A New Kind of Christianity: The God Question

In this third part of the book McLaren puts his two prongs, the supposed Greco-Roman god Theos and the Bible as cultural library, into use.

He begins with the question "Is God Violent?". McLaren acknowledges that, as useful as his 'Bible as cultural library' proves to be for him, it just doesn't do away with all of what he considers disturbing images of God. "But as a serious reader of the Bible, I'm still a little uneasy, because I know about some of the other images of God that are also found in the Bible--violent images, cruel images, un-Christlike images", p 98.

What he posits to answer this is a form of 'progressive revelation', or as he called it, "this evolving understanding of God", p 100. He says there are five ways that the Bible shows such an 'evolving understand--God uniqueness, from a God supreme among many gods to one true God; God's ethics, from ritual and cermony to social justice; God's universality, from a tribal God to one who loves all people; God's agency, from a distant God to one close and involved; and God's character, from a violent God to one who is gentle, pp 100-102.

He claims that this isn't an evolution of God himself, but of how people understood God. "I am not saying that the Bible reveals a process of evolution within God's character, as if God used to be rather adolescent, but has taken a turn for the better and is growing up nicely over the last few centuries. I am saying that human beings can't do better than their very best at any given moment to communicate about God as they understand God, and the Scripture faithfully reveals the evolution of our ancestor's best attempts to communicate their successive best understandings of God...If we read the Bible as a cultural library rather than as a constitution, and if we don't impose a Greco-Roman plotline on the biblical narrative, we are free to learn from the evolutionary process--and, we might even add, to participate in it", p 103.

He likens it to math. Students in early grades learn simple math, and as they advace, they learn more complex forms of math, onesthat may even seem to contradict what they had previously learned. So, those early in the Bible who recorded what he considers less-mature images of God were simply understanding God as best they could, as a second-grader understands math in only a limited sense. But people like McLaren are more advanced. To make his point, McLaren uses one of his favority tactics--a series of unanswerable "What if...?", questions, p 104-105.

As if to show us what that is like, McLaren gives another example--people from today are somehow sent a bit over 1000 years into the future. People in this speculative future are some different from us, they are "deeply spiritual", they have "grown socially", they no longer fight wars, eat meat, or use fossil fuels, p 106. When those from today arrive, the people of the future are horrified that people used to fight wars and pray for God to bless them in doing so, eat their "fellow creatures" and even view vegetarianism as being 'pro-life', and thought it ok to ruin the planet by using oil.

People who don't like this way of thinking are, of course, stuck in the old Greco-Roman and constitutional way of viewing the Bible, p 108.

McLaren focuses on the story of Noah. Instead of seeing it as God saving a man and his family, he focuses instead on God practicing "ethnic cleansing", p 108, and a story in which people may find justification for similar destructions. "In this light, a god who mandates an intentional supernatural disaster leading to unparalleled genocide is hardly worth belief, much less worship", p 109. He even points out that the flood was a failure, as Noah and his sons soon enough start sinning and soon the world is a mess again.

He does say that, while for him the story of Noah is now distasteful, it is still a step up from what he considers to be the origin source of the story of Noah, something in Gilgamesh, where the gods kill mankind because man is too noisy for them to sleep.

"This approach helps us see the biblical library as the record of a seris of trade-ups, people courageously letting go of their state-of-the-art understanding of God when an even better understanding begins to emerge", p 111.

When coming to Jesus, McLaren quotes a Quaker scholar named Elton Trueblood, "The historic Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ does not simply mean that Jesus is like God. It is far more radical than that. It means the God is like Jesus", p 114. Jesus, then, "...bring us to a new evolutionary level in our understanding of God. An old definition of God does not define Jesus--the experience of God in Jesus requires a brand-new definition or understanding of God", p 114.

"The character of God, seen in Jesus, is not violent and tribal. The living God is not the kind of deity who decrees ethnic cleansing, genocide, racism, slavery, sexism, homophobia, war, religious supremacy, or eternal conscious torment. Instead, the character of the living God is like the character of Jesus", p 118.

