Take and Read (multivalently)

Roland Barthes may have once declared that “the text is not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the message of an Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash” (p. 148).  But in contemporary scholarship, Harvard's Jeffrey Hamburger counters that “medieval exegetes would be sorely perplexed at the notion that the Scriptures they treated could ever be limited to a single, literal meaning." (pp. 3-4). Indeed, for Augustine, "[N]o one ought to suppose… that we should study only the historical truth, apart from any allegorical meanings; or, on the contrary, that they are only allegories, and that there were no such facts at all..." (Civita Dei, XV:27). No one, I suppose, except for Roland Barthes.

Light of the Unenlightened

Rather than bashing on the Enlightenment with a worn-out club, David Ritchie, in The Fullness of Knowing, surveys thinkers who didn't buy it in the first place (hat tip to Mars Hill audio).  Ritchie's book came from his "growing recognition as a student of the eighteenth century that many of today's criticisms of the Enlightenment are really not all that original."  Among his insights are that Edmund Burke anticipated the criticisms of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, and that Isaac Watts deconstructed John Locke in verse.

Ritchie examines Jonathan Swift, the poets Christopher Smart and William Cowper, and more familiar, recent figures such as Polanyi and Gadamer.  Of course, his is no exhaustive treatment, and Ritchie admits as much.  Diogenes Allen was up to something similar when he examined Simone Weil, Kierkegaard, and Pascal in Three Outsiders, as, I imagine, were the contributors to Bakhtin and Religion, Alan Jacobs among them. Likewise, it has been suggested that C.H. Plotkine's study of Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Tenth Muse, shows that 19th century philology was far more complex that Foucault suggests in Les Mots et les Choses.  We should make it a collective ambition to somehow extend this unenlightenment project further by discovering similar figures, if only to more fully inhabit our post-postmodern times.  (Dibs on Jonathan Edwards and Pavel Florensky.)

At any rate, after his survey of the happily unenlightened , Ritchie concludes:  "Somewhat to my surprise, nearly all of them emphasize an aesthetic element to knowledge, whether in the form of beauty or good taste, as opposed to the more narrowly rationalistic or empirical boundaries to Enlightenment epistemology."

I'm not so surprised.

Theological Book of the Decade

Remember postmodernism? How quaint it all seems in retrospect. In those days - I speak of the early 2000's - we used to think Lyotard had the best summation of the idea, "incredulity toward metanarratives." Now we know that the most concise and pithy definition comes from David Bentley Hart: "Pagan exuberance tempered by gnostic detachment."

In those days the efforts of Jack Caputo were actually somewhat interesting. Here was a thinker engaging Derrida, showing that he wasn't so bad as his knee-jerk critics suggested - Derrida actually talked about ethics! It was an important point to make, and profoundly liberating if one's alternative was "postmodernity ooga booga!" (which for many it was.) But then Hart's The Beauty of the Infinite came along in 2003.

Postmodern evocations of "responsibility" were, in Hart's words, "no doubt quite genuine, but probably also quite absurd," mute to protest the "creative jeu joyeaux of, say, fascism." Each were shown to be unsuccessful attempts to escape the post-metaphysical implications that only Nietzsche fully embraced ("The weak and ill-constituted shall perish: first principle of our philosophy.") Claims to produce an ethical mandate from the raw material of postmodern thought was like the Alchemist's promise to bring gold from lead. Hart laid bare the dogmatic certitude of Foucault, where "the will to power occupies a position of transcendental authority, prephenomenal, prepersonal, and prehistorical." He pointed out the oddity that Deleuze and Foucault "tend to be somewhat oblivious (or indifferent) to the ways their account of the will to power can easily turn into an endorsement of, quite precisely, a will to, quite precisely, power." Hart explained how the contorted, very un-Jewish gnosticism of Levinas "might just as well (and just as blamelessly) be taken as a provocation to kill the Other." Derrida's more enduring appeals to "undeconstructible justice" were shown by Hart to be a nostalgic retreat to Kant's categorical imperative, absent the comforts of reason. In a word, unsustainable. In seven? Krazy Salt sprinkled on the post-metaphysical rot.

Indeed, Hart's 2003 tome was the theological book of the decade, a postmodern elegy, and it has taken the rest of the decade to percolate down. Sure self-professed postmodern Christian thinkers persist, but to those who have read Hart, they are like ghosts in the land of the living - barely even there. Is this overly-privileging one man's take on a complicated, multifaceted movement? No. There were many thinkers to whom one could have gone for similar perspectives, it's just that Hart encapsulated them. The book emerged from a community of thinkers, but was delivered with an individual panache that took up the postmodern invitation "for theology to respond in kind." A beautifully written book about the primacy of beauty.

In hindsight, those early, pre-Hart theological engagements of postmodern thought look like sixteenth-century maps of the Americas, with vast swaths labeled "terra incognita." No one can blame those first explorers for inaccuracy. As they engaged the (then) new and (then) popular modes of thought, they found patches of vegetation in what was supposed to be pure tundra, and they excitedly pointed out the green. But now, thanks to Hart, the cartography is nearly complete. We know what the landscape actually looks like. Both the "Thar be dragons" of the fear-mongers and elephant graveyards promised by progressives have been exposed. There were dragons, but they're sickly now, and not so terrifying. There was little ivory to speak of. Postmodernism has been mapped, flood-lit by Cappadocian light and declared unfit for settlement. Emboldened by his confidence in analogy, Hart moved us on to the welcoming, fertile Nicean fields.

Pass the word on, will you, to those who are still seated in the parked roller-coaster at the postmodern theme park, thinking there will be another loopity-loop. Whisper kindly in their ears that they should at least read pages 35 - 93 of Hart's book, surely a manageable chore. Gently point out to them that there is no longer a ride-operator in the booth. In fact, they're shutting the place down for the season. The clown is wiping off his make-up. The funhouse mirrors have been bubble-wrapped. The cotton-candy stand is all boarded up. It was quite a ride, but it's time to go home to the classic Christian tradition, where ethics is underwritten by the mandate of a living God and where not the sublime, but the beautiful is real.

2009: After Postmodernism

In a presidential address at the AHA last Saturday, Gabrielle Spiegel bid farewell to postmodern theory: "We all sense this profound change has run its course." All of us, that is, except for cutting edge Christians. (Don't say you weren't warned.)

As to where the field is going, Spiegel is not sure. One can always look at other AHA presidential addresses, such as Kenneth Scott Latourette's, for suggestions.

