name of God closes every question down, that it supplies  a ready-made answer for every possible questio, the name of God in my post-modern Itinerarium is the name of infinite questionability, of what is endlessly questionable, for no name can cause my head to spin more than the name of what I love and desire.  But what do I love when I love my God?  In loyalty to St. Augustine, whom I also love, I have retained the “what,” but of course, if I dared to correct a Saint, which I would never do, if I were an obscure copyist in an Irish monastery in the tenth century working on the Confessiones, I would in all fear and trembling have furtively amended the what to a how.  How do I love when I love my God? For love is a how, not a what.

Captuo goes on to argue that God is not merely a name to by examined by theologians and metaphysicians, but a deed — or deeds plural, that is more like it — to be carried out, a doing to be done, and action to be enacted, a how to be put into practice.  For it is in doing justice and doing love that God exists, not in the hopelessly modernistic arguments for or against the existence of God as a simple proposition, for God cannot be constraint my reductionist propositions and premises.

Perhaps then both ends of the spectrum, of God as Being-Itself (Paul Tillich) and God as that which is without Being (Jean-Luc Marion), are as equally problematic as is the false dichotomy of theism and atheism.  To ask whether God is or is not is to miss the higher movement at play and to reduce the name of God to pure empirical proposition.  Rather, in this view, God is in facere veritatem ( the doing of truth), to borrow Caputo borrowing Augustine.  Truth is brought into existence in the happening; likewise God is brought into existence in the event.  God is a God-Who-May-Be, to use Richard Kearney’s expression, because God rejects as false both modern reductions of theism and atheism, of possibility and impossibility, real and unreal.  This God is utterly Beyond, a God of a/theism, a God of im/possibility, and a God of the hyper-real, that is the Real beyond real, whose name is brought to bare in the happening of truth, the doing of justice, and the enacting of a possibility otherwise thought to be impossible — that is love.

There is a lot of talk in the emergent/ing church — and postmodernism at large — about the project of deconstruction, mainly as a critique of modern models of “doing” church and theology, but also, though often not as popular, as offering a constructive response to those systems.  In even narrower conversations, there is talk of what can and cannot be deconstructed.  So for Derrida, “justice” is the undeconstructible nucleus (though he would surely object to that word) of the “law,” which seeks to be justice, but can always be deconstructed.  Likewise, Caputo speaks of the church as the deconstructable sign pointing toward the kingdom, which is undeconstructable.

I think these sort of conversations are very helpful.  We can’t stop deconstruction our own systems and ideas.  Sometimes I think part of my personality is naturally deconstructive.  Which is good…and bad.

What do I mean?

I’m wondering if sometimes, in our efforts to deconstruct “something else,” we miss the opportunity to let ourselves be deconstructed.

For example, for a long time now I have categorically rejected Augustine and his writings.  Original sin, latent — or not so latent — misogyny, sex as utility only, I could go on.  For all these reasons I simply wrote Augustine off completely.  Not that those aren’t good reasons.  I believe they are.  And I still disagree with Augustine about them.

But recently I’ve rediscovered Augustine’s mysticism and his ascent into himself in search of God who is beyond his comprehension.  And in doing so, I’ve been deconstructed.  I’ve allowed myself to be worked over by a tradition I had previously dismissed.

All this has to be done in moderation of course. Because we can just import Augustine uncritically into 2009.  But I wonder if sometimes we are too critical and miss the opportunity to have ourselves criticized?  I wonder if sometimes, under the auspices of deconstruction, I undermine the very heart of the deconstructive project.

That is not to say that I reject the deconstructing of historical figures or systems of thought.  Not at all.  I’m only suggesting that perhaps there is a tension between our deconstruction and our being deconstructed.  The key is learning to live and embody that tension well.

What to do you think?  Have you had similar experiences? Or am I just blowin’ smoke?

I’m taking an online class this semester called “The Way of Emergent Church and Ministry,” taught by the one and only Tony Jones.  This week we read John Caputo‘s book/essay Philosophy and Theology.  It’s a great, short, and thought provoking read.  I imagine I’ll be rereading it and using it for reference often.  In less than 100 pages, Captuo provides a concise history of continental philosophy whilst suggesting the theology and philosophy need not be completely divorced as modernity has insisted.  On page 14 Caputo writes:

“Religion needs theology and theologians need philosophy if they are going to anything more than tell us that God told them so when pressed about their faith.”

Several pages prior he states the same thing in a different way:

“If we think of philosophical thinking and thoelogical thinking as two different acts or modes of thinking, as two different dimensions of a whole human life, then we can imagine the two acts cohabiting happily in the same head, yielding a person who would be a thinking believer, or a believing thinker, a person of learning and faith.”

The overall thrust of Caputo’s thesis is that orientation and turn toward the postmodern is opening up many new — or not so new if you look back prior to the Enlightenment, which he does – possibilities for the playful interaction between philosophy and theology.  The two are usually pitted against one another, a mistake Caputo credits to the overall modernization and fragmentation of disciplines.  But for him, the two overlap more than not.

What do you think of this idea?  How are philsophy and theology related?  And, for you, which one comes first?  That is, to which act or mode is your thinking fundamentally rooted?

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