The Image of Fish

Things mentioned in this video:

Postmodernism, Culture, and Religion Conference

John Caputo

Caputo's Keynote Address at the Conference

Cyborg Philosophy

Ray Kurzweil

Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 6, Episode 12

This post is centered around a phone interview that I did with John Caputo about the issue of hyperrealism.  Click "phone interview" to get the MP3.

The question that I open asking references his book, The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event, and is specifically about this passage.

I compare how Caputo uses the term to the more common usage that Jean Baudrillard uses.

The "Richard" I reference in the interview is Richard Kearney of Boston College, and the book being referenced is his Anatheism, the official site of which is here, and a good (independent) engagement of which is here. 

A series of conversations between Caputo and Kearney are archived here from the 2007 Emergent Village Philosophical-Theological Conversation.

A series of recordings of lectures from Caputo are found here.

Tripp Fuller's Homebrewed Christianity interview with him is here, and the recent interview I did with him is here.

Relatedly, Caputo asked that I try to promote the Call for Papers for an upcoming conference he is co-hosting around the future of philosophical thought.  He is particularly interested in younger voices being present, so lets send him a whole host of interesting things to read!

Lots of things in this one…

The QUIP Quaker Writers conference was held to coincide with the release of this book (which I have a few things in).

The Center for Process Studies at Claremont hosted the Theopoetics and the Divine Manifold conference , at which, most academically noteable for me (at this moment), were Catherine Keller, Vince Colapietro, and Mat Lopresti.  

While there I gave a presentation in conjunction with the paper I delivered working with my ideas about a Heraldic Gospel.

Then I spent time at Whittier First Friends Church.

Wesley’s Blog Post (which is the inspiration for this post) is here.

My original post on McLuhan, the medium, and the message, is here.

An article about Epistemological Coherentism is here.

To learn more about the Theology After Google class which inspired most of this, click here.

Often times those interested in Postmodernism are so interested in the topic that they sometimes struggle to talk about it in a way that is concrete and accessible to folks not already interested.  In this video I try to explain my understanding of postmodernity in a way that folks can get at without needing a degree.  As a result of the simplicity I’m leaving lots out and cutting corners, but the hope is that it is worth it.

One of the things I hit on in the vid is my problem with calling the whole shebang “post”modern, when, in fact, modern thinking is hardly past. I think its very name sets it up hurdle to understanding… Has anyone out there also been bothered by this?

Invariably, when Christianity and Postmodernism cross paths, the issue of relativism and absolute subjectivism pops up.  I have unabashedly skipped this issue all together.

It certainly does require consideration and IS A PROBLEM that some folks with sloppy thinking do  run into. I run into it too, so don’t think I’m unaware…  I’m not planning to dodge it forever. Its just that I’m currently writing a paper on the topic and trying to sort through my own thoughts. Eventually I’ll address it.

In the meantime though, I’d be curious to know what others think:

1. How would you describe postmodernism to someone who doesn’t quite know what it is?
2. What are the benefits of postmodernism to a life of faith?

Oh, and Wess Daniels, mentioned in the vid, is online here: Gathering in The Light

This morning, Tony Jones published on his blog the contents of a chapter he wrote for The Justice Project. In it he discusses the utility of some aspects of postmodern thought to the faithful Christian.  His particular consideration of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur and the hermeneutic of humility prompted me to add on to some thoughts I started in my comments of the transforming possibility of text.  I have been engaged by the work of Paul Ricoeur since I first read him, and I imagine I’ll further address some of his thoughts as I proceed.  He has lots to offer.

In this particular video I am mostly concerned with his idea about the Second Naïveté.

Over at his blog, Matt Gallion raised some interesting questions, via a comment from Slavoj Žižek, about the role of narrative in our thinking.  Long story short, the question seemed to me to be about effective and persuasive communication:  Are we best served by prosaic and uber-clear communication, or is there something to be said for subtlety?  Also, should we shy away from narrative, just sticking to the facts ma’am?

My take is that narrative and creative engagement with ideas are foundational aspects of human social life, and while we often have the tendency to like to make everything as reductionist as possible so we know easily who to hate, I think the world is often murkier than we can make it seem.  There is only one white and one black, but an infinite number of grays.

One of the problems of course is that liking narrative for narrative’s sake, and believing in the transformative power of language can once again but you (singular and plural) on the slippery road to unhinged subjectivity.  For example, while I like much of this sermon I found online,  it contains the following, which I think can become problematic:

Some people are very concerned to know whether [the events in the Bible] actually happened, and they will either believe it or disbelieve it based on whether it actually happened to an actual person at a real time in a real place. Curiously enough, these people are sometimes found in the pews of fundamentalist Christian churches, and sometimes in the pews of humanist Unitarian Universalist churches. I respect their desire to know what really happened in Bethlehem two thousand years ago. But I am not personally interested in it, any more than I am interested in whether there was ever a real King Lear or a real Mary Lennox. That question seems rather beside the point. These people are real and Jesus is real insofar as their stories, the lies that were told about them, tell us some very important truths. The truth the story of Jesus tells, like the truths in all of these stories, is born of its lies, its beautifully, skillfully told lies.

While I think the power of story is such that it can transform regardless of its historical-critical veracity, I think that routing one’s faith in something that even the believer understands to be a lie is risky business to say the least.

Though I think that the power of theological inquiry is greatly supported by a creative and imaginative quality of thought, I don’t think that doing away with the whole notion of truth in text is the way I would want to go.  I believe than we can simultaneously embrace transforming narrative and tradition.

Books Mentioned in Video:

Amos Niven Wilder’s Theopoetic: Theology and the Religious Imagination

Sandra M. Schneiders’ The Revelatory Text

This past weekend, November 6-10, I was at the American Academy of Religion Conference in Montreal.  While there I made a number of great connections, including some longer conversations with Tripp Fuller (of Homebrewed Christianity) and Phillip Clayton, both at Claremont and involved with the Transforming Theology Project.  Well, long story short, both those fellows were encouraging about the work I’ve done over that THEOPOETICS(dot)NET and inspired me to get more of my work out on the web instead of just focusing on printed output.  This is the beginning of what I hope with be one or two videos a week engaging theological work (in print and on the web) with some smaller textual summary below.  Cheers!