Indiana Ong

Reading Walter Ong on Jacques Derrida is like watching Indiana Jones fight the swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Derrida does his little dance, and then Ong fires the orality gun:

Jacques Derrida has made the point that "there is no linguistic sign before writing." But neither is there a linguistic "sign" after writing if the oral reference of the written text is averted to... Thought is nested in speech, not in texts, all of which have their meanings through reference of the visible symbol... It is impossible for script to be more than marks on a surface unless it is used by a conscious human being as a cue to sounded words, real or imagined, directly or indirectly.

In contending with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Derrida is of course quite right in rejecting the persuasion that writing is no more than incidental to the spoken word. But to try to construct a logic of writing without investigation in depth of the orality out of which writing emerged and in which writing is permanently and ineluctably grounded is to limit one's understanding, although it does produce at the same time effects that are brilliantly intriguing but also at time psychedelic, that is, due to sensory distortions. Freeing ourselves of chirographic and typographic bias in our understanding of language is probably more difficult than any of us can imagine, far more difficult, it would seem, than the "deconstruction" of literature, for the "deconstruction" remains a literary activity (Orality and Literacy, pp. 75-77).

But despair not. If liberation from text is what you're after, one way of achieving it is through Judaism and Christianity, for "the orality of the mindset in the Biblical text, even in its epistolary sections, is overwhelming... God the Father 'speaks' his Son: he does not inscribe him."

Incidentally, in The Future of Christian Learning, Noll and Turner debate whether the academic approach of the Jesuit Ong is more "Catholic" (understated faith commitment) or "evangelical" (explicitly stated). Whether or not such characterizations are legitimate, Ong closes The Presence of the Word by reconciling both positions:

Those with faith read history differently - and, as I believe, more completely - than do others, but faith or no, we must all deal with the same data, and among these data we find not only the elaborate transformations of the word which follow upon its initial spoken existence but also the permanent irreducibility of the spoken word and of sound itself.

Theory Weary

Terry Eagleton, the Marxist who has taken to dismantling Dawkins in the public square, has been mentioned here before. Eagleton's suspicion of critical theory didn't start with After Theory (2003). In The Ideology of the Aesthetic (1990) he wrote that

it is difficult to read the later Roland Barthes, or even the later Michel Foucault, without feeling that a certain style of meditation on the body, on pleasures and surfaces, zones and techniques, has acted among other things as a convenient displacement of a less immediately corporeal politics, and acted also as an ersatz kind of ethics There is a privileged, privatized hedonism about such discourse, emerging as it does at just the historical point where certain less exotic [i.e. classical Marxist] forms of politics found themselves suffering a setback.

This could be compared to another Nathan Glazer quote, one that encapsulates his perfectly entitled book on modernism.

Architecture in recent years has turned away from the pragmatic social and behavioral sciences to the wilder reaches of critical theory because its early efforts to design better housing turned into a failure...

In both cases, prominent thinkers (both dissatisfied Marxists to varying degrees), without dismissing theory completely, identify it with an escape from action. This is not regrettable. It is a mercy that graduate students inhale the thick smoke of theory instead of the tear gas of the riot police, and that aggressive modernists are no longer trying to reinvent the world.

If - as theory's defenders would have it - theory merely involves a disciplined reflection on one's academic methodology, then fine. Long live theory. Just as nearly everyone is a feminist if feminism is "the radical notion that women are people," so too all but the most unreflective dogmatists are "theorists" if that's the definition of theory. But there are other ways of disciplined methodological reflection. One of them is theological, which, properly understood, always leads to action. Christian theology, for example, has a proven track record of spilling over into soup kitchens.

Pomo People

I realize it's heretical to say that one can actually understand (hence diffusing the power of) the supposedly impenetrable mystery that is (hushed silence please)... postmodern thought. Still, it is penetrable; and one of the reasons to read First Things is because the journal clearly understood what a healthy, largely positive Christian relation to postmodernity involved waaaaay back in nineteen hundred and ninety-four (i.e. well before the cottage industry of books on the subject).

Still, even this is unremarkable considering the first successful Christian engagement of Pomo people occurred much earlier. Namely, from San Francisco area Spanish Catholic missionaries in the eighteenth century.

I'll be here all night.

Icons and Absolutes

One irony of the postmodern fascination with icons is that the couch and candle crowd would likely be horrified at the theological firmness - the metaphysical guts - necessary to back them up. Rather than providing a break from the rigor of language and doctrine, icons are equally as binding. The Second Council of Nicea (787) insisted that the icon's purpose was,

in accordance with the narrative of the proclamation of the gospel, to ascertain the incarnation of God the Word, which was real, not imaginary.

Icons stand by the gospels as witnesses to objective, actual persons and events. The icon, properly understood, is no friend of ambiguity. Icons then are a trojan horse in the New Age giftshop. Be sure not to tell, but the icons for sale to disgruntled Evangelicals on that book table at the From Fundamentalism to Foucault conference, are smuggled absolutes.

A further irony of postmodern fascination with icons is that few things could be less conducive to the "visual turn" than classic postmodern thought. Consider Martin Jay's magisterial study, Downcast Eyes, a sweeping summary of which can be found in this whopper of a paragraph:

Virtually all the twentieth-century French intellectuals encountered on this voyage were extraordinarily sensitive to the importance of the visual and no less suspicious of its implications. Although definitions of visuality vary from thinker to thinker, it is clear that ocularcentrism aroused (and continues in many quarters to arouse) a widely shared distrust. Bergson's critique of the spatialization of time, Bataille's celebration of the blinding sun and the acephalic body, Breton's ultimate disenchantment with the savage eye, Sartre's depiction of the sadomasochism of the "look," Merleau-Ponty's diminished faith in a new ontology of vision, Lacan's disparagement of the ego produced by mirror stae, Althusser's appropriation of Lacan for a Marxist theory of ideology, Foucault's strictures against the medical gaze and panoptic surveillance, Debord's critique of the society of the spectacle, Barthes's linkage of photography and death, Metz's excoriation of the scopic regime of the cinema, Derrida's double reading of the specular tradition of philosophy and the white mythology, Irigaray's outrage at the privileging of the visual in patriarchy, Levinas's claim that ethics is thwarted by a visually based ontology, and Lyotard's identification of postmodernism with the sublime foreclosure of the visual - all these evince, to put it mildly, a palpable loss of confidence in the hitherto "noblest of the senses."

I think that might be about all of 'em. Small wonder that those who forget how to speak, soon forget how to see as well. If Martin Jay is right, Christians unduly adulating postmodernity might consider doing away with paintbrushes altogether, and pick up the Iconoclast's hatchet instead.

-----
References:
Daniel J. Sahas, Icon and Logos: Sources in Eighth Century Iconoclasm (p. 178).
Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought (p. 588).

