PhD Submitted!

I submitted my thesis yesterday. That fact is still sinking in. It feels like something that happened to me, rather than something I did. So after I've had a bit of time to reflect, I'll post more about it. My viva is already "arranged" (we're waiting for the paperwork to catch up with what we've sorted out) for March 22nd and my examiners will be Gerard Loughlin and Chris Partridge. I'm sure I'll have lots of posts between now and then second-guessing myself, so I'll be able to post more about the content of my thesis in a self-reflexive/self-critical way!

The Thesis in Parables

I'm toying with the idea of including an explicit supplement in my thesis which would be a sort of other to the thesis. For Derrida, argumentation always involves implicit supplementation: in order to argue X, that which is other-than-X is required in an 'infinite chain' that is yet concealed in order to give the 'mirage' that the argument is self-sufficient (OG 157). The supplement both adds to and substitutes the argument: it 'adds only to replace' (OG 145). It is both essential and threatening. Threatening since it reveals that, without it, the argument cannot appear self-sufficient, cannot appear as "a work itself;" without the supplement, there is no "itself" of the work. Therefore essential since the "work itself" is less than whole, less than pure, lacking in and of itself, and in need of supplementation.

This is why I've been thinking about the possibility of including a (there is an infinite chain of supplements such that there is never just one supplement, never just the supplement) supplement that might work as an other of the thesis. While there will be implicit supplements in my thesis (some I may be aware of, others I definitely won't be), I've been thinking/worrying/obsessing about the nature of the doctoral thesis in general, about writing and representation in general before (see here, for example, where I was thinking about alternative presentations, like the work of a number of poststructuralist thinkers, including Derrida's Glas and Circumfession) and think that a supplement that augments the philosophical, theological, ethical and ecclesiological argumentation with literature might be an apt way to explore how argumentation can also be replaced by the supplement.

So I'm thinking about a supplement of creative writing, in which I attempt to write the thesis as parables, "the thesis in parables," one for each chapter, positioned after the thesis, as a supplement. These pieces of writing might say in poetic form what the logic of the argument is trying to say. The parables can (will?) say more than the argument will (can?) and can (will?) replace the argument.

I'm going to post a few of them to the Facebook discussion board of the Association for Continental Philosophy of Religion at the beginning of March, along with a brief introduction to the background to their creation. I'll also post them in a "thesis in parables" series here at some point.

New Year Write-up Round Up

So as you can probably tell from the paucity of blog posts in December, I spent the month trying to get as much as possible of my thesis written before the Christmas holidays. During that time, I managed to make a significant dent in chapters four (3 out of 4 sections completed), six (2 out of 4) and seven (2 out of 3). Chapters one and two are in a similar sort of state (half to three-quarters done), and three is mostly done but in a bit of a state structurally, but I've yet to even start writing up my notes into something remotely resembling a chapter five.

Therefore my newest timetable for completion is:

• Chapters One, Two, Three, Four, Six and Seven completed by the end of January
• Go see my Mum for my birthday at the beginning of Feb and spend a week printing and editing
• Chapter Five completed by mid-Feb
• Edit draft and submit the latter half of February.

Doable? We'll see.

Writers' Rooms

So I've been writing. I'm working on a chapter which explores how the notion of "truth" is connected to the notion of "justice," and, seeing as how that means I've not been blogging much (or doing, really, anything apart from writing - my partner Sim is being absolutely fantastic about doing cooking and washing up), I thought I'd blog about where I do my writing.

Well, since I haven't really got that much interesting to say on the subject (my study is in a small upstairs extension at the back of our house, with skylights [that leak] and a window with a tree outside it, is full of books, folders and [for the moment unused] musical instruments... oh and I haven't cleaned it once since we moved in over a year ago), I thought I'd post some photos instead, a la The Guardian's excellent (and obviously much more interesting than mine) "Writers' Rooms." So, here we go on a tour of my study...

On the door is this picture. It is generally "where I'm at."

Then there are lots of book shelves without many books on them. Like this:

They're a bit empty because most of the books are all piled up around my desk so I can grab them quickly. Like this:

But there are some books that do make it back onto the shelves after I've used them. Like these:

And here's my window with the tree where the long-tailed tits make me happy when it's not going so well!

Updates After Andalucia

So I didn't get all my holiday reading done. Mainly because it's quite hard to read when its 40 degrees. I did get through Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter and Reading Derrida / Thinking Paul: On Justice, though. So I've got a few more texts to go (especially Realist Christian Theology in a Postmodern Age, which I got half way through about two years ago) before I feel more comfortable in moving ahead with my remaining chapters (mainly Chapters Four, Five and Seven).

While we were away, I did some good thinking on how I'm going to characterise the relationship between my different sources of empirical and theoretical data. I have both empirical texts (interview transcripts, e-questionnaires, and a variety of emerging church media) and theoretical texts (mainly by Jack Caputo and Jamie Smith, but including secondary literature by people like Gavin Hyman, Theodore Jennings, Bruce Ellis Benson, Richard Kearney, Robyn Horner, Merold Westphal, Kevin Hart, and Mark C Taylor).

My starting point is, of course, my empirical data. But because of the very nature of this starting point, my own reading of theology and philosophy has to follow the trajectories of my participants. Therefore, the theoretical texts augment the empirical ones, making in particular two strands clearer within the data. In the process, then, there is a massive amount of literature that I've only been able to dip into, including work by St. Augustine, Alain Badiou, Jacques Derrida, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Martin Heidegger, John Hick, Gerard Loughlin, Immanuel Kant, Soren Kierkegaard, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, John Milbank, Friedrich Nietzsche, St. Paul, and Graham Ward, etc.

My thesis is not "on" the work of any of these people. To an extent, it could be said to be "on" deconstructive theology, or Radical Orthodoxy, or, of course, the emerging church milieu. It might even be said to be "on" Jack Caputo and/or Jamie Smith. But I have to be clear that mine is not, for example, a thesis "on Derrida." Instead, I've been thinking about using the word "fragments" to refer to the other reading practices that I have had to engage in. This form of reading does not, for example, "do justice" to "Derrida." On the contrary, it probably does a lot of violence. This is similar to the way that Jennings frames his use of both Derrida and Paul in his Reading Derrida / Thinking Paul: On Justice. He writes,

"the procedure here adopted entails a certain violence to the texts both of Derrida and of Paul, for it requires extracting bits and pieces of their respective arguments in order to show points of convergence and illumination... I hope, however, that the violence of this reading is to a certain degree mitigated by its attempt to undo the greater violence that has come from the supposition that neither author is really concerned with the question of justice" (p.xii)

In the hope of "doing justice" to my empirical texts, I have done violence to the theoretical texts of several philosophers and theologians. As (a "fragment" of!!!) "Derrida" says, "in order to be just, I am unjust and I betray... it is unjust to be just. I always betray someone to be just; I always betray one for the other" ("To Forgive" in Questioning God, p.49).

