deconstruction - a rebuttal

More nonsense from the guardians of their own truth, TeamPyro.

For this poster, jazzycat exclaims, "What a great concise definition of what deconstruction really means to the emergents......." Let me know after you look at it what truthful definition you learned.

The author of the ridiculed article, Andrew Perriman, tries to defend himself.

I like the irony of the deconstruction picture - a building that looks like it's going to fall down if someone doesn't 'deconstruct' it pretty soon. As usual, you guys completely missed the point of the article.

Phil Johnson isn't phased. Parriman couldn't possibly know what he meant by his own article so Johnson feels justified in defending his attack.

The picture illustrates "deconstruction" in process. By tearing the building apart (starting with the window, the one feature that was originally designed let the light in anyway), someone has rendered it useless for any purpose.

As usual, you guys completely missed the whole point of the parody.

But Perriman is confused into thinking Johnson cares about proper representation and persists.

At least I intentionally missed the point of your parody. It's called irony. And be honest, your building is old and derelict; it's not being torn down; it's falling down; it's no longer fit for purpose.

But 'deconstruction' is not the same as 'demolition' - nor is it about making something mean what you want it to mean. The parody is funny but inaccurate. What deconstruction does (as I understand it) is point out the internal contradictions, lacunae, blind spots, in a text or ideology that have the potential to cause the collapse of its cultural or political significance or authority.

The article that you parodied was not about making the Bible mean what I want it to mean. On contrary. It was about deconstructing dominant modern interpretations of the Bible that have swollen to the point of obscuring or misrepresenting the text. The last but one sentence reads: 'The text itself will always have the capacity to subvert our reductive, trivializing orthodoxies.'

I guess the basic question is what is the building. Is it (1) scripture itself? Is it (2) an edifice of timeless, unalterable (but reformed - another irony) truth that has been constructed around scripture? Or is it (3) simply the prevailing culturally shaped world-view through which we attempt to make sense of the original text of scripture? My article takes (1) as a given. But it takes the view that what is often mistaken for (2) is really (3), and that we would get a much better understanding of (1) (for the sake of worship, mission and corporate life) if we allowed a critical-realist hermeneutic to deconstruct the modern domestication of the Biblical text.

Perriman even wrote a post to clarify that the original article was intended to focus on Biblical truth as opposed to the truth people think they can get away with by imposing their own cultural views over Scripture.

The good news for TeamPyro is that Perriman's attempt to seriously engage is not noticed so that they and their flock can continue to jeer and ask why EC'ers only whine but never seriously reply.

And all of that is in the comments. The poster and referenced article, Strange but true: the irrelevance of Scripture for the church today, simply further the point that TeamPyro isn't interested in truth. In fact, they only seem to want to attack those that express interest in learning truth.



So what Biblical truth did jazzycat and others learn from this? I don't know. I again see mocking and the implication the EC'ers overall think they have license to make the Bible mean whatever they want.

Of course it is not important to TeamPyro that this is not what the referenced article is saying. They only care that their supporters get a laugh and hope that someone might try to defend the charge so that Frank Turk can jump in and stir the frenzied crowd. Which in Turk's mind is a good thing since he thinks God is laughing as His people bicker over the fabrications of Phil Johnson.

The article is a bit lengthy. Certainly the title is designed to elicit a response. One really needs to read the article to get the point. Perriman baiscally argues that we concern ourselves too much with trying to be relevant.

the Bible is not a modern text: it is an ancient text, written to address ancient circumstances, constructed out of the peculiar thought-forms of an ancient worldview, and it should seem strange and irrelevant to us. Although we may want to construe it theologically as the Word of God for his people today, always pertinent, always meaningful, this understanding of Scripture is unavoidably at odds with its intrinsic literary nature. In my view this contradiction between real identity and perceived identity accounts for much of the misinterpretation of Scripture – and indeed the bad theology – that has sustained modern evangelicalism.

Perriman argues that modernism dissociates form and content with serious consequences.

i) It discourages any reassessment of the content of Scripture. We assume that we know what the Bible teaches, we simply need to find a more effective way of enticing people into reading it: it becomes an exercise in marketing rather than understanding. In that respect, it is a form of denial, a way of not facing up to the problem of Scripture. The real need, I would argue, is to determine exactly what is this ‘story that we find ourselves in’. A jazzy respray and go-faster stripes are not the answer.

ii) The separation of form and content also underpins the modernist confidence in an overarching meta-narrative. The modernist instinct is to possess and control truth, to sequestrate meaning for ourselves. This is much easier to do if we can, so to speak, disconnect truth from the historical matrix in which it was birthed and assimilate it into our own unquestioned worldview.

He then goes on to suggest ways that we might de-modernize our approach to Scripture and loosen our grip on what we think it says so that we can more honestly look at what it really says. I have to admit some of these suggestion make me more than a little nervous and they may be open for debate. TeamPyro on the other hand would rather help people think that EC'ers simply want to twist the Bible.

Perriman's goal is clearly to strip away our false notions and find the true God of Scripture - not at all consistent with the implication of the poster.

I put forward this de-modernizing approach to Scripture not because I think it will necessarily furnish us with a more objective and assured statement of the truth but because it minimizes the space between text and interpretation; it stops interpretation getting carried away with itself. There is less room to generate those grand modern ‘mythologies’ that seek to give a totalizing account of the world. We are less likely to mistake the metaphors and myths that we produce – the synthesizing meta-narratives that we construct out of Scripture – for objective truth. The text itself will always have the capacity to subvert our reductive, trivializing orthodoxies. We are forced to approach the question of God from a more fragile and human perspective.