Anti-Expertism

There has been so many different strands of conversation at the conference I almost don’t know where to begin. I must say that both Kearney and Caputo are less wily in person: they shoot straighter than they read. Caputo defined rather clearly two concepts which I have been wrestling with and which this blog has discussed with great confusion: deconstruction and onto-theo-logic.

Deconstruction (roughly in Caputo’s words) recognizes the ambiguity inherent in hermeneutics which is to say, simply, that interpretation is not translation without remainder, or, more banally, what you say and what I think you say are not the same. Understood this way, it is nothing new just as Derrida suggested.

Onto-theo-logic is a scheme which judges God by ontology. It places reason above the Divine, God is judged by the court of reason, he must be proven. You know onto-theo-logic is rearing its head when a thinker names God a causa sui (cause of himself). This is a perspective that is drawn out of scholastic thought. It is not Thomas Aquinas’ perspective, mind you, he would call God an uncaused cause. The onto-theo-logic is best typified by Descartes or Leibniz. Those who fail to recognize God’s greatness, his infinity (to put it crudely), placing him in an easily parsed out scheme which would make St. Thomas blush since he wrote his highly systematized theology on his knees.

What I found interesting is the language that Kearney and Caputo used, language I had not heard before but intuitively grasped, theo-poetics. This is the reason I became interested in poetry, specifically Pound’s imagism, since it demands that language be concrete and vivid rather than abstract and vacuous. This same fascination draws me to Professor Strunk (“Vigorous writing is concise,” and “Omit needless words”). I am, frankly, not entirely sure what these two men mean by it and, more frankly, I am unconcerned since I will appropriate for my own uses.

The general backdrop for the whole discussion goes something like this: The grammar of Western thought flows from Plato and the Grecian tradition. This grammar involves a dualism which is destructive in philosophy and anti-theological (read: “anti-biblical”, although they would shy away from that term, I think). This dualism led to abstract thought as “more true” and “really real” to the determent of the concrete, the historical since it is “subjective.” The Nieztchean/Keirkegaardian (speaking of strange bedfellows) critique argues that the abstract (which nobody has ever met, seen, or experienced, incidentally) is a fiction. In the case of Keirkegaard, God is too big for the categories of the abstract, they burst in his presence, are hallow, empty, vacuous. For Nietzsche, the abstract God who is a pure fiction, is the “great totalizer” (not his words), Platonism for the masses (his words) and, consequently, the great violence of the history of the world. A violence because it sissifies men and sucks the joy out of life, particularly because Platonism (and, therefore, Christianity) disdains the body.

It is of no small significance that truth is supposed a women.

The postmodern turn, then, realized among a great many other things, that “God is dead” is equally as totalizing, the Nietzschean critique folds in on itself. Such is the world we live in, however simplified my explanation.

Now those in the Emergent Conversation take varied perspectives on this turn which is why it is perceived as so slippery. Many, embracing the postmodern critique, a la Nietzsche, what to chuck all the traditional categories and creeds since they are bastardized forms of Hellenism, other’s recognize some truth in the traditional creeds but a truth contingent since it only has vivid meaning at that historical time (similar to the Thomas/Scholastic problem above) and, thus, require reinvention: a betrayal of tradition in order to contextualize the truth for today. Their are others still who think we should reject the postmodern turn and return to some premodern state, my alma mater would be a good example of this, albeit outside of the Emergent conversation.

More importantly, they recognize a tension between totalizing claims and the exclusivism of Christianity: “No one comes to the Father except through me.” The tendency, in my experience, is that they prefer the unexclusive over and above limited atonement and only discuss Romans with great discomfort.

The most frustrating thing about the conference is that, literally, the only time I heard the word “sin” uttered was by my own mouth or those who where responding to something I said ((Actually, it was obliquely referenced in a question this morning, now that I think about it)), but I’ll take more about that and my take on all this in part two. But, before you leave, I want you to understand two things:

1. I am making very generalized statements about the folks at the conference and the historic sweep of intellectual culture in the West, both should be obvious.

and,

2. For all the critiques I have about the Emergent Conversation, these people are concerned about good things: the marginalized (the least of these), justice, ecumenicism, and love of neighbor/enemy.

Until next time.

Today begins The 2007 Emergent Theological Philosophical Conversation in Philadelphia. The two speakers are Jack Caputo and Richard Kearney who might be loosely categorized as deconstructionists (if such a thing as deconstructionism, let alone deconstruction, does indeed exist). As the sort of fellow who is equally frustrated with young progressives as I am with stodgy old men*, this conference will most likely place me around those of the former rather than the latter category and very possibly excite a state of aggravation.

Case and Point:

Our dream

Our dream is to join in the activity of God in the world wherever we are able, partnering with God as God’s dreams for our world come true. In the process, the world can be healed and changed, and so can we.

Emergent

In English, the word “emergent” is normally an adjective meaning coming into view, arising from, occurring unexpectedly, requiring immediate action (hence its relation to “emergency”), characterized by evolutionary emergence, or crossing a boundary (as between water and air). All of these meanings resonate with the spirit and vision of Emergent Village. In other languages, names for regional networks will be chosen with similarly evocative meanings.

Sounds a bit wishy-washy doesn’t it? Such is the problem with ecumenical movements. However, as always, its biggest weakness is also a strength, since it is attempting to model the sort of inclusiveness the Church ought to have. The consequence is strange bedfellows and I’ll take strange bedfellows if it means–ahem–good pillow talk.

Any-hoo, I hope this will kick start some of my thought on foundations. Lately, I feel like I have lost my theological mojo.

NB: You should check out BittersweetLife on the Emergent Church. Ariel has written a great deal about it.

*Unfortunately the perception between oneself and the actuality often differ.

A few choice phrases that struck me during my (at least!) yearly T.S. Eliot read:

The Wastland, III. The Fire Sermon
The nymphs are departed.

Ash-Wednesday
Why should I mourn
The Vanished power of the usual reign?
—-
And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

Gerontion
I have no ghosts, an old man in a draughty house under a windy knob.

Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service
Along the garden-wall the bees>br />
With hairy bellies pass between
The Staminate and pistillate,
Blest office of the epicene.

Burnt Norton
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph[...]

Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.

Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.