Curtis A. Bronzan

The books on the left symbolize the completion of the coursework for my ThM, with nothing but the 8 unit thesis left to write. These books formed my final two classes, Missiological Integration with Douglas McConnell and a reading on postmodern culture with Barry Taylor.

I’ll be spending the summer doing some unofficial reading in order to present my thesis proposal in September, in order to begin writing in the fall. If all goes well, I’ll have a rough draft ready by the end of the year, which will function as a writing sample for the PhD program. But we’ll see about that.

In this post, I continue arguing for the deconstruction of the church (previously here and here).

In a public debate with anthropologist René Girard, Gianni Vattimo summed up his philosophical project, stating, “[e]verything depends on an effort to be faithful to the basic purpose of Heidegger’s philosophy, even against Heidegger himself.” (Christianity, Truth and Weakening Faith, 83) Indeed, Vattimo has sought to extend Heidegger’s writing by elucidating the dissolution of metaphysical pensiero forte in favor of what he terms weak thought.

This necessarily includes Heidegger’s Verwindung, explicated well by Thomas Guarino: “[t]he task is one of healing, which is also a kind of twisting and even deformation, because modernity must be disciplined and rethought in our own epoch and culture.” (Vattimo and Theology, 7) In his public debate, Vattimo likewise asserts, “The overcoming of metaphysics – which in Heidegger’s view, as readers probably know, can only be Verwindung, and acceptance-distortion – will prepare a new way of conceiving Being that might also reopen the possibility for religious experience…” (CTWF, 82)

Such an ‘acceptance-distortion’ adopted by Vattimo functions as a corollary to our project here, namely how to appropriate Jesus’ first-century temple action to twenty-first century ecclesiology. As we will see, such healing, twisting, and deforming truly ‘depends on an effort to be faithful to the basic purpose’ of Jesus’ countercultural, counter-temple mission.

As aforementioned, Vattimo’s project continues the thought of Heidegger and Nietzsche, the latter of whom marked the demise of modernity with his famous – and largely misunderstood – phrase “God is dead.”  Guarino notes, “it is Nietzsche’s manifesto “God is dead” that marks the real passage from modernity.” (VT, 6) Metaphysics, it has been argued, sought to enforce an extrinsic, final norm, restricting human freedom, putting an end to the discussion of humanity’s becoming in history, jeopardizing the liberty of human self-creation and ending the continuing conversation of historical consciousness. (VT, 39)

While the majority of Christian history has rejoiced in such strong foundational principles, Vattimo argues it is rather the demise of metaphysics that is the true fulfillment of the Christian message. In After the Death of God, Vattimo asserts, “Christianity is a stimulus, a message that sets in motion a tradition of thought that will eventually realize its freedom from metaphysics.” (After the Death of God, 35) Thus, instead of mourning this loss of truth, all Christians should rejoice in this fulfillment of the Christian message, which seeks to demolish and replace strong constructs. From the outset, then, we can see an apt comparison with Jesus’ temple proclamation, if we simply substitute the metaphysical structures for the first-century physical structure: “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” (John 2.19)

This postmodern mindset has elsewhere been explicated as “incredulity toward metanarratives.” (Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, xxiv) Indeed, as Guarino asserts, “[i]n the postmodern age, we must live with endless contingencies rather than with secure and available foundations.” (VT, 7) While this sentiment may trouble many in the Christian West, Vattimo asserts that this is a positive development, as it keeps us from using God as a first principle, as if the Divine Being can be asserted as an uninterpreted reality. (See, in particular, Vattimo and Theology, 11)  Is this not, then, congruent with Jesus’ quotation of Isaiah 56.7 immediately following His prophetic temple action, wherein the structure points to the Divine rather than defining it? Indeed, the temple structure was meant to be “a house of prayer for all nations.” We are now in a position to further explicate the contribution of Vattimo’s “weak thought.”

The shift from metaphysics to weak thought is explicated well by a dialogue between Richard Rorty, Gianni Vattimo, and Santiago Zabala, in The Future of Religion. At the outset, Zabala identifies the metaphysical tradition as “dominated by the thought that there is something nonhuman that human beings should try to live up to – a thought that today finds its most plausible expression in the scientific conception of culture.” (The Future of Religion, 55-56) In response, Rorty summarizes weak thought in a highly Vattimian vein:

Cutting oneself of from the metaphysical Logos is pretty much the same thing as ceasing to look for power and instead being content with charity. The gradual movement within Christianity in recent centuries in the direction of the social ideals of the Enlightenment is a sign of the gradual weakening of the worship of God as power and its gradual replacement with the worship of God as love. (FR, 55-56)

