I was reading Covenant’s own Dr. Michael Williams on the matter of systematic theology, and he covers a lot of very good ground. However he raises a question that I have struggled with for some time: should systematic theology burden Scripture with extra-scriptural prolegomena? That is not far from the problem Barth dealt with as he sought to have the Bible provide not just the answers, but also the questions for theology.

I would suggest that we must have prolegomena. We cannot come to the text tabla rosa, we will apply an interpretive framework to it. We bring our cultural and linguistic frameworks to the text; we bring our epistemological frameworks to the text; yes, we even bring our understanding of the text to the text. The hermeneutical spiral is what it is regardless of if we wished we could simply extract the text as we was meant to be known. I know Dr. Williams acknowledges this as well, and, for that matter, we have spent much of this semester in what appears to me to be the prolegomena of Covenant Theology, and so I am sure there is more to his position than what I have stated above. I need to talk to him on this subject perhaps, but I leave it to my readers for tonight: how do you deal with the tension between sola scriptura and the need for interpretive frameworks in reading that Scripture?

For me, I think, following Calvin and the Westminster Confession, I find it mostly helpful not to look solely to Scripture, but rather to place whatever I look at under the authority of Scripture. I would argue we must have extrabiblical assumptions, but that does not mean we abandon sola scriptura. What do you think?

This is a continuation of my series on literary criticism and Biblical hermeneutics. You can find the previous pieces of the series here: I. Old Historicism, II. New Criticism, III.1. Reader Response, III.2. Reader Response Cont'd..

So far, you can see the progression we have made from the strong objective belief in authorial intent and historical influence, as it appeared in the Historicism, to the even stronger sense of the text as an objective reality of its own in the New Criticism, to the strong subjectivism that followed in Reader Response. I was inclined to skip over Mimeticism -- which has some close ties with Reader Response -- despite the fact that I find it interesting, because I have not spent as much time studying it as I would have liked to prior to commenting, and because I am anxious to move on to our next stop, Deconstructionism.

But, in Covenant Theology today the lecture outline contained a quote from Erich Auerbach's Mimesis and I decided I had to at least mention Auerbach's school as we continue this survey.

Mimetic criticism focuses on the text as that which portrays reality. There is a heavily Platonic sense to this critical school in at least some forms, given its sense that literature can illumine reality better than what we normally think of as "real life" can. The common analogy being Plato's Cave: if our experience is the flickering shadows on the cave wall, literature is perhaps looking in the pond outside the cave and seeing the sun reflected with relative clarity.

For some reason, my fascination with Mimetic Criticism has been largely in applying its principles to a Jungian archetypal model. Though Jung's ideas usually show up in Reader Response, it is my assertion that they fit perhaps better here, for my interest is in seeing how the author, reflecting on reality, creates the text, and not nearly as much on how the reader responds to the text. The archetypal figures do not just come out of the readers imagination to be imposed on the characters of the text, rather they exist in the text. Hamlet would not evoke archetypal inspired responses in readers if he did not fit the characteristics of the tragic hero to begin with. In a sense, to return to the New Criticism, we might say there is such a thing as an objective correlative -- an objective feature of the text -- which evokes the archetypal recognition in the reader.

Thinking about Auerbach reminds me of another point I find interesting with Mimeticism, however, and this one is more closely related to Biblical hermeneutics. While as a good Thomist (to the extent that Thomism does not impinge on my Barthian tendencies) I view too much emphasis on Plato to the exclusion of Aristotle as a bad thing indeed, I think the notion of the realm of the ideal forms is somewhat compatible with the Christian notion of God. If we follow Barth's emphasis on the self-revelation of God and the fullness of revelation in Christ Jesus, then it may make sense to say that the Bible, as the clearest witness to that revelation, points from lesser to greater views of reality. Furthermore, natural revelation (such as it functions at all) fits well the analogy of the shadows on a cave: it gives a highly distorted view of the true reality. Nevertheless, even fallen creation reflects the original Word of God, by which it exists.