My thoughts on this.

A few years ago, I heard someone talk about "chronological snobbery", which essentially means that a person or people will look back on those before them as having been rather stupid. Maybe they will try to say nice things about those ancients, saying they did the best with what they had, but we today know so much more and know it so much better.

Essentially, McLaren's whole position here is an astonishingly towering tribute to chronological snobbery. The arrogance emerging from this part of the book is almost more than I can imagine.

About a year ago, I read parts of a book called "The Lost Message of Jesus" by a couple of emergents on the other side of the pond, Chalke and Mann. They say this about God in the Old Testament.

Hence, Yahweh's association with vengeance and violence wasn't so much an expression of who he was but the result of his determination to be involved with his world. His unwillingness to distance himself from the people of Israel and their actions meant that at times he was implicated in the excessive acts of war that we see in some of the books of the Old Testament. From the very beginning, Yahweh's dealing with Israel were motivated by his desire to demonstrate his love. But to a people saturated in a worldview that saw him as power, this was always going to be a slow uphill struggle

God's relationship with Israel took place in the messy and often brutal reality of their day-to-day lives, longings and ambitions. And in the ancient Near East, where war and unrestrained violence were commonplace, having a god of power on your side helped justify cruel acts of revenge towards those who wronged you. That is why, if we focus in on individual Old Testament verses and stories, it is easy to fall into the trap of seeing God as a vengeful despot...
Chalk and Mann, the lost message of jesus, p. 49

I called this god of Chalke's and Mann's "the incompetent god", because he was unable to get his real message across to humanity; for example, he was pacifistic, but kept having to send Israel off to war, because he was unable through his divine power to protect them.

McLaren essentially uses "the incompetent god", and adds a bit to it. For unspecified reasons, God cannot make ancient man understand Him, so He's doomed to have his character misrepresented in Scripture, at least until McLaren and other enlightened ones come along to set the record straight.

One of the most distasteful parts of his argument is positing a sort of conflict between God and Jesus. He claims that there are images of God in the Old Testament that were "un-Christlike". He says that we must compare views of God to Jesus, "The images of God that most resemble Jesus, whether they orginate in the Bible or elsewhere, are the more mature and complete images; the ones less similar to the character of Jesus are the more embryonic and incomplete...", p 114. As the quote states, he thinks that one can find 'images of God' outside the Bible, I suppose in other religions, that are better than some one can find in the Bible itself.

I noted before that McLaren seems to put a lot of the Bible on to the fiction shelves of his 'cultural library', and this is more confirmation of that. He pretty blatantly says that Noah is a made-up story, ripped off from another culture. More than that, he strongly implies that almost all of it was somehow made-up--it's a man-made book, not a divine revelation. It's a book of mankind's continual evolution in the understanding of God, and that evolution is still going on, an evolution was can still participate in today.

If McLaren's god didn't destroy the world in Noah's day, what does that do to other times that the Bible records God speaking? Does God not judge Sodom and Gomorrah, because that would be homophobic? What about what God did to Egypt? Did God really tell Israel to conquer Canaan, or was that just Moses and Joshua using god-language in support of their own agenda of conquest? And what about those prophets and all their dire warnings and predictions, did God really tell them to say those things?

In order for McLaren to hold to his positions, he must say that much of the Bible claims to have been spoken by God was not really God speaking. His continual emphasis on "an evolving understanding of God" makes that point as well, and is essentially saying that much of the Bible is simply made-up stories where a character called God is introduced, words put into his mouth, and those words given status as Scripture.

There is someone at the Christianity.com forums where I participate in discussions, who has a quote by Spurgeon in her signature area, which goes something like this: "It is a remarkable fact that all the heresies which have arisen in the Christian Church have had a decided tendency to 'dishonor God and to flatter man." As this seems a reasonable criterion, one can say that McLaren here soundly falls in the heretic category. Not only does he bring down God, he essentially places man, especially ones like himself, in a seat of judgment over God, pronouncing judgments on things God did and said, saying even the sometimes God is "un-Christlike".