Also whilst we were away, I also realised that a guiding structural question of my thesis is "how do non-propositional understandings of truth affect participants' relationships to religious propositions?" I had already worked out that Chapter Three, "Thinking Truth(s) Otherwise," moves from participants' considerations of religious propositions to ask whether this is even where religious truth is located and, further, to explore whether religious truth is (also) non-propositional. I had even created a three-fold structure for the closing section ("Non-Propositional Religious Truth"): Truth is God, Truth-Event, and Living in Truth. But, on a train (dictating to Sim, as I don't travel very well), I worked out that part of what my thesis is actually asking is how participants relate non-propositional understandings of religious truth to religious propositions.

In turn, this means that I've been able to much better articulate (should that be, "articulate much better"?!?!?) what I'm up to in some of my thesis chapters. So, the "Interlude" makes clear that a structuring question is, "what does non-propositional religious truth mean for religious propositions?" Then, chapters four, five and seven detail the implications of the non-propositional understandings of truth I enumerated in Chapter Three (Truth is God, Truth-Event, and Living in Truth) for religious propositions. So, Chapter Four presents the implications of "Truth is God" for religious propositions, Chapter Five details what "Truth-Event" means for religious propositions, and (part of) Chapter Seven demonstrates how "Living in Truth" relates to religious propositions. That means that I can clarify that, for the two strands in my data, "dialogue" and "deconstruction" become the respective guiding principles for non-propositional notions of truth to religious propositions. Well, I think that's clearer, at least!

Holiday Reading

So I've been madly trying to get as much writing done as possible before our holiday to Andalucia in a few days. I've made a few leaps of progress, as well as making some detours and a few deadends.

I've written the first "final" draft of my Introduction, and finished most of the sections of the first "final" drafts of chapters one, two and three ("Emergence" - what is the emerging church? why study truth in the emerging chruch? - "Ordinary Philosophy" - how did I study truth in the emerging church? - and "Thinking Truth(s) Otherwise" - how is truth conceptualised in the emerging church?). I've also made headway with chapter six ("Truth, Theology, and Fictionality" - is Radical Orthodoxy or deconstructive theology more appropriate for the emerging church, given participants' conceptions of truth?).

That leaves me with a vague idea of what I want to achieve with my interlude ("Determining Truth") and chapters four, five, and seven ("Dialogue and Determinate Truth" and "Deconstruction and Determinate Truth" - what are the philosophical and theological implications of such conceptions of truth? - and "Truth/Justice and Kingdom Poetics" - what are the ethical and political implications of such conceptions of truth?). I've still got a bit of reading to do for these chapters, particularly now that I know what I want them to do, so I've chosen a few key texts to get to grips with on holiday. These are works that will help in particular with my distinction between two strands in my data (chapters four and five) and the practical translation of truth into justice (chapter seven). They include:

• Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter, edited by Michelfelder & Palmer;
• Realist Christian Theology in a Postmodern Age, by Sue Patterson;
• Liturgy of the Neighbor: Emmanuel Levinas and the Reigion of Responsibility, by Jeffrey Bloechl; and
• Reading Derrida/Thinking Paul: On Justice, by Theodore W. Jennings, Jr.

Thesis Abstract - June 2009

My supervisor has asked for my most recent abstract to "sound out" potential external examiners with. It's all starting to feel a bit too real, now. Anyway, here's the latest version of my thesis abstract.

"On Truth/Justice: Post-Secular Theology and the UK Emerging Church Milieu."

The cultural and philosophical contexts of the global emerging church, a diverse network interested in Christianity and the postmodern turn, have shaped the ways in which the nature, as well as the content, of religious truth is being conceived. Building upon qualitative data from the UK emerging church milieu, this thesis takes the notion of truth to be an exemplary site for the exploration of what I term “ordinary” phenomenology and theology. Phenomenologically, religious truth involves an event of the radical transformation of subjectivity and behaviour, the substantive evaluations of which are undecidable, contingent and fictive. Reflecting theologically on their determinate interpretations of truth, however, the two divergent strands within the data exhibit different levels of fictionality. The first strand operates with a determinately religious hermeneutic, stressing the possibility of nearing theological alethic realism through dialogue, while the second is more thoroughly a/theistic in relation to both religious and tragic hermeneutics, emphasising the auto-deconstructability of all interpretations.

These strands mirror two post-secular theological sensibilities that have been suggested as apt for the emerging church, James K.A. Smith’s Radically Orthodox ‘catholic postmodernism’ and John D. Caputo’s deconstructive ‘weak theology.’ The preceding discussions of truth raise and answer questions of Radical Orthodoxy’s out-narration of other religions and deconstructive theology’s practical viability. It is suggested that Caputo’s theology, embodied by the second strand in the data, is more fully fictionalist than Smith’s Milbankian post-secularism, and therefore preferable for the emerging church milieu, given the nature of participants’ common phenomenology of religious truth. This thesis contests the suggestion that such a thoroughgoing fictionalism entails alethic relativism, however, through emphasising participants’ exemplarism, following which it is uncertain whether truth is an example of justice, or justice an example of truth.

Key words:

• continental philosophy of religion;
• deconstructive theology;
• emerging church;
• event;
• exemplarism;
• fictionalism;
• justice;
• Radical Orthodoxy;
• truth;
• undecidability.

Thesis Structure - April 2009

Another Panel Review document I submitted this year was an annotated plan, presenting the panel with my thesis in detail, from chapters to sections to subsections. I can't very well post all of that here (my annotated plan is 6,200 words) but I thought it could probably edit it down to something more readable. It might also be useful to have a look at the one page summary of my thesis argument thta I also submitted to the panel (here).

Thesis title (at the moment):

Emerging Truth/Justice: Towards a Poetic Understanding of (Christian) Truth.

Introduction

Chapter One, Contexts

• Presents the emerging church as a diverse milieu in which familial resemblances can nevertheless be drawn between those within it, providing the reader with an understanding of the context in which the research questions were asked.
• Places the emerging church milieu in the context of current research within the disciplines of the sociology of religion and continental philosophy of religion, positioning the milieu in the wider religious and spiritual landscape and demonstrating the wider value of the research questions.
• Explains my own position as a researcher in relation to the UK emerging church milieu.