While we want to be careful to avoid Platonic dualism in the church, I think this perspective need not lead us to that point. We do not want to say we are trapped in a lesser physical revelation, but rather that the created world is in its entirety a witness to God that is lesser not because it is bad, but rather because it is not direct. The true self-revelation of God in Christ is a direct viewing of the Creator by creation rather than merely a view of reflections.

Obviously, there is a lot of potential applications in theology to the basic framework of Mimeticism -- I am not by any means doing it justice. But it is at least worth mentioning on the "Attractions Next Exit" sign, so that you may get off and explore it more fully before we pass it up en route to the bigger and more recent stops on the itinerary.

Gratitude and credit is due in large part to Dr. Ana Schnellman of Lindenwood University for the basic understanding of Mimeticism off of which I am working. Don't blame her, however, for my Jungian musings, those are my own reader responses to the ideas of this school.

Well, Mike asked for a little sample of Greek weekly. I’m not good at doing things weekly, but I’ll provide one for this week, at least! This is an interesting grammatical rule which came up when I was teaching the high school Sunday School class at my church last week. We were looking at Titus 2.13, “while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (NIV). Now, it seems natural enough that the author of the epistle is referring to Jesus as “our great God and Savior.” But, it could also be read, theoretically as “our great God” and also “our Savior Jesus Christ.” I noted in passing that there existed a grammatical rule in Greek that helps argue for the first reading.

Much to my surprise, I found out the class was really interested in hearing about this grammatical rule, so I told them it was called the Granville Sharp rule, and explained it something like the following. When there are two singular, non-proper nouns (e.g. God and savior) that have one article (“the”) in front of them, and those two words are joined with a conjunction (“and”), they both refer to the same thing. Granville Sharp, in formulating his rule, was a “little” more precise than that, but such is the gist.

In Greek, the text looks like this: “προσδεχόμενοι τὴν μακαρίαν ἐλπίδα καὶ ἐπιφάνειαν τῆς δόξης τοῦ μεγάλου θεοῦ καὶ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ.” Notice the part in bold. The article is “τοῦ,” and the two titles applied to Jesus are “μεγάλου θεοῦ” (“great God”) and “σωτῆρος ἡμῶν” (“our savior”). The conjunction (“καὶ”) is right were you would expect it to be. So, as you can see, all the necessary components of Granville Sharp’s rule are present. To answer one common question, yes, “God” is non-proper; we talk about gods or a god in English, and such usage would have been even more common in polytheistic Graeco-Roman culture.

So there you have it. Now, Titus 2.13 is not the most helpful verse in many discussions on the deity of Christ, even with Granville Sharp’s rule, because of the question of the authorship of the Pastoral Epistles. That is, even if I affirm the Pauline authorship of them, many others do not, so even now that you are armed with this useful Greek tidbit, it will not necessarily be a convincing verse to many. Then again, even if it was without a doubt Pauline, it would remain unconvincing to many, so perhaps authorship really does not matter in this case.

Continuing from Part III.1 on Reader Response

A few more words, perhaps, should be said about Reader Response criticism. What did I mean when I said that Reader Response is not permission to interpret the text anyway that I might want? That's a good question. What Reader Response does is look, as I said, at certain types of "readers" that it creates to analyze the text. The control on this is that we are not interested in one individual, but in a comprehensive interpretation.

So, for example, I might create a Freudian reader, and look at how on average, using a Freudian model, I would interpret the text. A liberation theologian or Marxist would create an oppressed reader and look for key parts of the text as they appeal to the downtrodden. As for me, in as much as I would participate in Reader Response, I would likely provide a Jungian model of interpretation.

