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What Would Jesus Deconstruct?: The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church (The Church and Postmodern Culture)

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I take the publication of this book as an announcement of sorts. It tells us that what could be loosely called post structural Christianity is going public. There have been a number of other books that deal with Derrida's work in the Christian context but What Would Jesus Deconstruct? is the first book I know of that attempts to outline the profound sympathy between Derrida's later work and Christianity in a readable, non-academic way. That alone makes this an important book.

The wonderful thing for me about this text is that Caputo did a great job selecting the ideas and themes from Derrida that can be used as a lens through which to read scripture and address Christian faith. These ideas open up a variety of potentials, and energies that just don't have the same resonance when examined without the tools that post structuralism generally, and Derrida specifically provide us. Some of these themes include the journey, the unavoidable nature of impasses; the idea that the moment when we are faced with the impossible is the exact moment when real potentials are opened. He also addresses Derrida's unique understanding of justice, the economy of the gift and hospitality, to name a few.

What makes Caputo's summary of Derrida useful is that it directs our attention to the structure of how themes such as love, or loving God, or one's neighbor (as only one of many potential examples) are articulated in scripture but also the significant pragmatic and philosophical challenges posed by such themes, their aporias, and the difficulties we face when we are willing to take this kind of challenge seriously. This is important work and frankly it strikes me that Christianity in America today is often dead set against doing this kind of work. This leads to another reason we need a book such as this. At no other point in my lifetime has Christianity been so defined by political affiliations, reduced to partisan politics in the most cynical way. The all-to-common and easy conflation of Christianity with specific political views means that Christianity is often robbed of its content and of the specific challenges it poses to us. Addressing Christianity through a Deconstructive hermeneutic is an important way to counteract this trend.

All that being said I think the book has two significant problems. The first is the way it describes its themes. Caputo often under describes them to the point where I'm not sure the uninitiated will be able to see what is so remarkable about the interaction between post structuralism and Christianity.

The other difficulty I have with the book is the way it addresses politics in the final chapter. Politics desperately needs addressing but the way he does it here is disappointing. He spends a great deal of time simply beating up the Christian right. Granted my own politics area very similar to Caputo's but in the last chapter he obviously ignores his own call for a strong argument, and his criticisms are not deconstructive in nature at all. They are, more or less, common leftist critiques. The problem with this is that the full scope and impact of deconstruction is masked, and readers are definitely going to get the idea that deconstruction is merely a patsy for leftist politics. I think Caputo knows better and deconstruction deserves better. There are times when his readings could have become more vital, such as in his discussion of abortion, where he hints at the potentials of a deconstructive engagement; but for whatever reason he chooses not to develop those potentials.

So in the end I am ambivalent about this book. This book is necessary, and I hope it will get readers interested in the very rich interaction between Derrida and Christianity, but at the same time readers should seek out what's missing, and not be willing to take Caputo's word for it when he reduces deconstruction to the political. Caputo is right that there is good news in post modernism for the Church, and I hope more people will be willing to seek it out.

This was a fascinating and enjoyable book. John D Caputo's writing style was always engaging and the book was very easy to read for a philosophy book on a fairly complex subject. He looks at Charles Sheldon's book 'In His Steps', published in 1896, alongside works by Jacques Derrida on deconstruction, weaving these two together to get a handle on how Jesus might deconstruct the church - not demolishing it in a negative way but drawing out peace and righteousness and the kingdom of God from two millennia of post-Jesus church building.

Caputo writes very much from his personal opinion and I enjoyed many of his amusing asides. He talks incisively about many of the failings of the religious Right, although also has things to say about the weakness and ineptness of the Left. I felt that the book was rather weighed down by its series preface/foreword/acknowledgements/introduction before it began, and that the real meat of the content didn't appear until fairly late on in the short book at chapter 5. That chapter was a brilliant read, however, deconstructing the church through the lens of the Sermon on the Mount, and was worth the price of the book alone.

This is an excellent read for those interested in a different angle in the postmodern debate and explains enough that those unfamiliar with deconstruction should understand it.

This book pulls together almost everything Caputo's written on deconstruction related to Christianity. I loved it especially after having ploughed through Caputo's 'Prayers & Tears of Jacques Derrida' and his 'More Radical Hermeneutics', and aching for more clarity.

Caputo writes like his mentor and model, Derrida. Full of -isms, weird sentences, twists and turns, aphorisms, puns, etc. WWJD follows suit but in much less intensive manner. And, yes, even a newbie to postmodernism would enjoy the book, if one gives it a fair presentation.