In this way – even in the words of Rorty – we see Vattimo’s primary philosophical insight and its connection with Christian faith. Vattimo goes so far as to state “postmodern nihilism (the end of metanarratives) is the truth of Christianity. Which is to say that Christianity’s truth appears to be the dissolution of the (metaphysical) truth concept itself.” (51) Though his detractors have questioned whether the Torinese is more influenced by Nietzsche and Heidegger than by the Christian Scriptures here, Vattimo would argue that the weakening of metaphysical thought is entirely congruent with the incarnation.  Vattimo defends himself thusly:

Lyotard and other theoreticians of postmodernism have neither noticed nor stated… that Nietzsche and Heidegger speak not only from within the modern process of dissolution of metanarratives but above all from within the biblical tradition. It is not so very absurd to assert that the death of God announced by Nietzsche is, in many ways, the death of Christ on the cross told by the Gospels.” (FR, 46)

He notes especially the kenotic hymn in Philippians 2.6-8, which asserts that in taking on human flesh, Jesus

being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death –
even death on a cross!

For the purposes of our project, then, we can extend this theory to include not only the event of the incarnation itself but, more precisely, the incarnation as it relates to Jesus’ death. While the Apostle Paul is quick to note the sacrificial death of Jesus, his writings never engage the historical reason behind his death, namely, the temple act. Therefore, we must ‘deconstruct’ Paul, recognizing that Jesus’ ‘obedient… death on a cross’ was the result of His justified judgment of the temple’s sacrificial system. In so doing, we are better prepared to accept the fullness of Vattimo’s insight, that “kenosis serves as a cipher or symbol of the essential message of the Gospel which is ‘love’ and ‘charity’ toward the other, especially charitable tolerance toward other interpretive ‘styles.’” (VT, 116)

Indeed, the kenosis of Jesus, especially regarding the love and charity He sought to extend through Israel’s central institution, is the essential message of the Gospel. See also Eugenio Trias:

In the course of all this, a symbolizing form or figure emerges that is conditioned in its turn by a determinate foundation: the matrix of the entire symbolic process. This matrix or matter provides physical support for the symbol. To present itself as a symbolic form or figure it must, of course, be formed or transformed. (Religion, 104)

This weakening of metaphysical structures in postmodern culture reveals that “[w]e live… in a world without a center, a Babel-like plurality, with an irreducible number of different Weltanschauungen.” (VT, 26) Again, while many Christians would mourn this as a loss, Vattimo rejoices in such pluralism, as he asserts in After Christianity: “our task is to build consensus in dialogue, without making any claims for absolute truth.” (After Christianity, 5) Again, we simply ask, is this not similar to the perspective offered by Jesus, following the destruction of the temple? Instead of a ‘den of robbers’, Jesus asserts that the temple is to be ‘a house of prayer for all nations’. Would this not be the center of ‘Babel-like plurality’?

Instead of asserting the preeminence of doctrinal truth claims, then, Vattimo sees the mission of the church as one that exercises caritas in the midst of pluralism. Guarino argues that for Vattimo, “secularization is the legitimate fruit of religious charity because it opens society to every point of view, thereby rejecting an aggressive religiosity that degenerates into fundamentalist ideology, seeking to exclude those viewpoints not conforming to the ‘prevailing wisdom.’” (VT, 20)

Instead of a violent ecclesiology then – which he might define as “an act of imposition on the other and her liberty”, (CTWF, 45) we are invited to see the fulfillment of Christian faith in and through the charity offered to our ‘other.’ Thus, such metaphysical claims were never meant to be characteristic of Christianity, since it “has its own form of rationality and justification; its truth warrants and criteria are to be found in the Christian community itself, not in universal standards that are imported and imposed from elsewhere.” (VT, 81) Though outside of our central text, the Gospels hold similar equations between exercising faith and the other, with Jesus even equating Himself with those in need: “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 25.40)

As we have seen, Vattimo’s twenty-first century philosophical insights regarding the dissolution of metaphysics are applicable to Jesus’ first-century symbolic temple action. His insights regarding the need to perform a Verwindung could be compared to Derrida’s deconstructive efforts, each of which can lead us as we seek to reform the church. We further have seen the need for ecclesiology to renounce the strong structures of modernity, instead accepting the fluidity of postmetaphysical thought. If so, we can reaffirm our commitment to caritas, living into our divine calling, which could profoundly effect our postmodern culture. As Vattimo asserts, “our only chance for human survival rests in the Christian commandment of charity.” (FR, 54)

In this post, I continue looking at the deconstruction of the church by engaging with René Girard, who, being trained as an anthropologist and historian, has written extensively upon the inherent violent nature of cultural systems by thoroughly examining literature as well as engaging the founding myths of civilization(s). He is known for articulating the connection between sacrificial violence and religious systems, developing the theory of mimetic desire, and describing the scapegoat mechanism – three concepts intimately intertwined.