It has been my long term assertion that the Jungian model is better placed in the next school that we will look at, Mimeticism, but for the sake of argument, consider it here. If we assume that there are certain key archetypes embedded in humanity (whether you wish to call them part of natural law or be truly Jungian sounding and dub them the "collective unconscious"), then it stands to reasons that the text will be read with the reader constantly searching and meeting the text where the text can enter into the archetypal roles. Hamlet is the famous prince he is because we can read into him the role of the tragic hero, or -- with only a little stretch of the imagination -- a savior figure.

Norman Holland talks of "subjectivity questioning objectivity." The good part of reader response is its focus on a dialectic. The text and the mind are in a constant conflict to create the poem (used in the looser sense, not the sense of verse). This explains why we enjoy texts that conflict with our views and we are prone to forget about simplistic texts that have no ambiguity or depth. There is little dialectical value in those texts. No text is completely free of dialect to be sure, otherwise it would be a mirror image of our mind, but certainly some texts are so poor as to come close.

The important point that this all leads up to, which a wonderful professor I studied under kept re-enforcing because it is so tempting to forget, is that Reader Response is not about how much I enjoy the text. While we can formulate that certain characteristics that will lead to people enjoying the text, such is totally irrelevant to the school's goal. This school is about applying systematic models of readers to the text, not about becoming a newspaper book reviewer who must give new books so many stars and suggest whether her readers will enjoy the book. To pull this whole series back into its starting point at exegesis, note that higher criticism is about interpretation, not reviewing.

With that said, I think we can now move on to Mimeticism with a fuller understanding about why I will argue shortly that one should reject Reader Response and argue that Mimeticism follows similar themes much more fruitfully.

Continuing from Part II on the New Criticism

If New Criticism's formal method focused entirely on the text to the point of losing context, I would assert that Reader Response is its polar opposite. Reader Response makes two good assertions: first, it notes, as does formalism, the impossibility of really knowing the author. Certainly, once we admit that an author is not required to present himself as himself -- and that is hard to deny, for writers often adopt personae in their writings either intentionally or unintentionally -- this seems like common sense. Second, we cannot really know the text as the text either, for we can only know the text such as it interacts with us and we interpret it. This too is hard to deny.

If you sense that modernism is quickly slipping away as we move through critical schools, you would certainly not be far off. Reader Response rejects the idea of objective truth in the text. Instead, what is of interest is the meeting of the written word with the mind to form "the text." Whenever I read something, I do not read it with the same connections between the words as the author did, but rather my own ideas and connections. I read into the text my hopes and aspirations, my fears and doubts. I find T.S. Eliot particularly appealing at times because I can connect with his characters -- or rather I can connect with how I read his characters -- that may not be the same thing.

Now, reader response is not a free for all. It is not permission to read whatever I want into the text. But, as a critical method, we might look into how a particular hypothetical audience would read the text. In religious studies, in particular, of interest is often the feminist or liberation readings of the text. These can thrive on Reader Response, since the emphasis can be placed on the text interacting with their modern concerns, rather than trying to keep the text as the text or as the author's intended result.

To be sure, some Reader Response critics come up with some interesting ideas, and I appreciate how they see that the reader is a significant participant in the reading process. Both as a writer and a reader, it is hard to deny the importance of the audience -- intended or not -- that reads the text. As will become clear in part V and VI, there is good reason for many of Reader Responses' arguments.

Nevertheless, I believe particularly in the realm of Scriptural interpretation, Reader Response is highly dangerous. By rejecting the quest to bound meaning within the guidelines of what historically or formally the text might have meant, even with careful, scholarly methods, Reader Response is a free pass to provide vastly wilder interpretations than are desirable. And not only with Scripture, but also with literature.

When studying the school, more than any other, I was left questioning the exact usefulness of its pursuits. It remains the least objective school in my estimation, and while it is interesting to consider how the words and person meet to form some kind of poem, it is not terribly helpful in a quest for meaning or being.

To get closer to that, we must move on.

Continuing from part I on Old Historicism.