Most people who read the Bible would probably agree that there is a sense in which God reveals things about Himself over time. But this is more of a sense of God adding knowledge of Himself to what knowledge was before, rather than "trade-ups" as McLaren posits. There is no sense in, for example, the New Testament that the God of what we call the Old Testament--God in the books of Moses, God in the prophets, God in the recorded history--is being traded out for a new, improved, better God, like an older man divorces his wife for a younger model.

In the end, I think what McLaren is most against is Hell. Instead of seeing Hell as an aspect of the the justice of God, even if a rather harsh and hard-to-understand one, he calls it "torture" several times, as if he's trying to equate Hell with liberal's views of Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib. I think McLaren's politics comes into play here.

Finally, McLaren resorts to 'scare tactics' in order to try to make his interpretive method more user-friendly. He essentially says that we much do violence to the message of the Bible for our own good. Like all liberals, he sees people who don't agree with him as simply stupid, brutish, small-minded sheep, motivated only by self-interest. Perhaps because he has dismissed the Fall, he must hold to such a low view of man to explain why he isn't universally accepted.

follow the threads

Ok, how about some threads.

Diane Butler-Bass, in her book "Christianity for the Rest of Us", takes an approving look at one St. Andrew Christian Church in Kansas. Here is an excerpt from that church's beliefs page on their website.

We welcome and affirm all children of God of any color, class, sexual orientation, age, gender, ability or thought.

While following the guidelines of the denomination, we have developed as a congregation that is particularly passionate about preserving the dignity of all, valuing diversity, seeking justice for the disadvantaged and preserving the delicate balance of Earth’s ecosystem.

In other words, a church that's so in the liberal's back pockets.

This church is a part of a group with the oxymoronic name The Center for Progressive Chrisitanity. The CPC's website's links page has come interesting things on it, like a link to the Westar Institutes, the people who have given us the travesty called the Jesus Seminar.

And there's the link to the progressive hymn writer, William Flanders. And from his site, one can find the lyrics to his hymns. Here's a couple of stanzas from one of them, with a possible spelling correction noted by me in one of them.

The God that we love is no God we hear.
While “Thus says the Lord” rings bold and sincere,
The words are the prophets’, theirs evermore.
Still unheard but, our God, listened for.

The God that we love may not even be;
To face this our mind must always be free.
Our heart says that God awaits us, instead,
Our (perhaps that should by 'out') of sight and, always, up ahead

So, in this man's head (and likely in that of these 'progressives' he writes hymns for), when the prophets said "Thus says the Lord" they were only speaking and writing their own words, and the God he claims to want to hear from may not even exist.

Don't be surprised at this, please, unless you really are new to this kind of progressive non-thinking. There are many out there who claim the name Christian who are really little more than athiests in their philosophies and beliefs--Spong, Borg, Crossan, Caputo, Vattimo, and others, and one can see the emergents going the ways of these people, though they are not there yet (while noting that Butler Bass is an emergent in her own right, and it was her book that lead to finding this songwriter).

Why these people want to call themselves Christian while denying everything true in Christianity is beyond me. Were they honest, they would drop the pretenses and own up to their athiesm. Since they don't, I don't think it too harsh to think that there are subterfuges and manipulations they can pull off on the 'inside' of the church that they can't do if they were 'outside' it as self-proclaimed nonbelievers.

using fakes to dismiss the real

Ironically, though, when many modern Christians use the word sovereign (another form of "kingship" or "lordship"), they make matters worse, much worse, because for them, sovereignty means absolute control, and control is a very tricky word. Again, if you're living in danger and chaos, to say, "A good king will soon be in control," would be good news.

