Friday, August 29, 2008

the postmodern's greatest fear

To propose a postmodern theology of the Cross, to meditate the event that transpires in the death of Jesus, is to try to think a certain death of God, the death of the ens supremum et deus omnipotens, the death of the God of power, in order to release the event of the unconditional claim lacking worldly sovereignty that issues from the cross...I would press further to a more pressing and important death, the death of the deus omnipotens of classical theology, and this in order to nourish the life of the event that stirs within the name of God, which is the stuff of our rebirth...insofar as there is any philosophical life left in this increasingly dated expression, the death of God, it refers to an ongoing and never finished project of deconstructing the God of ontotheologic, which is for me above all the God of sovereign power...The work of burning off the old metaphysics of omnipotence, which can never cease, must always be a way to fan the flame or build the fire of the event that transpires in the name of God.
John Caputo, in the essay "Spectral Hermeneutics", in the book "After the Death of God", pp 66-67


From my perspective, limited as it may be, perhaps these statements sum up the whole postmodern virus mindset as well as anything else--the thing the postmoderns are running from, that they fear, that they try to hide from by calling on the mountains of relativism and meaninglessness to hide them from, is the God of sovereignty, the all-powerful and all-knowing God.

Read Pagitt's "A Christianity Worth Believing", and see how he desperately tries to say that our concepts of God power and sovereignty have somehow come from Greek or Roman thought, not from anything in the Bible.

Read almost any emergent work, and see how they denigrate the concepts of the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-sovereign God. It's a common theme.

What is there instead? Something of human construction. With Caputo, it's some kind of 'weak theology', which is essentially meaningless. With Pagitt, it's some kind of 'holism', which does not recognize any barriers.

Little gods made in man's image.

One can only hope and pray that these will have their eyes opened, while they have time to be opened.

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