O Lord, Deconstruct Me!

Tony Jones is the national coordinator of Emergent Village and the author of The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier (coming out next month!).  This post is the next in a series that interacts with Jack Caputo's What Would Jesus Deconstruct? The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church.  Here Jones reflects on Chapter Five, "What Would Jesus Deconstruct? Or, Whatever Happened to the Sermon on the Mount?"

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I'm on the record.  I like deconstruction  I think it's fun and, truth be told, I don't think that church people are fun enough.  I'm also on the record liking this book -- and its author -- and I wrote one of my best blurb lines yet for it: "Caputo is a sheep in wolf's clothing."

But I was a little bummed when I got assigned chapter five for my reflections.  It's my least favorite chapter of the book, and I told that to Jack when I read a review copy about a year ago.  So I guess it's only fair for me to examine my ambivalence about this chapter.  And what better place to do so than on the slog where I once almost swore about the Bible.

Here's what I don't like.  I don't like that Jack lands the plane.  I like it when deconstruction flies around at 30,000 feet and drops cluster bombs of intellectual TNT on church ladies and M.Div. students.  That's fun.  I should know, since I do a fair amount of it myself.  Shockingly, church groups often pay me to come into their places and deconstruct them.  I go Jesus on them, you might say.  Or, to avoid a messiah complex, I go Isaiah on them.

Jack does a lot of that in the first four chapters, and he even does it in chapter five when he suggests using Jesus against the Bible.  What kind of crazy hermeneutic is that?!?  I love it!

But then Jack has to go and climb out of his ivory tower and start walking the streets.  No longer safely ensconced in his Derridean cloister, Caputo weighs in on real-life topics: war, women's rights in church, homosexuality, and abortion.  He rails against the Bush administration, berates the "Religious Right," and steers us all toward the social teachings of the Catholic church.

Now, I don't begrudge Jack his First Amendment rights.  He can write about whatever he wishes.  In fact, he should.  What he's done takes some courage for an academic, to speak publicly about the issues of the day.  Junior faculty are rarely afforded this luxury, but Jack's earned his soapbox.

So why is it so disconcerting to me that Jack would pronounce a verdict on gay rights or abortion? Well, this is where it stops being Jack's problem and becomes my problem.  I realize that I like it more at 30,000 feet.  It's easier to be a deconstructionist in that rarefied air.  Up there I can constantly defer questions that I'm asked.  Sure, I'll speak publicly about some things, but others fall in the category of always-answer-a-question-with-another-question.  Up there, it pays to be subversive and witty and smart-alecky.

But you can't do that at Walmart.  No, in aisle seven at Walmart you have to answer the questions that you're asked.  Or at Thanksgiving dinner.  Or across the pillow to your spouse.  There comes a time when deferral is not deconstructive, it's deceitful.  It's a way to keep getting speaking gigs and book contracts and hoping that people from both sides of the theological aisle will listen to what you have to say. 

What I'm most afraid of, I suppose (and I fear this for Jack, too), is that someone would hear my answers to a few of the hot questions of the day and call me a "liberal." Or a "conservative."  In my mind, I'm clearly neither, and I want to be neither.  I want to be "beyond liberal and conservative" -- a phrase I both use and hear a lot -- whatever that means. 

But, having re-read Jack's fifth chapter, I wonder: Is it possible to move beyond these damned antitheses, false though they may be?!? 

Or is deconstruction's answer to ethical dilemmas, moral dilemmas, all dilemmas always nigh unto liberalism's? 

Comments

[Matt Wiebe]

I think that what Caputo has done in his lively tome is to performatively refute the thesis that deconstructionists have nothing to say about substantive issues.

Although he takes some fairly classically liberal positions, I think that one must place them within the structure of law/justice, where law is seen as a historical construction, while justice is always structurally to come; not present. Like law, taking positions within lived life is necessary, but I'm sure Caputo would be quick to point out that, like law, his positions are deconstructible.

And since turnabout is fair play, I'm hopeful that Caputo would welcome deconstruction of his own positions in the name of the kingdom to come. What greater sense of responsibility than to do just that could we walk away from his book with?

[kns]

Tony,

What a "fun" post. Sometimes I think about deconstruction the way I think about wit: sarcasm and satire can be excellent ways of revealing absurdities and faults, but it seems to me they're often only part of what needs to happen - only one part of a more "constructive" move.

As for liberalism: there's no going back, it's true. But, with a historian's eye for the past (that "foreign country"), it seems to me altogether possible that the dichotomy can be overcome. But this might require both individuals who wish to do so (such as yourself) and a change in the "forms of life" (Wittgenstein can be so helpful, so "constructive", no?) of our culture.