But it's not good news at all if you live, as we do, at the end of modernity, a period that told us in a hundred different ways how we're already controlled: by our genes (genetic determinism), by class struggle (Marxism), by primitive psychological aggressions (Freudianism), be operant conditioning (Skinnerism), by evolutionary competition (social Darwinism), by laws of physics and chemistry (naturalism, reductionism), by linguistic and social constructions (some forms of extreme postmodernism), by Euro-American military and economy (colonialism), by technique and machinery (industrialism), and by advertising (consumerism).
McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, p. 89

So, because a bunch of pretenders are claiming the throne of sovereignty, we must kick God off of that throne?

Or, should we recognize that God is sovereign despite (maybe even because of) the presence of all of those pretenders.

And if I may say, some of those pretenders are themselves simply pretenders in McLaren's mind. I mean, really, can advertising really make people do things? It may be manipulative at times, but manipulation can only go so far.

And, as well, this supposed distaste of people today to the idea of a good king cannot explain, for example, why people today are so fond of Tolkien. One of the main points of the "Lord of the Rings" is that a good and sovereign king (insofar as a human king can be sovereign) is coming and has come to take his rightful throne, taking over for a great but insane man and having a part in defeating a demonic power. Or how many people like Lewis' Narnia stories, which again often revolve around the establishing of good kings and queens. Or the continued interest in King Arthur.

Perhaps in the supposed progressive circles Mclaren runs in, the idea of a soverign king either isn't viewed positively (unless one of themselves should hold that throne), or is denied. But out here in the real world, it's still powerful and very meaningful.

But in the end our human reactions to such things are meaningless. If the Bible says that God is sovereign, then He is so, and any distaste in the idea is wrong.

...find nothing but faith in nothing

IN ASKING ABOUT THE REALITY OF FAITH in the 21st century, the following questions arise: What is the meaning of faith? And what makes faith a reality? More importantly, however, to the question of the reality of faith is the reality of God, and it is this question of God that is under discussion in the present essay. For instance, if the Father-God of Christian tradition belongs to history, that, of course, has far-reaching implications for one's thinking about the reality of faith. In this essay I want to examine the work of H. M. Kuitert and Alain Badiou to show that a choice has to be made about this. It will be my argument that true faith can better be imagined without than with God.
Neven, Gerrit. ‚Doing Theology without God? About The Reality of Faith in the 21st century‚
Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory vol. 6 no. 3 (Fall 2005): 30-42.
PURL: http://www.jcrt.org/archives/06.3/neven.pdf

So, let's see, if that's how postmoderns are thinking, lets see where this trend in thinking will take us, with some remixing of the last phrase of that paragraph.

It will be my argument that true parenthood can better be imagined without than with children.

It will be my argument that true eating can better be imagined without than with food.

It will be my argument that true marriage can better be imagined without than with having a husband or wife.

It will be my argument that true reading can better be imagined without than with the written word.

It will be my argument that true swimming can better be imagined without than with water.

It will be my argument that true golf can better be imagined without than with golf clubs and golf balls.

It will be my argument that true driving can better be imagined without than with vehicles.

It will be my argument that true art can better be imagined without than with paintings or sculptures or any other art form.

It will be my argument that true internet surfing can better be imagined without than with the computer.

It will be my argument that true seeing can better be imagined without than with eyes.

It will be my argument that true hearing can better be imagined without than with ears.

It will be my argument that true living can better be imagined without than with life.

random thoughts from caputo

Taken from "After the Death of God"

One important thing we mean by the death of God is the death of the absolute center, of inhabiting an absolute point of view.
p. 117

A statement for radical relativism, something not even he can live up to. If there were no 'absolute center', he would have no basis on which to say the things he says.

I want to reference this quote first...

I reached a point where I could not stand this "essential thinking" anymore. When it comes to politics, essential thinking is essentially stupidity.
p. 121

Before pointing out this one...

As for myself, I would be perfectly happy if the far left politicians in the United States were able to reform the system by providing universal health care, effectively redistributing wealth more equitably with a revised IRS code, effectively restricting campaign financing, enfranchising voters, treating migrant workers humanely, and effecting a multicultural foreign policy that would integrate American power within the international community, etc., i.e. intervene upon capitalism by means of serious and far-reaching reforms
p. 125

Because I want to do something that, frankly, he cannot stand, and say that what he is advocating here is essentially socialism. Universal (read: badly done) health care, redistribution of wealth through taxation (socialism to the core), and trying to weaken US sovereign.

