Curtis A. Bronzan

A brilliant animation of a Slavoj Žižek lecture addressing the central tenet of his book First As Tragedy, Then As Farce, engaging issues I’ve addressed before. (Hat tip: Michael Jimenez)

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)

While looking for pictures of Vattimo for an upcoming post, I ran across this realy cool sculpture, entitled Failed Dawn, here.

Got Kester Brewin’s new book Other: Loving Self, God and Neighbour in a World of Fractures in the post today. Looks like the box had something of a difficult time en route from the UK, but the books inside are in good condition.

I can’t wait to get into it, but need to finish up some writing first (on Rene Girard, Jacques Derrida, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Gianni Vattimo). I’ll try to post some of that here.

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.

In the midst of the trial before the Sanhedrin, testimony is brought against Jesus, asserting that He declared, “I will destroy this man-made temple and in three days will build another, not made by man” (Mark 14.58, see also Matthew 27.40, Mark 15.29, and John 2.20) though Mark is sure to assert that the testimony of these witnesses did not agree. Despite conflicting testimony, of course, Jesus is crucified as a political dissident.

To understand just how radically political Jesus actually was, we only have to ask why he was crucified. Clearly he was seen as such a major threat to the political powers who governed his land (both the Romans and the ruling Jewish establishment) that they saw only one way to deal with the challenged he presented – to remove that challenge by removing him through political execution. (The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative, 307)

In light of His crucifixion, of course, Jesus’ previously triumphant disciples quickly disperse. Commenting upon the section in the Apostle’s Creed which addresses this event, Karl Barth notes that at this point in the Credo, “the word of the believer completely coincides with the word of the unbeliever.” (Credo, 385) While it goes without saying that the three days in which Jesus remained in sheol were not experienced by His disciples as the high point of Christian community, His resurrection from the dead powerfully reinvigorates God’s initial purposes in Creation.

There is a great irony in John 20, where Mary’s assumes Jesus is the gardener, because in one sense, he is! (see Wright, The Challenge of Jesus) Jesus’ pronouncement of judgment on the Temple system, the destruction of His bodily Temple and its resurrection from the dead renews the Creator’s original purpose. It is in this light that Kirk rightly notes

[t]he Church is a ‘fellowship of the resurrection’, an event of the past which anticipates the transformation of all decay and corruption into new life. The Church is like a pin attracted to the magnet of the coming restoration of God’s rule over the whole of life. (What is Mission?, 218)

Following Jesus’ resurrection, of course, Jesus renews the call to “go” and “bless” through The Great Commission. After his ascension, God sends the third person of the Trinity, His Spirit “upon the whole community and upon each one of the members of that community. The Spirit creates koinonia, community with a purpose, to call all things to conversion and reconciliation in Jesus Christ.” (The Good News of the Kingdom, 135) This Spirit of koinonia is evident especially throughout the book of Acts, where it empowers Jesus’ disciples to continue His healing ministry.

Most notably for our study, of course, are episodes that involve the Temple, like the one found in Acts 3, where Luke sets the stage thusly: “One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer – at three in the afternoon.” (Acts 3.1) We should note, therefore, that even in light of Jesus’ proclamation of the destruction of the Temple, His disciples were drawn to it centripetally to continue their religious activity. This activity, however, did not preclude them from both healing in the Temple and proclaiming the good news of Jesus, even when it resulted in their immediate arrest. Furthermore, Peter’s message interestingly connects their interaction as well as Jesus crucifixion and resurrection to the story of Abram.

