lifeasmission

I just came across a great post by David Fitch on why Emerging Church people are drawn to deconstructive theology. Actually, this post is a follow up to one he wrote for The Church and Postmodern Culture. In the original post he does a great job of answering the above question and in his follow up he clarifies that in his opinion, which I share, there are a handful of Christian theologians who have been speaking to the concerns of “Emerging Church people” for quite a while, but oddly, don’t seem to get as much credit as their more atheistic counterparts - people like Hauerwas, Lindbest, Milbank, etc.) Not ironically, in my opinion, these are some of the same theologians who have been most helpful in framing how the church benefits from a narrative approach to theology and a missional approach to ecclesiology. Simply put, they understand that the church forms its theology based on its mission in the world and that the church’s mission in the world is correspondingly and simultaneously shaped by its theology (this was the thrust of my masters thesis). This is a constant ebb and flow of action <-> reflection (envision a really cool circular diagram here!).

I think folks like Derrida, Focult, and other deconstructionists (Tony Jones would have me inform you that “Derridaian decontruction does not mean ‘to tear down’ but ‘to break through.’”) have good things to offer and ought not to be dismissed out of hand, but when push comes to shove, we ought to give more credence to those authors who seek to submit their lives and work to Jesus as Lord and the church as their family.

Here’s what I really wanted to say - when we understand it rightly, it is easy to conclude that Jesus was a theological deconstructionist. He took commonly held theological assumptions and practices and “broke through” the ways in which people misunderstood and misappropriated them in order to refreame them rightly. That’s the rub. Deconstruction, for the Christian, can never stop at merely exposing weaknesses and fallacies. Rather, to be truly Christian, there must also be a rebuilding, a restoration, a movement forward into a better, more faithful way; such is the nature of the Trinity and God’s mission in the world.

A Christian is not one who simply acts in unknowing, this is an agnostic. Neither is a Christian one who acts without any reason or cause, this would be a retreat in to fidesm. Instead, a Christian is one who lives and acts in accordance with their faith and reason, but always in humility and with a reverence for the mystery of God. This enables the Christian to invite others into a future with no sure, fixed foundation, yet centered around a God who desires relationship as opposed to one who remains largely unknowable (which I think is the alternative offered by at least one stream of “Christian” deconstructionist theology).

The people of God, through the story of Scripture, have gone through countless cycles of orientation (when all was well), disorientation (when things began to unravel), and reorientation (when God worked to restore and recreate). The church in Western culture, I would say, finds itself in the throws of disorientation. I am not advocating that we race through that phase as we grasp for some sort of reorientation, but I am saying that we need to look toward and expect it.