Deconstructing the wisdom of the wise – Weak Theology
My previous post complained that my life is ‘data protected’ so there is not much I can write about. I realised today that I can write about what I am reading and thinking (not a right that everyone around the world has – see irrepressible.info).
I have just started reading ‘The Weakness of God: a theology of the event’ by John D. Caputo (2006). At first I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to understand it, but once you get past the introduction it is much easier to read (although some background knowledge of philosophy and theology is probably required). In this book Caputo is attempting to read St Paul and the Prophets of the Old Testament through the ideas of Derrida (a post-structuralist philosopher). The result is Weak Theology. The best way to explain this is probably to quote excerpts from the book (which could be relevant for the next Foundation Big Service?):
“Can anyone imagine any more sovereign power than God’s? Can one imagine anything more supportive of the established order, anything more top-down, more entrenched in the status quo, anything more immobilised, actualised, contented, than religion and religion’s “God”? Pro deo et patria (for God and country?): is that not a lethal combination, literally a deadly, ultra-divisive call to arms in whose ungodly name more blood has been spilled than just about anything else we can imagine?… How often has the “reign of God” meant a sovereign reign of theocratic terror? What has been more violent than theocracy? What more patriarchal, more hierarchical? What more authoritarian, inquisitorial, misogynistic, colonisalist, militaristic, teroristic?
But suppose all this power mongering is just rouged and powdered theology?…
Suppose, then in short, and contrary to the expectations of religion, mainstream theology, and the vested interests of His Reverance, the name of God harbours an event that is as at best a ‘weak force’ and that the ‘weakness of God’ is, nonetheless, the only thing that is strong enough to save us, which is why we want to save this name?…
God’s transcendence is the power of a spirit, not of the sword…” (excerpts from pages 32-35).
The chapter I am currently reading talks about the cross as central to the ideas of weak theology. “The power of God is not pagan violence, brute power, or vulgar magic; it is the power of powerlessness, the power of the call, the power to protest that rises up from innocent suffering, and finally, the power to suffer-with (sym-pathos) innocent suffering, which is perhaps the central Christian symbol” (p43).
There are a variety of Biblical quotes which support these ideas e.g. First Corinthians 1/Isaiah (‘God chose what is weak in the world…’). The bit I’m up to translates this through Derrida to be “I will deconstruct the wisdom of the wise” or “I will deconstruct the metaphysics of presence of the strong onto-theologians, sayeth the Lord God”!
I am enjoying the sacred-anarchy that this book proposes as an interpretation of the Kingdom of God. I’m optimistic that somewhere later in the book, there maybe some revelation of the point of what Jesus was saying. I always have a feeling that the church is somehow ‘missing the point’ but haven’t found a way to articulate this yet myself. I will let you know if there is any further insight into the ‘point’ when I get further into the book.
Farewell Horatio
This is a sad day because our beloved hamster Horatio has passed away. The organic food did not make him immortal and he died suddenly of a heart attack. The Ranter buried him in the communal garden by our flat. I made a cross to place by his grave – although I don’t really believe he was a Christian hamster (being Syrian afterall). We shall miss Horatio’s reassuringly grumpy presence and have very fond memories of our first pet together.
RIP Horatio
Post Protected
April 27, 2007 at 9:15 pm (cultural comment)
Apologies to anyone who has checked this blog and not found anything particularly interesting! I wanted to have my own blog to express my views but realise that most of my life is ‘data protected’. I have three part-time jobs all of which I can’t really blog about! This is quite right and proper because in all 3 jobs I work with young disabled people/children. It would obviously be completely inappropriate for me to blog in any detail about what I do during the day, and I don’t do much else (sad I know but quite true)! All I can say is that I work for a charity called Time2Share and a large college in Bristol.
I’m not very impressed with said college – I’ve worked there since 2001 and have gradually got more and more disillusioned with it. The staff I work with are really nice and friendly but we are all over worked and under paid, which I guess is fairly standard in the public sector. The problem is that there is a clash of cultures at work. We all care about our students who we know personally, and end up doing a lot for free. Today I was paid to teach for 5 hours but I got to College at 8:45am and left at 4:30 with no break (7:45 hours) which doesn’t even factor in having to plan beforehand and that I haven’t finishing marking the tests or filled in the paperwork I’m meant to do. This is all well and good but the Principalship seem to live on a completely different planet to the teaching staff. At the end of last term we had a staff engagement day (I think there was feedback that staff were unhappy so they appointed an unpopular member of staff to sort it out!). We were all filed into the refectory to hear the Principalship speak. They thought the way to engage staff was to talk about ‘branding’, competition and general neoliberal claptrap. You can imagine how this went down with a room full of teachers! The worst part was that this was going on in the same time period that many staff had recently been told that they could lose 30-50% of their income with 2 weeks notice, or that their job roles and faculties could change due to the restructuring of the college system and funding cuts!
Anyway, enough on that icky subject. I do like my job roles at Time2Share. In fact, I would like to publicise this charity to anyone reading in Bristol, Bath or North East Somerset. Would you like to volunteer some time to support a disabled child or young person? You can do this through 1:1 volunteer befriending or helping with one of our social groups. See www.time2share.org.uk . We could also do with fundraising for activities, if anyone would like to help with this (at the moment we’re collecting mobile phones to raise money).
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