Thus ends my political screed.

What I want everyone to believe is that there is no one thing for everyone to believe.
p. 128

Outside of being self-contradictory (like saying that the only absolute is that there are no absolues), it's another thing that he cannot live up to nor accept in himself.

In the end, for me, I speak of the death of God in a restricted sense, in the sense of a critique of ontotheology, of the God of metaphysics, and, in particular, the God of sovereignty and power and omnipotence
p. 147

Plainly put, if nothing else.

But when reading (of the Bible) becomes literalism and when literalism ecomes a politics, it becomes dangerous.
p. 155

Like a non-literal reading would be less dangerous. If anything, a non-literal reading opens the door to all manner of mischief, because then anything goes.

What is so much more compelling about Jesus than about institutional, ecclesiastical Christianity, Catholic or Protesant, is the figure of someone who was crucified not as part of a grand divine design but unjustly and against his will, and if he returns we would crucify him again for meddling in the affairs of the Church.
p. 160

Plainly overlooking the biblical passages where Jesus says not one takes His life from Him, but that He lays it down. Probably some of those passages we shouldn't take literally, Caputo may say.

Caputo is probably right about one thing, though. He would likely be one to crucify Him. Jesus would probably not be happy with someone de-Godifying His Father, saying He's weak and powerless and isn't someone we should pray to. Such a radical fundamentalist as Jesus would eventually have to be silenced by those who think they know better.

the Y2K of theology

From Caputo's essay in the book "After the Death of God".

An event is not precisely what happens, which is what the word suggests in English, but something going on in what is happening, something that is being expressed or realized or given shape in what happens; it is not something present, but something seeking to make itself felt in what is present.
p. 47

The event is always already ahead of us, always provoking and soliciting us, eternally luring us on with its promise. The truth of the event is its promise to come true. Events make promises that are never kept by any actual occasion.
p. 55

How we would use the word 'event' is not how Caputo uses it. We would use it to refer to something has happens, while he uses it to refer to something that does not happen, probably cannot happen, promises in some way to happen but never happens. For him, then, an event is actually a non-event.

What does this mean, then, to how he refers to God?

We might even say, to put all this a bold and simple stroke, that in postmodern theology what happens to us is God, which is why we call it postmodern theology. Or, to couch it in slightly more cautious terms, in postmodern theology what happens to us is the event that is harbored in the name of God...
p. 50

In the Scriptures the covenant is a promise or a covenant cut by God--that is why I speak unabashedly of theology--where the name of God is the name of an event, of something that stirs within the name, something I know not what, some sacred spark or fire.
p. 53

Having already established that Caputo does not believe in God (there is no one out there to whom we pray), we see him making God, or rather name of God, one of his non-event events.

So, to do a Chestertonian "in other words", his god is not all of the things the Bible says God is. When we pray to his god, we pray to a nothing. We long for a Messiah who will not come, even though the Bible promised He would come and He has come and will come again. His god does nothing in the world, does not work miracles, did not create and does not keep, and does not love us or care for us.

His ideas remind me of a Bible verse, which gives a list of things indicative of how things will be "in the last days". Among them will be people who will "have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof".

And the next words are an injunction to believers in regards to such people, "From such turn away".

willing to throw God off the lifeboat

...Indeed, by distinguishing between the name and the event, between the name of God and the event that transpires there, I have laid myself open to the possibility that this event, or stream of events, can twist free from this name and that we might then find ourselves out in the desert, in a khoral place of namelessness and the desire for new names...The event of solicitation that is issued in the name of God stands on its own, calls and solicits us on its own, whether or not someone named God is th author of that solicitation, in which case the death of the author, which would be here the death of God, is the condition of hearing this solicitation. In the desire for God, it is not God but the event that stirs within that name that is undeconstructible, and it would always be possible for that desire to take other forms, to find other formulations, now or in times to come...For, however precious and prestigious it may be, the name of God remains a historical name and, as such, a contingent formation or unity of meaning...
John Caputo, in the essay "Spectral Hermeneutics", in the book "After the Death of God", pp. 69-70

In reading this, it seems that he really is saying that, if the name of God should someday become of no use (which such as he will intentionally or not bring out, if given time, I would add), then it is to be chucked aside.