Caputo puts forth deconstruction at the method/approach of the hermeneutics of the kingdom of God, a tool of God's theo-poetic reign. This is a way of treating the interpretation of Scripture as a fresh/new kind of 'poetry', where language takes on a life of its own and resists our rigid categories, presuppositions and the overall human desire to draw absolute conclusions. Deconstruction is God's way of hermeneutically breaking-in into our world and its prejudices, fossilisation and comfort zones. This shakes the faith, laughs at our certainties and mocks our pride - and in so doing seeks to return faith back to faith.

Caputo then takes nice humourous shots at the Bush administration and many not-so-nice ones at the 'Christian Right' of USA. He then gives his take on abortion, homosexuality, poverty and some other politically hot (American)issues. The central thrust of Caputo's form of deconstruction (which is a much more fun and vibrant kind, much more than, say, the deconstruction of Mark C. Taylor whose works usually stem from the 'death of God') is the event, the advent, of the Other. The Other is the voices we want to silence, the powerless we want to keep in their place, the cries we ignore, the (always emerging) future horizon of possibilites. It's almost like the heavenly utopia of perfect justice and forgiveness we will never attain but which keeps us striving.

The book is a good introduction to deconstruction (if one is unfamiliar with the term used in a Christian context) and an essential part of an on-going conversation which (curious, interested, hooked) readers would do well to continue in their own faith-communities.

John Caputo's newest book, the second in a multi-author series called The Church and Post-modern Culture, is an attempt to deconstruct the underpinnings of emerging Protestantism in the United States, namely Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism. The book is fashioned not so much as a book about postmodernism and deconstruction as a postmodern and deconstructive book itself. Caputo places this book within the oeuvre of postmodern theory and criticism, his book is built upon a pun, What Would Jesus Deconstruct? is a very different rendering of WWJD, the popular acronym for "What Would Jesus Do?" The popular Evangelical phrase is the subtitle to the book Caputo sees as the catalyst of the modernism within Evangelicalism and the Religious Right, William Sheldon's In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do? Using this century old morality tale as the founding narrative of the Christian Right (which will henceforth be used as the umbrella term for Evangelicalism, Fundamentalism, the Religious Right and Conservative Protestantism as Caputo does in his text), Caputo sets out to deconstruct "What Would Jesus Do?" by asking, "What Would Jesus Deconstruct?"

Caputo takes several stabs and jabs at the Religious Right in a cynical and enlightened humor that is necessary within a text that seeks to bring postmodern philosophy and criticism to lay persons. Within this 138 page book the terse barrage of philosophy needs some comic relief in order to keep the lay reader from blowing a fuse. Caputo casts deconstruction as a journey, for "deconstruction is adventure, is risky business, as is life. So life and deconstruction go hand and hand" (53). The traditional viewpoint of deconstruction, as it is referenced in pop culture, is the obliteration of meaning, which is not exactly true, no matter what Chuck Colson or John McArthur tells you. Caputo deconstructs this amateur notion of deconstruction, and places his own spin on things, branding deconstruction as "the hermeneutics of the kingdom of God," what Derrida has coined the gift of the possible from the impossible. (58) Caputo spends much of his time in the book making a thought out attempt to align postmodernity and deconstruction as a radical, prophetic hermeneutic of the coming kingdom against the behemoth of the modernity-steeped, Enlightenment-drunk Christian Right and its lowest common denominator "What Would Jesus Do?" which is so vague it is rendered meaningless. Caputo makes his case that What Jesus Would Deconstruct is not a hypothetical, it is right in the text: he has come to uproot the powers that be, to banish the status quo, to make the powerless have power, the poor become rich, the needy become clothed, all in such a radical spiritual act of love that the whole thing seems impossible, and that is really what deconstruction is about, the impossible being possible, the kingdom of God making a heaven on earth out of a hell on earth.

Caputo places his hermeneutic of the kingdom of God as opposite to the earthly church, which Caputo (rightly) states needs to be deconstructed as well. The church has far too often been the arbiter of power and a rod of injustice against the innocent, which can be seen in the usual parade of Crusades, papal misconduct, and religious wars. Caputo pushes farther, and calls the church "Plan B," making the case that when Jesus ascended into heaven and said the kingdom of God would come soon, the apostles didn't know what to do after waiting so long and ended up starting the church. Postmodernists love to be radical and push the envelope, and Caputo hardly argues to disband the church and have spiritual anarchy, but what Caputo constructs as a "Plan B" reeks of some postmodern dispensationalism where the church is a stepping stone of mediocrity until Christ returns. I doubt Caputo genuinely believes this, yet he does not offer much explanation concerning his harsh terminology.

