LaRon Shults on “Deconstructive Theology and the Emergent Church”
February 27, 2007
LeRon Shults is a Professor of Theology at Agder University in Norway (he blogs here). LeRon also recently joined the Presbymergent community with an initial introduction post here. I first met LeRon at the 2005 Emergent Convention in Nashville, and have been impressed with him and his writings in theology and relationality.
I recently ran across an article he wrote for the upcoming 2007 Emergent Theological Philosophical Conversation at Eastern University with John Caputo and Richard Kearney. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to go, but I think it will be great gathering. The article is entitled “Why is the Emerging Church drawn to Deconstructive Theology?” It is a wonderful article, and very in line, I think, with much of what Pete Rollins does with apophatic theology in his book “How (Not) to Speak of God.”
He says that “Emergent Types” are drawn to deconstructive theology for 3 reasons:
“First, deconstruction not only accepts but embraces the category of difference…Second, deconstructive epistemology (or hermeneutics) calls for humility within the search for knowledge…Finally, deconstruction is surprising. We do not know ahead of time exactly what will emerge when we begin the process of interrogating our beliefs and the practices that shape our interpretations.”
I think that many of these reasons are the same ones that initially drew me to a more apophatic understanding of theology and faith. Humility is a trait so needed in our world where so many claim 100 percent certainty far too often. And I like the idea of being surprised by theology, not being sure where it’s going to take us.
I don’t think we should just deconstruct, deconstruct, deconstruct…without doing any reconstruction. But I think that deconstructive theology and philosophy is an important step to coming to a new understanding of theology.
Check out the article here.
Tags: Deconstruction, Emergent, emerging-church, LeRon-Shults, Postmodern-Philosophy, Postmodernism
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Adam Walker Cleaveland: I am a 28 yr old 
February 27th, 2007 at 9:30 am
Personally, no theology surprises me anymore… but what should concern us is if God no longer surprises us. There is so much out there, especially in blogdom, that claims to know. If anyone thinks they know, then they don’t know as they ought to know. I read that somewhere 8) . Thanks for the tip. I’m going there now.
February 27th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Can you give us a basic definition of deconstructive theology? I read your post and his article which I was intrigued by but I still feel like I’m guessing a little at the definition. You and he both seemed to describe it without in a “floating nearby” sense without really putting meat to it.
February 27th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Leron appears to be interested in being different, but says nothing about the Bible or faithfulness. The issue is not differentness or sameness, but faithfulness. People can be faithful in the same ways and in different ways. Leron is making a false distinction or a distinction of no importance.
Leron says, “Insofar as Derrida (and others) share epistemic qualities such as humility with the Christian apophatic tradition, the former can inspire ET to retrieve the latter.” Hmm.
Let’s deconstruct this sentence. First some definitions. Apophatic: Of or relating to the belief that God can be known to humans only in terms of what He is not (such as ‘God is unknowable’). In other words, God is not knowable through Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ is traditionally understood to be God Himself through the reality of the Trinity. Jesus is not helpful in terms of knowing God because “God can be known to humans only in terms of what He is not.”
Follow this: “Derrida’s particular methods of textual criticism, which involved discovering, recognizing, and understanding the underlying — and unspoken and implicit — assumptions, ideas, and frameworks that form the basis for thought and belief, for example, in complicating the ordinary division made between nature and culture.” from — Wikipedia. Thus, to apply the textual criticism of deconstruction to the the Bible involves understanding the underlying and unspoken assumptions of God. Wow, that’s really something.
Further, “the former” (humility) “can inspire ET to retrieve the latter” (the “Christian” apophatic tradition). I put the word Christian in quotes because saying so does not make it so. And it isn’t. Christianity is not about knowing God through what He isn’t. Christianity is about knowing and loving God through His self-revelation in Scripture. And the humility that denies that the Bible is God’s Word revealed is actually the pride that exalts Man (and/or me — the self) above God in order to deny this most basic Christian premise.
Finally, “deconstruction is surprising.” Yes, when you blow a thing up, you can’t quite be sure of all of the consequences and ramifications. Blowing up parts of the foundation of your home can have some surprising results — and as an additional bonus, those results can be exiting (nerve stimulating).
“Allowing for deconstructive moments within philosophy and theology is one way to open oneself to such surprises, and even to delight in them as they facilitate real transformation.”
The transformation of a home into a pile of rubble is a real transformation. However, the importance of “transformation” is not the process, but the end result. Transformation into what? ETs apparently don’t know, and they enjoy being surprised about it. I’ll bet that people in hell are often surprised to find themselves there.
The roots of deconstructionism are Nietzscheian, and Neitzche may have been the smartest person ever to hate God in general and Christianity in particular.
Phil
http://www.pilgrim-platform.org
February 27th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
It has been my experience that to reconstruct theology you have to deconstruct it from the foundation up to create something new. If this process does not happen then you are just putting a new face on an old way of doing things. My $ 2.50 for the day.
February 27th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
Hey Adam. You left a comment on my site about my wordpress template. Yes, it is your Cleaker and I had downloaded it from your website since you had it posted there. I’m struggling to get it up on my site though. I chose the “Sandbag” template and pasted in your css coding in but it has some variations to it like it didn’t totally work. (As you can probably tell, I know enough about this to be dangerous).
February 28th, 2007 at 12:11 am
I don’t really get it. Why are we trying to “deconstruct” or “reconstruct” at all? What is wrong which just proclaiming the gospel? What happened to the good old apostles creed? Maybe this is covered in what we are talking about, but I can’t help but pick up the scent that we here in theology land are a little too bloated with our own self worth to the Christian community and the various “conversations”.
Anyway, all our efforts in this will have disappeared 40 years from now, but the gospel will still remain until the end. Seems to me we might be more fruitful just talking about what God has done in Jesus Christ and what that means for us.
February 28th, 2007 at 12:16 am
Comment premise: I very interested in continental philosophy, including Derrida, and his deconstruction ‘theory.’ Needless to say, I have certain sympathies with continental method. However:
It seems like the emergent conversation is very quick to claim these philosophical methods without any real involvement with them. I think it is really important that those who want to utilize the insight of thinkers such as Derrida need to first understand him in his context– that is, apart from christian theology. I just get the sense that people within the emergent conversation are coming close to hijacking something they know nothing about.