**Author:** [[3. Resources/Authors/John D. Caputo|John D. Caputo]] # Book Overview ![[What Would Jesus Deconstruct Visual]] ## About the Author John D. Caputo is a philosopher specializing in continental philosophy of religion, particularly the intersection of Derridean deconstruction and theology. He spent decades at Villanova University and later Syracuse University, writing extensively on the relationship between postmodern thought and religious life. His major works include *The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida*, *The Weakness of God*, and *Against Ethics*. Brian McLaren, who wrote the foreword, is a pastor and leading figure in the emergent church movement. The book grew out of a presentation Caputo gave at an Emergent Youth Specialties Convention in 2004 titled "Why the Church Deserves Deconstruction." It's part of the Church and Postmodern Culture series edited by James K. A. Smith. ## Central Thesis Deconstruction isn't the enemy of the church -- it's good news for it. Caputo argues that deconstruction functions as a hermeneutics of the kingdom of God, exposing the gap between what the church has become and the radical vision of Jesus in the New Testament. The church is deconstructible precisely because it's a human construction, a provisional institution (what Caputo calls "Plan B") that occupies the space between the first coming and the awaited kingdom. But the kingdom of God itself -- the unconditional call to love, justice, forgiveness, and hospitality -- is not deconstructible. It's the uncontainable event that the church contains. The structural gap between the church and Jesus is the principle of deconstruction built into Christianity itself. Jesus would deconstruct the church not to destroy it but to recall it to its own deepest impulses. ## Why This Book Matters The book challenges the popular perception that postmodernism and deconstruction are hostile to faith. Caputo flips the script: deconstruction isn't what Jacques Derrida does to things from the outside. It's what happens from the inside when an institution's own suppressed truths force themselves to the surface. For Christians disturbed by the domestication of Jesus -- whether by the Religious Right, institutional bureaucracies, or comfortable suburban congregations -- the book offers a philosophical framework for prophetic self-criticism. It also stands as a bridge text: accessible enough for non-philosophers, rigorous enough for scholars, and written with enough wit and passion to hold both audiences. Published in 2007, its critique of American civil religion, militarism, and economic injustice remains pointed. --- # Chapter Summaries ## Series Preface and Introduction (James K. A. Smith) Smith frames the book within the Church and Postmodern Culture series as a "big tent" project. He positions Caputo's work as complementary to his own *Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?* -- where Smith called for radical orthodoxy, Caputo explains why orthodoxy itself needs deconstruction. Smith emphasizes that the star of the book is Jesus, not Derrida. Derrida plays art critic, providing a lens and lexicon. The church doesn't need Derrida to be deconstructed -- it's got Jesus. ## Chapter 1: In His Steps -- A Postmodern Edition Caputo reimagines Charles Sheldon's 1896 novel *In His Steps* (source of the WWJD movement) as a deconstructive text. Sheldon's story opens with a homeless man disrupting a comfortable Sunday service -- an event Caputo reads as a scene of deconstruction. The familiar is shattered by the advent of the other. Caputo proposes that the WWJD question, taken seriously, is far more radical than its bumper-sticker deployment suggests: Sheldon was a Christian socialist who advocated racial equality, women's leadership, and structural economic reform. The chapter introduces Caputo's central framework: deconstruction as the hermeneutics of the kingdom of God, where things are made to tremble by their own inner truth. The church is "Plan B" -- a provisional institution occupying the gap between Jesus's announcement of the kingdom and its arrival, always in danger of confusing itself with the kingdom it was meant to proclaim. ## Chapter 2: Spiritual Journeys, Postmodern Paths Caputo gives the idea of a spiritual journey "postmodern teeth." Drawing on Derrida, Blanchot, Heidegger, and Levinas, he argues that genuine faith requires acknowledging the contingency and plurality of our situation. The French word *pas* means both "step" and "not" -- the misstep is built into the step. Faith, hope, and love all operate under this logic: faith is really faith when belief looks impossible; hope is really hope when it's hope against hope; love burns hottest when directed at the unlovable. Caputo connects this to the *via negativa* in mystical theology. He positions deconstruction not as nihilism but as "hyper-realism" -- a