Moving beyond the pragmatism of "What Would Jesus Do?" and its meaningless hypotheticals (What Would Jesus Drink? What Would Jesus Drive? What Would Jesus use to clean his bathtub?) is the call to become Christ in totality, to be a co-deconstructor with Christ, for

That is why we require hermeneutics. It is our responsibility to breathe with the spirit of Jesus, to implement, to invent, to convert this poetics into a praxis, which means to make the political order resonate with the radicality of someone whose vision was not precisely political. We need hermeneutics, which means understanding linked to historical context, and deconstruction, which means an interpretive theory that is mad about justice, in order to make this translation. (95)

Deconstruction, in Caputo's text, is the means in which the kingdom of God comes forth, for deconstruction is the way we rip apart the injustice, violence, and political power of our world in (and through) Christ. Caputo meanders his way through some of the touchy, flashpoint issues in the culture wars, and shows how deconstruction breaks down the majority narrative and, when wielded as the hermeneutics of God, introduces radical justice, hospitality, and love where it is most impossible and most sacrificial, the gift of impossibility through the impossible God-man, who died and came back in the impossible resurrection.

Interestingly enough, Caputo takes what is now the classically liberal view on homosexuality in the Church, that we should let radical love supersede notions of sin. As a practicing deconstructionist, Caputo misses a grand opportunity to deconstruct the West's very notion of homosexuality itself, that, as Foucault showed in his History of Sexuality, that homosexuality as a lifestyle is a social construct of the West that is scarcely one hundred years old (for some great proof make your way to the Oxford English Dictionary, which shows the first use of the word homosexual was 1892). Caputo does not deconstruct the Christian Right's view of homosexuality, he merely regurgitates Christian and secular liberalism.

Caputo ends his treatise with a thrilling, if not a tad scary, contemplation of how deconstruction re-inserts doubt into the Christian life, and that within the Church is a remnant of people who live the deconstructive lifestyle of radical love and hospitality amongst the majority Church which is about hierarchy, power, and comfort. The role of doubt in the midst of faith, as the reason for faith, and even as that which is beyond faith is a kind of postmodern negative theology, an acceptance that we cannot prove God, prove Christ, prove our faith beyond a shadow of a doubt---and once we accept this we are then capable of living like Christ for we know longer cling to comfortable legalism or "What Would Jesus Do?" mentalities. Only in a postmodern world does doubt lead to freedom to realize our impossibility which is only answered in the wondrous mess of impossibility which is the church, our faith, Christ, the Spirit, the Father, and the coming kingdom of God.

After listening to John D Caputo's interview by Luke Mulenhauser on commonsenseatheism.com I decided to get John's book, What Would Jesus Deconstruct, and see what sort of case he could build for postmodern Christianity that would compel emergent pastors like Brian McLaren to endorse it.

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I first encountered JackCaputo's writings in the introduction to God, the gift, and Postmodernism, which he edited with Michael Scanlon (Indiana University Press, 1999). Since I'm not a professional philosopher, a number of the book's chapters (sur)passed the reading comprehension capacities of my bald layman's head, but not the introduction. There Caputo and Scanlon spoke in down-to-earth terms of our need to become "enlightened about the Enlightenment" (meaning, for my fellow less-philosophical laypeople, the eighteenth-century movement that eventually reduced reality to phenomena that could be measured and dissected by "objective" human reason).

-Brain McLaren, pg 9
===

McLaren goes on to provide a very brief outline of the book which I find rather helpful,

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First you'll notice that Jack flies you into a "zone of intertextuality," meaning that he is going to suspend you between several texts, notably Sheldon's In His Steps (the unlikely inspiration of the WWJD craze), the writings of Jacques Derrida, and the New Testament. This may strike you as an unlikely combination, but it will make perfect sense by the time you're halfway to the last page.
===

John does rely heavily on Sheldon's book to, ironically, provide some structure for his book which deals mostly with deconstructionalism. In fact, if you haven't read Sheldon's book you might find it worthwhile to put John's book down and read Sheldon's work before returning.

John's book can be broadly divided into two sections. The first being a crash course in deconstructionalism. And the second being what John sees as the practical implications of deconstructionalism when applied to Christianity.

In the first section John does an excellent job providing the reader a cogent and easily digestible overview of what deconstructionalism is. John uses many analogies and weaves in quotes from the founders of deconstructionalsim (Jaques Derrida, Martain Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, etc.) in seamlessly. It is evident here that John is a skilled teacher who is able to convey an otherwise complex topic.