Luke University

Luke chapter 20 could be subtitled "Christ among the academics," especially religious academics. Like anyone claiming religious truth today, the accusation from the worldly wise - as from the Sophistichristians - is, "Who is it that gave you this authority" (20:2)? In other words, "How dare you traffic in metanarratives?"

Realizing that the perpetual questioning of authority is itself a uniquely oppressive authority (Chesterton's reply to Nietzsche's "Question authority" was "Say's who?"), Christ throws in a wrench to stall the scribal gears. Lacking the metaphysical guts to answer a simple question - whether John's baptism was from God or man - the religious academics give up. Christ thereby proves to the crowd that their chief teachers, by virtue of their supreme sophistication, have become incapable of making any pronouncements at all. We imagine Christ smiling as he says, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things" (20:8). How can you have a conversation with someone who is unable to speak?

Example: Are you a believer or not M. Derrida? Sorry, I'm far too sophisticated to answer that, and anyone who can is "naive." (Hear it in his own words here.)

Luke 20 continues. After an infuriating parable, the academics send in their big guns, "spies who pretended to be honest" (20:20). Here are those who claim to honor the "richness of the faith heritage" for its narrative value, the ones for whom aesthetics trump truth. Christ, however, knows their hearts. The spies' attempt at entrapment leads to that most brilliant answer, "Render unto Caesar...", but no matter. In Luke 23:2, they'll simply lie about what he said anyway to get him killed.

Next, the Sadducees pipe in with a logical circus trick intended to show literal belief in the resurrection to be ridiculous. "What about the legend of the septupletly wedded wife?" These are the materialists, who will always be with us. Christ dismantles the threat only to show that yes, he actually believes in real resurrections (20:34-38). Everyone's impressed, but the show goes on.

Christ fires back with his own question, leaving them hanging for an answer. "What do you make of Psalm 110:1?" I too, Christ seems to be suggesting, am familiar with the baffling complexity of Scripture, but it doesn't lead me to worship the goddess of ambiguity, and her consort, the lord of liquidity. Familiarity with the complexities of Scripture does not leave one without an answer: They're looking at the answer.

Christ closes his speech to the religious academics - who are too sophisticated for simple belief, who know so many options that they can't pick one - with yet another possibility that they're unprepared to take seriously: Outright condemnation (20:45-7).

Today, one never quite know where the Sophistichristians will arise. Who would have expected them in self-professedly Evangelical circles and publications, but there they so frequently appear. And lo, in a frankly feminist medieval history text, one finds this from historian Barbara Newman:

Finally, and most controversially, I believe that religious experience reveals the traces, however opaquely filtered, of a real and transcendent object. This is not to exclude the possibilities of self-deception and deliberate fraud, both common in medieval Christendom as in all societies where religion is a hegemonic force... Nevertheless, I assert this conviction to clarify my theoretical stance and to overthrow the last bastion of reductionism. To leave a space for transcendence means to allow for the possibility that, when historical subjects assert religious belief or experience as the motive of their actions, they may at times be telling the truth.... It was not because of their commitment to feminism, self-empowerment, subversion, sexuality, or "the body" that [medieval woman] struggled and won their voices; it was because of their commitment to God.

While the Sophistichristians can't afford such transparency, a secular historian - no doubt at significant personal cost - can? I suppose such clarity of prose makes Newman, at least for M. Derrida, a bit dense. To the Christ of Luke, I imagine it would make her luminous. "I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel" (Luke 7:9)!

---------------
References
From Virile Woman to WomanChrist (pp. 16-17, and 246).

No Country for Old Men

"It was the cognoscenti's last joyride after the death of God." That's how art critic Maureen Mullarkey describes deconstruction's heyday in 2008. Wait, make that 1998. Sorry, wrong again, 1988. Or was it '78 or '68? Ah, that's right. 1968.

She then connects Weiner's World (party time, excellent) to that joyride. When a catalog marries Weiner's conceptual art to hot theorists Baudrillard and Lacan, she invokes philosopher Roger Scruton, who

"once charged both with charlatanism. He called them impostors who abuse the terms of their disciplines 'to deceive the reader into thinking that they are thinking when in fact they are doing no such thing.'"

This leads to a question: Why is it that deconstruction historically received a colder reception in philosophical country than in the literature or art worlds? Philosophy professor Anthony Kenny (whose new book is reviewed in the current First Things) has an answer, and it's not snarky as much as it is straightforward. The fame of Derrida (et. al.), has prospered in art and literature departments because their members "have had less practice in discerning genuine from counterfeit philosophy."

Fortunately, the sterling discipline of theology is, like philosophy, able to detect any and all counterfeits. Right? Well, no. And perhaps that's why James K.A. Smith seems so concerned.

9.5 Theses

Apostles of Ambiguity, this is just too much. I have heard my Tetzel. Where is my Wittenberg door?

1. I'll say it again: He who marries the spirit of the age will soon become a widower. Do those who married postmodernity realize their spouse is in a nursing home?

1.5 Christians who cater their theology to accommodate deconstruction are comparable to sub-rate CCM bands who copy Green Day five years after they've ceased being cool. They'll sell, but to a subset of evangelicalism who want to be "relevant" - which is the only group they'll ever be relevant to.

2. Yes Paul said he sees through a glass darkly - but he still saw. Don't forget to keep reading.

2.5 Paul did not end his speech at the Areopagus by saying "the Unknown God" is a great idea, sorry I bothered you. Nice statue. Can I have a copy?

NEW! 2.75 At least John Shelby Spong holds a position.

3. If you're reacting to a bad experience with evangelicalism, I'm sorry. Please, stop, take a deep breath, and learn the tradition instead of reacting to a truncated (but vivid) fragment of the Christian heritage. Learn, forgive, move on. You can do it.

NEW! 3.5 A new translation has revealed what was actually the last temptation of Christ. Returning our Lord to the temple mount, Satan said: "Obfuscate whatever remains of classical church teaching in American Evangelicalism and you'll get a book deal, multiple panel appearances, and an exponential increase in blog traffic."

The offer was declined.

Revised! 4. Yes, God is at work in the world already. That doesn't mean the church needs to be like the world. The best thing the church can do for the world is to be the church, not regurgitate graduate school seminar room talk from 1985.

NEW! 4.5 Wrestling with the difficult questions of the Christian life (the eternal destiny of non-Christians, the reliability of the Bible, church hypocrisy, etc.) does not constitute a movement. It's called normative Christian maturation. It is risky business, but followed through, opens into holy mystery and stronger, more nuanced faith. Abandoned, this process can lead to faith's termination. Perpetuating those questions indefinitely, however, is another thing entirely: Frozen adolescence.

