Difference, Humility, and Surpise

"Why is the Emerging Church drawn to deconstructive theology?"
by LeRon Shults, a professor of theology at Agder University in Kristiansand, Norway.

I see at least three emphases within “deconstruction” -understood broadly in the sense proposed by Caputo – that would naturally be attractive to Emergent Types (hereafter ET).

First, deconstruction not only accepts but embraces the category of difference.  In part this is attractive to ET because they (we) are embedded within a late modern generation that is open to difference in ways that (so it appears to us) our evangelical “parent” churches were not.  Many of these traditional churches focused on sameness: we must all behave according to the same rules, sing the same songs, look at the world the same way, and affirm precisely the same propositions.  The deconstructive embrace of the significance of differentiation (differance, deference, etc.) gives ET a language for what they have already experienced: liberation from a constricting obsession with sameness.

Second, deconstructive epistemology (or hermeneutics) calls for humility within the search for knowledge.  Now, my point is not that all deconstructive philosophers are humble and (say) analytic philosophers are not.  My point is that the “method” of deconstruction is self-reflective in a way that promotes an ongoing interrogation of the way in which one is holding on to one’s knowledge.  It challenges arrogant claims to have grasped final, neutral, universal truth.  Many ET were raised in churches within the American evangelical sub-culture, wherein theological reflection was anything but humble.  In fact, it wasn’t even reflection; it was declaration.  Insofar as Derrida (and others) share epistemic qualities such as humility with the Christianapophatic tradition, the former can inspire ET to retrieve the latter.

As we continue longing to know and be known by God, deconstruction can alleviate some of our modernist anxiety by helping us accept our finitude; we are not God, but this is OK and we can all take a deep breath and humbly follow in the way of Jesus without pretending like we know everything.  After all, even he didn’t know everything!  ;)

Finally, deconstruction is surprising.  We do not know ahead of time exactly what will emerge when we begin the process of interrogating our beliefs and the practices that shape our interpretations.  Constantinian churches don’t like being surprised.  They like being in control, and so their engagements with the “other” and the “unknown” tend to look more like colonization than open exploration.  ET are willing to give up the need to predict the outcome of every encounter with absolute certainty.   In fact, they kind of get a kick out of the shocking discoveries that emerge during the journey itself.  Allowing for deconstructive moments within philosophy and theology is one way to open oneself to such
surprises, and even to delight in them as they facilitate real transformation.

I’m sure there are many other more concrete reasons that deconstruction is appealing to ET, but it seems to me that these three general characteristics of the approach are a significant part of the mutual attraction.  But, hey, maybe you think differently.  I could be wrong.

Surprise me.

Comments

[harris Bechtol]

i love the ending—it made me laugh. perfect considering the topic.

[Ken Archer]

Another possibility is that the emphasis on the limits of reason resonates with the evangelical background of most emergents, particularly the Calvinist antithesis of faith against limited reason that lives on in evangelical Christianity. Somehow we got the idea that an emphasis on perspective, on situatedness in place and time, is incompatible with a realist theory of knowledge. But everyone from Aristotle to the early Heidegger viewed them as compatible. The question one should always raise when reading a deconstruction of a text is this: couldn't the undeconstructible that is being revealed within a text just as easily be justice, power, sexual anxiety, etc, and if so doesn't deconstruction lead to nihilism? (This is why Miroslav Volf at last year's conference was concerned about the enthusiasm shown for Derrida.)

I just finished one of the best books I've read in years - The One and The Many by Norris Clarke - that embraces Heidegger in a realist approach to philosophy that celebrates faith and reason as both gifts of God. Clarke is a colleague of Caputo and Kearney, and gave a spirited defense of reason that embraces Heidegger specifically against Caputo's project in the festscrift to Dr Caputo, A Passion for the Impossible. Fr Clarke, who has been writing for longer than most of us have been alive, is one of several voices from Christian philosophy that are deeply engaged with Husserl and Heidegger and see no reason to join deconstructionists in their stress on the limits of reason. They embody the spirit of Leibniz, who wrote, "I have found that philosophers are generally right in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny." (Or as my prof Fr Sokolowski says, "Why do deconstructionists thematize absence, when there is so much presence with which to philosophize?")

[LeRon]

Harris,

Thanks! I think I'm hilarious.

Ken,

I appreciate your comments about Heidegger, etc. I should point out that in my comments above I'm not saying that I do (or that ET should) embrace everything about deconstructivism, ala Derrida or Caputo. Rather, I'm pointing to reasons they might find dialogue attractive.

I love Sokolowski's way of emphasizing THE distinction between God and the world as the basis for all other distinctions, though not itself one of the distinctions in the world. It seems to me that at least some of the deconstructivists would agree.