Girard argues that only the Judeo-Christian Scriptures give us the possibility of denying such violent, culturally inherited impulses. In Girard and Theology, Michael Kirwan states, “Jesus’ ferocious attack on Israel’s religious leaders is really an assault on a religious system which preserves its authority and integrity at the expense of sacrificial victims.” (GT, 83)

Thus, Girard is a necessary thinker for seeking to fashion a postmodern ecclesiology in light of Jesus destruction of the temple.

Mimetic theory builds on the insights of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who asserted that subjects desire what others possess, in defiance of the tenth commandment! Girard, however, postulates that our desires are even more rudimentary: specifically that we desire what we see others desiring. He stated in an interview that

the root of all conflict is… ‘competition’, mimetic rivalry between persons, countries, cultures. Competition is the desire to imitate the other in order to obtain the same thing he or she has, by violence if need be… Human relations are essentially relations of imitation, of rivalry. (GT, 22-23)

Could we not extend his statement to include even religious communities seeking to increase their attendance? Whenever difficulty arises in a given society, this mimesis leads to violence. To understand why this is so, we must turn our attention toward another of Girard’s theories, the scapegoat mechanism.

In his book The Scapegoat, Girard sets out by engaging with Guillaume de Machaut, a French poet in the mid-fourteenth century, who authored Judgment of the King of Navarre. In it, Guillaume describes what we now refer to as the Black Plague, which he wrongly believes was caused by Jews who purposely poisoned the town’s drinking water. Using this historical event – and more importantly Machaut’s explication of it – allows Girard to explicate how the Jews were scapegoated:

Ultimately, the persecutors always convince themselves that a small number of people, or even a single individual, despite his relative weakness, is extremely harmful to the whole of society. The stereotypical accusation justifies and facilitates this belief by ostensibly acting the role of mediator. (TS, 15)

An obvious corollary is evident in the Gospel accounts. Notice even in Mark, most likely the earliest account, that asserts,

the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead.
“What shall I do, then, with the one you call the king of the Jews?” Pilate asked them.
“Crucify him!” they shouted.
“Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate.
But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!”
Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified. (Mark 15.11-15)

Within this account we can easily recognize both the scapegoat mechanism applied to Jesus, as one who is presented by Pilate as an innocent victim, as well as mimetic desire, with the chief priests ‘stirring up the crowd’ to release Barabbas instead.

His reading of the Gospel accounts, especially through the lens of myth, leads Girard to continually argue for the victimization and innocence of Jesus. While ultimately, of course, this is undeniable, the way in which Girard does so betrays a historical understanding of Jesus’ temple action and its ramifications.

In I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, Girard states, “the Gospels are aware of what they are doing. They not only tell the truth about victims unjustly condemned, but they know they are telling it, and they know that in speaking the truth they are taking again the path of the Hebrew Bible.” (127) By reading the Gospel accounts as primarily literary texts, Girard fails to properly integrate the historical event that undergirds them. Thus, we must further deconstruct Girard’s deconstruction!

Again, without seeking to assert that Jesus’ crucifixion was somehow justified, notice Mark’s explanatory comment following the symbolic temple action and Jesus’ ‘teaching’: “The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.” (Mark 11.18) While the evangelist has revealed that the ‘chief priests and teachers of the law’ have been seeking to kill Jesus since the early chapters of Mark, it is this quotation that leads directly to the crucifixion.

Thus, Kirwan’s interpretation, that “Jesus symbolically completes his mission to Israel through the cleansing of the Temple, but instead of preaching resentful vengeance he moves towards a loving self-offering as an act of atonement for the collective force of human sin”, (GT, 38) is reversed. Indeed, it is the other way around: Jesus’ loving self-offering leads Him to symbolically complete his mission to Israel through the destruction of the Temple. Of course, as the fulfillment of the promised Messiah, Jesus’ judgment upon the temple system was entirely justified.

Contrary to the charge leveled against deconstruction, Girard’s theory vehemently relinquishes any emphasis on lack. Kirwan asserts,

mimetic theory renounces any kind of ‘pact with the negative’ which makes the sinfulness and need of the human beings the controlling factor in the narrative. The reality is the other way around: we only have a sense of the mess because Christ has been raised from the dead. (GT, 68)

It is striking, then, that both he and Girard include few of the historical implications of Jesus’ counter-temple movement, which need not be confined to the symbolic event that induces the temple authorities at the end of the synoptics, but could also be implied throughout Jesus’ continual mission to extend the Kingdom outside Israel’s central institution. To his credit, Girard does find great significance in Jesus’ quotation of Psalm 118:22; “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone”, which is found in each of the synoptic Gospels, Acts, and 1st Peter. Kirwan notes, “‘The stone the builders rejected’ means that the fate of the scapegoated victim has become the great hermeneutical principle, enabling us to decode all such instances of persecution.” (GT, 84)

Though he does not engage specifically with Jesus destruction of the temple, we can recognize the importance of Girard’s thinking for our thesis. Indeed, Girard’s insight to the nature of religious systems and their violent foundations helps us recognize the possible implication of Jesus’ death, were we to fully recognize it in the way Girard reveals. And while we may not go so far as to assert that “no religious culture or institution has done a demonstratively better job of ‘deconstructing’ sacred violence than Christianity”, (GT, 123) we could agree that this ought to be the case. Indeed, Girard’s theory does present “a petite idée of infinite applicability, rather than yet another totalizing system”, (GT, 134) especially in light of our project here.