NEW! 4.75 POP QUIZ! What is wrong with the following Biblical quotation? "Seek and you shall seek."

Revised! 5. Protestantism can find hope by clinging to its birthright, a passionate focus on the written Word of God, the unique, authoritative avenue to the Word of God in Christ. Protestants are an order of the written Word (in very sad condition) within God's woefully divided church. Our guide in stewarding this threatened charism is not the "spirit of protest" but the Holy Spirit. There's a difference.

NEW! 5.5 Tom Oden is right: "A center without a circumference is just a dot, nothing more. It is the circumference that marks the boundary of the circle. To eliminate the boundary is to eliminate the circle itself. The circle of faith cannot identify its center without recognizing its perimeter."

Revised! 6. Yes, we all know what big words like hermeneutics mean. The answer to the dilemma that the science of interpretation poses is not chaos, nor a license for whatever you want the Bible to mean, but the definitive community of interpretation of the historic church. No, this does not answer every question, but it rules many fruitless questions out.

6.5 Speaking of big words, consider this one: "And." It's especially helpful when confronted with polarizing rhetoric shortsighted enough to suggest one must choose propositional/factual truth or narrative/aesthetic truth.

7. It does not "puncture the hegemony of logic" to deny the central tenets of the Christian faith. The central tenets of the Christian faith do a fine job of that already. It is not humility to deny what God has done by impenetrable obscurity masquerading as "nuance." It is pride.

7.5 To correct abuses of rationality (which are legion) by neutering epistemology is like correcting poor carpentry by outlawing tools.

NEW! 7.75 The most radical postmodern epistemology appears numbingly Newtonian next to the first few verses of 1 Corinthians 8: You can't know this kind of knowledge (verse 3), this Knowledge knows you.

8. Heresy is boring, not exciting because it eviscerates mystery. If you're attracted to heresy because it makes you feel naughty then that's kinda creepy. If you're attracted to it because you don't want to "limit God," then the religion that serves a God who became a particular first-century Palestinian Jew might not be for you.

NEW! 8.5 If religion without doctrine suits you, consider Shintoism.

9. Negative (a.k.a. apophatic) theology is not a new idea. What's new is removing it from its context withing positive theology and until it leaves you without a Gospel.

9.5 And by the way, apophatic theology does not apply to ethics.

Six Theses on Parallel Centuries

1a. In the 13th century, an infusion of pagan philosophy into the medieval world through translations of Aristotle led to a significant degree of theological confusion.
1b. Today, postmodern currents have led to similar (though not unexciting) disturbances in contemporary theology.

2a. In the 13th century, one reaction to the challenge of Aristotle was an indiscriminate surrender of central tenets of Christian faith. One unfortunate example would be to believe, with Aristotle, in the eternity of the earth instead of holding onto to the then unfashionable doctrine of creation.
2b. Today, one reaction to postmodernity is the same capitulation to the spirit of the age by minds insufficiently formed by the Christian faith and overly excited about postmodernity. One unfortunate example is someone who, when given the chance to publicly clarify his views in the pages of a major Christian publication, instead punts to pluralism as John Caputo did in the recent issue of Books & Culture.

3a. In the 13th century, the over-correcting response to sloppily-Hellenized Christianity was a refusal to engage Aristotle at all.
3b. Today, the over-correcting response to sloppily-postmodernized Christianity is a refusal to engage postmodern thought at all.

4a. Consequently, in the 13th century two shortsighted theological camps - Aristotelians and anti-Aristotelians - were locked in a perpetual and uninteresting debate.
4b. Today, two similarly shortsighted theological camps - postmodernist and anti-postmodernist - are locked in a perpetual and uninteresting debate.

5a. The resolution to this dilemma in the 13th century required a mind formidable enough to thoroughly comprehend and appreciate Aristotle, yet Christian enough to know what aspects of the faith could not be forsaken, that is, a mind able to assimilate Aristotle into Christianity instead of the other way around. Due to the necessary combination of natural giftedness and adequate training, such minds are rare - but one came along in Thomas Aquinas . The result of was theology enhanced by the truth contained in Aristotle, and immunized against its mistakes - to the benefit of both Chritsianity and Aristotle.
5b. The resolution to the dilemma today requires a mind formidable enough to thoroughly comprehend and appreciate postmodern theory, yet Christian enough to know what aspects of Christian faith cannot be sacrificed to it. Due to the rare combination of natural giftedness and proper training, such minds are rare. Yet (though probably not as epoch-defining as Aquinas), in David Bentley Hart such a mind has come along.

6a. Aquinas, both during and after his lifetime, was misunderstood. The Aristotelians saw him as too Christian, the anti-Aristotelians saw him as too pagan. The result was that many stayed stuck in the tired debates of opposing camps, when they could have transcended them by reading Aquinas. But it being hard to get a copy of an Aquinas manuscript back then, they can be forgiven.
6b. Hart is similarly misunderstood, but it being so easy to get a copy of his work, staying stuck in the tired postmodern or anti-postmodern camps is a much less forgivable offense.

Foucault vs. Foucault

Many Christians get their postmodern theory filtered through a friendly neighborhood progressive theology professor. The straight drink however is best imbibed from the native distillery - the graduate seminar room of selected University humanities departments.

Therein Freud, that dreaded foe of faith, might theoretically be appealed to by a Christian to defend the now scorned concept of self in face of its detractors. The anti-Christian Marx might prove to be a believer's uncanny ally, for in contrast to those who deny the category completely, at least Marx believed in history. Likewise humanism, once billed as faith's hostile competitor, in the face of post-humanism appears one of Christianity's newfound, and much needed, friends.

Which is why this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education is so interesting:

"He has been venerated and canonized as the messiah of French antihumanism: a harsh critic of the Enlightenment, a dedicated foe of liberalism's covert normalizing tendencies, an intrepid prophet of the 'death of man.'

But increasingly that perception seems wrong, or, at best, only partially true. Considerable evidence suggests that, later in life, Foucault himself became frustrated with the antihumanist credo. He came to realize that much of what French structuralism had during the 1960s rejected as humanist pap retained considerable ethical and political value."

The book under discussion, Foucault 2.0, seems reminiscent of Oliver Davie's suggestion, based on his later work, that

"Derrida is aware (more than Deleuze, for instance) that the very negativity which defines his semantic philosophy also offers a potential reappropriation of his deconstruction back into the reconstructive ontotheologies to which he declared himself opposed. Having been banished to the very margins of contemporary intellectual life, the deus absconditus might redefine that margin as the new epi-centre of a metaphysical/postmetaphysical re-enactment of traditional theism"(124).