In his message following this healing, Peter not only connects what the people have just witnessed to the story of Jesus but to Abraham. He does this at the beginning of his word (‘The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus’ [v.13]), and then again at the end (‘You are the heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers. He said to Abraham, ‘Through your offspring all peoples on earth will be blessed.’… [Acts 3.25]). (The Mission of God, 246)

In Acts 8, conversely, the Temple is presented as a precursor, when an Ethiopian eunuch fulfills Isaiah 56.7 being introduced to Jesus not in the holy place but on his journey home through an encounter with Philip. Another interesting text is found in Acts 15, where James brings together two seemingly opposing ideas, namely the eschatological restoration of God’s “fallen tent” alongside the inclusion of Gentile nations. It is due to the implications of passages like these that we begin to find fault with Karl Barth’s assertion that the ecclesia is both the people of God as well as “the place where an assembly has been held, and is to be held again and again.” (Credo, 137)

These texts from Acts reach their highpoint, however, in Paul’s speech at the Areopagus, found in chapter 17. He asserts, rather boldly,

[t]he God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. (Acts 17.24-25)

Harvie Conn helpfully explicates the implications of Paul’s statement when he notes

Jehovah was no local urban deity; his territorial claims were bounded not by one ethnic city but by “the heavens and the earth”. (sic) In the eschatological shadow of the urban heavens and earth soon to come, the church proclaimed itself as the true city and its “city-zenship” in Christ, the cosmic beneficient “tyrant”/kurios of the city. (The Good News of the Kingdom, 99)

This, of course, reminds us of Solomon’s assertion, that God could not be held captive even in the highest heavens. Furthermore, though speaking to a thoroughly “pagan” (though “quite religious”) audience Paul’s statement questions the role of the Temple itself, a question many are asking regarding church attendance still today. Before addressing this question – and its missiological implications for postmodern ministry – we must first briefly address two passages that powerfully reorient our understanding of the Temple.

We could cautiously assume that Paul’s further deliberation regarding the nature of the Temple revealed even deeper theological and missiological implications. Though the terminology dates back at least to Jesus – and possibly even to the Creation narratives – Paul’s letter to the Ephesians most powerfully states how we are now to understand the Temple. Indeed, in light of the revelation and indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit, Paul can powerfully assert

you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. (Ephesians 2.19-22)

Note also the implications of 1st Peter 2.4-10:

As you come to him, the living Stone – rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him – you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says:

“See, I lay a stone in Zion,
a chosen and precious cornerstone,
and the one who trusts in him
will never be put to shame.”
Now to you who believe, this stone is precious.
But to those who do not believe,
“The stone the builders rejected
has become the capstone,” and,
“A stone that causes men to stumble
and a rock that makes them fall.” They stumble because they disobey the message – which is also what they were destined for. But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Even Gentiles have become

“nothing less than… part of the very temple of God. They may have been physically excluded from the inner parts of the temple in Jerusalem, as Gentiles, but spiritually they now constitute the dwelling place of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit.” (The Mission of God, 340)

In postmodern engagement with Christian tradition, texts like these provide the foundation by which philosophers argue that the Judeo-Christian tradition is to be credited for the demise of the sacred into secular. (see, for instance, After the Death of God, After Christianity and Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism) This dangerous type of thinking, in turn, has encouraged contemporary culture to increasingly withdraw from church involvement. This need not be the case. Indeed, what we see in these texts is not so much the dissolution of sacred into secular as much as the sacred being known in and through the secular, or more specifically, through those who have been called according to the purposes of God.

In fact, such postmodern Christian thinkers are not radical enough, for in joining together the sacred and secular, they have distanced themselves from the revelation of God through His Living Word, Jesus Christ, and the Written Word, the Holy Scriptures. If we view these passages in light of God’s whole revelation then, the result is not a nihilistic estrangement, but rather a missiological calling.

So the centrifugal mission of the New Testament church had its centripetal theology also: the nations were indeed being gather in – not to Jerusalem or to the physical temple or to national Israel – but to Christ as the center and to the new temple of God that he was building through Christ as a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. (The Mission of God, 524)

Or, put more clearly, “All of us have been drawn into the church catholic so that the church may become increasingly universal. Then we are sent out to make disciples of others.” (Mission on the Way, 113)

I’ve catching up on some Nada Surf of late, whose album Lucky I had completely missed, until recently, after hearing it at a wedding of some dear friends (with great musical taste).