Jesus’ destructive temple action functions as the fulfillment of His counter-cultural, counter-temple movement which sought to emphatically extend the good news of the Kingdom to the other, in which Girard’s theory does assist. Engaging with Girard’s Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, Kirwan explains: “There is no change in ‘me’ without change in my relation to the other; nor is there any change in ‘me’ unless it is initiated by the other.” (GT, 51) This insight is perhaps most helpful, as it pertains specifically to Jesus’ proclamation, that the temple was to be “a house of prayer for all nations”, (Mark 11.17) necessarily implying engagement with the other – and the Other.

In this post, I argue for the deconstruction of the church by addressing the father of deconstruction, Jacques Derrida. I do so primarily through engaging Derrida and Theology, a recent book by Steven Shakespeare. In the coming days, I will do the same by looking at the work of Gianni Vattimo and René Girard.

At the outset of Derrida and Theology, Steven Shakespeare relates the work of Jacques Derrida to Woody Allen’s 1997 movie Deconstructing Harry. He writes

Allen’s film plays on the caricature of the dissolute writer. [The main character] objects to religious fanaticism, indeed to all religion as arbitrary and exclusive, undermining our universal obligations to all people regardless of creed and race. However, his own life is fragmented, shallow and bitter. He cannot help confusing real life and fiction, with disastrous consequences for the former. He seems incapable of sustaining any lasting relationship. In the end, it is only his fiction that offers him any redemption, any way of gathering the shards of his life together. (DT, 1)

This comparison, though limited, holds keen insights for another comparison at the heart of this essay: the work of Derrida with Jesus’ first-century temple action. Just as Block, the main character in Allen’s film, objects to fanatical expressions of faith, so Jesus’ deconstructive temple action pronounces judgment upon exclusivist religious practices in his day.

Indeed, as we will see, Jesus’ pronouncement immediately following his action, seeks to reorient the first-century Temple toward its original purpose for the ‘other’: to be “a house of prayer for all nations.” (Mark 11.17) While we may not be willing to go as far as to assert that His personal life is not divided, the Gospels do present Jesus as the fulfillment of Israel’s history, whose communal life could be characterized as “fragmented, shallow and bitter.” Further, Jesus cannot help integrating the Hebrew Scriptures with his own life, indeed with “disastrous consequences,” and yet it is this text that guides His mission toward redemptive meaning. A final similarity is found in Jesus’ relationship with the religious authorities, His twelve disciples, and even His own family, each of who have been entirely incapable of sustaining any pronounced commitment to His Kingdom movement. This post, then, will seek to explore the culmination of Jesus’ counter-Temple movement with regard not to Harry Block, but Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction.

There are those, of course, who would question engaging Christian theology or ecclesiology with one who openly declares he could “rightly pass for an atheist.” At the same time, we ought to recognize that this perspective “ignores the difficult and contested history of theology itself, which, even confining ourselves to the Christian tradition, is one of dialogues, appropriations of other languages, debates and disputes.” (DT, 3) Indeed, in faith “we are invited into the space of an open-ended conversation.” (DT, 7)

At the outset, we note the limits of comparing Jesus’ action with Derrida’s concept:

Deconstruction is not so much a technique that an individual can master and employ. It is more an inherent dynamic of language and meaning. It is something that happens, and that reading and writing and acting engages with, without us ever fully grasping it. Reading deconstructively means something like being attentive to an event, an unexpected arrival, that interrupts, contradicts and dislocates what appeared to be settled and fixed. (DT, 25)

Indeed, deconstruction – which builds upon Heidegger’s destruktion – is not something to be employed in order to bring about a desired result. At the outset, then, it seems there is an inherent problem in our comparison, namely that we are arguing for Jesus’ action as the employment of this technique. On the contrary, our thesis here is much simpler: that Jesus’ temple action functions as the culmination of His mission, which, as a result of our reading here, can be characterized as opening a space for the Event. This must taken place, then, “in the middle of secondariness, interpretation and flux.” (DT, 27) In this sense, then, we are seeking to view Jesus’ mission as a reading of first-century Jewish faith, which ‘interrupts, contradicts and dislocates’ the seemingly ‘settled and fixed’ system of power. Notice, for instance, Matthew 11.16-17:

To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others:
We played the flute for you,
and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge
and you did not mourn.