Chapter Two, Methods

• Reviews the research methodologies of currently available studies of the emerging church.
• Gives the rationale behind my multi-methodology and presents these methods of data collection.
• Justifies in particular my use of Internet-mediated research methods.

Interlude, Researching Truth

• Problematizes the preceding chapters through a consideration of this thesis’ interdisciplinary position in relation to the philosophy of social science and continental philosophy’s critiques of representationalism.
• Suggests that John D. Caputo’s distinction between logics and poetics (The Weakness of God) is not only useful for thinking about the nature of this thesis as a piece of writing, but also hints at a distinction between two understandings of truth explored below; namely, truth as representation and correspondence (logics) and truth as transformation (poetics).
• Plays with the word “icon” and concludes that my work exists on the Derridean slash of undecidability in the word “i/con.”

Chapter Three, Truth(s)

• Argues for the aptness of pluralism about truth, supplementing the recent work of Michael P. Lynch (Truth as One and Many) through suggesting that the concept of truth needs to also be explored as it operates in the domain of religion.
• Constructs a set of truisms about religious truth (at least as it is viewed within the UK emerging church milieu) from interviews with participants.
• Uses participant data to suggest the truism that truth in the religious domain is transformational.
• Distinguishes between truth as transformative proposition and truth as transformative event, aided by Michel Henry (I am the Truth) and Jack Caputo (The Weakness of God).

Chapter Four, World

• Argues that, for the first strand, connecting the truism of transformation to propositions results in a realist assumption about truth: ‘truth hinges not on us but on the world’ (Lynch, The Nature of Truth, p.9).
• Shows why this assumption is questioned by the second strand.

Chapter Five, Event

• Argues that, for the second strand, understanding transformative truth as an event of truth itself results in an important relationship between religion and deconstruction.
• Shows why the first strand are wary of deconstruction.

Chapter Six, Justice

• Argues that the property that satisfies the truism of transformation and therefore manifests truth for religious/spiritual propositions is the norm of justice.
• Demonstrates that the event of “truth” itself can also be translated as “justice,” thereby augmenting our folk concept of truth as transformation.

Chapter Seven, Poetics

• Demonstrates that the foregoing exploration of the notion of truth within the UK emerging church milieu enables an assessment of the extent to which two contemporary theologies that have been suggested as apt for the milieu are indeed appropriate.
• Argues that, following some revisions, both Radical Orthodoxy and deconstructive theology are practically viable for the milieu.
• Recalls the distinction between representational logics and transformative poetics to defend Caputo's theological agenda from James K.A. Smith's criticisms ("The Logic of Incarnation")
• Uses Gavin Hyman's The Predicament of Postmodern Theology to argue that the latter option remains, however, preferable in my opinion.

Conclusions

Writing Schedule

The other documents that I submitted for my Panel Review this year (see here for the thesis summary I also handed in) included my annotated thesis plan (a detailed run down of the contents of each chapter, section and subsection of my thesis) and a writing sample, which was just over 12,000 words setting out part of the central thesis of chapters three to six of my thesis. As I can't very well replicate those documents here I thought I would post the gist of my writing schedule for the next few months along with my expected submission date.

I have already written the first final draft of chapter two, "Methods," and completed some sections of my "Introduction" and chapters one, "Contexts," and three, "Truth(s)."

So, from May 4 - 10, 11 - 17, I hope to complete the remaining sections of chapter three so that I've got a first final draft of it. During this time I'm also planning my workshop, "Studying Religion and the Internet," for a postgraduate day at Birkbeck (May 16).

I've got another London workshop (for Aspiring Academics) on the 19th, and my Panel Review on the 20th, so during May 18 - 22 I hope to finish the first draft of the section of chapter six, "Justice," that completes part of the thread of the argument begun in chapter three.

After taking Sim to see Anthony and the Johnsons in Birmingham on May 22, Sim is taking me to Paris for a little break (it's his halfterm holiday) from May 23 - 27, so I won't get that much done from May 23 - 31, although when Sim starts having to prepare lesson plans again after we get back I imagine I'll get something done.

June 1 - 7 I'll try to get a first draft of chapter four, "World," done, and the same for chapter five, "Event," from June 8 -14.

June 15 - 21 I'll finish the remaining sections of chapter six, "Justice."

The "Towards a Philosophy of Life" conference runs from June 26 - 28, so if my submission gets accepted (see here for my abstract) then I'll need to have been working on this before now. However, the argument of the paper slots nicely into chapter seven, "Poetics," so I can be writing this chapter around about the same time, June 22 - 28, with any revisions after the conference, June 29 - July 5.

During the week of June 29 - July 5, I'll also start writing my "Conclusions."

Then, after having completed the remaining sections of my "Introduction" and chapter one, "Contexts," I can edit for about a month (July 6 - 12, 13 - 19, 20 - 26, 27 - August 2) until either submitting before our summer holiday to Andalucia (August 13 - 29) or, after having had a nice break to get away from it all, looking through it once more and submitting at the beginning of September.

Looking at this, it seems like a lot of work to do in not a very long space of time. But maybe writing it here will motivate me to try to stick to this schedule - even if by the time I've submitted my brain has leaked out of my ears.

Thesis Abstract - April 2009

For our annual Panel Reviews (here and here for posts on last year's panel review process and here for this year's comments!) we have to submit a number of documents for the panel to read and evaluate prior to the review itself. One of the things they ask for is a one page summary of your thesis, the title of which is (at the moment) going to be Emerging Truth/Justice: Towards a Poetic Understanding of (Christian) Truth, focusing on central arguments and main findings. I thought I'd post my one page summary here, so you can see what I'm hoping to argue and also compare it to another thesis abstract I wrote only a few months ago (here) to see how it is changing as I continue to write up. So it's a little longer than an abstract would be but it's been really helpful for me to write - I now know that not only do I know what I want to say in my head, I can actually get it out onto a piece of paper for other people to see!!! Along with the central argument, I decided to try to hone my keywords:

This thesis explores how the notion of truth is conceptualized within the UK emerging church milieu, a diverse network of individuals and communities connected by the Internet and often particularly interested in the relationship between Christianity and the postmodern turn. Participants’ post- or late modern context of religious pluralism and individualism has impacted the ways in which the truth claims of the Christian religion are understood. Further, the theological turn of contemporary philosophy has also brought participants in contact with thinkers like Nietzsche, Derrida, Marion, Lévinas and Žižek, whose work in relation to religion raises questions of the nature of truth. This project therefore sought to discover not only what the philosophical, theological and ethical implications of participants’ conceptualizations of truth might be for Christian belief and practice, but what these notions of truth reveal about the viability of academic theologies like Radical Orthodoxy and deconstructive theology for the UK emerging church milieu.