In this section John makes the claim that certain concepts like love, justice, and "the kingdom of God" are not deconstructible. John never explains exactly why or how he comes to this conclusion, but based on his aversion to objective truth I suppose even expecting a well-reasoned argument is asking too much.

John also makes the claim that since the church is not the same as the Kingdom of God (again, the reader is apparently asked to take this assertion on blind faith alone), the church is the first and foremost thing that is ripe for deconstruction.

By way of example John uses several stories from the New Testament where Jesus apparently turned the tables and did the unexpected. John subsumes these as evidence that Jesus would always do the unexpected in the name of "love" (which, defined existentially, appears to be merely a subjective concept).

From here John launches into the second major section of his book which deals with the practical implications of what he just described.

In the second section we are given, without much analysis (which, given John's adherence to continental philosophy is not very surprising), a steady stream of assertions that Jesus would be a full-blown liberal supporting all the fashionable liberal causes of our day from gay marriage to abortion on demand. John does balk a bit at the concept of abortion but ultimately comes down on the side of the woman has a right to do whatever she wants with her body, which is consistent with John's deconstructionalism which makes objective judgement not only impossible but wholly undesirable.

In the end, I can see why emergent pastors like Brian McLaren would find John's work appealing. Deconstructionalism allows the reader to place any meaning they want onto a text and thus co-opt for whatever means they desire. It also makes judgement verboten which means they are absolved from the responsibility of ever taking a real stand on anything. Further, it provides a handy platform for them to support all the fashionable causes without fear of being challenged since any and all challenges to their assertions would, themselves, be deconstructed and rendered harmless.

I highly recommend John's book for anyone who is looking to understand the emergent church movement. John provides well articulated and frank answers to anyone who wants to understand the thought-process of the postmodern Christian/church.

Even though his work is quite old, older than Caputo's, an excellent rebuttal to this book would be Francis Schaeffer's lecture Modern Man & Epistemology.

This is a great place to start with Caputo's work. If you want to look deeper into questions that make a lot of christians uneasy this is a good read, it asks Would Jesus recognize Christianity today as any thing close to what he taught, would he say the same things now that he did 2000 years ago? wwJd? I really enjoyed this book and think it gives a glimpse of the future of faith.

In this well-written work, John Caputo makes a good case for applying key concepts and strategies of deconstructive theory to the biblical narrative. However, in a heroic attempt at explication, his definitions transform the gale-force winds of deconstruction to a breeze suitable for flying kites. This is a aporia inherent in deconstruction; to define it is, in some sense, to effectively "stop the play" and render it lifeless.
To his credit Caputo himself makes mention of this, and continues the attempt to forge a "hermanuetics of the Kingdom" in the firey furnaces of postmodernity. He is to be commended; this work is very readable and serves as a good introduction to that most strange of juxtapositions: Christianity and the work of (primarily) Jacques Derrida. That both Christianity and Derrida lose something in the telling is probably unavoidable; Caputo minimizes the losses on both sides.

Following in the footsteps of Jacques Derrida, who draws from the rationale of Friedrich
Nietzsche, emerges John D. Caputo and his thought-provoking text What Would Jesus
Deconstruct? In this work Caputo, a staunch supporter of Derrida (whose relationship with
and influence on Caputo is obvious throughout the text), brings excellent critique and post-
modern discussion to the table. Declaring deconstruction to be a theory of truth, in which
truth spells trouble, i.e., Jesus, Caputo's answer to the question "what would Jesus deconstruct?" ironically, is the church!

Indeed, Caputo's assertions of areas where the modern church has thrown up a wall in
need of breaking down, and, subsequent criticism, I find agreeable and worthy of the student's time. On the other hand, Caputo's reconstruction on the other side, often times, is either over the top, or nothing more than liberal complaining. As for the positive, Caputo's argument that the church is plan B and his orthodox views of Jesus as the gift I find quite helpful. By contrast, his views on hospitality and homosexuality, I feel, are a bit much.

On the whole, What Would Jesus Deconstruct? is a worthwhile read. Jesus was always
deconstructing something, i.e., poking holes in everything the Pharisees had, and, ever ready to rebuild after deconstruction: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (John 2:19). Likewise, postmodernists do not just destroy a temple and leave; we are happy to build a new one.

I posted a pretty lengthy review of this book on my blog, but here's a little preview:

In What Would Jesus Deconstruct?, John Caputo swings his postmodern wrecking ball - deconstruction - against all the cherished forms of religious thought and practice that masquerade as definitive and absolute. Not only is he willing and able to question all representations of statuesque, codified faith, he does so in the name of Christ and claims that his is good news. Caputo presents deconstruction as a loving tool that frees the Church for authentic metanoia - "a fundamental change of heart"[1] - in its own life and ministry. In his words, deconstruction is the "possibility of the impossible" and is therefore the "hermeneutics of the kingdom of God" - a kingdom where the unlovable are loved.[2] While it may seem risky and a little frightening, Caputo believes that the deconstructive way, the via negativa, is the only way forward if the Church is to embody the good news of the kingdom of God in our world today.

