I meant your own post here. Fair enough to say it’s not about science? (Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good general post about faith and a relevant topic these days.)
I think it depends on your perspective. For me, science was right at the heart of it because it was my attitude to science that I had to sort out in order to do my job properly and to progress in my career.
Having once been in the church but now out of the church for 30 years (and with a small amount of knowledge of what deconstruction looks like on the atheist side of the aisle), this is what I am seeing, for what it is worth.
The first question that someone will come to is whether they are questioning the basic faith based beliefs of Christianity. If the answer is no, then it leans more to the side of Reformation. This process, IMO, would involve untangling 2,000 years of Christian tradition and culture from the core understanding of scripture. In a way, a bit like the Sola Scriptura of the Protestant Reformation. There would also be a process of personalization in trying to figure out what Christianity means to each individual person, akin to the “personal relationship” that many people often use to describe their Christian beliefs.
When I hear Deconstruction I often think of a skeptical view of the basic tenets of Christianity. People may be looking for reasons to continue to believe in God, or at least the God of the Bible and Christianity.
So I don’t think people should try to replace Deconstruction with Reformation because they could be two very different things. One is a crisis of faith while the other is a crisis of theology.
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Good distinction.
Since this discussion earlier and rolling terms around in my mind I think I’m going to start using “ Christian naturalist “ as the label for myself but I still think I’ll use evolutionary creationism as the default term for the subject of how evolution and faith plays a role in understanding genesis 1.
Can the latter lead to the former – it would seem like it could. The converse maybe not? If someone is having a crisis of faith then likely they’ve already been through a crisis of theology, if they’re going to have one.
I think the use of deconstruction comes from the idea that it was constructs that were being evaluated and rethought. But the association many people have with the word is maybe more linked destruction than analysis, so I share your feelings about the word and don’t use it to describe myself. About ten years ago people used the term “faith shift” and I liked that, except many people then began to apply it to deconversion, so then I didn’t want to use it. Same with ex-vangelical, it’s not telling anyone where you are, just where you don’t want to be.
I didn’t watch the video, but my problem with applying “reformation” to the current convo is that I associate it with the historical process of reforming Christianity with institutional level, corporate reform, not individual’s personal journeys. And all the talk of deconstrction is about highly personal journeys and I don’t see much evidence of any institutional level reform in Christianity these days.
I prefer to think of my own process as disentangling not deconstruction. There is a lot of white cultural supremacy and patriarchy and politics and American exceptionalism and modern Enlightenment that got tangled up in the form of Christianity I was raised in, so I don’t feel like I am tearing down and discarding my Christian beliefs so much as trying to weed out the stuff that was only ever a culturally biased preference or misrepresentation of Christianity to begin with.
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While I’m not a big fan of “deconstruction,” there are situations when the word is used appropriately. I define deconstruction as using poststructuralist methods (especially those by Derrida) to analyze beliefs and systems for evidence of binaries, hierarchy, oppression, etc. It can trace its heritage to ideas by Neitzche and Marx.
A poststructuralist analysis of Christianity has its place, but my issue with personal “deconstruction” is it usually only leads to skepticism about some things and not others. For instance, it may lead one to skepticism about the core tenants of Christianity but not skepticism about objective moral values or scientific realism.
I prefer the instances of “critical exposure” or what I call “epistemic shaking,” where one subjects aspects of their worldview to skepticism and see what works and what was believed on not-so-solid grounds. In many cases, this leads to a “re-building” or reformation of Christianity that is more personal and less self-assured.
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I’m curious what your issue with Craig and McDowell are and why you think their approach is “Bankrupt.” I haven’t read much of McDowell’s work but I’ve found Craig’s writings on time, necessity, etc to be very thought provoking.
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I like the way the phrase “a bit ham-fisted” was explained in detail by Jammycakes about 4 days ago.
On the idea of deconstruction, I’d like to suggest the book by Christian author and professor Crystal Downing Changing Signs of Truth.
My suggestion is that no good house can be built on the foundation of an inerrant Bible, but if we understand that the Bible is true based on a foundation of other types of evidence and reasoning, then we are in good shape.
The thing about deconstruction is that we must deconstruct a western modern Protestant understanding of the Bible that had its seeds in the Gentile church and fully bloomed in the 16th century, and instead delve into the scholarship that gets us reading more through the eyes of original cultures and audiences.
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Bankrupt is a poor word choice. Christian apologists are still guilty of overstating their case. Sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally. But with Craig, I find he tracks in a different direction by how he has handled himself in debates on the resurrection and with the role the Spirit plays for him in belief formation.
That’s a double edged comment. I would steer clear of any church or leader that does not place themselves under the authority of the text… an admittedly fallible collection of infallible books.
I also see, based on Acts 2:14-36, that to “know for certain” can be based on a cumulative case or combination of the testimony of Scripture, eyewitness evidence for the resurrection, and the self-evident testimony of the Spirit.
A bit of a side comment, but I find myself continuing in the process of deconstruction or reformation. And reading Christy’s comment, I tend now to think deconstruction is a better word, despite its negative connotation to many.