Qualitative data was gathered from emerging church literature, emerging church blogs and interviews with a variety of UK milieu participants. This data displayed a conceptual pluralism about truth: truth is not only a concept that could be manifest differently in particular propositional domains, but is also understood non-propositionally as an event of truth itself. Participants identified both this truth-event and the truth of religious and spiritual propositions with the transformation of subjectivity and behaviour.

The author distinguishes between two strands which arise within the UK emerging church milieu regarding the truism that truth is transformative.

For the first, religious/spiritual propositions are true just when the transformation they evoke conforms to the norm of justice, a norm that itself coheres with a durably coherent framework of moral judgements towards which human beings aim in community and dialogue with each other. This conclusion has implications for collaboration across religious/secular boundaries. Those participants within this strand often, but need not, assume a theologically realist ontology. It is, however, difficult to overcome the objection that transformation here is merely a response to truth and not inherent to the concept itself.

In relation to religious/spiritual propositions, the second detectable strand within the data connects transformative truth not to propositional content but to the way in which propositions are believed. This is a consequence of their emphasis upon transformative truth as the non-propositional event of truth itself. Here, participants endeavour to keep religious/spiritual propositions open to the auto-deconstructive event at the heart of all language. Deconstruction is therefore intrinsic to religious propositions, traditions and institutions, to all the ways in which humanity names the event. For these participants, the language of truth is often supplanted by that of the other words used for the undeconstructible event, including justice and kingdom of God, which are understood as transformational rather than representational notions. Conceiving truth in this way places transformation within the concept itself, rather than as a response distinguishable from the truth that caused it.

These findings regarding truth in the UK emerging church milieu enable the author to assess theologies that have been suggested as apt for the milieu, James K.A. Smith's Radically Orthodox 'postmodern catholicism' and John D. Caputo's deconstructive 'weak theology.' It is argued that Radical Orthodoxy needs to become more generous towards other religions if it is to be welcomed by participants, and that weak theology becomes more practically viable when communities also emphasize how beliefs are held above what beliefs are held. The author assesses Smith’s criticisms of Caputo, arguing that he overlooks the latter’s differentiation between representational logics and transformational poetics. I use this distinction to argue that an interpretation of the kingdom of God as a concept that corresponds to a reality that will either arrive (Smith) or never arrive (Smith’s reading of Caputo) mischaracterizes it as representational rather than transformational.

Key words:

• John D. Caputo,
• Christianity,
• deconstructive theology,
• emerging church,
• justice,
• kingdom of God,
• poetics,
• Radical Orthodoxy,
• realism,
• James K.A. Smith,
• truth,
• transformation.

Philosophy of Life Abstract

So I submitted my abstract for the Towards a Philosophy of Life conference today: "Making Good on the "Good" of Life: Emerging Logics and Poetics of the Kingdom." The gist of it is basically the argument of my last three chapters (having now rearranged the order of my chapters - "Justice," "Generosity" and "Weakness" - which I'll blog more about tomorrow). Hopefully it'll get accepted, but even if it doesn't the words will go straight into my thesis so no real harm done... but it would be great to present this stuff to Jack Caputo and John Milbank as it directly relates to the rebate between elements of their work (see particularly my posts on James K.A. Smith's Radically Orthodox 'Postmodern Catholicism' here, here, here and here). Here's the abstract then:

This paper begins by illustrating how the deconstructive theology of John D. Caputo is embodied in the life of the UK emerging church milieu. Caputo’s theological project, articulated more recently as a Weak Theology, proposes both an ‘historical association’ with the determinate religious traditions’ visions of and hopes for life, and a ‘messianic disassociation,’ in order to refuse such traditions’ exclusionary, violent and unjust closure towards the other. Using interview and ethnographic data, I suggest ways in which this difficult tension between particularity and alterity might be lived out. I show why Caputo’s notion of the kingdom of God as a repetition or recreation of God’s generative proclamation that life is “good” is helpful as participants seek to live their lives as a form of “making good” on this original “good.”

In the process of exploring his notions of creation and kingdom, I defend Caputo’s theology against recent criticism by James K.A. Smith. In contrasting his Radically Orthodox ‘Postmodern Catholicism’ with Caputo’s work, Smith distinguishes between his own logic of incarnation and Caputo’s logic of determination. According to Smith, the consequences of the Derridean/Caputian logic include the translation of Derrida’s impossible, undeconstructible, un-present-able justice into an indeterminate, not specifically Christian, kingdom that is similarly structurally always to-come. However, I believe this is to overlook Caputo’s differentiation between representational logics and transformational poetics. I use this distinction to argue that an interpretation of the kingdom of God as a concept that corresponds to a reality that will either arrive (Smith) or never arrive (Smith’s reading of Caputo) mischaracterizes it as representational rather than transformational. These divergent notions of the kingdom are also present within contemporary Christian belief and practice. This paper therefore further unpacks the differences between these two understandings of the kingdom, as I see them emerge both in the work of Smith and Caputo, and in the UK emerging church milieu.

Annual Panel Reviews

So, it's that time of year again.

Theologically Speaking

Here in Lichfield, I go to a local parish church called St. Michael's. It has a great vicar who takes the piss out of everyone, and a stained glass window that I love which has Mary Magdalene in it and the jewels in her hair make her look like she's got pixie ears. (I'll try to remember to take a picture to put here soon.) St. Michael's runs a monthly theological discussion group that I've been part of since we moved here called "Theologically Speaking." The speed with which the group normally moves to issues of doubt and unknowing is always exhilarating - totally blowing away any preconceptions I had held about what this little group of Anglicans would be like. St. Michael's has a few characters that revel in referring to themselves as faithful heretics and it has been fantastic to chat to these guys.

Anyway, Theologically Speaking asked me to do a session on my research. It was titled "A/theism and the Future of the Church," and you can download a copy of the handout I did here.

I started by framing my project in terms of my research questions: How is truth conceptualized in the emerging church milieu? and What are the philosophical, theological and ethical implications of such notions of truth? I (incredibly briefly and necessarily unsatisfactorily) introduced the emerging church milieu as a global network of individuals and communities, connected by the Internet, concerned to live Christ-like lives today.