Foucault the humanist? Derrida the traditional theist? The early Foucault and Derrida undone by none other than the later Foucault and Derrida? Friends, it just might be.

original deconstruction 3

Three? Yes. Don't you remember one and two? The theme of this provocative series (called "fiendishly clever" by Important Magazine and "millinerd at his table-turning best" by Reputable Source Weekly) is that deconstruction is not new. It began when Omnipotence went and got crucified circa 30AD, and it continues as inflated humanity humbles itself before that ego-shattering (and ego-transforming) truth. In other words, it's not that the late 20th century brand of French academic deconstruction is threatening, but that it's not nearly threatening enough. Postmodernists deconstruct ideas. Christians deconstruct themselves.

For my third example of original deconstruction, pardon me if I raise some eyebrows by turning to eastern spirituality... that is, the eastern Christian monastic spirituality of John Climacus' Ladder of Divine Ascent (the preeminent spiritual classic of Eastern Orthodoxy). For a selection from this monastic boot-camp, click here. If you'd like to play it safe however, stick with Foucault.

Writes Climacus regarding pride:

"I once caught this mad imposter as it was rising in my heart, bearing on its shoulders its mother, vainglory. Roping them with the noose of obedience and thrashing them with the whip of humility, I demanded how they got access to me. At last, when flogged, they said: 'We have neither beginning nor birth, for we are progenitors and parents of all the passions. Contrition of heart that is born of obedience is our real enemy; we cannot bear to be subject to anyone; that is why we fell from Heaven, though we had authority there.

In brief, we are the parents of all that opposes humility; for everything which furthers humility, opposes us. We hold sway everywhere, save in Heaven, so where will you run from our presence? We often accompany dishonours, and obedience, and freedom from anger, and lack of resentment, and service [i.e. the activities of successful Christians]. Our offspring are the falls of spiritual men: anger, calumny, spite, irritability, shouting, blasphemy, hypocrisy, hatred, envy, disputation, self-will and disobedience.

There is only one thing in which we have no power to meddle; and we shall tell you this, for we cannot bear your blows: If you keep up a sincere condemnation of yourself before the Lord, you can count us as weak as a cobweb. For pride's saddlehorse, as you see, is vainglory, on which I am mounted.' But holy humility and self-accusation laugh at both the horse and its rider, happily singing the song of victory: Let us sing to the Lord, for gloriously is He glorified: horse and rider hath He hurled into the sea (Exodus 15:1) and into the abyss of humility" (23:37).

No doubt this text would be anathematized by many pomo-theorists for its use of the forbidden word "obedience." And no doubt Climacus would have responded that a refusal to countenance obedience should itself be deconstructed to reveal the underlying power-play of pride and self-indulgence that such a phobia can ingeniously conceal. Certainly legitimate ecclesial structures can and have been abused, but a refusal to submit (gasp!) to them might also be due to a prior, and perhap unconscious obedience to a different (and much harsher) master.

And notwithstanding the fortune cookie and/or Yoda associations it may call to mind, this bit on humility is a keeper:

"The natural property of a lemon tree is such that it lifts its branches upwards when it has no fruit, but the more branches bend down the more fruit they bear. Those who have the mind to understand will grasp the meaning of this" (25:48).

Though admittedly more appropriate to Lent than Eastertide, Climacus' Ladder rewards the significant effort it requires to read... Let alone actually climb.

Hegel vs. Pomo

I honeslty don't seek this stuff out, but when I come across it, I feel obliged to let you know. Call it the millinerd contract with America (and Canada). So here it is, one more contemporary critique of postmodernity brought directly to your screen, this time from the Hegelians.

"[W]hat postmodernists present as the fatal flaw of modernity and its philosophy - their lack of any final given or postulatable foundations in subjectivity, nature, language, being, etc.- Hegel recognized and proclaimed as the initial key to, and the first step in understanding, modernity's and philosophy's triumph. In Hegelian terms, it is only postmodernists' tacit foundationalism, their obdurate and otiose attachments to the belief that freedom and reason must be grounded in some givens, that leads them to the illicit conclusion that the absence of such given foundations must result in the nihilist victory of arbitrary caprice and irrational subjectivism...

As if that wasn't itself a brainfull, get ready for "cryptofoundationalism":

What [postmodernsits] fail to see is that the absence of foundations for modernity's freedom need not necessarily lead to a nihilistic will-to-power as some sort of 'postfoundational foundation.' Paradoxically endorsing some version of Nietzshe's cryptofoundationalism, they miss, or ignore, Hegel's discovery that the conceptual and practical legitimacy of modernity can be demonstrated by a systematic philosophy that originates in the liberating discovery that the foundational assumption is itself wihout foundations (x)."

Though it's not news that postmodern thought rejects Hegel, what is news is that a gaggle of neo-Hegelians are making a fresh case that the rejection was based on a profound misunderstanding. I'm not a Hegelian any more than I am a Marxist, but in both this and that case the books quoted from are not the product of an isolated author, but are the collected essays of multiple authors.

Like I said, I don't go looking for such things, but I wonder how much I'd find if I did.

Logic is Back

Surely, in those quiet moments, we all ask ourselves that nagging question: Why does millinerd always discuss postmodernity? Though I too grow bored of the topic, the reason, dear reader, is bad teaching. I heard several lectures that used "postmodernity" as a passport to sloppy thinking and just plain awful theology. This wouldn't have been too much of a concern, as no one can entirely avoid bad lectures - but the problem with these is that the listeners were nodding their heads... vertically!

With MacGyver-like urgency I patched together an initial response with the chewing gum and paper clip of my own intellectual resourses - such heroism! I even managed to secure a minor publishing contract to broadcast my attempts. Not without struggle did I resist the temptation of the standard knee-jerk traditionalist critique. Soon however I was made aware of thinkers much wiser than I, Christian and non, who had developed sophisticated responses to postmodernity of their own, and my confidence gained. I summed up the journey with the millinerd motto, "The answer to false stories [i.e. one's stemming from materialist or amorphously transcendentalist assumptions] is not no story [Lyotard's famous definition of the pomo as "incredulity of metanarratives"] but the true story" [that is, the sweeping narrative of creation, fall, redemption and consummation we call the Gospel].

But now, to mix 80's T.V. metaphors, my MacGyver efforts have been even further assisted by the late arrival of the A-Team, that is, the oft-ignored tradition of analytic (as oppose to continental) philosophy.

Of course, all such reinforcement may be overcompensation. In our post-Sokal hoax world, it is doubtful whether formal rejection of postmodernity is even necessary, possible as it to now reject it on purely postmodern grounds: That is, if being "transgressive" is commendable, then the phenomenon of pop-postmodernity makes postmodernity no longer truly transgressive at all.