Indeed, here we see Jesus deconstructively “reading” the faith of those within His own first-century context. As Steven Shakespeare notes, “Human religion produces only idols. Only the free self-revelation of a wholly other God can create in us the capacity to receive God’s word.” (DT, 210)

As aforementioned, the mission of Jesus took place secondarily, within the history of interpretation. While a Christian understanding regarding the role of the temple is often projected onto the gospels, we must seek to pull back these layers to reveal a Jewish understanding. As Derrida asserts in Glas, “The risk, then, is the Jewish reading.” (DT, 124) Jesus’ particular reading regarding the role of the temple could have been influenced by Solomon’s prayer of dedication in 1st Kings 8.41-43, which includes an emphasis similar to what some proponents of “missional” thinking would assert today:

As for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel but has come from a distant land because of your name – for men will hear of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm – when he comes and prays toward this temple, then hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and do whatever the foreigner asks of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your own people Israel, and may know that this house I have built bears your Name.

Structurally, then, the temple was meant to be “associated with the reality of the object”, (DT, 35) in this case, YHWH – for ‘all the peoples of the earth.’ And yet, as Derrida would assert, “[s]ense can be lost along the way. Meaning can wander from its source.” (DT, 32) Jesus’ temple action, viewed from this perspective, seeks to reorient Israel’s central institution back to its original purpose. Thus, it functions as both the continuation and fulfillment of His counter-temple movement that has previously included subversive teaching, table fellowship, healing, forgiveness, and symbolic actions (such as baptism and the Passover meal) all of which were tied unambiguously to the Temple cult.

Jesus’ temple action, then, reveals that the institution is a function of what Derrida would call différance, a term crafted by Derrida himself. This neologism plays on the French word différer, which can mean both “to defer” and “to differ.” Thus, Jesus is seeking to remind the Jews that the temple was originally built in order that all people would know YHWH, who is both different from the institution and to whom the institution is meant to defer. As Derrida himself asserts in Writing and Difference, “[l]ife negates itself in literature only so that it may survive better. So that it may be better. It does not negate itself any more than it affirms itself: it differs from itself, defers itself and writes itself as difference.” (DT, 98)

Commenting on this, Shakespeare notes, “In this sense, life and God are close to one another.” In the same way, Jesus’ temple action negates the institution in order to save it. Note also: “The trace is always crossing itself out, always deferred, never at one, never home. The trace is therefore not only a condition of meaning of unmeaning too.” (DT, 41)

With many allusions to what seems like a negative Christian theology, Derrida seeks to distance himself by utilizing the term khôra, found in Plato, and more recently Heidegger, which is defined not as “a receptacle, not a giver or gift… [though] in its passivity… allows the world to take place.” (DT, 154) If we can briefly set aside the idea of a receptacle as a physical area, we must ask, is not such an ‘interval’ or ‘space’ congruent with Jesus’ declaration regarding the purpose of the temple? Indeed, by overturning tables and benches, as well as keeping anyone from using the temple court as a shortcut through town, Jesus seeks to provide a passive openness to the other. It can become, then, “not a barren desert (a very patriarchal image of lonely aridity) but a fecund matrix, a womb of possibilities and new life.” (DT, 202)

Notice a similar theme in Derrida’s assertion in Writing and Difference, that

God separated himself from himself in order to let us speak, in order to astonish and interrogate us. He did so not by speaking but by keeping still, by letting silence interrupt his voice and his signs, by letting the Tables be broken… God no longer speaks to us, he has interrupted himself: we must take words upon ourselves.” (DT, 67; 68)

If our thesis, so far, is correct, we can find a corollary between Jesus’ temple action and the demise of Western metaphysics. Shakespeare notes that Derrida’s project uncovered how

the very openness and incompleteness that we find in the most purified structures of truth shows that such distinctions are unstable at best. At worst, they lead us back into dogmatism. We might even suggest that they result in a form of idolatry: taking as timeless and absolute what is secondary and contingent. (DT, 49)

In the same way, the structure of the first-century Temple cult reveals an incomplete system of truth, namely because of its exclusion of the other. Its dogmatism can be as clearly perceived as its idolatry. We need no further evidence than to note that, historically speaking, Jesus temple action leads directly to his execution. Note especially Mark 11.18, which immediately follows Jesus’ action and proclamation: “The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.”

We have been seeking to elucidate how the first-century temple functioned similarly to how Socrates viewed writing; as a pharmakon, “a Greek word that means both cure and poison.” (DT, 57) As such, we are now at a place to recognize the primary reason Derrida’s project is so central to Jesus’ symbolic action. This is due to its functioning as a heterology, a project focused on radical otherness, as Rodolphe Gasché has asserted. Indeed,

Derrida does not claim that deconstruction must be purely secular, this-worldly, renouncing all ideas of transcendence. We should not forget that it is in the name of the other, in response to the other, that deconstruction seeks to expose the limits of any system. (DT, 75)

In the same way, as aforementioned, Jesus’ entire countercultural, counter-Temple mission and temple action is centered on the ‘other.’ Note, again, Jesus’ proclamation:

Is it not written:
‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’ (Mark 11.17)

For the temple cult to remain faithful to its “missional” calling, it was to be a place where all people could come to pray. And yet, it had betrayed its purpose. Just as Derrida asserted that “[w]riting exposes us to the other, not just the other person but to the wholly other that subverts our mastery and divides our human essence”, (DT, 83) so the function of the temple was meant to be a place that exposed God’s holy people to other people and to Himself, the tout autre.