After the Great War, people started to realize that meaning was not cut and dry, and history was not a perfect record. Disillusionment reigned king, especially in Europe, and this had a big impact on not only politics and social mores, but also literature, literary theory and religion. If history and news was written by the will of the victors and the powerful, and often misled people into ill advised pursuits such as the "glories" of going into war for the fatherland, clearly using history to interpret texts was merely grabbing at the wind.

The New Criticism (Formalism) arose in literature, but I would contend a very similar movement arose within the core Fundamentalist tradition that was galvanized in the modernist debate that appeared in places such as Princeton Seminary. As Fundamentalism emerged, it claimed not only the priority of Scripture, but also generally isolated Scripture in a way I would suggest is fundamentally different from the intentions of the Reformers to whom they claimed to be the defenders (and, indeed, in some areas were).

An inside joke among students of literature is the famous freshman English Comp paper expression when the said freshman is writing about a text; when it comes time to paraphrase, the student will say, "what the author is trying to say is [such and such]." Nonsense. That suggests two things that no one, much less someone early in literary training, should suggest: first, that a worthwhile author was so poorly equipped at writing that he or she needs the freshman to clarify what the work is saying and, second, that anyone, much less a person who likely has very little knowledge of the author, can actually know what the author intended based solely on the text that was a result. We are not the author, and so the author's intentions can never be truly fathomed.

That is the essential starting point of the New Criticism. New Criticism and Fundamentalism both believe that a text can be read in and of itself; indeed, that is the only way to truly read it, since we cannot know the author's intentions. I respect the New Critics, which include two of my poetic heros -- T.S. Eliot and Archibald MacLeish -- and it would be a mistake to see them as Fundamentalists. New Criticism is highly nuanced, and encourages a close reading of the text using solid insights into the objective nature of emotion in poetry (the objective correlative), the fundamental adherence to genre in writing (generic criticism) and a love of allusion. New Criticism places the text on a pedestal and says, we cannot understand the author's intent, and it really does not matter; what matters is the text, which we can read and we can know if we read it carefully and avoid eisegesis. Notice that I have switched referencing and am only talking about New Criticism; Fundamentalism, I would assert, wants to take the text as the text, but ignores such important parts of a close reading as generic criticism, and this can lead to errors such as Dispensationalism.

Nevertheless, despite my admiration for New Criticism (and, indeed, my habit of naming Formalism as one school in my eclectic style of criticism), both they and Fundamentalism have made a critical error insomuch as they reject the need to provide historical context to understand a work. "I am going to perform open heart surgery tomorrow" can only be understood to be a crime if you happen to know that I am not an MD. One important nuance among New Critics (but not Fundamentalism) was the emphasis on being over meaning. "A poem should not mean/But be." This is a focus on the text. The New Critic does not see the text as a resource meant to be scavenged for specific nuggets of meaning, and so avoid part of this concern. When Archibald MacLeish wrote those words, he was putting to words the notion that our focus should be on the experience of reading the text and not on what we can extrapolate directly from it.

I would suggest the Fundamentalist reaction to Modernism parts company with New Criticism at this juncture and does generally see a text as only a means to propositional ends. Clearly, when it comes to theology, we do not want to say that Scripture is being and not meaning -- unless we want to get all Tillichian! On the other hand, extracting meaning while loosing oneself from historical context is highly dangerous.

One cannot loose a text from context. If we ignore its original context, we merely allow ourselves to lazily place a text in the foreign context of our own socio-linguistic situation. Remember that language is merely a set of signs and symbols. When we fail to place those signs and symbols within their original interpretive context (or the nearest thing we can manage to posit), a problem arises. Instead of seeing the New Testament as primarily Hebraic writings with Hellenistic influence written to people who think in the way people would in first century Palestine and have a set of shared experiences, expressions and so on that we lack, we start to see Paul as writing to Americans and sharing our experiences and expressions. And while there is no doubt Scripture provides us with useful instruction today, that instruction is best derived by trying to find out Paul's real point (in context) is and then finding how that point can then be applied to our situation. It serves neither as a respectful attitude toward God's Word, nor our own purposes, to place Paul out of context in an ill advised attempt to find him directly speaking to specifically modern problems (this is what liberation theology, for example, seems to do).