The second track, Whose Authority, reminds me of the title of Alasdair MacIntyre’s book Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, as well as Merold Westphal’s recent Whose Community? Which Interpretation?, which is staring up at me from my office bookshelf like a lost puppy wanting someone to play with it. Whose Authority declares

I walk like you guide me, my eyes are shut like I’m blind
Turn to you and listening and tryin’ to be in your mind
There’s a feeling that I get when I look to the west
‘Bout having all the answers, still failing the test
Wolf packs and convoys and captains and men
Surprised in translation world without end
Welcome back to real life, the picture is gone
Put a contract out on things that go on and on
How do you stay where you most want to be?
Where’d you get the patience, did it come easily?
On whose authority? I have none over me
On whose authority? There’s none that I can see
On whose authority? I have none over me
On whose authority? No one speaks to me
On whose authority? I have none over me
All the tales with paper heroes, the ones who dyed the sun
And called it yellow, the ones who made you run

In the very next song, “Beautiful Beat,” Nada Surf lead singer Matthew Caws yearns for a song to save him:

Sometimes all I want is another drink or another pill
If I could get anything done maybe I’d hold still
I’m trying to levitate I’m trying to leave the ground
Tryin’ to remember when I could fix anything with sound
Beautiful beat get me out of this mess
Beautiful beat lift me up from distress
I believe our love can save me, have to believe that it can
I want to redirect myself with you, do you understand?

Are not these songs – and their proximity on Lucky – a near perfect explication of the human condition, simultaneously shunning authority and crying out for deliverance? And, further, do we not see in Paul wrestling with these realities in quoting the first century hymn in Philippians 2, as he reminds us of the One who did not use his authority to his advantage, but came to give his life?:

In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing,
 by taking the very natureof a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human being,
he humbled himself 
by becoming obedient to death
-
 even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
 and gave him the name that is above every name
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, 
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

In the philosophical terminology used by Gianni Vattimo (building upon Nietzsche), it could be argued that in this One who comes from heaven to earth, the metaphysical God is shown to give up his “metaphysical essence.” But that’s a rabbit trail for another hike.

If this weakened, kenotic metaphysical stance and dissolution of the sacred/secular is followed to its end, then, we can understand anew Jesus’ assertion that the temple is to be “a house of prayer for all nations.” Indeed, this lines up with the intention of Solomon’s temple from the beginning.

As other “nations” are beholden to their own myths, we can recognize the importance of seeing in Christ’s incarnation and temple action an understanding and willingness to engage with these petit recits. Or as Vattimo puts it,

it is not that the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ undermines – and delegitimates – the myths of other religions; in many senses… it implicitly validates them. Since the Christian God was incarnate in Jesus, we may also understand God through the other forms of natural being appearing in many non-Christian religious mythologies. (After Christianity, 27)

Thus, instead of exclusively demanding adherence to each and every propositional statement of the Christian church, followers of Jesus ought to dig underneath the foundation for such propositions, recognizing and proclaiming God’s willingness to reveal himself in weakness to all people of all nations.

This emphasis on caritas for others signals a decisive break from Girard regarding the necessity of Jesus’ sacrifice, which can lead to legitimated violence:

[a]lthough Christ came into the world to reveal the connection between the sacred and violence, and to dismantle it, the violence of the sacred has remained active within Christianity until today.” (Christ in Postmodern Philosophy, 12; see also After Christianity, 119)

One final element of Vattimo’s thought that is applicable to our present study is revealed in his thoughts regarding hermeneutics. In some ways similar to Žižek’s conception of lack, he asserts

if there is no objective truth given to someone once and for all, a truth around which we must all (for good or bad, willingly or unwillingly) gather, then truth happens in dialogue. The truth Christ came to teach the church is not an already accomplished truth. ((After the Death of God, 44)

Much to the chagrin of some of the Radical Orthodoxy movement (especially James K.A. Smith), Vattimo here opens up the possibility for and responsibility of followers of Jesus to continue the project of interpretation by deconstructing the hierarchical structures of metaphysical modernity. This continued hermeneutical praxis highlights the need to “continue the saving act of revelation… thus reducing the violence of institutions, including ecclesiastical ones.” (After Christianity, 119)

This is done in the name of the One who revealed true caritas by pronouncing judgment upon (and the deconstruction of) the temple, in favor of the Temple.