Strange ideas, rather blasphemous, one may say. But is it not a logical followup to his notions that there is no sovereign God, no God Who is out there, no God who is in control, no God period? He has stripped the name "God" of all real meaning, has filled it with a meaning of his own (I shall probably have to give a bit about his use of 'event' sometime soon), and then says that if the name God does live up to what he calls the event, then we are free to discard it, and find a new name.

And yet, when God gave His name to Moses, He called Himself "I am". And He is still "I am".

God is not an empty shell, to be filled with what we will. Nor is He dead or weak.

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.

reversing the Cross

I am proposing a postmodern theology of the Cross in which I ask, what is happening on the Cross? What is happening to us? What events pulsate through that unforgettable scene? Of what are we to make ourselves worthy? It is a mystification to think that there is some celestial transaction going on here, some settling of accounts between divinity and humanity, as if this death is a amortization of a debt of long standing and staggering dimensions. If anything, no debt is lifted from us in tis scene, but a responsibility imposed upon us...The crucified body of Jesus is a site--one among many--of divine eventiveness, through which there courses a stream of events that traverse our bodies and shock the world under the name of the weakness of God, and we are to make ourselves worthy of this event.

John Caputo, in the essay "Spectral Hermeneutics", in the book "After the Death of God", p. 66

The reversal here is staggering, and as much against the Bible as anything I've seen. Is it not written that righteous works cannot save us? Is it not written that all our righteousness is merely as putrid rags?

For a good look at what the Bible says about this, please check out this page.

http://www.carm.org/doctrine/Jesusdieforsins.htm

Some excerpts from it.

The sinner needs to escape the righteous judgment of God or he will face damnation.
Rom. 1:18, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness."
Matt. 25:46, "And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

But, no sinner can undo an infinite offense since to please God and make things right, he must obey the Law, which is the standard of God's righteous. character.
Gal. 2:16, "...by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified."
Gal. 2:21, "I do not nullify the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly."

Jesus became sin for us and bore our sins in His body on the cross, thus fulfilling the Law.
2 Cor. 5:21, "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."
1 Peter 2:24, "and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed."
Rom. 8:3-4, "For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh. 4in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit."

Caputo's 'we must make ourselves worthy' is simply another variation on works salvation. Not only that, his redefining (it's not about making us right us God) and denigrating (it's merely one such event among many) is unbiblical to the core.

praying to no one

Prayer is not a transaction or interaction with some hyperbeing in the sky, a communication with some ultrareality behind the scenes, the invocation or appeasement of a magical power of supernatural intervention from on high. Prayer has to do with hearing, heeding, and hearkening to a provocation that draws us out of ourselves.
John Capute, in the essay 'Spectral Hermeneutics', in the book 'After the Death of God', p. 57

It always raises the eyebrows, how much people will twist and contort themselves and their thinking in order to come up with some way to discard and disregard God. It goes beyond simply looking a bit like the old party game "Twister", and becomes more like some wild-haired mad scientist wildly and maniacally splicing various genetic materials to create the monster that turn on him in the end and devour him.

Read Caputo's words, and see that he is in essence proclaiming a form of 'athiestic spirituality'. When we pray, we do not pray to God, because there is no God out there to pray to, a statement athiestic to its core. But there is a spirituality or something like it that he does say that we hear from, perhaps it is only ourselves and something inside us that we hear from (a bit later then the above he seems to say that it is 'our desire').