To the point, Formalism is an important discipline, but it must be included in a larger, more eclectic system for it to work in a proper, honest fashion. Those who adopted some or all of its methods in the twentieth century were reminding us of important truths that we ought not ignore. However, what Formalists are not honest in -- if they are pure formalists -- is that language is always understood in a context, because language without a context is nothing but random gibberish.

Jennifer mentioned the ever present discussion of whether God can create a rock that He cannot move and the (even more pressing) question of whether a tree falling with no one to hear it would make a sound. That gave me an idea, what if Aquinas had answered that first question and Anselm, the second? I think it'd sound like the following.

Of course, Thomas -- being the Angelic Doctor -- already actually deals with the issue in Summa Theologica 1.9.1 under the first article of the question concerning immutability. But, I decided it would be more amusing to have Aquinas deal with the issue directly, so hear is how I expect it would have gone:

We thus proceed to the first article.

Article 1. Whether God can create an object too large for him to move?

Objection 1. It seems that God can create an object too large for him to move. For as the Philosopher says (Metaphysics ii) "matter is in everything which is moved." However, as was already admitted in an earlier objection (ST 1.9.1), there exists things that are not made of matter. Therefore it seems God could create an immovable, immaterial rock.

Objection 2. Further, it seems that movement belongs to only things that are not already perfected, but it cannot be said that nothing God creates is already perfect. Therefore it seems that God can create an immovable rock.

Objection 3. It is clear from the Sacred Scriptures and the Magisterium of the Church that God is perfect and all powerful, for as the Evangelist reports, the angel said to the Blessed Virgin Mary, "Nothing will be impossible with God." Therefore it seems that God can create an immovable rock.

On the contrary, Augustine says (De Nat. Boni. i), "God alone is immutable; and whatever things He has made, being from nothing, are mutable." Therefore no creation of God can be immutable.

I answer that, although God is all powerful, He is also simple (ST 1.3), therefore all of God's essence and existence are one. If God's essence and existence are one, He cannot do anything in His will that would cause His essence to be in conflict with His existential actions. The resultant action of discord from God creating something that He Himself could not move would bring his existence into conflict with His essence, but a thing cannot be and not be in the same substance.

Moreover, a thing that is in conflict with itself is not as perfect as a thing that is not in conflict with itself, but we know that God is perfect, for as the First Principle, He is pure act and pure act is most perfect. If He were not pure act, He would not be the First Principle, but rather a Second or Third Principle, as is clear from the Philosopher. But, it is written "Be you perfect as also your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). Therefore God is perfect and, as pure act, can move anything that is not pure act, which is everything other than Himself.

Reply to Objection 1. As I have related before, the immutability of something depends not only on the physical movement of matter, but also the ability of the object to be made more or less act. Everything that is not the First Principle does not have necessary existence, therefore, there is some time that the rock did not, or will not, exist. Therefore, because philosophers treat conversion from potency to act as movement, the immovable rock is only immovable so long as God grants it act, which he may cease to grant it at any time.

Reply to Objection 2. Although something may achieve its ends, and therefore cease movement, it only achieves it thusly as God has intended it. Nevertheless, anything that can possibly not be, will not be at some point, whether prior or future, and therefore the rock is not immovable regardless of whether it ceases movement at the achievement of its end.

Reply to Objection 3. Nothing is impossible with God, but the impossible cannot be because it is nothing. For something that conflicts with its own nature cannot actually exist, and therefore does not actually exist, nor can the idea of its existence even be pondered. Anything that has existence neither in potency or actuality can be said to truly be "nothing" and therefore, is not something that is impossible with God.