While Vattimo (following Girard) is right to emphasize the pacifist nature of Jesus’ ministry – and the Incarnation as a whole – Slavoj Žižek’s concept of subjective violence may be helpful here, as he defines it as “a perturbation of the ‘normal,’ peaceful state of things.” (Violence, 2) In other words, though we ought to disregard the shallow insinuation that Jesus’ temple action was an objectively violent, militaristic coup, its prophetic significance cannot be missed.

Jesus’ temple action is his final attempt at perturbing the “normal, peaceful” violence of the first century religious elite in favor of the outcast and downtrodden. Thus, it is not only the Incarnation as the event, but rather – in a Derridean sense – the Event within the Incarnation that provides for the dissolution of the metaphysical God;

The substance of the Christian announcement is not Christ’s revelation of an eternal truth but rather an actual historical event. (After Christianity, 109)

For Vattimo, this “implies the end of an almighty, absolute, eternal God and thus the weakening of God.” (Christ in Postmodern Philosophy, 11, see also AC, 120) As aforementioned, Vattimo sees in Heidegger’s history of Being a parallel between the Incarnation and the weakening of strong structures. Caputo – following Vattimo – notes, [t]he event that shocks the world is not a strong but a weak force.

Underlying, or arching over, all these famous paradoxes, there is, on my hypothesis, a thesis about God, or about the event harbored in the name of God, one that is contrary to the powers that be in theology and the church, a startling thesis found in what Paul calls ‘the weakness of God’… Paul spells out the way this weakness jolts the world: God chose the foolish ones in the world to shame the wise, and what is weak to shame the strong, and what is the low down in the world, the ones who “are not” (ta me onta), to shame the men of ousia, men of substance, the powers that be. (After the Death of God, 62)

This weakness is explicated not only by Paul, but seen throughout the life and ministry of Jesus, exemplified most notably following Jesus’ temple action in his demand that Peter put down his sword. His following question deserves mention: “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26.53, NIV) In this way, Jesus purposely chooses a way of weakness, as opposed to strength, which may well be why his disciples immediately desert him. We can see in this statement Jesus’ revelation not of sacred violence, but on the contrary, what Vattimo would call the “postmetaphysical and postmodern God of the Book.” (After Christianity, 8)

Jesus’ Incarnation of weakness leads necessarily to a reworking of the sacred secular “split.” Vattimo notes

secularization is not a term in contrast with the essence of the [Christian] message, but rather is constitutive of it. Jesus’ incarnation (the kenosis, the self-lowering of God), as an event both salvific and hermeneutical, is already indeed an archetypical occurrence of secularization. (After Christianity, 67)

Vattimo nowhere engages with the implications of Jesus’ ascension to “the right hand of God,” most likely because his project of understanding the Scriptures spiritually need not answer such questions. This, however, would present a present a problem for his more fundamentalist readers (if he has any!) in light of Vattimo’s proposition that the history of the Christian tradition ought to continue such secularization. Vattimo’s discussion of secularization is extremely helpful once we recognize its only limit. He asserts

[t]hough the event of Christianity sets in motion the processes of secularization, we may also find in Scripture a limit to secularization, hence a guide to desacralization – namely that of charity. If you read the gospels or the fathers of the church carefully, at the end, the only virtue left is always that of charity. From Saint Paul we learn… ‘even faith and hope will end at one point or another.’ (After the Death of God, 41)

This reality is indeed seen throughout Jesus’ ministry – and especially in his symbolic temple action – wherein Jesus seeks to extend caritas to those outside of the present community. In our deconstructive reading, then, are Jesus’ followers, then, not encouraged to do the same? The Apostle Paul’s continued encouragement to be a “living sacrifice” must be deconstructed (or recontextualized) in light of why Jesus was killed in the first place. Vattimo’s explication of caritas is, then, another way of explicating this Call to those who have been grasped by the Event (within the event).