We discussed Samson in Sunday school this week, and it occurred to me how we grow up as children in church thinking of Samson as a heroic figure, a mighty warrior, a strong and mighty man brought low by the trickery of the deceitful and cunning temptress Delilah. When you read the account of his life in the Bible, however, you see that his life documented in Judges was ruled by lust and anger, breaking his vows as a Nazerite at every turn, marrying Canaanite women, frequenting prostitutes, defying his parents. There is ultimately a turn back to God, so really a good story as to how we can be used by God despite our flaws, but certainly not the heroic figure we are taught about as children in the patriarchal culture many of us grew up in. So, even now I am deconstructing some of what I was taught with bad theology. You can include young earthism, purity culture, and other such teachings that have deeper scars as well with that.
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I like the “cumulative case” or “combination” approaches, rather than having only one single reason.
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Yes, a deconstruction not of Christianity or of the Bible, but a deconstruction of an inferior body of teaching and attitudes that has sprung up surrounding Christianity and the Bible.
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I’m just going by what I saw in your post, including the video. But you don’t have to worry.
I wouldn’t comment on Craig philosophically. I probably wouldn’t even understand half of what he writes in a philosophical debate. Historical arguments for the resurrection are my problem with him. Here is the basic problem without getting into all the specific things the authors get wrong from my perspective:
History works in terms of probability. It’s attempts to reconstruct the past based on what is most probable given the surviving evidence. As far as events go, supernatural miracles are the most improbable of all events (they seem to not occur frequently in nature if at all depending on who you ask). How does an attempt to reconstruct what is most probable use events that are the most improbable of all as an explanation? How does one evaluate “God rose Jesus from the dead” historically? History is also not to be confused with “what actually happened” but it is actually just our best guess as to what happened based on scholarly methodology. In some cases we can have more confidence than others but ancient history doesn’t have the certitude some would like it to for faith and as an academic discipline, it cannot do what they want it to. Given there are dozens of modern scholarly reconstructions of Jesus, it is quite clear faith cannot rest on minimalistic portraits of Jesus. Whose version would we follow?
Even if we accept a worldview which allows miracles, as I do, history can scarcely reconstruct them. The problem here is one of methodology. That a man rose from the dead is hardly the only or best explanation or Christianity. Necromancers stole the body of a holy man. How can anyone tell me that such an explanation, whether ad hoc or an actual ancient process is less or more likely than God actually raising Jesus from the dead? How does one historically evaluate a theological claim? A bunch of irreversible reactions and pretty much a biological impossibility vs body theft? There will never be historical proof of Christianity. We can only show how some of our beliefs are consistent with the evidence (e.g. some of Jesus’s earliest followers genuinely believed he rose from the dead). While it can be, genuine belief doesn’t = accurate.
Not to mention our source material is not historically good enough to do what many apologists claim. We have four gospels-- possibly all having literary dependence in some form with one another, whose authorship cannot be established, that probably come 1-2 generations after Jesus was killed. This meets the definition of hearsay. Mcdowell spends a bit of time in NETDAV on textual criticism as well but he doesn’t really appreciate the lack of early manuscripts or the evidence for diversity we find that occurred so early manuscript tradition we do have does not even know of it.. A large volume of later manuscripts geographically spread in different languages is nice for sure, but it doesn’t eliminate the 100-150 years of darkness for most NT works. Even the wholeBible being able to be reconstructed from church fathers doesn’t get around this as the majority of these quotes are also centuries.My understanding is also that at least some of the OT is not very textually secure.
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Samson was not a heroic figure to me when we covered the story last year in Bible study. He certainly did some things right but my biggest concern is how God just gives him his vengeance at the end.
Judges 16:28 "Then Samson called to the Lord and said, “Lord God, remember me and strengthen me only this once, O God, so that with this one act of revenge I may pay back the Philistines for my two eyes.”
Though with details like killing 1000 men with the jawbone of a donkey I am not inclined to understand much of it as literal.
Where is the turn back to God?
From Wiki: Ambrose, following the portrayal of Josephus and Pseudo-Philo,[44] represents Delilah as a Philistine prostitute,[44] and declares that “men should avoid marriage with those outside the faith, lest, instead of love of one’s spouse, there be treachery.”
In some cases it could, but I don’t think a crisis of faith is a necessary outcome of a crisis of theology. The Protestant Reformation certainly didn’t cause a rejection of Christianity throughout Europe.
That wasn’t the case for me. It was the basics of faith that I questioned, not theological nuances. For example, the debate over faith and works with respect to salvation never really factored into it.
However, my experience is certainly not universal.
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Indeed, he seemed ruled by base desire until the end (he deconstructed? 
) The difficult thing about that is that evidently, God gave him the strength to do so. Not sure what to think with that, along with the magic hair thing. I suspect that in the context of the ancient culture, it goes along with showing God’s power in a polytheistic setting, and represents a nationalistic posturing as well, but doesn’t translate as being positive today. Still, no excuse to make him a champion, and name your luggage after him as a symbol of strength.
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