LeRon

[Geoff Holsclaw]

LeRon and Ken (ken great to hear from you),

I wonder if we have hit upon an old divide (by old I mean about 2 years young). It is quite fashionable to distinguish between Emerging (Church) and Emergent (Village).

I wonder if the same is true for deconstruction: there is a generally accessible definition of 'deconstruction' which many embrace for different reasons (or reject), and then there is the specific 'deconstruction' articulated by derrida and caputo.

It seems that above LeRon is arguing for a 'generous deconstruction' as a general notion, while Ken is arguin against the specific limitations 'deconstruction' imposes.

or to turn the tables: maybe the Emerging Church is drawn to heretical "deconstruction without deconstruction" because the orthodox Bishop (Caputo) is much too restrictive.

[Greg Lygon]

My reason for embracing deconstruction is simple; it's not because of Derrida, but because of Jesus, Who said "ask and it shall be given . . . seek and you shall find . . . knock and it shall be opened . . . "

I mean, the last time I asked Jesus for a fish, I got a fish. I didn't get snake.

The last time I asked Jesus for bread, I got bread. I didn't get a stone.

Only fear and superstition keeps the Phariseeical mindset addled with that calicification and stubborness.

I for one do NOT know evertying. Last time I checked, a man some believe to be Jesus' brother said that if we lack wisdom, we're to ask the Father of Lights who gives wisdom to all liberally and does not chide us for asking the tough questions. And is that not the heart of philosophy, to ask the tough question?

Not an ingenious bit of epistomology here. Simplicity ('cause that's all I'm really capable of *LOL*). I'm just simple enough to believe in the portrait of God the Father as Jesus paints Him . . . beneficent, kind, and above all, loving for He is Love.

--
Of soul, spirit and song,

Gregory Lygon
Ravenwood Music Services, LLC
http://www.gregorylygon.com

AAA/Contemporary Folk Singer Songwriter
Nominated "Best Instrumentalist" Contemporary Folk by WAMA, 2003

[Richard Jones]

Well, I might be the only one wondering this, but could someone give a definition of deconstructionist theology?

[LeRon]

Geoff, Ken and Richard,

Yes, I think Geoff has put his finger on the key issue of definition (I just commented on this on my blog, just before checking in here, which suggests we're thinking in the same direction!).

Of course, many deconstructivists would want to eschew definition! ;)

I like the idea of "generous deconstruction." In fact, I prefer to emphasize re-construction, but I believe that a key moment within the process of reconstruction is to recognize the need for deconstruction, and then of course to leave one's reconstruction open for additional deconstruction.

What worries me more than deconstruction is what I have elsewhere called "paleo-construction." By this, I mean an approach that unearths a particular formulation, or doctrinal set of propositions, dusts them off and places them in a museum that must be protected. Safe, but not useful in the real world.

So, if I have to be pushy, it would be in the direction of deconstruction in order to unsettle those in "evangelicalism" who are happily gazing at their fossilized beliefs.

Once people start to move, then of course, we also need to find a balance that reconstructs the biblical tradition, which includes a movement of retrieval (paleo), but not to dust it off (repeat the propositions) but to refigure the intuitions for transformative dialogue.

This part of the ongoing practice of reforming theology, which is part of being the church, reformed and always being reformed.

LeRon

[Jeremiah]

In response to the attraction of deconstructive theology embracing the category of difference, and also the traditional churches as attempting a coercive sameness.

I think that the emphasis for those traditional churches is more toward a central cannonicity, rather than uniformity. I then see disunity or the category of difference being attractive for the very reason that an acceptance is more inclusive - obviously.

The desire for uniformity, as it was put in the post, I think is mis-categorized. As unattractive as it maybe, I think it still needs to be classified under some sort of centrality of hermeneutics, which would be recognized by uniformity, but not classified by it.

[len hjalmarson]

Geoff, an outstanding summation, and imaginative, which makes it moreso. Re: the most fundamental distinction is between God and the world, then the incarnation teaches us that transcendence becomes an opportunity for redemptive immanence. In the incarnation virtually all the basic gospel themes are woven together, including mission. Perhaps its only in difference that we can discover love.

[Ken Archer]

I think LeRon and Len are on to an approach to difference that resonates with the emergent spirit. To think is to make distinctions within the world as it is presented to us (a helpful contribution of structuralism is this, that making distinctions IS thinking). The fundamental distinction is between God and the world. This is the ontological distinction Heidegger calls us to make.

But emergents aren't interested in chopping up the world into differences by these distinctions and thus undermining others structural theories. The positive, holistic thinking of emergents inclines them to see more the relations revealed by distinctions than the differences. Thus, the fundamental distinction between God and the world doesn't lead emergents to follow Barth in denying the possibility of talking about God. Rather, this difference reveals the relation of love that must exist for God to create the world, in response to which the only responses can be relations of faith, hope and charity (Fr Sokolowski makes this beautiful point). Thus, when we deconstruct a text or belief system and uncover what is absent in the text (God, justice, etc) we need not thematize what is absent as absent, but instead observe the relational way that what is absent (God, justice, etc) reveals itself to us and respond accordingly! (This stuff gets me excited.)