It has been written that “[f]or Derrida, philosophy is always obsessed with its ‘other’” (DT, 57), and yet, this is much more than ethereal philosophical speculation. Indeed, “Derrida’s thought invites the coming of the other, the address of the other, and this is an irreducibly religious motif.” (DT, 197) Jesus’ symbolic action, then, seeks to reopen the structural understanding of the first-temple so that it can be available to the other: “In other words, signs can only be available to others if they are not tied to a present meaning immediately contained within my own mind.” (DT, 79)

The temple had, of course, become irreplaceably tied to a function of what Emile Durkheim would call mechanical solidarity, namely that there are insiders and outsiders, with obvious distinctions between them. Missiologically speaking, the temple had become a bounded set, when it was meant to be centered. By engaging with Foucault’s History of Madness, we see the injustice of the temple was, in some sense, necessary:

This inhuman madness is necessary for thought to get going. If it is not acknowledged, even by those wishing to stand up for the victims of history’s exclusions, then we risk erecting a totalitarian structure, with all the potential for violence that entails (and we should not this early ethical concern of Derrida’s). (DT, 84)

Here one thinks of Žižek’s dictum that those who rob banks are often those who set up others – and it could be argued that throughout history Christian ecclesial institutions have done just that. Steven Shakespeare notes that at the American Academy of Religion conference, John Caputo once asked Jacques Derrida “To whom did Derrida pray and what answer did he expect?” (DT, 11) In his reply, Derrida noted that “his skepticism is part of the prayer, part of an openness to the approach of the other that no secular or religious system [could] stifle.” (DT, 13)

In conclusion, we again ask, can we not find in this response a similarity to the prayer that Jesus believes should be characteristic in the khôra of the temple? Is this not why he seeks to deconstruct the entire temple cult? Shakepeare concludes with a statement about Derrida, that could be easily applied to Jesus’ symbolic temple action: “It is as if he is saying, or showing us, that one way in which to disrupt systems of thought that have totalitarian pretensions is to pray.” (DT, 15)

As we have seen, Derrida’s thought lends itself quite well to aspects of Christian theology and ecclesiology. His emphasis on deconstruction helps us imagine – in a postmodern setting – what ministry in Jesus’ name among systems of power could look like. His emphasis on différance reminds us that, to employ Nietzsche’s assertion, our institutions are not facts, but are merely interpretations. And his khôra helps us recognize what such institutions could be. It has been noted, “[p]erhaps we can find in Derrida, if not a new theology, at least a thinker who provokes us to consider the possibility of doing theology otherwise.” (DT, 47) Could we not, in the same way, find in Derrida, if not a new ecclesiology, at least a thinker who provokes us to consider the possibility of doing ecclesiology otherwise?

As with any societal shift, the definitive beginning of postmodern culture is difficult to define, though of course, that has not stopped some from trying. The late Stanley J. Grenz, asserted “[p]ostmodernism was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 15, 1972, at 3:32pm,” (Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism, 11) when the Pruitt-Igoe housing project was razed with dynamite.

Note also Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, who state

[s]ometime between 1960 and 1980, an old, inadequately conceived world ended, and a fresh, dynamic new world began… Although it may sound trivial, one of us is tempted to date the shift sometime on a Sunday evening in 1963. Then, in Greenville, South Carolina, in defiance of the state’s time-honored blue laws, the Fox Theatre opened on Sunday. (Resident Aliens, 15)

James K.A. Smith notes others: “student riots in 1968, the abandonment of the gold standard, the fall of the Berlin Wall.” (Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?, 19)

As “a landmark of modern architecture,” the housing project was “the epitome of modernity itself in its goal of employing technology to create a utopian society for the benefit of all.” (Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism, 11) This metaphor rightly envisions postmodernity as the pessimistic successor to modernity, a period largely characterized by unparalleled optimism in the progress of humanity. Near the height of modernity, such optimism was present even in evangelical mission, as seen in the statement heralded by John R. Mott, who sought “the evangelization of the world in this generation.” (Hopkins, John R. Mott, in Mission Legacies, 82) Hopkins is careful to note, however, that Mott “did not invent [this] motto… but he made it his own.”