I began by showing how philosophy has begun to level the playing field for religious belief in the public sphere and introduced notions like post-foundationalism and post-secularism. Here are some of the quotations from participants that I used to give them a flavour of how these notions are held by those involved in the emerging church milieu:

"Everyone has a faith commitment... I'm not saying [everyone's] got a religious commitment, but [they've] got certain assumptis which are not based on reason."

"We're all fundamentalists of one sense or another."

"[Faith] is a foundation of sorts, but it's a post-foundational foundationalism, it's a foundation in the sky, because as soon as you try to analyse it, it disappears."

Here, I've written up the notes I was talking from:

While exposing the myth of the secular levels the playing field for religion to reassert itself in the public sphere (for example, Radical Orthodoxy's unapologetical declaring of secular models of structuring society to be heretical parodies of Christian models), we can go further than this: towards a/theism.

The limitations of human knowledge lead many participants towards an affinity with Derridean deconstruction and Capution deconstructive theology. For example,

"we don't know the number of hairs on God's head, God knows the number of hairs on our head... [The nature of human knowledge] actually creates doubt not just about who or what God is, it creates doubt about if God is. But in the same way that we can celebrate we're not sure exactly who God is, I think we can actually celebrate going, 'and sometimes I don't know even if God is'."

"God changed me, but I'm not sure he exists."

Because we can't know whether we are theists or atheists (in the final analysis) or whether God exists or not, many participants believe that we have to learn to live on the slash of uncertainty between these states. This uncertainty leads to conceiving God differently, other than a being or entity, and instead as an event:

"God spoke to me, repeating four simple words, 'I do not exist.' 'I do not exist'? What could this possibly mean? One thing for sure was that this was not a simply atheism, for it was God who was claiming God's non-existence. In that wasteland I was confronted with something different, I was confronted with the erasure of God by none other than God. I was confronted with the idea that, while God may not be something, that did not imply that God was nothing... And so I began to wonder if it was possible to think of God otherwise than being and nothing, to think of God as speaking, as happening, as an event, as life but not as an object." ('I do not exist,' The God Delusion, ikon, Belfast)

But this uncertainty about whether or not God exists (as an entity) does not lead to a lack of meaning, a lack of ethical principles and apolitical paralysis (as so many criticisms of postmodern thought have contested). Instead, "God" names something (we don't know what) that calls to us, promises a different reality "to come," transforms us and inspires us to make that reality happen. Therefore, it is closely linked to political and social action, particularly notions of justice, hospitality, forgiveness and love.

To explain a bit further, Derrida distingshes between the "messianic" (the inexplicable hope of something "to come" built into us all) and "messianisms" (the concrete systems built around a particular Messiah, e.g. Christianity). What is "to come" is a future we cannot prepare for, because no horizon of expectation (e.g. "kingdom of God") will dull the shocking impact of its arrival. Its coming might even destablise our notions of "kingdom of God." For Derrida, the "messianic structure" (the hope of something "to come") is more important than the particular "messianisms." In fact, "messianisms" need to be kept open to the in-coming of the event, the call, in order to prevent them from being closed over to the work of responding to that call (this is where deconstruction "comes in"!).

"Tearing apart what I love is evidence that I love it" ("Unravelling," The God Delusion, ikon, Belfast)

Jack Caputo talks of both "historical association" (within particular determinate traditions) and "messianic disassociation" (acts of Christians and of Christianity itself which keep them/it open to the incoming of the other, and able - hopefully, because we can't know! - to responding to the other). The Christian tradition is auto-deconstructive. There are fissures and cracks that keep it open to its true calling, that stop it from closing over and shutting down to its vocation to respond to the call (of God? of justice? of love? of peace? Again, we don't know; but we can believe).

There is an element of uncertainty built into creation such that the call can go unheeded, the promise unfulfilled. But we can also be transformed by the call, turned around (metanoia), reversed, convrted, changed. As Caputo has written, we have to "make good" on God's "good" in the Creation narrative, which means acting to bring about what we believe is "to come," even though our idea of it (e.g. kingdom of God, love, justice, peace) might be radically revised in the event of its coming, which might never be.

So even though we don't know the end of the story (does God exist? will the kingdom come? are theists or atheists ultimately right?) we have to step out in faith and respond to what has called us (even though we don't know what it is, even though we name it differently, and disagree about what it is and even that it is).

To recap, the origin of the call is ultimately unknown and unknowable. We all name it differently (God, love, justice, the good, peace...). But we are called by it to help bring it about, not to squabble over what to call it, whether it exists, or who is/isn't included in its call. Caputo writes, “It is not what we call God that is at issue, but what God calls. Then again, it is not what God calls that is at issue, but the response.” (John D. Caputo, The Weakness of God, p.97).

In my thesis, however, I'm particularly interested in how we get from this a/theology to something with practical viability for communities. More quotations from participants signals how they are trying to create communal spaces in which divisions between types of belief are being resisted and blurred.

"dividing people between sheep and goats, that's not what we're about. We're not trying to divide people, we're trying to bring people together."

"Can we hold both views? Can we create a space where both views can be held?"

I'm using the notion of A/theistic Orthodoxy to look at how such spaces might be created. Important here is a different notion of orthodoxy:

"Instead of following the Greek-influenced idea of orthodoxy as right belief,... the emerging community is helping us to rediscover the more Hebraic and mystical notion of the orthodox Christian as one who believes in the right way - that is, believing in a loving, sacrificial and Christ-like manner... Thus orthodoxy is no longer (mis)understood as the opposite of heresy but rather is understood as a term that signals a way of being in the world rather than a means of believing things about the world" (Pete Rollins, How (Not) To Speak of God, pp.2-3).

Here, "church" or community is a space in which divergent beliefs can be held, e.g. whether or not the virgin birth was a historical event, whether Jesus is the Son of God, whether or not God exists as an entity external to us. Many participants talk about beliefs being held "lightly" so that they remain open to the incoming of an event that may radically revise them. Instead of rigid dogmatism, beliefs are held in a "loving, sacrificial, Christ-like manner."

"I think we need to hold our beliefs lightly."

"I tend to draw the line if somebody wants to hold their religion to the point of brow beating or condemning others because they don't do it their way."

"I don't particularly have a problem with people who sort of feel certain, you know. As long as their certainty doesn't then exclude others."

I ended with some questions for discussion:

• What do you think the implications of a/theism might be for the future?
• Do you think that suspending final conclusions about the origin(s) of this call and the name(s) which we give it will facilitate a collaborative response to it?
• Do you think that the notion of "a/theistic orthodoxy" will enable collaboration between denominations, across religons, and with people of "no religoin" for a better future?

