Deconstruction and Theology’s Negative Task

Deconstruction is, at the same time, “on to something” and misguided. Let me explain. Deconstruction is an orientation (some might say a method) that questions limits and boundaries. In the most positive sense possible, then, deconstruction seeks “the more” too often concealed by our structures and assumptions. It is an orientation that refuses to accept confinement of any sort not simply out of stubbornness, boredom or rebellion, but because rigidity can limit the pursuit of higher ideals.

For instance, while being interviewed at Villanova University, Jacques Derrida, widely known as the “father” of deconstruction, makes the following comment regarding the relationship between law and justice:

“…the law could be deconstructed…Each time you replace one legal system by another one, one law by another one, or you improve the law, that is a kind of deconstruction…But justice is not law. Justice [which is not deconstructable according to Derrida] is what gives us the impulse, the drive, or the movement to improve the law, that is, to deconstruct the law. Without a call for justice we would not have any interest in deconstructing the law.”

Derrida’s distinction between law and justice suggests that law is temporary and temporal, whereas justice is an aspirational ideal that is never fully realized (apart from God).

Because the world is broken, we set up provisional structures to hold back chaos and institute some semblance of order. Those structures, however, will always need to be revised and reinvented because the solutions they provide are partial at best. Deconstruction occurs because what has been established can’t deal with every aspect of the world’s brokenness. Deconstruction, in some sense, stems from the inadequacies of the provisional structures we develop as we seek to manage the disorder.

Suggesting that deconstruction is “on to something” is not an endorsement. Deconstruction (and other “methods” of analysis) may highlight problems or tensions. They may even allow us to improve on our provisional structures, but they are always shadows rather than substance. Deconstruction has no final solution to the problems it observes.

While deconstruction may be “on to something,” it is also deeply misguided because it is largely unaccountable to any particular authority. As such, whatever insights deconstruction may yield, it cannot help but promote understandings decoupled from Christ’s authority. Because deconstruction does not recognize the Triune God or root itself in a love of God, its observations and conclusions will always be rooted in misordered loves. By denying God, deconstruction cannot hope to understand the world. It can only offer continual critique.

Deconstruction will “get it right” on occasion. In fact, “getting it right” (at least some of the time) makes deconstruction feasible and (to some) compelling. Yet, no matter how much deconstruction “gets right” it will always offer a story that distorts and denies God. As Bruce Ellis Benson notes at the conclusion of his treatment of deconstruction, “It is all too easy for me to equate my view with ‘the way things are.’ And Derrida is no different.” To the extent that deconstruction dismisses God’s authority, it must become its own authority.

So, should we throw the deconstructive baby out with the bathwater? No, and yes. Deconstruction is often, as noted above, “on to something.” Methods like deconstruction serve as reminders that the world is broken. Still, continual questioning and reformulation can go too far when they are decoupled from the authority of the Triune God. While we may be able to learn something from deconstruction, Christians don’t need to redeem deconstruction. They need to embrace theology, particularly theology’s negative task.

What is that negative task? In Hearers and Doers, Kevin Vanhoozer describes it as theology’s task of freeing the church from idolatry by alerting God’s people to “false beliefs and false practices and the false ways of imagining the world that fund them.” Theology’s negative task is not simply performed outside the church, but within it. For those in Christ, theology is both, by its very nature, settling and unsettling. It consistently demands that we set aside our agendas, our notions of success, and our legitimate concerns to be increasingly conformed to the image of Christ.

Deconstruction, then, could be characterized as a theological crisis that stems from a theological crisis. The latter crisis has little to do with Derrida, but with the church’s willingness to suffer fools and falsehood…to have our itching ears scratched (2 Tim 4:3). It derives from our unwillingness to embrace theology’s negative task. We must model what it looks like to allow it to scrutinize our practices. We need to scrutinize our false beliefs, practices and stories not because we have a deconstruction problem, but because we are a people so committed to the truth that we recognize confession of sin as a sign of our faith (1 John 1:9).

Theology is not intended to reinforce our limited perceptions of the world, but to expand them. As Stanley Hauerwas suggests, “a theological sentence that does its proper work does so just to the extent it makes the familiar strange.” Engaging in theology, particularly theology’s negative task, makes deconstruction unnecessary. It becomes unnecessary because our theological convictions will stand in tension with the structures and stories that too often determine the way we live in the world. As theology makes the “familiar” structures and stories seem strange, we will find that we too will become strange in ways that allow us to point to and glorify the Triune God in a world hellbent on denying Him.