search for the real beyond the real. The chapter works through the postal metaphor from Derrida's *The Post Card*: texts, traditions, and the gospel itself are always in transit, capable of being understood differently by different communities, never arriving at a single final destination. ## Chapter 3: A Prayer for the Impossible -- A Catechumen's Guide to Deconstruction The most philosophically dense chapter. Caputo provides a primer on deconstruction's key concepts: the event (what's really happening in a name or institution beyond its surface), the impossible (the unconditional demand that exceeds any possible fulfillment), différance (the productive gap between what is and what is called for), and the gift (giving without expectation of return). He frames deconstruction as organized around the affirmation of the impossible -- not logical impossibility but the kind of impossibility that defines genuine love, forgiveness, hospitality, and justice. These are unconditional demands that any conditional institution can only approximate. The chapter connects Derrida's categories to the theology of the kingdom: the kingdom is the impossible that makes the church possible and keeps it restless. ## Chapter 4: Jesus, the Theo-Poetics of the Kingdom, and Praxis Caputo presents the New Testament as a "theo-poetics" rather than a theo-logic, ethics, or church dogmatics. Jesus's teachings -- the parables, the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount -- form a poetic vision of the kingdom that must be translated into existence. This translation is always risky, always interpretive, never a simple copy-paste. He develops the concept of kenosis (self-emptying) as central to the kingdom: God operates through weakness, not power. The kingdom reverses worldly hierarchies -- the last shall be first, the meek inherit. Caputo connects this to Paul's language in 1 Corinthians about God choosing the foolish and the weak to shame the wise and the strong. The chapter also introduces the concept of the "working church" versus the institutional church -- the real church exists wherever the kingdom's work is done, regardless of institutional structures. ## Chapter 5: What Would Jesus Deconstruct? The book's most politically pointed chapter. Caputo applies the deconstructive framework to specific issues: economics and poverty (Jesus would deconstruct the alliance between evangelical Christianity and unrestrained capitalism), war and violence (the Sermon on the Mount is fundamentally pacifist; just-war theory is a Constantinian compromise), patriarchy and women's ordination (the kingdom reverses patriarchal hierarchies; barring women from ordination contradicts the spirit and early practice of Christianity), homosexuality (Jesus systematically sided with the marginalized; the independent ethical arguments against homosexuality fail), and abortion (Caputo treats it as a lesser-evil question, criticizing the hypocrisy of opposing abortion while supporting policies that exacerbate the poverty producing unwanted pregnancies). Throughout, he targets the Religious Right for domesticating Jesus into a champion of American militarism, capitalism, and cultural conservatism. ## Chapter 6: The Working Church -- Notes on the Future Caputo presents two case studies of what a church "after deconstruction" might look like. First, John McNamee's *Diary of a City Priest*, chronicling parish life at St. Malachy's in North Philadelphia -- a traditional Catholic parish operating on the margins of the institutional church among the poorest communities, where the gospel is lived through radical hospitality and service without payoff. Second, Peter Rollins's Ikon community in Belfast -- an experimental, postmodern gathering of believers and nonbelievers meeting in a bar, creating avant-garde liturgies that suspend judgment and create sacred space for mutual love. These two models -- one traditional but radical, one experimental and postmodern -- represent complementary visions of a deconstructive church. Caputo concludes that deconstruction is not against institutions but for them, keeping them alive and responsive to the event they're meant to embody. --- # Key Themes and Highlights ## Deconstruction as Hermeneutics of the Kingdom This is the book's organizing idea. Deconstruction isn't imported from French theory to attack Christianity. It's already at work inside Christianity as the gap between the church and the kingdom of God. Things are auto-deconstructed by their own inner truth -- the church contains an event (the kingdom) that it cannot contain. Whenever the suppressed truth forces itself to the surface, that's deconstruction happening. ## The Church as Plan B The early Christians expected the kingdom of God, but what came was the church. The church is provisional, occupying the space of deferral between two comings. Its job is to make the