A postmodern paraphrase of Philippians 2:5-11

The Incarnation is the mad story of the undeconstructible God who did not consider undeconstructibility as something to be grasped, nor did he despise deconstructibility, but rather taking the “human, all too human form” of a servant, he humbled himself to the point of inhabiting the very deconstructible structures of human law and culture—even to [...]

musing about political terminology and misc.

Too often in our reading of the Bible, we make an easy association between words like “liberty”, “justice”, and other words that have political associations in our time, as well as words with other economic and social implications, and the usages of such words in modern liberalized political discourse. This error is often compounded by [...]

What Would Jesus Deconstruct? 2

In the last installment of What Would Jesus Deconstruct? I looked at Caputo’s brief account of Charles Sheldon’s book In His Steps and the question of “What would Jesus do?”. He finished the section by saying the question hinges on the one word, “would”, and the “would” draws us into the realm of hermeneutics. It [...]

What Would Jesus Deconstruct? 1

Before beginning a discussion of the book proper, it’s worth mentioning that What Would Jesus Deconstruct? is the second book in the Church and Postmodern Culture series from Baker Academic. Caputo’s volume comes after James K.A. Smith’s quite helpful and eminently readable (that is, intended for a non-specialist audience) Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, [...]

audio available at Cynicism and Hope site

Audio recordings of several of the sessions from the Cynicism and Hope conference are now available at the conference website, including a recording of my session, “Anarchism, Christianity, and the Prophetic Imagination“. The talk is in MP3 format and can either be downloaded or streamed from the site.
I also highly recommend listening to Ric Hudgens’ [...]

What Would Jesus Deconstruct? (introduction)

The latest entry in the Church and Postmodernism series from Baker Academic Press is What Would Jesus Deconstruct? from noted deconstructionist/philosopher/theologian John D. Caputo, professor of Religion and Humanities and professor of philosophy at Syracuse. I got my copy in the mail today, read the first chapter, and was very nearly blown away. I’m only [...]

some thoughts on truth and religious epistemology

This is part of a discussion I’m having on a Facebook group, via the group’s wall, which only allows 1000 characters per post, so it’s not terribly well-developed, but I think it’s a decent framework for a beginning.
I have a lot of beginnings of ideas, if you hadn’t noticed.
The group is called “Post-Emerging [...]

The Liberating Image: Imago Dei in Genesis 1 by J. Richard Middleton

J. Richard Middleton’s The Liberating Image: Imago Dei in Genesis 1 is an excellent exegetical look at Genesis 1 and particularly the “Image of God” section in vv. 26-28. The book was written, I believe, for the completion of his Ph.D at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. It is divided into three parts, [...]

another article from Brian Walsh and brief comment

Derrida and the Messiah
There is no truth without incarnation. Truth does not exist in a formless void, disembodied and apart from some kind of instantiation in concrete existence. While our ability to access truth objectively is cracked, flawed, that does not absolve us of the duty to pursue it.
Question to ponder… How does Jesus embody [...]

Christian preaching and imagination

“Preaching is fundamentally about shaping the imagination of the Christian community. … We need preaching that will set the captives free, especially when they have become comfortable in captivity.”
From Subversive Preaching in a Postmodern World by Brian Walsh.
Walsh quotes Walter Bruggeman several times in the piece, most notably (for me):
“The key pathology of our time, [...]

a brief on language and domination

Language tends to demonstrate the human tendency for domination in all things. Written language is probably stronger in this than spoken, but I would say language has a dominating tendency because when we speak we essentially make sounds (or write symbols that represent sounds) that have no meaning in and of themselves, but we (at [...]

Nieztsche, the fall, anarcho-primitivism, and human domination

[Anything which] is a living and not a dying body… will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant — not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power… ‘Exploitation’… belongs to the essence of what [...]

The Hot Topic Phenomenon

Or, see the bit on my About page, “The revolution will not be televised, instead it will be analyzed and sold back to the ones who start it. And the rest of the world can watch via podcast.”
The tendency of the pop-culture market is to take that which is on the fringes and make it [...]

Tyranny of the present, the progress myth, and Christian eschatology

this is a brief thought on some thoughts I have swimming around up there that I’m not entirely sure how to articulate. If anyone has any idea how to help me articulate some of this, I’d really appreciate it.
Basically I’m trying to synthesize ideas from three books I’ve read, all three with which I basically [...]