What is somewhat easier to address than the date of this shift is its significance for our contemporary culture. While the modern world was characterized by the optimistic belief that universal reason could “demystify and illuminate the world over and against religion, myth and superstition,” (Barker, Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice, 188) postmodern thought has criticized the very structure of knowledge itself. Jean-Franois Lyotard provided the benchmark definition when he branded postmodernity as characterized by “incredulity toward metanarratives,” (Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, xxiv)

This statement, alongside many other postmodernists’ work builds upon the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, who similarly wrote, “there are no facts, only interpretations.” (Notebooks, Summer 1886 – Fall 1887) which, in French, is grand reçits, or big stories, thus revealing the extent to which postmodernity turns the tables on its predecessor, modernity. Later Lyotard builds upon his definition when he questions, “[w]here, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside?”, (Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, xxv) signaling the importance of grappling with this cultural shift missiologically.

Taken at his word, Lyotard seems to be advocating a shift that set us afloat in the ocean like Kevin Costner’s character “Mariner” in the 1995 film, Waterworld. (noted by Barry Taylor, Entertainment Theology, 89) He notes that

its story line exemplifies some key elements of the postmodern situation, particularly as they relate to spiritual expression… The old world remains intact but lies submerged under the new, much as the structures of modernity lie rusting under the new postmodern world.

In one sense, this is very much the case for those who have grown up in a media saturated world, including both MTV and the internet. We must recognize, however, that this seemingly ivory tower-based, philosophical turn has impacted – and continues to impact – the daily lives of Westerners, including how they understand the role of the truth. This greatly influences postmoderns’ ability to accept the veracity and inspiration of the Scriptures, a topic to which will return in a later post.

While many indeed feel afloat in the ocean, it need not be viewed in an entirely negative sense as if we are yearning for dry ground upon which we can place our authority, but rather we can recognize that, as Charles H. Kraft observes, God has created all people “like fish swimming in cultural water.” (Kraft, Anthropology for Christian Witness, 8) While our current philosophical and cultural setting may seem liquid, this may not be an impediment to faith, but rather a possibility to rely upon the strength of the One who is greater.

We must recall that while other seemingly “postmodern” thinkers have been reticent to use the term, Lyotard enthusiastically endorses “postmodernism”:

Lyotard [has] embraced the perspectival conception of knowledge and the term ‘postmodern’… which involves a loss of faith in the foundational schemes that have justified the rational, scientific, technological and political projects of the modern world. (Barker, Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice, 195)

Note especially the phrase “loss of faith,” in the quote above, which reveals a significant dynamic for our understanding of the modern postmodern split. While it is common to question the role of postmodern philosophy and culture in light of a Christian worldview, some similar charges – if not many of the same – could also be leveled against modernist perceptions, which also required “faith.”

We should note, then, the specific faith Lyotard seeks to question is an entirely reason-based scientific knowledge, which “when called on (by itself) to legitimate itself, cannot help but appeal to narrative.” (Smith, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?, 67) Smith goes on to argue, “[w]henever science attempts to legitimate itself, it is no longer scientific but narrative, appealing to an orienting myth that is not susceptible to scientific legitimation.”

Thus, Lyotard’s critique of universal reason and the metanarratives that explicate it’s “findings” are specifically those which are indebted to an Enlightenment philosophy, and thus have sought to undermine Christian faith by requiring “proof.” Thus, James K.A. Smith concludes,

Christian thinkers should find in Lyotard’s critique of metanarratives and autonomous reason an ally that opens up the space for a radically Christian witness in the postmodern world – both in thought and practice… In this way the playing field is leveled, and new opportunities to voice a Christian philosophy are created. (Smith, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?, 73)

At the same time, some necessary cautions must be offered to Lyotard’s postmodernism. Paul H. Hiebert asserts that an instrumentalist epistemology led to postmodernity’s deconstructionism, which he defines as “giving up the search for one grand unifying theory of knowledge, and celebrating pluralism and diversity despite their incongruity and lack of coherence.” (Hiebert, Anthropological Reflections on Missiological Issues, 62) It should be noted, however briefly, that most contemporary philosophers would reject Hiebert’s definition as overly negative, which was not the intention of Jacques Derrida in adapting the word from Husserl and Heidegger for literary usage.

Indeed, John Caputo notes that far from being a destruction, Derrida’s constant refrain viens! is like “the precursor John whose Baptist voice cries out in the desert of the same for the other who is to come. Viens precedes the event structurally; it always precedes and calls for the event because in messianic time, the event is always yet to come.” (Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, 89)

Thus, while we may recognize in Lyotard and other postmodernists allies who also question the gods of modernity, we cannot go so far as to adopt their worldview as our own. We must instead, seek to hold fast to the revealed and incarnate truth of the One who is “the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14.6)

After a couple nights of tossing and turning, I slept in for quite a while this morning. A little after 10am, I pulled myself out of bed, took the dog for a walk, grabbed some coffee, and set out for a lunch meeting in Pasadena.

I had a great lunch meeting with Barry Taylor, one of the professors with whom I’ve been studying toward my ThM, in the Fuller cafeteria. The food was palatable, the conversation brilliant (in the British sense of the term).