It was a really useful exercise to try and introduce some of these ideas to people unfamiliar with either the emerging church conversation or deconstructive theology, and helped me to solidify my thinking in some of these areas. It was great to see everyone interested and engaging with these ideas, and fantastic to see some people so energized about it. The discussion questions ellicited the view that dogmatism will remain a barrier but that collaboration between "progressive" elements (within denominations, across religions and with "atheists") has been possible and will continue to be. The group found the notion of a/theistic orthodoxy to be an exciting way of articulating these developments towards collaboration regardless of differences.

I was asked to do a follow-up session focusing more on a/theism and Derrida's confession that 'I quite rightly pass for an atheist,' which I'll blog about some time next month.

Thesis Abstract - January 2009

Here's the most recent version of my thesis abstract. It will most definitely change as I continue to write up my arguments - particularly as my arguments continue to shift as I write. The most glaring omission from this abstract concerns my findings, as I haven't quite decided what they are or how to frame them best!!! However, as it stands, this abstract is a good indication of what I intend to write about at the moment! I've also never been particularly good at writing abstracts, so hopefully the I'll get better at that too. As a result I'll keep posting versions as they emerge from my brain.

The religious landscape of the United Kingdom has undergone considerable changes in the last half-century. The ‘death of God theology’ of the nineteen sixties began an exploration of the possibilities for Christianity ‘after metaphysics’ within a variety of academic disciplines. Recent contributions to the debate have included Radical Orthodoxy’s ‘catholic postmodernism,’ Weak Theology’s notion of non-dogmatic a/theistic ‘religion without Religion,’ a Lévinasian ‘religion of responsibility’ and Slavoj Žižek’s ‘atheistic Christianity.’



At the same time, the questionable evidence for the secularisation of contemporary society envisaged by many sociologists of religion and the growing indications of sacralisation now beginning to be documented throughout the West are being felt outside academia. The spectrum of possible expressions of Christian religiosity and “church” has further diversified. An increasing number of individuals and communities are engaging with the work of Nietzsche, Derrida, and Marion, among others, using these thinkers to inform their practice, and articulating their religious identity in the language of emergence. They are suggesting that something new is happening.


This thesis maps the contours of what it identifies as the UK emerging church milieu, framed by an investigation into the notion of truth. It follows participants’ understandings of truth as the concept traverses the disciplines of philosophy and theology, morphs into ethics, and encompasses politics. Its multi-methodological approach discerns the theories of truth that function within the UK emerging church milieu, placing them in conversation with classical theories.



These emerging understandings of truth are used as a springboard to explore their philosophical implications for Christianity after metaphysics, to evaluate the suitability of Radical Orthodoxy as a theological option for the milieu, and to argue for the ability of Weak Theology to act as a viable premise for ir/religious community. While two strands emerge regarding truth, suggesting philosophical and theological divergence, the thesis argues that there is convergence in practice as participants unite in a prioritisation of ethical justice over theoretical truth. The thesis forms a sustained argument for the undecidability of truth and its translation into justice as a useful means of “doing” Christianity after the death of God.

Two Cheers for Postmodernism; Three for the Logic of Incarnation?

Jamie Smith's chapter, "The Logic of Incarnation: Towards a Catholic Postmodernism," in Neal DeRoo and Brian Lightbody's The Logic of Incarnation: James K.A. Smith's Critique of Postmodern Religion, begins with a clarification of the "post-" in "postmodern" and of a distinction between postmodernism and postmodernity (pp.3-4). The subtitle of the book is a little misleading as Jamie Smith has contributed lucid and entertaining expositions of philosophical postmodernism and postmodern Christianity to (evangelical) audiences who have often misunderstood and/or misrepresented both (see, for example, his chapters in Christianity and the Postmodern Turn and his monographs Jacques Derrida: Live Theory and Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard and Foucault to Church). So to describe his work as a "critique of postmodern religion" is more than a little confusing, given his engagement with postmodern thought. However, Smith helpfully summarises his position in relation to philosophical postmodernism:

"Insofar as the church (and mutatis mutandis, Christian theology and philosophy) has bought into key assumptions of modernity; And insofar as these assumptions (for instance, regarding the nature of freedom, the model of the human person, the requirements for what counts as “rational” or “true,” or what can be admitted to the “public” sphere of political or academic discourse) represent a rejection of biblical wisdom and the Christian theological heritage; And insofar as postmodernism articulates a critique of just these assumptions; Then the postmodern critique of modernity is something to be affirmed by Christians, not because it is postmodern, but because the postmodern critique of modernity can be a wake-up call for Christians to see their complicity with modernity, the inconsistency of this with a more integral understanding of discipleship, and thus actually be an occasion to creatively retrieve ancient and pre-modern theological sources and liturgical practices with new eyes, as it were." (pp.4-5)

So with his position clarified in such a manner, Smith gives "two cheers" for postmodernism - but stops short of the full three. Three cheers for postmodernism, Smith claims, is to "enthusiastically and wholeheartedly embrace all that is 'postmodern,' without critique and without reservation" (p.6). Acknowledging that the metaphor will eventually break down, Smith suggests that Christian thinkers like Merold Westphal (Postmodern Philosophy and Christian Thought and Overcoming Onto-theology: Towards a Postmodern Christian Faith) might also give postmodernism two cheers (or maybe two and a half), but that Jack Caputo (start with On Religion and What Would Jesus Deconstruct?) and Pete Rollins (How [Not] To Speak of God and The Fidelity of Betrayal) give postmodernism three cheers, and do so, according to Smith, "without critique and without reservation" (p.6).