One may wonder what he hopes to gain from this dismissal of God, and why emergents seem to look to him, because they do.

what lies behind deconstruction 4

Deconstruction is the flailing of the spades of God's gravediggers. To refuse the ceremony of burial, however, is a more culpable form of hubris than to take the shovel in hand. For the stench of "divine decomposition," as Neitzsche phrased it, is everywhere.
Carl A. Raschke, from the essay 'The Deconstruction of God' in the book 'Deconstruction and Theology', p. 30

Here is something I remember from way back when. I may not have it worded exactly at it was, but I think I have the basic point of it. It has to do in regards to people like the above, who want us to take Neitzsche's "God is dead" statements seriously.

"God is dead."
Neitzsche

"Neitzsche is dead."
God

The point is, somewhere in this world, there are the remains of the man Neitzsche. If there is a "stench of '...decomposition'", it is coming from that spot. One may also wish that it were coming from the 'philosophy' Neitzsche put forth, because that would the most merciful thing to happen to it; instead, there are people who seem to latch on to it like he were some kind of prophecy, like they were the words of a genius instead of the words of a madman.

There is no "stink of 'divine compositions'", because despite the many of people like Raschke, God is very much alive. Despite the words of such as Marcus Borg, Christ is indeed risen from the dead. Despite McLaren's attempts to caricature the second coming as some kind of "Jihad Jesus", Christ will return to set up His kingdom on the earth. Despite Caputo's desire for a 'weak God', God is still sovereign.

These people's attempts to elevate man can only end in disaster, because they are lies and cannot end any other way. May they, I pray, put aside their pride in their man-made philosophies, and finally bow before the living and true God, and truly come to the Christ who died for them and rose from the dead.

what lies behind deconstruction 3

Deconstruction is the dance of death upon the tomb of God; it is the
tarantella whose footfalls evoke the archaism of the Great Mother, who takes
back with the solemnity of the Pieta her wounded, divine son.
Carl A. Raschke, from the essay 'The Deconstruction of God' in the book 'Deconstruction and Theology', p. 28

Whatever the last part of that statement means (what Great Mother?), it's pretty clear again that this is about an athiesm wearing a faux-christian mask.

what lies behind deconstruction 2

Again, we must underscore our leading thesis: deconstruction is the death of God put into writing
Carl A. Raschke, from the essay 'The Deconstruction of God' in the book 'Deconstruction and Theology', p. 27

Would that all postmoderns were so honest.

what lies behind deconstruction 1

Deconstruction, which must be considered the interior drive of twentieth-century theology rather than an alien agenda, is in the final anaylysis the death of God put into writing, the subsumption of the "Word" by the "flesh," the deluge of immanance
Carl A. Raschke, from the essay 'The Deconstruction of God' in the book 'Deconstruction and Theology', p. 3

subsume (root for 'subsumption)

1. to consider or include (an idea, term, proposition, etc.) as part of a more comprehensive one.
2. to bring (a case, instance, etc.) under a rule.
3. to take up into a more inclusive classification.

'Immanance' is more difficult, at least as he Raschke seems to want to use it here, but considering that he basically says tha that the "Word" is taken up into the "flesh", or that the "Word" is put under the rule of the "flesh", then I suppose it's like to mean something like this.

immanance (it's a long encyclopedia entry, so not all of it will be here, please read all of it)

The term "immanence" is usually understood to mean that the divine force, or the divine being, pervades through all things that exist, and is able to influence them. Such a meaning is common in pantheism and panpsychism, and it implies that divinity is inseparably present in all things. In this meaning immanence is distinct from transcendence, the latter being understood as the divinity being set apart from or transcending the World (an exception being Giovanni Gentile's "Actual Idealism" wherein immanence of subject is considered identified with transcendence over the material world)...

...the term has been utilized by the Kennesaw School to elucidate the emergent nature of communalized relationality and the potential for becoming within an Age of Globalization.

Trying to get one's head around this is not easy, and I'm not so sure I have done very well at it. But some parts are pretty clear. It's not the first time I've come on the "death of God" thought that tries to disguise itself as Christian. I think Caputo puts it as the "death of the God of sovereignty", substituting instead a "God of weakness".