Nevertheless, turn up the accompaniment and click HERE to see the A-Team in action.

The Distinction
It's not that continental philosophy is to be discarded. I agree with David Hart who writes that the continental tradition has a special realtionship to theology, which is

"always already involved in the Continental tradition - its longings and nostalgias, its rebellions and haunting memories, its interminable flight from the Christian rationality that gave it life - and so is responsible for and before it; ... This is the burden of consanguinity: theology cannot disown its history - or its children" (30).

But whereas continental philosophy is an runaway child of theology, the analytic tradition was adopted by another family. In a recent article entitled "Theology's Continental Captivity," R.R. Reno argues that while continental philosophy sought to replace Christianity, analytic philosophy thought science did that, and therefore always understood philosophy to be of more limited aspiritation. The analytic tradition

"announces by its name the secondary or handmaidenly role it is to play: not revealing or disclosing truth but analyzing the exigencies of what is taught or disclosed."

And for those of us who realize that science hasn't replaced Christianity, the soft reading light of the analytic tradition is an attractive alternative to the sun-mimicking stadium lamps of the continentals.

W.V. Quine?!
In contrast to the extreme atheistic branch of analytic philosophy known as logical positivism, Reno seeks to recover the movements more moderate proponents such as Quine who dared think

"that good arguments should compel the mind and that a responsible intellectual should set out to discern what is and is not true about the world... Quine was skeptical about the ability of philosophy to explain why particular beliefs are justly held as true (thus nonfoundational in epistememology) - while, at the same time, he did not think that truth and the human ability to know truth are illusory or sources of violence and oppression (thus foundational in the more robust, metaphysical sense)."

No doubt this might conjure up someone's postmodern metaphysiphobia, but the prejudice against metaphysics is, if only to be informed of the flood of recent work on the subject, something one needs simply overcome. Do so, if you must, in the name of mere tolerance. After all, meta (i.e. beyond) physics is merely the realization that the cosmos we find ourselves in "is astonishing beyond measure and cannot be exhaustively explained by any cause which derives from within [it]" (615).

Recovering the analytic tradition's use of logic enables Reno to dispell the cloud of suspicion cast on rationality by postmodernity. This leads to some pomo-party-pooping problems such as,

"In what sense does the principle of noncontradiciton lead to colonialism or gender inequality? How does 2+2=4 suppress religious differences?"

In a statement that recalls the thought police in Orwell's 1984 who rather than attacking their victim's logic, did everything to remove it, Reno reminds us that

"Totalitarian governments tend to silence reasoned arguments, not encourage them as tools for domination."

John Locke?!
Moving beyond Reno's article, what happens when we keep following the strands of the primarily English, analytic tradition to what are (arguably) its roots, even daring to taste the forbidden fruit of the hopelessly "modern" John Locke? In a review of Nicholas Wolterstorff's books on Locke, I read the following most unusual remarks:

"Wolterstorff quotes Locke in what could be a rebuke to the postmodern skeptics of our own time:

'We shall not have much reason to complain of the narrowness of our minds, if we will but employ them about what may be of use to us; for of that they are very capable: And it will be unpardonable, as well as childish peevishness, if we undervalue the advantages of our knowledge, and neglect to improve it to the ends for which it was given us, because there are some things that are set out of the reach of it. ...If we will disbelieve everything, because we cannot certainly know all things; we shall do much - what as wisely as he, who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly.'

So much, then, for the stereotype of Locke as the Great Modern Knower whose reason magisterially sweeps over the empirical landscape and comes to universal, certain conclusions about it all. Instead, we find a Locke who is fearful precisely of those who are willing to do battle as fanatical believers in this or that-shall we say it?-metanarrative. Locke seeks to chasten us all with his restricted view of what we can properly claim to know. Locke stands between the premodern and the postmodern in his distrust of "community lore"-whether the appeal to a universal tradition or to the traditions of this or that party-as he seeks to live his life, as he hopes others will, according to our best perception of the true nature of things."

Thomas Reid?!
Could it be however, that as the mists of postmodernity fade, we would even be willing to trespass into the thicket of Thomas Reid's dreaded "Common Sense Realism?" Continues the same reviewer regarding Wolterstorff's book on Reid:

"We all thought we knew that Thomas Reid taught 'Common Sense' as a kind of willful ignoring of the 'real issues' thrown up by Hume and Kant. Thus we felt no qualms about neglecting the work of a man who was perhaps the most popular philosopher in Britain and North America for almost two centuries - one who, in Wolterstorff's view, deserves to be recognized as the peer of Immanuel Kant.

It turns out, at least in Wolterstorff's portrayals, that these philosophers were more circumspect, more relevant, more interesting, and even more Christian than we knew. It turns out that we have a lot to learn from them... Reid dispenses with modern hubris on the one side and postmodern despair on the other. In the latter case, Wolterstorff puts a remark of Wittgenstein's into Reid's mouth as they both, so to speak, confront the philosopher who, just like a clever adolescent, professes to doubt what everyone else knows is true. (This is the sort of person who says, 'You just think you're sitting in a chair now, but in fact you could be anyone, anywhere, just imagining you are you sitting in a chair.') To such foolish skeptics, who are patently ungrateful for the knowledge they have gained so effortlessly by the grace of God, Wittgenstein/Reid affirms that we should respond not with disputation, but with contempt: 'Ach! Unsinn!' we should say. 'Oh, what rubbish!'

The burden of proof, then, is put where it belongs: on the skeptic who has to show why we should doubt what is otherwise so immediately evident, rather than on the believer who has to show why one ought to believe what seems effortless to believe."

The Task Ahead
So there you have it. Reno a Catholic, flanked by Wolterstorff, a Protestant are closing in on postmodern skepticism with the resources of the forgotten analytic tradition (and its "modern" predecessors). Not that it will be easy. Writes Reno,

"I do not doubt that there are many long, complex, and obscure arguments that must be made in order to shape analytic philosophy into a truly Christian project."

To be sure, winning the heritage back from Bertand Russell won't be duck soup, especially considering those of us educated during the analytic eclipse have much catching up to do. But it won't be without its thrills. Because pomo told us all this was a nono, doesn't it all feel, well, transgressive?

POMOPOWERPOST

Here at millinerd we try to keep you up to date with the those moving beyond the postmodern moment. Not those who move around it, mind you, but those who move through it. Easy it is to find those who flippantly dismiss postmodernity, much more interesting are those who have sufficiently wrestled with its challenges and are happily moving on. It is a task however that is becoming increasingly hard to keep up with. When I first found a thinker that fit the description, I thought it was a rarity. Then it kept going... and going... and going... and going... and going. Until now postmodernity may be becoming a lot like salad dressing: There's no need to buy it again. Ever.