[Geoff Holsclaw]

ken and len (when I write it like that is seems like you should be the dynamic duo),

without getting lost in jargon, but still seeking clarity, I feel that when you guys bring up the 'incarnation' that you make most deconstructive people nervous. 

the question was asked before by Richard, what is 'deconstructive theology'? I don't think we can answer that just yet (kinda like "what is the emerging church?" right?).  But if we were to narrow it down to Caputo and Derrida, referring to the incarnation in ways that you mention would give them fits and starts.  the "incarnation" is a doctrine of a specific 'religion' expressing the view of a specific 'messianicity'.  But Caputo and Derrida don't want to be defined so narrowly, opting instead for the 'religious' and the 'messianic', or what Caputo calls "religion without religion" (which we will flesh out more next week in coming posts).

Even as I read through your earlier post, Len, on Caputo's "Philosophy and Theology", I kept thinking, "Caputo would like that Len drew that conclusion, or make that connection, or based that idea on that doctrine."  What I think many in the EC do/feel/think is a kind of midrash or riff on deconstruction without deconstuction going ALL THE WAY DOWN. 

Now I'm OK with this personally, and from the sound of it perhaps LeRon is too (at least by the account of reconstruction).  But some deconstructionist might say that I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too.  but hey, I believe in the resurrection (literally, morality, communally, bodily, and spiritually), so yes let's feast! 

(except this is lent so let's fast)

[josh burns]

Would not some deconstructionists brand ANY attempt to speak of a revelation of the presence of God in theology or doctrine as impossible as God is beyond human thought , intellect or experience in the spirit of negative theology ( with an appeal to Eckhart, Silesius etc). If God is ABSOLUTELY OTHER all we have is faith in the possibility of the impossible like a man lost in the desert never finding water yet thirsting for it with his whole being. Anticipation at the prospect of encountering God who never turns up as recognisable in our experience. Is this emphasis on absence, void etc not just another way of talking about the extreme skepticism many in the west to-day express about the reality of God? All we are left with is some vague references to justice and love as being the impotant essential of religion? But how is this self-evident without reference to any beliefs about God?

Josh

[Geoff Holsclaw]

josh,

I think you are absolutely right about many thorough going deconstructionist. It is impossible to speak of God. Your image of the desert is actually one that Caputo refers to repeatedly.

That is my problem with deconstruction in the specific sense (not the general sense). It speaks of absence to such an extent that any sort of presence is denied absolutely. Deconstruction in the general sense, aligned with, say, the hermeneutics of suspicion and/or ideology critique, is very helpful. But to preclude the thought of presence, or actual presence (which I think Derrida does do) is going too far.

[Ken Archer]

Josh and Geoff,

Another way to state your observations could be the following. Reality (whether a table or God) reveals itself to us in an interplay of presence and absence. Thus, everything we encounter (a table top, a doctrine) reveals as much as it conceals about the thing it is revealing (a table, God).

What is present is the basis for realism (we have real knowledge of what is really present), and for confidence in our knowledge, such as it is. What is absent reveals our situatedness in place and time, and is thus why our confidence must be a proper confidence and our position towards other doctrines must be one of openness (in the same sense as Plato's erotic openness recognizes our finitude).

[Geoff Holsclaw]

wow ken, that was beautifully said. we need more people like you making Husserlian phenomenology accessible like that. You make me not want to bash on Reason and Knowledge.

For all of you not in the know, Ken loves phenomenology, and the above comment is a distilled gloss.

[LeRon]

Ken and Geoff,

Thanks for emphasizing this part of the conversation. I find so many people misunderstand what apophatic theology is, but Sokolowski represents the best aspect of this tradition, in my view.

Actually, Sokolowski's book on Faith and Reason was a pivotal moment for me in my life as a theologian. It was assigned by Diogenes Allen at Princeton in my second year as a Ph.D. student. Once I "got" the truly infinite distinction, the different difference, between God and the world, I felt for the first time that I really understood what theology is. In my book on the Doctrine of God, I suggest that the idea of infinity (Creator - creature distinction) is what makes distingishes theology as a discipline. In a recent article, I described the notion of "apophatic confidence," which may seem like an oxymoron, but really gets at what I think ETs are attracted to, and which Ken is describing above.

LeRon

[Joseph Holbrook]

hey, thanks. This is an interesting and helpful thread. You guys are way ahead of me in theology/philosophy...my area is history. However, I am learning as I follow your discussions and I will try to keep up. Thanks for the discussion about deconstruction.