Anselm's Lost Appendix in Fides Quaerens Intellectum Dealing with Falling Trees

"The fool says in his heart, 'if no one is around to hear a tree fall, it does not make a sound.'"

O most perfect newly fallen tree, how marvellous it is that you should fall with clarity and make it so that even a fool can see his folly in this statement! For it is clear that you could not have fallen without making a sound. For you are the most perfect fallen tree that can be imagined. However, the most perfect fallen tree that can be imagined is a fallen tree that has made a sound as it fell. For if the most perfect fallen tree fell but did not make a sound, then a more perfect fallen tree, which did make a sound, could be imagined, and you would not be the most perfect fallen tree.

But you are the most perfect fallen tree, not because someone happened to be around to hear you fall, but rather because your status as the most perfect fallen tree made it necessary that you should make a sound as you fell. The fool denies the obvious when he makes the claim, for to say that the most perfect tree could fall and not make a sound, because he was not there is foolishness! To suggest that the most prefect fallen tree is only most perfect because of something outside of its perfect falleness is contradictory to the idea of the most perfect fallen tree, for if the most prefect fallen tree were only perfect because someone was there to hear it, I can easily imagine an even more prefect fallen tree that was perfect without need for someone to hear it.

Reading through my first Greek in Exegesis assignments was not an exercise that was all fun, but parts of it were an absolute delight, because they touched on one of my favorite subjects: literary criticism. So, I thought I would mull over some of the ideas in the book and essays as a way of walking through the major schools and, ultimately, showing why I’ve ended up in the critical school I am in. This may prove further to Brad that I am sick.

What got me started on this was that Wallace remarked in his text that language is cryptic and symbolic, which is something dangerous to say around a person who is recovering from a severe case of deconstructionism (that's me). Admitting language is cryptic and symbolic draws us into the territory of Deconstructionism. The essays rounded things out and helped soothe my other critical interests, incidentally, but I had to slow myself down lest my inner Deconstructionist get too excited.

The Deconstructionist, as well as the New Historicist, rejects the absolute of meaning because we observe that the meaning is lost "in the slippage of the signified from the signifier." This is essentially a fancy way of saying that given any word (a symbol) it inevitably will shift from the intended meaning of the author. We can observe this quickly in two ways with respect to the Bible: first, well known verses have become so well known as to have obtained proverbial status, hence granting to them an independent status that does not exist in their original state (whether translated or not). Second, the statements have been pulled out of the context of first century Palestine, as such regardless of how much we try, we cannot reconstruct the mindset of the audience.

Ok, so language is cryptic, why does all this nonsense about author-text-reader really help at all? Well, I am glad you asked. Basically, as one of the authors said -- I think it was Joel Green -- Biblical interpretation (and, I would add, literary criticism in general) has gone through some marked phases in the modern and post-modern periods.

Let's journey down one path tonight, and we can pursue the others soon. The realm of interpretation actually has more than three sides, it actually has five: author, text/co-text, reader, intertext and reality. Understanding these explicitly, rather than taking them for granted, is extremely helpful, I believe.

The Enlightenment Project's sense that everything could be understood brought in Old Historicism, which in the context of the Bible, led to attempts to determine the original authors, their motives and their accuracy. It is also related to the Quest for the Historical Jesus. This is the school of both the Academic Study of Religion and classical liberal theology. It seeks, for example, to determine how Mark, the Q text and other sources were used by Matthew and Luke. This is, clearly, a focus on the author.

What is good about this school is that it forces us to consider the intent of the authors. God chose human authors; He did not need to do that. So why did He do that? Presumably, He did so because He could use their unique personality traits to cover important angles. Mark is short and apocalyptic. Luke is the detail oriented, literary guy. Matthew is interested in Jesus's relation to Judaism. John (or, more properly, perhaps, the Johannian community) is in the Kingdom of Heaven already, at least in spirit. Each has his own purpose and style.