The following are two of the more impressive minds I've come across who fit the post-postmodern profile. Both happen to be Christians (perhaps I'm biased). Those more academically inclined might prefer Hart. Wright, though himself a rigorous academic, may be more accessible. Both, I suggest, are well worth your time.

Continue...

David B. Hart and the Meta-metanarrative
Hart defines modernity as

"the search for comprehensive metanarratives and epistemological foundations by way of a neutral and unaided rationality, available to all reflective intellects, and independent of cultural and linguistic conditions" (3).

A mouthful indeed - but right on. Perhaps because Hart's theology is deeply rooted in Cappadocian soil, he bears little affinity for this modern perspective, and is consequently unruffled by the postmodern critique of it.

"For Christian thought, [postmoderinty] is not by any means a disheartening prospect. For if indeed God became a man, then Truth condescended to become a truth, from whose historical contingency one cannot simply pass to categories of universal rationality; and this means that whatever Christians mean when they speak of truth, it cannot involve simply the dialectical wrestling of abstract principles from intractable facts... Christian thought has no stake in 'pure' rationality to which dialectic seems to appeal - the Christian ratio, its Logos, is a crucified Jew..." (5-6).

Unphased as he may be, the difficulty Hart does have with postmodernity nonetheless appears, but

"not in its alleged 'relativism' or 'skepticism' [the standard critique], but in in its failure sufficiently to free itself form the myths of modernity."

That is - and it is amazing that more people don't realize this - the pomo critique of metanarratives "can easily be translated into a dogmatic metanarrative of its own." Postmodernity is

"the culmination of the critical tradition of modernity... and predicatbly (given its pedigrees), this rigourous soupcon or critical incredulity becomes yet another attempt to extract thought from the quagmires of narrative; it become a meta-metanarrative, the story of no more stories, so told as to determine definitively how much may or may not be said intelligibly by others who have stoies to tell; it completes not only the critical but the metanarrative projects of modernity (which prove to be indistinguishable). This is where the temper of the postmodern often proves wanting in courage and consistency. The truth of no truths becomes, inevitably, truth: a way of naming being, language, and culture that guards the boundaries of thought against claims it has not validated" (7).

This idea of postmodernity as hyper-modernity is certainly not original to Hart, but what is unique to Hart is a compelling reconstruction of a non-violent metaphysics of beauty that follows.

N.T. Wright and the Epistemology of Love
Was postmodernity providential? The Bishop of Durham thinks so.

"Part of the point of postmodernity in the strange providence of God is to preach the Fall to arrogant modernity."

The following are my notes to his extraordinary remarks on the subject (culled mostly from this address, the last of a 4 part series freely available here).

In necessarily critiquing modernity, Wright insists that we will of course find some common points with postmodernity; but as with Paul in his Areopogus speech, we need to affirm, critique and subvert this worldly wisdom. In Christ, not in Voltaire Rousseau, Hegel, or Derrida are found all the treasure of wisdom and knowledge. Although postmodernity was necessary against modern arrogance, on its own it leads to fragmentation - that pick and mix smorgasbord world which declares that all great stories are just powerplays, not least of which those told by postmodernists themselves.

On its own, postmodernity is ultimately a message of judgment and death, of sterile and ironic negativity. Look at the life as well as the thought of Michel Foucault. We agree, says Wright, with postmodernity's negative judgment on modern illusions, while insiting over against particularly Foucault that the resurrection is the ground for a cultural renewal and revival, of which Christians should be in the forefront.

The Way Ahead
But Wright doesn't stop with deconstructing deconstruction. He points the way forward toward a new theory of knowledge, nothing less than what he claims is true knowing. We, especially academics, must allow the gospel to challenge and remake our very knowledge itself, and in doing so we must take on board the full weight of the postmodern critique of knowing. Many who claimed in modernity to be merely describing the world were in fact disguising a power grab. But that does not mean that all knowledge is simply a reflection of our own powergames.

Paul speaks of being renewed in knowledge according to the image of the creator. Although current accounts of knowing privilege the would be scientific knowing, a biblical account of knowing should take love as its basic mode, with the love of God as the highest possible form of knowledge. Think about it, who really knows biology, the scientist who dryly memorizes data, or the one who has the data but is also enchanted with the beauty of molecular structures, and consequenlty loves biology. Love is a form of knowledge. When I love I affirm the differentness of the beloved. Not to do that is lust. When I affirm the differentness of the beloved I am passionately and compassionately involved. We can and must give an account of human knowing that will apply to all disciplines: from science to art, mathematics to music. The epistemology of love is the way of the post-postmodern world, to which we have a serious and joyful commission.

But, says Wright,

"I don't see people pointing the way out of the postmodern morass."

Many close up the shutters and live in a pre-modern world, including some Christians. Many are still stuck in modernity, including some Christans. Many think that picking off the garbage heap of now dated postmodern theory is the best they can do, including Christians.

My brothers and sisters we can do better. The Gospel urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture. Articulating in story, music, art, philosophy... even, believe it or not, Biblical studies - a worldview which will mount the historically rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading us into the post-postmodern world with joy and humor and music and dancing and gentleness and good judgment and faithfulness and wisdom.

If not now when? If not us who? If the Gospel of Jesus is not the key to all this then what is? Professor Wright concludes with a modest proposal:

"Jesus is Lord and neither modernity nor postmodernity are."

There's also a great closing illustration, but I wouldn't want to give it all away.

The Trial Continues

...that is, postmodernity's endless one.

Have Christians spent too much time critiquing postmodernity? Yes. Can you blame us? Well, it's kinda fun. But I'll admit it takes energy better spent both speaking and living the Gospel, especially considering those outside the church are often much better at critiquing postmodernity than Christians are. I've mentioned several before, but this time, here come the Marxists, with a rhythm of argument that may sound familiar:

"Postmodernist culture has produced a rich, bold, exhilarating body of work across the whole span of the arts, and has generated more than its fair share of execrable kitsch. It has pulled the rug out from beneath a number of complacent certainties, pried open some paranoid totalities, tainted some jealously guarded purities, bent some oppressive norms, and shaken some rather solid-looking foundations. It has also tended to surrender to a politically paralyzing skepticism, a flashy populism, a full-blooded moral relativism, and a brand of sophism for which, since all conventions are arbitrary anyway, we might as well conform to those of the Free World. In pulling the rug out from under the certainties of its political opponents, this postmodern culture has often enough pulled it out from under itself too, leaving itself with no more reason why we should resist fascism than the feebly pragmatic plea that fascism is not the way we do things in Sussex or Sacramento.

