re-church network

By Zane Yi

This is the third  post in a six-part series in the re-church Summer Reading Group (click these links to read parts one and two). The six posts will correspond to the six chapters of What Would Jesus Deconstruct?, by John D. Caputo. Next week’s post will also be written by Zane.
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I like to think of myself as a generous person. This summer, my wife and I have had the privilege of attending several weddings. Each of my family members or friends received gifts from us. According to Derrida and Caputo, however, these so-called “gifts” came with some unstated expectation of gratitude or reciprocation. In other words, they are not really gifts and I am not really a generous person. I do not truly give gifts; rather my gift giving is a form of putting someone in debt to me!

The distinction between names and events is central to understanding Caputo’s provoking discussion of gifts and along with his thoughts on forgiveness, love, and hospitality. I will start by providing some further distinctions that I hope will clarify Caputo’s general claims regarding names and events, and then raise some questions for discussion. (By all means, feel free to add your own below, or to touch on topics I do not mention in the discussion below.)

Words and events

There are three helpful distinctions from the world of linguistics and grammar, and one from metaphysics, that help us understand the difference between names and events or the cryptic phrase “events are not names or things but something going on in names or things” (59).

First, is the distinction between words and the things, people, actions, etc. to which those words refer (the referent). Names and words fail to fully capture the reality of the people, actions, and events they seek to describe. In other words, they are never adequate, and at best, they serve as icons–at worst, they are idols–directing us to a reality beyond themselves.

Another helpful distinction, for all the grammarians out there, is the one between the nominative case (as well, as other cases) and vocative case. Nouns, we know, can be used as a subject of a sentence, i.e. the nominative case (Ex. The man ate the cow.), as the direct object of a sentence, i.e. the accusative case (Ex. The cow ate the man.), the indirect object, i.e. the dative case (Ex. The woman gave the cow to the man.), or as a possessive, i.e. the genitive case (Ex. The man’s cow at the grass.).

All this can be distinguished from the vocative case of a noun, in which someone or something is called upon by someone else (Ex. He has shown, you, O man, what is good.”).

Giving something a name, or learning someone’s name, gives us a certain sense of familiarity or even certainty about them. It gives us a sense of power and mastery over them. We call out someone’s name; they respond to us. We invoke names; they legitimate our agenda. We are the subject; the person or thing we refer to is the object.

Caputo reverses the priority and power we give ourselves and our cognitive abilities. Events are not something we grasp, something we call for. Rather, events call us into account and into action.

Thirdly, we know that verbs have tenses—they refer to actions that have happened in the past, are happening now, or will happen in the future.

Lastly, is the distinction between, necessity, i.e. what exists, how things are or must be, and possibility, i.e. how things might be.

We do not find the ideals we profess perfectly embodied somewhere, or in an alternate reality, i.e. the pure world of Platonic Forms. Events give us a vision (albeit, an unclear one) of what might and should be.

So to briefly summarize, names (words) should not be mistaken for events (realities and possibilities) and where they are, they can be “deconstructed”, i.e. analyzed and criticized to show how they will always fall short of the possibility to which they refer.

Caputo draws out the implications of this distinction between names and events by discussing justice, gifts, forgiveness, and hospitality. Each of these events exceeds our linguistic and conceptual grasp of them, along with our present experience of them, and call us to us further action.

Gifts, love, and forgiveness

True gifts, according to Caputo, are impossible. If we are honest, we will admit we never give something to someone for free. In our most generous givings, we expect at least “a thank you.” “[A]s soon as the gift is given, the gift begins to annul itself,” Caputo writes (67).We are all entrapped in an endless cycle of exchange.

This, for me, raises uncomfortable questions about my own personal “givings”, religious or otherwise. I think it raises questions about communal giving as well:

1. When we give our lives to God, or return our tithes and offerings to God, are we really giving? Don’t we expect further blessings at least, or eternal life, at most?

2. There’s a lot of  talk these days about “needs-based” evangelism. The old methods of preaching to people don’t work. “You have to ‘love’ them first. Meet their needs and they will come,” it’s explained. Is the church loving or giving to anyone in such cases? Aren’t we seeking to indebt and manipulate people? What would happen if we were to really love the world?

“We must also be aware of making everything turn on rewards, even long-term celestial awards,” Caputo warns (72). He tries to assure us that his critique is not to throw us into despair or to inhibit us from giving, but to make us aware of the truth about our situation, and provide an ideal aspiration.

God is the only true giver.

Or is s/he? This raises yet another uncomfortable question:

3. In Scripture, God is called the giver of every perfect gift (James 1:17). Salvation, it is explained, is a gift (Ephesians 2:8). Is it? Doesn’t God’s supreme gift of himself to us in Christ actually indebt us? If so, can it rightfully be called a gift?

On a related note, critiquing traditional understanding of God’s forgiveness as based on atonement, Caputo asks, “Is not the highly Anselmian story we have been telling ourselves in atonement theology completely at odds with the figure of the father in [the parable of the prodigal son] told by Jesus? Is not the God of Jesus marked first and foremost by forgiveness?” (75).

I would answer Caputo’s first rhetorical questions in the negative; I don’t think Anselm’s view of the atonement is at odds with the story of the prodigal son. In the story, at least the way I read it, the father absorbs the shame and cost of his younger son’s rebellion. (I would also ask the question, “Can a gift be a gift, if the gift cost nothing to the giver?) Perhaps, I’m being too much of a traditionalist on this. What do you think?

Justice and law

Caputo’s discussion on justice and law has thought-provoking implications for the legal minds amongst us. The law, Caputo speaks of, of course is human or political law, which is not to be confused with justice. Furthermore, justice should not be confused with consistent application of the law, i.e. legality. Some times, justice requires the abrogation of law or in Caputo’s words, “[I]f laws are universals, justice is sensitive to the singularity of the situation, to the idiosyncrasies and differences” (65).

Laws exist as a means, to the end of justice; they are not an end in themselves. Caputo suggests that this was Jesus’ attitude toward religious laws (63). “Whatever exists, whatever is present, is contingent, historical, constructed under determinate conditions—like the church or the Sabbath—and as such is inwardly disturbed by the undeconstructible, unconditional impulse that stirs within it,” Caputo claims. (68). He quotes Jesus to make his point, “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath?”

To this, the Sabbath apologist will say, “Yes, Jesus deconstructed the human laws of how to observe Sabbath, but not the Sabbath itself, which is a part of the divine law.” This is a distinction that Caputo fails to make. This, however, still raises some interesting questions:

4. Are divine laws, i.e. the Ten Commandments, or the teachings of Jesus, an end in themselves or a means to an end? If it is the later, what is this purpose?

5. Could the purpose of divine law “justice”/shalom, as Caputo suggests? If so, can it be deconstructed, or set aside, when it fails to actually lead to justice?

Concluding thoughts

Caputo purpose in this chapter is ultimately practical. He leaves us with a question that haunts all those who feel the call of these events that are described in this chapter: “What would love or justice or hospitality require, here and now, in the concrete” (80)?

How does all this relate to prayer? Well, some prayers are never answered; they cannot be answered in the final sense (at least in this life). We never arrive at our destination. Deconstruction point us to what is absent in our lives and in our world.

Without the comfort of presence, we are forced to pray. Perhaps this is what St. Paul had in mind when he admonished us to “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

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Zane Yi is completing his Ph.D. in Philosophy at Fordham University in New York City.