In contrast to Smith's reading of Caputo and Rollins, his own work "is meant to be a critical appropriation of postmodernism and deconstruction that walks a long way with Derrida, but parts ways at a critical juncture—not out of a timidity or an unwillingness to 'go all the way,' but because of a principled critique of what I think are problems internal to Derrida’s thought." (pp.6/7)

So, with Smith's position with regards to postmodern thought clarified for the reader, he moves on to detail the "logic of incarnation" which was first articulated in Speech and Theology: Language and the Logic of Incarnation and developed as an "incarnational ontology" in Introducing Radical Orthodoxy. I blogged briefly about Smith's logic of incarnation yesterday, here. He contrasts his "two cheers" logic of incarnation with the "three cheers" logic of determination that he sees in the work of Jacques Derrida and the deconstructive theology of Jack Caputo. Though he acknowledges that there might be other strains, here's how Smith characterises these two:

The logic of determination recognises particularity, uniqueness and difference as inescapably part of human finitude but deems this existence "regrettable, lamentable and problematic" and remains "haunted by the Enlightenment dream of universality and purity" (pp.8-9). As these dreams are understood to be constitutive of knowledge, knowledge is therefore impossible (p.9). Similarly, as particular entities, determinative religions are considered to be tribal and violent, unable to live up to the (undeconstructible) dream of pure religion (p.11; see Hent de Vries Religion and Violence). Visions of justice, for example, are determinate, and therefore exclusionary and violent, which enables Derrida to construct the notion of undeconstrucible, pure justice as necessarily always to-come. Smith views the result as "a political rhetoric with grand claims regarding justice but which is systematically unable to articulate concrete policies" (p.12). However, this logic of determination is assumed. As Smith suggests in The Fall of Interpretation, the particular and determinate is constructed as violent only on the assumption of finitude as "failure" (p.13).

Smith argues that the logic of incarnation can outnarrate that of determination. This logic does not lament particularity but rather, as a "more 'persistent' postmodernism," refuses to desire universality and purity as (modernist) requirements of knowledge (p.10). This, Smith writes, "makes it possible to conceive difference differently" (p.11). Rather than being violent, then, particularity and determination - "drawing boundaries, demarcating doctrine (as the 'grammar' of the community) and specifying it's confession" - are central to finite communities (p.18). Unlike the logic of determination's positioning of justice (or a kingdom of the kingdomless reading of the kingdom of God) beyond possibility, "the logic of incarnation, which flows from and re-affirms the goodness of creation, finds its completion in the doctrine of the resurrection and an eschatology of the new heavens and the new earth—which is not any kind of escape from finitude as if finite particularity were inherently evil; rather, it is the hope of well-ordered particularity." (18)

Smith frames these two logics as a debate between a the "religion without Religion" of Caputian Weak Theology (see Caputo's Weakness of God) and Smith's "reformed Radical Orthodoxy" (see Introducing Radical Orthodoxy) or what he is now articulating as a "Catholic postmodernism" (p.21). He argues that "religion without Religion" is not undecidable all the way down (i.e. "things have been decided with respect to the abyss" [p.24]), does not leave the question of revelation "open" enough (p.29), "makes religion a (still) largely private, individual affair" (p.32), and fails to affirm a catholic eschatology in which "a particular instantiation of the kingdom is coming and will arrive" (footnote 65, p.34).

I've skipped through Smith's critique of "religion without Religion" because there is a lot more work I want to do on his distinction between the logics of incarnation and determination. I think that the debate between Weak Theology and "catholic postmodernism" [surely it should be a lower-case "c"?] will be a very useful way to frame my thesis as I already have two theological strands which emerge from my data on the notion of truth: a modified Radical Orthodoxy (in conversation with Generous Orthodoxy) and Weak Theology. When I've done more work on this I'll let you know whether I have three cheers for Smith's logic of incarnation!

"Emerging Church" as a Barrier to Participation in (Resistant) Social Movement?

Fellow PhD student Tony Jones has blogged about the emerging church in relation to new social movement theories, which connects with some of the things I've been thinking about recently. (There's a bit of preamble to wade through before I get to the good stuff).



Having done a first draft of my Introduction (should be 6,000 words - it's about 9,000), I'm onto Chapter One, "Emergence," which asks 'what is the emerging church?' Forget that a whole thesis could be done on that subject, and remember that I'm just trying to introduce my readers to the milieu so they know the context in which I'm asking my research questions. I do this by arguing against the tendency to define such a thing as an "emerging church" and for the usefulness of the concept of a "milieu." This enables one to talk about the diversity within such a milieu without suggesting that a particular expression (ecclesiologically, philosophically, theologically, politically, aesthetically, structurally) is more prevalent or more preferable or more "emerging" than others.


So, I then move on to argue that, despite the observable diversity, there are certain ideological commitments discernable within this milieu. These ideological commitments are not all made by every individual, community, organization or network involved in the milieu. That said, commitment to one or more of these ideologies allows them to be positioned within the milieu, remembering that one can be part of the emerging church milieu and part of any number of other Christian and non-Christian-specific milieux simultaneously and that one is not judged to be more "emerging" than others if you exhibit more ideological commitments than them - you are just more deeply involved in the emerging church milieu (in other words, a value judgement is - hopefully - not implied).


I'm going to chicken-out from posting about these ideological commitments in detail until I've at least written a first draft of Chapter One so that I've got them a bit more fleshed out, but here they are, in brief:

• "Glocal" contextualization in contemporary culture


• Rediscovery of "ancient-future" traditions


• Organization experimentation


• Engagement with postmodern theory


• Radicalization of Christian theology


• Social and political activism

As you can see, these ideological commitments come together to form a very broad picture of the emerging church milieu. This is intentional. Many of the "emerging church typologies" out there (esp. Stezter, Driscoll, Patton, Patrick) require the not unproblematic identification of a community's primary concern (usually supposed to be EITHER theological, methodological OR structural revision). Viewing these ideological commitments as familial resemblances (of which an individual, community, organization or network within the milieu may have one or more) resists such a reductionist task. Further, within each familial resemblance is a lot of room for maneouvere. For example, two communities that both engage win social and political activism may do so in diverse ways; similarly, two networks interested in radical Christian theology may go in diverse directions; individuals participating in the rediscovery of Christian tradition may go apply their findings in diverse manners; and so on.


Anyway, in reading for the subsection of the chapter that explores organizational experimentation, I recently found this PhD dissertation from the States by Josh Packard entitled "Organizational Structure, Religious Belief and Resistance: The Emerging Church," which uses the emerging church as a case study for exploring the ways in which organizations might consciously resist institutionalization. It was fascinating.


Of particular interest to me where his conclusions that an organization seeking to resist institutionalization does not create its own organizational patterns but seeks to allow multiple patterns and to keep their existence visible in order to make these patterns 'subject to constant criticism and interrogation' (p.24). Packard suggests that resistant organizations need to create permanent 'unsettled periods' (Ann Swidler) in which ideologies and their connections to actions are clear and therefore open to be contested.


Robert Wuthnow writes, 'greater self-consciousness about religious symbolism is accompanied by a greater emphasis on personal interpretation and a decline in tacit acceptance of official creeds' (1988:299). Packard writes that 'lowering barriers to participation fosters a high degree of symbolic consciousness which compels people to examine the sets of ideas which support articulated ideologies in the form of statements or rituals' (p.267). He concludes that these processes allows those within resistant organizations to sift out the dominant ideologies which are the forces of institutionalization.