You can read the rest here:

[...]

This book is a `gift' in the rigorous Derridian sense. Given time, Caputo's work will do some good work loosing up the rusty sprockets in that old, underused relic known as the Evangelical imagination. With characteristic style, Jack Caputo gives Evangelicaland a smart introduction to `deconstruction.' As fun a read as any other Caputo tablet, it shares with those tables many - by now conventional - performative devices: `the very idea!,' and so forth. Stylistics aside, Caputo's book will perform a hygienic function for those readers who risk thinking beyond Evangelical theo-theorems that always add up to Same, sloganesque dogmas. Yet, as one might expect, Caputo tends to understate - or merely hint and wink - at the double movement of his `pharmikos.' And it is this understatement I find interesting.

Anyone familiar with Derrida's rigorous theoretical work knows that `deconstruction and Christianity' is an impossible conjuncture of terms. Derrida makes a lot of hay with the `impossible,' and amongst his enthusiastic disciples, Caputo could justly be designated as Derrida's `apostle of the impossible.' The impossibility I refer to, however, is good ol' fashion impossibility, i.e. formally inconsistent and `substantively' incommensurable. On the one hand, Christianity could express the ineluctable metaphysical moment in the double-movement of deconstruction's textual operation, and Caputo's book attends to those repressed traces that make Christianity tremble, open it up, etc. That Jesus becomes, amazingly, an archetype of this subversive gesture is surely foul play in two senses. First, it allows Jesus to be reappropriated after a pomo fashion, i.e. allows us Evangelicals to associate Jesus with `deconstruction,' to receive Jesus back repackaged for our pomo consumption. Jesus practiced deconstruction? Derrida, then, or at least the inscrutable, buzzing textuality he gives us must be equivalent to YAHWEH! Second, Jesus announced that he is coming again in a purifying Last Judgment that will inaugurate a utopian golden age: for the Christian wagers that his promise will be FULFILLED. Derrida and his consistent diatribe against the possibility of `redemption,' would politely poke at this as a piece of nostalgic and resentful fantasy.

Hence, when Caputo invokes Metz's "dangerous memory" and claims this as what Derrida has in mind with his logic of the trace, he is playing tricks. Caputo well knows that this analogy is strained. For Metz - who follows Benjamin and Adorno - this memory irrupts within a historical and normative horizon: Christ's eschatological coming (M) and an emancipatory overcoming of capitalism (B&A). Derrida not only problematizes normativity and historical materialism, his version of the `promise' is completely formal: the `to come' is nothing but the latest atelic irruptions the textual totality are SURE to produce. When deployed in a context of substantive belief and practice, deconstruction has some value; taken in stark terms, its formalistic antinomianism.

I have learned a lot from Caputo and Derrida. Yet after tarrying with deconstruction, I have learned that deconstruction is nothing but a `metaphysics of metaphysics.' As Derrida determines it, the necessity of metaphysics and the attendant `atelic' necessity of the trace makes deconstruction - quite like the ego-cogito it eternally dismembers - as unassailable as it is formal. I'm no fan of John Searle, but he was surely correct when he characterizes the game Derrida plays as "heads I win, tails you lose." Deconstruction can one-up or go-one-deeper than any discourse it works over. Hence Caputo - and I mean this sincerely - can do very interesting and inspiring work in the philosophy of religion, while at the same time style himself as a Nietzschean hero (see Against Ethics). Hence, Derrida can style himself as a radical subversive when addressing a Marxist audience, while championing the virtues of liberal-democracy before humanist audiences, etc.

In any case, Caputo's book is worth the read. He is surely right that Jesus was subversive, even if in ways not completely obedient to deconstructive orthodoxy. One hopes that thinking Christians will go on and read Derrida's rigorous early work to get a full dose of what deconstruction is about. One may even notice that the `general text' and its bellicose Laws uncannily resemble the enforced anarchy of Global Capital. The unmitigated and unnecessary suffering unleashed by this hegemony refuses to be reduced to a cipher for the irrepresentable trace, and it is the memory of this suffering - and the hopes and desires of the repressed - that is dangerous: it bears witness to the POSSIBILITY of overcoming our horrific history in the irruption of a Judgment the will not be outstripped, of a Peace and Justice that may come and endure.