"Postmodernism has a quick eye for irony; but there is one irony above all that seems to have escaped it... In a powerfully estranging gesture [the revolutions of Eastern Europe have] expose[d] postmodernism as the ideology of a peculiarly jaded, defeatist wing of the liberal-capitalist intelligentsia, which has mistaken its own very local difficulties for a universal human condition in exactly the manner of the universality ideologies it denounces" (25).

"The irony of post-modernism is that while purporting to have transcended modernity, it abandons from the start all hope of transcending capitalism itself and entering a post-capitalist era. Postmodernist theory is therefore easily absorbed within the dominant cultural frame and has given rise recently to texts such as Postmodern Marketing, which attempts to utilize the insights of thinkers like Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, and Baudillard to market goods within a capitalist economy" (193).

(By the way, if you too are interested in "transcending" capitalism, I know of a writer who will get you there much quicker than Karl Marx.)

I can appreciate Christians who call themselves postmodern in order to "reach this generation" with the Gospel. But considering what may be this generation's increasing disillusionment with postmodernity, perhaps one should consider being post-postmodern for exactly the same reason.

West and Zizek

Count Slavoj Zizek among those putting postmodernity on endless trial. In him we have yet another high profile intellectual performing public pomo-mutiny, perhaps accounting for his popularity. He certainly filled an auditorium tonight for a dialogue with Cornel West.

But unlike the T.D. Jakes event, this time it was more of a one way conversation. Zizek spoke for so long that West didn't have much of a chance to. In a very long and meandering way "Brother Slavoj" (West's designation) groped toward what I discerned to be the following point: Belief can be good, granted you don't actually believe.

Zizek recommended the kind of Christianity that has the benefit of liturgy and ritual without taking the faith part entirely seriously. This he called having a proper "distance" (hasn't he read millinerd? That just won't do). But still, Zizek the Marxist just couldn't get away from belief. Perhaps because Christianity is a fresh blast from the past for his secularized Slovenia, Zizek is quite eager to buy the sexy newcomer a drink. While still calling himself an atheist, he's heavily flirting with the Christian faith. And though he's hesitant to go all the way, things were getting kinda steamy.

Continue...
Zizek passionately described his fascination with the fact that Christianity has no parallels. If Jesus was just another messenger of God the religion he claimed would be a bore. But in this particular faith God himself dies on the cross. He loves G.K. Chesterton's assertion that one can only find a pure atheism in Christianity, that is, in the cry of derelection on the cross and the mystery of Holy Saturday.

Critique:
Zizek then claims then that only an atheist can be properly Christian, when in fact the opposite may be true - only a Christian (who buys the mystery of Holy Saturday) can be a "proper" atheist - for at least on that day, God in the person of Jesus Christ, was indeed dead. After the standard adulations, Cornel West picked up on this, explaining that Psalm 22 is not the same thing as Psalm 14 - a very nice distinction indeed. There is room, West seemed to be claiming, for the Jacobian struggle with and even absence of God within the framework of genuine belief in God.

Other Christians however have expressed even more serious concerns about Zizek's casual fling with faith:

"Does Christianity need saving, or does Marxism? Is Zizek a Bob Dylan, turning to Christianity because socialism is in decline, or is he a sincere convert to the rabbi from Galilee? I do not think that Christians need to be anxious about whether celebrity philosophers respect their faith, but I do think it is important to evaluate the future of this new alliance between post-modern European philosophy and the church. Zizek assumes that the church and Marxism can be allies because they have a common enemy in the corrosive consequences of consumerism. The question is whether they have a common hope. Given the present disarray of socialism, Zizek's ideal of absolute justice is very fragile indeed. It makes sense that he would reach out to the church to fill the vacuum left by a proletariat that has lost its voice. It would make a lot less sense for the church to try to salvage an economic ideal that has ruined many countries and countless lives" (from Christian Century).

And though I entirely agree, I'm less concerned for the church appropriating Zizek's ideas (because it's unlikely) than for the church actually appropriating Zizek, which strikes me as if not likely, at least a live possibiltiy.

Conversion?
Zizek said that in talking to fundamentalists he has ascertained that their faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ has no element of existential angst - it is for them a fact as true as any other commonplace fact. And though of course that is true for some Christians, it is far from true for even the most mildly sophisticated expression Christianity (again, if he had only read millinerd). The fact that anyone has faith in the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is in fact part of the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That such faith needs divine initiation is a basic tenet of Christianity that Zizek seems unaware of (and least it didn't come out tonight).

But it is a miracle that perhaps Zizek is on the way to experiencing. That is, the miracle of believing (as Christians do) that the reality of God is true independent of our belief in it, and it remains true independent of any benefit that such belief imparts. In fact, persistence of faith despite its impartation of benefit may be exactly what the "My God my God why have you forsaken me" that Zizek finds so fascinating is all about.

John Henry Newman once said that liberalism [in religion mind you, not politics] is a half-way house to atheism. Similarly Zizek's brand of Marxism may be a half-way house to actual Christianity.

Should he keep up his fascination, then "brother Slavoj" he actually might one day become.

original deconstruction 2

...the sequel.

Herbert Butterfield sums up a lifetime of historical reflection as a Christian in his precise and powerful book Christianity and History. Despite recent reflections (which are also worthwhile), the meditations of H.B. have, I think, yet to be surpassed.

Butterfield describes the "gravitational pull" of what he terms "cupidity," (a.k.a. "falleness"). It is "an historical equivalent to the theological assertion that all men are sinners" (59). Because of this irrepressable tendency, divine judgement often requires no divine effort at all:

"Sometimes God has only to withhold his protection and let events take their course - 'I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be' - and the penalty comes from His formidable non-intervention" (80).

But to get around to deconstruction:

"It seems that nothing could be more exact perhaps for any man that the statement that 'all men are sinners and I the chief of them.' or the the thesis, 'There but for the grace of God go I'... All this seems to be the final effect of the reading of history upon me. And if anybody answers me that of course there must have been great saints whom I slander in all my descriptions of human nature, I accept the correction, but still note the fact that these always seem to me to be the people who are most emphatically in agreement with me on the point that I am making"(64).

This is the classical Christian doctrine of original sin in action, and what else is it than a fundamental deconstruction of humanity from the start? Unpopular as it may be, far more absurd (and dangerous) is the alternative, which as G.K. Chesterton remarked, is "to believe in the Immaculate Conception of everybody."