After picking up a few books at the bookstore (three as gifts, two for me), I headed off to mall near Hollywood to purchase a gift certificate for a friend. While there, I took a break from driving and dug into Christianity, Truth, and Weakening Faith: A Dialogue (between Gianni Vattimo and René Girard – two authors that were a part of the lunchtime conversation, though I purchased the book just today).

Here’s some excerpts from the introduction:

This book… offers two voices in the contemporary intellectual debate that are engaged not in separating the two camps but in uniting them, on the basis of an intuition already partially elaborated by Max Weber, implicitly suggested and described by Eric Auerbach in Mimesis, and more recently argued by Marcel Gauchet, to the effect that secularization – and hence laicism – is, in substance, produced by Christianity. In other words, Christianity is the religion of the exit from religion, and democracy, the free market, civil rights, individual freedoms, and laicism have all been, if not precisely invented in the absolute sense, “facilitated” in their development and expression by the Christian cultures. Even Richard Rorty, a philosopher allergic to the religious, has recently conceded this – though without attempting an explanation of the historical reasons. (2)

In his polemic against Christianity, Nietzsche was able to discern the real anthropological kernel of religion: its sacrificial and victimizing origins. (6)

The nexus between religion and violence, which appears so striking to us today, comes about not because religions are intrinsically violent but rather because religion is above all a mode of knowledge about mankind’s violence and the ways of keeping it in check, about the “homeopathic” use of violence in order to control violence (from which derives Girard’s interpretation of the apparently cryptic passage in the Gospels about “Satan casting out Satan.”) (7)

For Girard, the Christian gospel (or, if one prefers, the New Testament) was the hermeneutic key that made it possible, in history, to reinterpret both mythology and the Hebrew Scriptures (or the Old Testament) as the gradual emergence into historical awareness of the violent and persecutory matrix of the social and cultural order, and to interpret the sacrifice of Christ as the moment of rupture of the equilibrium that had kept the symbolic-religious mechanism on which the archaic societies were based stable, recurring, and mythical. (8)

…Christianity is not a “religion” in the strict sense but a principle that destructures all the archaic religions and must temporarily clothe itself as an institutional “religion,” too, so as to be able to enter into dialogue with the historicity of religions. Like a Trojan horse, it penetrates the age-old citadel of the mentalities instituted by the natural religions and empties it from inside, adopting the language and symbolism of the religions but completely reversing their meaning, demystifying all the violence on which the walls of the citadel of the sacred had been erected. (8)

Vattimo the “progressive” tries to drag Girard the “conservative” onto his own terrain, asking him to accept all the theoretical consequences implicit in his own analysis of Christianity as the religion that reveals the victimizing foundation of human culture; that destructures all the natural religions from within, steering them toward their own disappearance; that heralds the deconstruction of all the rigid structures imposed by history: state or ecclesiastical apparatuses, authoritarian notions about truth and nature, and so on. (14)

The problem is that today, with the dissolution of any solid philosophical, political, ethical, or religious foundation, its place is taken by the caricatural version called fundamentalism, which, in fact, recuperates all the persecutory forms typical of the sacred. (18)

Can you tell I’m excited about this book?

Grades were due for the fall quarter at Fuller today, which means that after a couple busy weeks of grading 50+ final papers, I’m now able to return to some of my own research interests. I won’t begin actually writing my ThM thesis until this summer (after a required integration course in the spring), though this quarter I have the opportunity for another directed study with Barry Taylor, a professor who has significantly shaped my thinking in past courses as well as a previous directed study.

The first section of my ThM thesis will specifically examine Jesus’ action in the temple through detailed exegetical work. From there, however, I’m not exactly sure how best to proceed in arguing for a (post)modern de(con)struction of (our) temples that remain faithful to Jesus’ prophetic action.

As such, this quarter I’ll be examining the theological impact of a few different thinkers, some of whom I’m somewhat familiar with (Derrida, Vattimo, and Girard) and others of whom I’m not (Nietzsche, Rorty, and Foucault). Creating the reading list was rather difficult, especially considering T&T Clark’s recent “_____ and Theology” series as well as Baker’s Church and Postmodern Culture series. Ultimately, however, I’m excited about how it ended up – and am looking forward to conversations with Barry regarding the subject matter.

This fall, I again have the distinguished opportunity to do a directed study with Ryan Bolger, which comprises another 4 units en route to Fuller’s ThM degree in the School of Intercultural Studies.

I’ve previously been able to fill units (and even meet requirements) by studying missional ecclesiology with Ryan and postmodern philosophy/culture with Barry Taylor.

This quarter, however, I’ll be delving into the religious and social setting of the first century. Ultimately, my hope is that all three streams come together for my thesis, tentatively titled The De(con)struction of the Church: An(other) Attempt at Religion (Without Religion).