Just a whimsical, not to say witty, thought.

[David]

Why not simply create a new vocabulary that can then circumvent your frustration with what you think are false dichotomies? If someone's reading a deconstruction-based book (or this blog), then there is a certain expectation that definitions will be expanded (exploded?).

Really, though, the problem with feeling like you're at 30,000 feet is that you have deliberately distanced yourself from the other(s), specifically, you don't know if they're at 50,000' or 0'.

For example, what if the label of "liberal" comes from someone who is actually at 50,000' (I know, I'm pushing this metaphor a bit!) and is simply observing what you do & say? They might not even be deconstructing your thoughts but simply mirroring them.

I would have thought that a deconstruction-er would know better than to posit their absolute position "over" others . . .

After a while it seems like deconstructionists are doing what Western Christians did with their philosophy (read: theology), drop it like bombs.

Don't get me wrong,I LOVE what deconstruction provides. I am most grateful for Derrida, Caputo and others putting thoughts out for the public. I'd hate for people to dismiss the content because the practitioners weren't wise. Especially when their methods of influence match those they are moving *away* from. Will it befall the same fate?

[Julie Clawson]

I think Caputo does a good job at attempting to piss off both sides in that chapter - a nice call for "let's just move on." It was one of the most refreshing perspectives on those issues that I've encountered in a long time.

[Rob]

Part of me really loved this chapter, but another part of me thought Caputo was being as "arrogant" as the very modernists and fundamentalists that he is critiquing. Here's what I mean. When talking about the issue of homosexuality, Caputo talks about his take on the revelation of the Scriptures. He quotes a feminist theologian, who says something to the effect of "if a Scripture advocates violence against women, children, or slaves, it is not revelation". Caputo doesn't necessarily come out in agreement with that statement, but based on my reading I would say he affirms it. Problem that I have is that it is anachronistic, and the height of modern arrogance, to read our modern sensibilities back into these texts, and then criticize them because they don't match up.

My take on the Scriptures is that they are "incarnational". They came to be in the midst of particular cultural and historical settings (and all the practices and thought patterns that accompany such things). For me, inspiration means God spoke to his people through the only means he could, the weakness and ambiguity of language and cultural symbols, alot of which were borrowed from surrounding cultures. Peter Enns traces this out in "Inspiration and Incarnation", but that's not the only place we encounter it.

So, are there violent texts in the Scriptures? Without a doubt. Is slavery practiced, and given proper instructions for use, in the Scriptures? Yes. Because we have come to see the anti-Kingdom praxis of slavery today, does that mean that those texts were any less inspirational or revelatory for the original hearers? I would offer a "no".

William Webb, in "Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals" does a great job of showing how the redemptive hermeneutic was at work, even in the midst of those practices that we today view as violent and oppressive. We've progressed in seeing the redemptive movement for the issue of slavery (some in the church still hold onto 1950's thinking on this unfortunately), but I pray that we would see the same redemptive progression when it comes to women...where, ALOT still hold onto to ancient and modern patriarchal ideals.

[Progression of Faith]

Tony, are you simply afraid that you'll have to move from the center and actually do something? At some point someone has to land the plane. The apostle Paul had a different metaphor. He prefered to suggest that at some point we must take up our cross and die. If Jesus had stayed at 30,000 feet he would never have marched to the capital and said the very liberal things that got him killed.

[Anthony Paul Smith]

Seriously, this is why I think the Jesus people taking up Deconstruction is the worst possible thing. Just affirm that you are liberal protestants and get on with your life.

[KBC]

A few comments:

1) Ugh..Caputo's WWJDeconstruct has many valuable aspects to it. However, his views of Scripture should cause concern among those who take the bible as the Word of God..a reliable source of authority.

2) The Bible is pretty clear on homosexual practice...it condemns it. Notice, I did not say it condemns homosexuals.

3) He is entitled to his political views concerning George Bush. However, I did not purchase WWJD to hear his political opinions of Bush.

4) I suggest he read NT Wright and/or Nicholas Perrin. How can Caputo deconstruct Jesus when he questions the legitimacy of the very documents that tell about Jesus?

I think those who call themselves Christians need to relax a bit when it comes to the new fascination with the Emergent Church, PM, Deconstruction..etc. Movements come and go. Thankfully the Christian tradition is rich enough to discern good from bad in all such movements. For a fair assessment of the postmodern movement I suggest the book "Truth is Stranger than it Used to Be" by Richard Middleton and Brian Walsh.