In relation to recent debates concerning the utility of the phrase "emerging church," it made me wonder:

• Does the phrase and the assumed meaning (crafted mostly by its critics) serve as a barrier to participation?
  
• Would the emerging church be better served as a resistant social movement if it dropped the name?
  

Summer Hiatus Finally Over (Hopefully!)

Okay, so I've been a bit quiet over the past few months and I'm going to make up for that here. Since I last blogged about my thesis, I've been wrestling with transcribing (yes, I'm still transcribing!) after injuring my wrist (so, no, I haven't finished it yet!), finding and moving into a new house, buying kitchen appliances (Comet suck, but, when you complain, they give you stuff), and trying to get used to a new routine in a new place, whilst anxiously worrying about how my partner is getting on in his new job.

I've now transcribed 15 interviews (about 30 hours worth of data) with about 10 more interviews to go. Because I've been working from my fieldnotes about the content of the interviews, I've drawn up a very detailed thesis structure which I'm using to conduct thematic analysis of the transcripts, assigning participant quotations to their respective chapters. Of course, this is also further shaping my thesis structure as I do it.

Roughly, here are the main arguements of each chapter of the thesis, and some of the key words which I'm using to allocate interview data to particular chapters:

Chapter One argues for the concept of a "milieu" in approaching the emerging church and presents my understanding of the UK emerging church milieu.

Key words for (all) empirical data (not just interviews): alternative worship, "ancient-future," church, contextualization, culture, emergence, emergent, emerging church, experimentation, fresh expressions, "glocal," incarnation, leadership, mysticism, organization, post-evangelical, tradition.

Chapter Two presents the rationale for framing a study of the UK emerging church milieu and its spiritualities within an exploration of truth; namely, the criticisms of evangelical detractors, who wish to retain the "biblical" concept of truth as correspondence.

Key words: access, anti-intellectualism, correspondence, cultural postmodernity, emerging church critics, elitism, foundationalism, idolatry, intellectualism, modernity, "moral panic," nihilism, philosophical postmodernism, realism, relativism, representationalism, self-refutation.

Chapter Three provides the reader with an historical introduction to classical theories of truth, using a presentation of Nietzsche's critique of the will to truth and subsequent critiques of representationalism to introduce the ways in which participants understand the concept of truth.

Key words: Aquinas, Caputo, coherence, correspondence, Derrida, existentialism, event, Foucault, Heidegger, justification, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, metanoia, objectivity, personal, perspectivism, pragmatism, propositional, Radical Orthodoxy, realism, relativism, representationalism, subectivity, transcendence.

An Interlude: Mystics and Prophets explains that two sets or strands of philosophical implications can be drawn from the data about participants’ understandings of truth, and relates these two strands to the apophatic and prophetic strands which Jack Caputo identifies in the work of Jacques Derrida (and to Merold Westphal’s distinction between a hermeneutics of finitude and a hermeneutics of suspicion).

Chapters Four and Five highlight the epistemological and ontological implications of participants' understandings of truth, detailing the two strands which are in evidence.

Chapter Four agues that some participants are ontologically realist in relation to absolute truth, whilst acknowledging the epistemological limits that fallibility places on human knowledge of absolutes. These participants demonstrate a fear of what is constructed as postmodern relativism and postmodern nihilism, in their understanding of deconstruction as a necessary methodological phase through which they must go on their way to the reconstruction of Christianity.

Key words: absolutism, bivalence, certainty, deconstruction, doubt, faith, fallibility, finitude, foundationalism, humility, (in)accessibility, "moral panic," nihilism, relativism, subjectivity, universalism.

Chapter Five argues that, ontologically, other participants extend the themes of doubt and uncertainty to the reality of God's being and that, epistemologically, participants understand decosntruction to be inherent to language, as displayed throughout Christian history, and as a calling.

Key words: aporia, a/theism, auto-deconstruction, confession, deconstruction, doubt, event, faithful betrayal, metanoia, the other, ritual, slash, to-come, transformation, transformance art, uncertainty, undecidability, unravelling.

Chapters Six and Seven reflect on the theological implications of participants' understandings of truth.

Chapter Six assesses Jamie Smith’s suggestion that Radical Orthodoxy is an appropriate theological frame for the emerging church, arguing that, while RO connects with many of the theological implications of participants’ understandings of truth (especially within the first philosophical strand identified above), it needs to be revised in order to accord with these participants’ views on truth and religious pluralism.

Key words: aesthetics, arrogance, certainty, creativity, exclusivism, the "gathering center," Generous Orthodoxy, heresy, Hick, hierarchy, inclusivism, language, liturgy, meaning, narrative, "ontology of peace," "ontology of violence," "onto-theology," paganism, participation, pluralism, Radical Orthodoxy, sacramentality, "theo-ontology," transcendence, universalism.

Chapter Seven argues that the other strand within the data holds more affinity for Jack Caputo's weak theology, and that participants exhibit what I refer to as an “a/theistic orthodoxy,” which I show to be a practical expression of Caputo’s project.

Key words: activism, agnosticism, atheism, a/theism, deliteralization, language, the messianic, orthodoxy, postfoundationalism, pragmatic orthodoxy, theism, translatability, transformation, undecidability, undeconstructible, weak theology.

The second Interlude: Convergence argues that, while it is possible to discern differences between the philosophical and theological implications of participants’ understandings of truth, a convergence occurs in practice as participants unite in an emphasis on justice.

Chapter Eight argues that a Levinasian primacy of ethical action over settling theoretical differences is an appropriate framework in which to understand the political implications of the participants' notions of truth.

Key words: absolute future, activism, Augustine, call, Caputo, Derrida, ecumenism, ethics, event, facere veritatem, gift, hospitality, hyper-realism, justice, kingdom of God, law, Levinas, love, missio-Dei, orthopraxis, the other, per(ver)formative, politics, pragmatism, prayer, response, to-come, undeconstructible, Zizek.

The Conclusions re-cap my main findings, but also explore the importance of the context from which participants' understandings of truth arise (particularly post-conflict Belfast), and highlights two spiritualities which emerge from the emerging church milieu: Deep Church and A/theistic Spirituality.

So, any thoughts on the thesis structure as it is emerging? Admittedly, some of the key words and where I've chosen to place them within the overall strcuture only make sense to me, but hopefully the brief summary of each chapter's main arguments will give you at least an idea of where the data is taking me at the moment.