kingdom happen on earth while resisting the temptation to confuse itself with the kingdom. The church is deconstructible; the kingdom is not. ## The Impossible as the Condition of the Possible Caputo's most philosophically rich theme. The impossible -- unconditional love, absolute forgiveness, radical hospitality -- isn't something we achieve. It's the demand that makes conditional approximations possible and keeps them honest. Faith is faith when belief looks impossible. Hope is hope against hope. Love is love when directed at the enemy. This logic, drawn from Derrida, maps directly onto Paul's theological virtues. ## The Structural Gap and the Subjunctive "Would" The "would" in "What would Jesus do?" carries enormous hermeneutic weight. It names the irreducible distance between the historical Jesus and our present situation. The question can't be answered by simple imitation -- it requires interpretation, imagination, and self-interrogation. Caputo insists the question should be turned on ourselves first, putting us in the accusative rather than being used as a weapon against others. ## The Working Church vs. the Institutional Church A distinction that runs through the book. The "working church" -- wherever the kingdom's work of love, justice, and hospitality is actually done -- exists in tension with the institutional church that controls power, buildings, and theology. The sisters in the slums, the priests in the ghettos, the people doing the impossible daily are the real church, often parasitized by the bureaucratic institution above them. --- # Analytical Reading ## Main Arguments 1. Deconstruction is not hostile to Christianity but functions as the hermeneutics of the kingdom of God. 2. The church is a provisional, deconstructible institution; the kingdom of God is not deconstructible. 3. The structural gap between the church and Jesus is the principle of ongoing self-renewal built into Christianity. 4. The New Testament is a theo-poetics, not a politics, ethics, or dogmatics -- translating it into existence requires interpretation, not mechanical application. 5. The WWJD question, taken seriously, is a call for radical social justice that cuts against the domesticated Jesus of the Religious Right. 6. Genuine faith, hope, and love operate according to the logic of the impossible -- they're most themselves when they look most impossible. 7. The church's entanglement with militarism, capitalism, patriarchy, and sexual policing contradicts the spirit of the kingdom. 8. A church "after deconstruction" is auto-deconstructive, self-correcting, and minimally institutional. ## Methodology Caputo works through sustained close reading of multiple texts held in dialogue: Sheldon's *In His Steps*, the New Testament, and the philosophy of Derrida, with supporting roles from Kierkegaard, Levinas, Blanchot, Heidegger, and others. The approach is hermeneutic -- Caputo reads across these texts to produce productive collisions and illuminations. He also uses two concrete case studies (McNamee's *Diary of a City Priest* and Rollins's Ikon community) to ground the philosophical argument in institutional practice. The book is practitioner-facing philosophy, not academic monograph, though the philosophical architecture is rigorous. ## Strengths The book's greatest achievement is making deconstruction intelligible and practically relevant to a church audience without dumbing it down. Caputo writes with genuine wit and rhetorical skill -- the book is funny, passionate, and readable in a way that most continental philosophy isn't. The rereading of Sheldon's *In His Steps* as a deconstructive text is brilliant and unexpected. The two case studies in Chapter 6 provide concrete models that prevent the argument from floating in abstraction. The insistence that deconstruction is *for* institutions, not against them, corrects the most common misunderstanding. ## Limitations The book's political critique is heavily dated to the Bush era (2007) -- the specific targets (Iraq War, Religious Right dominance, specific Republican policies) anchor it in a moment that has shifted. The treatment of the Religious Right sometimes risks caricature, though Caputo acknowledges progressive evangelicals. The philosophical sections (especially Chapter 3) may lose readers without background in continental philosophy despite Caputo's accessible style. The book offers no systematic ecclesiology -- what a deconstructive church looks like in practice gets only two brief case studies. The treatment of abortion and homosexuality, while thoughtful, is condensed relative to the complexity of those issues. And the book's primary interlocutor is American Protestantism; Catholic and Orthodox readers may find the critique less directly applicable. --- # Personal Reflection ## Key Takeaways The most powerful idea is that deconstruction isn't something done to the church from outside -- it's what happens when the church's own suppressed truths force themselves to the surface. Jesus himself is the principle of the church's deconstruction. This reframes prophetic criticism as an act of love and fidelity rather than hostility. The framework of the "impossible" as the condition of the possible -- faith when belief is impossible, hope against hope, love of enemies -- provides a philosophical vocabulary for something deeply embedded in Christian experience but rarely articulated this precisely. The distinction between the working church and the institutional church is immediately recognizable to anyone who has spent time in both. The case study of McNamee's *Diary of a City Priest* is the book's most affecting section -- a portrait of faith as the impossibility of impossibility, believing because it's impossible that this impossible absurdity is the final word. ## Questions Raised - If the church is always "Plan B" and the kingdom is always deferred, what prevents this framework from becoming an excuse for institutional mediocrity? - How do you maintain institutional coherence while embracing auto-deconstruction? At what point does self-criticism become self-dissolution? - Caputo treats the New Testament as an "archive, not the arche." How does this square with communities that depend on scriptural authority for their identity? - The Ikon model is fascinating but fragile -- a small group of intellectuals meeting in a bar. Does it scale? Can it survive the founder's departure? - How would Caputo's framework handle traditions outside Christianity that make similar universal claims? ## Connections to Other Works - [[Fear and Trembling]] by Soren Kierkegaard -- Kierkegaard's treatment of Abraham and the suspension of the ethical prefigures Caputo's logic of the impossible. Caputo explicitly builds on Kierkegaard's "attack on Christendom" while arguing deconstruction is more constructive. - [[Totality and Infinity]] by Emmanuel Levinas -- Levinas's ethics of the other and the face-to-face encounter with the infinite pervade Caputo's account of hospitality, the neighbor, and the uncontainable demand. - [[How (Not) to Speak of God]] by Peter Rollins -- Directly discussed as a case study. Rollins's Ikon community is presented as an example of postmodern liturgical practice. - [[Diary of a City Priest]] by John McNamee -- The other case study. McNamee's account of parish life in North Philadelphia embodies the "working church" concept without any explicit postmodern theory. - [[God's Trombones]] by James Weldon Johnson -- Johnson's poetic sermons resonate with Caputo's treatment of the New Testament as theo-poetics rather than dogmatics. - [[Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?]] by James K. A. Smith -- The companion volume in the same series, offering a more Radical Orthodoxy perspective that Caputo's book complements and challenges. --- # Reading Notes - The rereading of Sheldon's *In His Steps* as a deconstructive text is the book's cleverest move. Sheldon was a Christian socialist and racial justice advocate -- the WWJD question originates as a call for radical economic redistribution, not conservative culture war. - "The church is Plan B. In deconstruction, everything is Plan B." This captures the book's central insight in two sentences. - The French *pas* meaning both "step" and "not" -- the misstep built into the step, the impasse built into the passage -- is an elegant figure for the uncertainty inherent in faith. - Caputo's distinction between the archive and the arche is his sharpest tool against fundamentalism: the Bible is a deposit of memories, not God. Treating it as God is idolatry. - "The church is not the answer. The church is the question." This inversion of the usual evangelical formula redefines ecclesiology as a posture of perpetual self-interrogation. - The McNamee material is emotionally the strongest section. Faith as "the impossibility of impossibility" -- believing not because you have evidence but because it's impossible that this absurdity is the last word. - Caputo's treatment of just-war theory as "justification without justice" -- choosing the lesser evil is justified but doesn't make the evil just -- is a useful distinction applicable well beyond military ethics. - The Ikon "Queer" service, where judgment is suspended and the sacred space is defined by mutual love rather than orthodoxy, models something genuinely different from both liberal and conservative approaches. - "If the church insists on the masculinity of Jesus, or of God, does that get us back to the mystery of the 'wholly other'? Is that the step/not beyond or just plain theological flat-footedness?" -- This is Caputo at his sharpest. - The book's humor is genuine and serves the argument. Philosophy that makes you laugh is rare, and Caputo's wit keeps the reader engaged through dense theoretical sections.