Even controversial theories, such as the isolation of Q (which is abbreviated from Quelle or source) from shared passages in Matthew and Luke is fruitful. The basic premise is that we can find identical or highly similar passages between the two Gospels, pull them out of the existing Gospels, and get some idea of what the earlier source both writers used looked like. It does not seem far-fetched to believe that there was an earlier source upon which the two Evangelists drew. But, should we reject that, it still causes us to question why God led the two Evangelists to frequently word-for-word copy each other, while also frequently not doing so. Perhaps it is for emphasis on important topics, if so, all the better that we pay attention, isolate these passages and try to exegete them.

I reject this school tenderly, as it was the first critical school I applied intentionally as part of my time as a Religion major. I later used it -- or tried to, anyway -- in my interpretation of literature too. I battled long and hard to maintain my Old Historicist sensibilities, but ultimately I believe it is chasing after the wind. Nevertheless, its attention to the details of ever important cultural context are not to be forgotten. They will return when we reach a different school, later on.

Ok, so how’s that for a fancy schmancy title? I need to develop my ideas a little more (and see what’s actually going on with this concept already), but I think it is high time to explore a deconstructionist philosophy within Christianity, and I’m not seeing it happening anywhere I normally look. Now, I’m sure if you know Deconstructionism, you are probably thinking I am crazy, so hold on just a moment.

I find reading Jacque Derrida painful, to say the least, but I find deconstructionism extremely interesting once I pull the concept out of Derrida’s text (which is truly deconstructed). The basic premise is simple enough: “meaning is endlessly deferred.” Whenever we seek meaning about something, which is called “the center,” we move away from the center, placing the focus on the means of understanding. It is essentially impossible to zero in on the thing itself, according to deconstructionism.

Deconstructionism differs from the atheistic, twentieth century existentialism in that it does not argue that meaning is arbitrary or non-existent, but rather that it is impossible to get to. I think this is actually a more faithful outgrowth from Kierkegaard’s original flavor of existentialism, and it also fits in neatly with my interest in redeveloping a Barthian neo-orthodox theology. Essentially, deconstructionism undermines any system of rational thought, admitting that none of them can get to meaning. This, of course, would include natural theology, to which we must follow Karl Barth in saying, “Nein!”

But, this does not lead to despair when applied within Reformed theology, because our knowledge comes not from our own reason but God’s. To me, it seems that what seems true coming out of deconstructionism is essentially an observation about the fall: a fallen creation cannot rationally or otherwise actualize meaning. The meaning is clearly there, but that meaning can only be drawn close to, not found. We can accept a Thomistic framework of natural theology, but we must accept that the center will be missed and must be interpolated via revelation. This is an important point, because it does not rule out reason, but rather puts reason within the bounds of revelation, our only hope of actually escaping a never ending series of collapsing systems.

I think this is not only interesting, but it also serves as an excellent response to modernist over-rationalism. From experience we can say that modernism does not work, precisely because everyone must accept a crisis point of faith and make a leap of faith to enter whichever scheme of knowing they feel is most proper. Deconstructionism does not say anything new, yet it gives its message so boldly and directly, I think it does bring significant value to the table.

No less than three people tied to my alma mater, Lindenwood, took the time to invite me to a two part Coffee Conversation there. The last one was last spring when I presented a talk on religious pluralism, so it has been a little while since I have had the pleasure to sit in on such an event. The first part was today and covered the first of two videos produced by that epitome of reasonable dialogue on the issue of religion, Richard Dawkins. It was interesting. Dawkins was, well, Dawkinsish, and he was properly and robustly rebutted by the panel of faculty that presented arguments after the 48 minute film.

The conversation after the panel was good as well. I am not quite sure why anyone would take Dawkins’s arguments seriously, but they did serve to get a good conversation stated on the general corruption of human nature. A tulip could have almost sprang out of that!