{"id":574,"date":"2014-03-01T18:33:37","date_gmt":"2014-03-01T18:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/practicalmattersjournal.ecdsdev.org\/?p=574"},"modified":"2016-03-31T20:33:46","modified_gmt":"2016-04-01T00:33:46","slug":"preaching-after-god-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pmcleanup.ecdsdev.org\/2014\/03\/01\/preaching-after-god-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Preaching After God: Derrida, Caputo and the Language of Postmodern Homiletics"},"content":{"rendered":"
Download PDF:\u00a0RV Neal, Preaching After God<\/a><\/h5>\n
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By Phil Snider
\nEugene: Cascade Books, 2012. 227 pages. $20.80<\/h3>\n
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Preaching After God <\/em>begins with a true story about a roomful of Christian preachers who cannot come up with a concrete instance of God\u2019s action in their lives. For Phil Snider, this inability to talk about the action of God in preaching has had negative implications for the progressive congregations with which he identifies. Snider makes abundantly clear that he has no interest in superstitious beliefs that image God as a supernatural \u201cSanta Claus\u201d or even a \u201cSupreme Being\u201d (75, 2). His congregation welcomes those who, by his own description, \u201cbelieve in God some of the time, or none of the time, or all of the time\u201d (2). In Snider\u2019s view, however, progressives that depend entirely on human agency as the transformative element of their sermons share something in common with their conservative counterparts. Both domesticate transcendence, creating a God that either conforms to human ontology or disappears into human action. To avoid this catch-22, Snider draws on the philosophy of Jacques Derrida and John Caputo, arguing for a \u201chomiletic of the event\u201d in which God insists<\/em> rather than exists<\/em>. Snider\u2019s hope is that such a homiletic maintains the significance of the \u201cwholly other\u201d (31) for preaching and opens a door to transformation and celebration.<\/p>\n

Snider begins his argument by noting the pastoral significance of the \u201cmodern homiletical crisis\u201d (32) that has resulted from the eclipse of divine agency in progressive preaching. He describes a lost sense of \u201cwonder, love and praise\u201d in progressive sermons and a corresponding compassion fatigue in congregations (46). He stresses the danger of inauthenticity when these congregations lose the connection between what they believe and how they behave. Furthermore, he notes that such preaching can become idolatrous, making \u201cit far too easy to place God in one\u2019s back pocket\u201d (41).<\/p>\n

Snider\u2019s antidote lies in the \u201creligious turn\u201d of Jacques Derrida\u2019s philosophy, leaning heavily on John Caputo\u2019s rearticulation. Snider takes pains to describe how Derrida has been misunderstood by his ecclesially-minded critics and earnestly outlines Derrida\u2019s \u201clove of the impossible\u201d(82). Snider defines deconstruction as a commitment to the impossible event contained in a name \u2013 an event that breaks open the name and calls to the reader. The event is not the name itself, but the evocation of meaning contained in the name. It is this meaning that overflows the name and deconstructs it, even as it depends upon it. Significantly, Snider reframes the agency of the reader in the deconstructive event. The reader doesn\u2019t \u201cdeconstruct texts; rather texts deconstruct themselves, precisely because of the event that they harbor, [an event] that can\u2019t be contained in words\u201d (144). Snider appropriates this concept of \u201cevent\u201d as a post-modern conception of God that moves beyond \u201cmagical\u201d thinking, as well as modern, moralistic reductions (30). Because it lets go of the need to know the Source of the event (i.e. God does not exist<\/em>, God insists<\/em>), Snider argues that such a conception can be embraced by postmodern thinkers whether they believe in God or not. And yet, such a focus on the instability and impossibility of the \u201cevent\u201d leads the listener to faith, hope and a longing akin to love.<\/p>\n

Snider\u2019s articulation of this hope is beautiful, but he falters in his description of the particular character and power of events that insist. In short, there is <\/em>something magical \u2013 or at least self-authenticating \u2013 in his description. Not all events are benign, and not all longings are equal. Some events rise from neuroses, some from desires for power or consumerist fantasies. Finally, while \u201cthe Source\u201d cannot serve as a firm foundation or guarantor of knowledge, it cannot be done away with either. As Paul Ricoeur argues, while the questions of \u201cwhat\u201d and \u201cwhy\u201d are significant for understanding eventful action in the world, as well as the acting Self, they cannot replace the question of \u201cwho.\u201d[1]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> The \u201cwho\u201d behind the event matters, even as our understanding of that \u201cwho\u201d cannot be separated from the indeterminacy of lived experience.<\/p>\n

In this regard, Snider\u2019s inattention to the particularity of the acting subject (i.e. the \u201cSource\u201d) mirrors his inattention to the particularity of those who are impacted by the deconstructive event. The \u201cevent\u201d of longing \u2013 embedded in and deconstructive of language \u2013 has a univocal and universal tenor in Snider\u2019s description. There is little acknowledgement that events occur in concrete contexts, inseparable from the persons who participate in them. Derrida\u2019s classic discussion on democracy and the longing it evokes serves as an example. This longing is contextually grounded. \u201cDemocracy\u201d reads differently in countries where democracy has become a code word for the interests of globalization and the manipulations of capitalism. To speak of undefined, universal longings for a messianic age, or to assume that all in the congregation will share an \u201cevent\u201d that transforms the world in a positive way simply because it happens, arguably takes more faith than the traditional views Snider critiques. Such claims would have been aided by a greater diversity of voices in Snider\u2019s engagement with Derrida\u2019s work. The few theorists of color mentioned by Snider, for example, were addressed in footnotes.<\/p>\n

Snider\u2019s belief that postmodern theory is no enemy of Christian faith is a useful contribution to the homiletic conversation, and his invitation to reexamine Derrida\u2019s philosophic contributions for the benefit of practical theology is welcome. There is an iconoclasm and a \u201cpassion for the truth\u201d that resonates in both (163). As Snider points out, both call for a cruciform death to certainty and proof. I also appreciate his performative emphasis on \u201chow a word or symbol means\u201d rather than \u201cwhat a word or symbol means,\u201d (145) moving theology into conversation with lived practice. But I find it strange that the \u201cmaterialist homiletic\u201d (30) he describes for Christian preaching includes so little talk of the embodied Jesus.<\/p>\n

To collapse the noun of \u201cGod\u201d into the insistence of a call is one thing. To dissolve the body of Christ into an event of unfulfilled longing (i.e. dissolving the person of Christ into his work) is something different. For all of Snider\u2019s disclaimers, this is high Christology indeed. There is a familiar neo-Platonism in Snider\u2019s assertion of indestructible essences \u201cin the nutshell\u201d of names (83). The problem of Jesus\u2019s body \u2013 its presence and its absence \u2013 is a thorny dilemma for any ecclesiology or sacramentology. (And finally, Snider is claiming that preaching has a sacramental function.) Given this function, doing away with the particularity and ambiguity of Jesus\u2019 body too quickly risks making, in Snider\u2019s words, the \u201cwholly other\u201d wholly the same. Snider notes that there are more nuanced versions of theism than the magical versions he denounces, but he does not engage them. I wondered what he would think of Douglass Farrow\u2019s work on the relation of presence, absence, and time[2]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> or Sarah Coakley\u2019s excellent article on the \u201celusive\u201d body of Jesus.[3]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> How would he respond to J. Kameron Carter\u2019s assertion of the \u201carticulation\u201d of Christ\u2019s flesh and the \u201creconfigured\u2026self\u201d that occurs in the preaching?[4]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> Each of these discussions affirms the significance of faith for theology and argue against domesticating of the divine. None of them attempts to \u201csecure the grounds of knowledge\u201d (156) or isolate doctrinal claims from the provisional eventfulness of practice. They do this, however, by paying attention to the particularity and grit of bodies moving in lived relation, rather than placing faith in disembodied, universal longings. After all, Christian tradition affirms that God became a provisional, misunderstood, material person, not an indestructible event. The deconstructability of Jesus \u2013 both his name and the event harbored in that name \u2013 is part of his scandal and, in my view, part of his kenotic witness.<\/p>\n

What I appreciated most about Snider\u2019s work are the sermonic offerings at the book\u2019s end. It is a risky, vulnerable thing to put one\u2019s theories into practice, and Snider\u2019s sermons are written with love and contextual urgency. Snider\u2019s sermons, however, also assume the transformative action of a particular person that is recognizable. This is true even when the sermons refrain from naming \u201cGod,\u201d as is the case in one sermon preached at a university baccalaureate service. They are sermons that take place \u201cin the shadow of the cross, with the spilled blood and broken body just a few steps away\u201d (164), and, as such, they risk more than the homiletic theology Snider describes.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Notes<\/h4>\n

[1]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup> Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, <\/em>trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 59.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> Douglas Farrow, \u201cIn Support of a Reformed View of Ascension and Eucharist,\u201d in Reformed Theology: Identity and Ecumenicity<\/em>, eds. Wallace Alston and Michael Welker (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).<\/p>\n

[3]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> Sarah Coakley, \u201cThe Identity of the Risen Jesus: Finding Jesus Christ in the Poor\u201d in Seeking the Identity of Jesus: A Pilgrimage<\/em>, eds. Beverly Gaventa and Richard Hays (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2008), 308.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> J. Kameron Carter, Race: A Theological Account<\/em> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 333, 315. Carter\u2019s discussion reflects on the preaching of Jarena Lee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Download PDF:\u00a0RV Neal, Preaching After God By Phil Snider Eugene: Cascade Books, 2012. 227 pages. $20.80 Preaching After God begins with a true story about a roomful of Christian preachers who cannot come up with a concrete instance of God\u2019s<\/p>\n

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