From Babel to Pentecost: Proclamation, Translation, and the Risk of the Spirit

Editor Introduction: Postmodernism, The Church, and The Future

Can postmodernism tell us something about how the church is to function, how we tell the story of Jesus, and how the Spirit works in our lives?

The wind (pneuma) blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit (pneuma).
John 3: 8

Can Jacques Derrida, a Jewish philosopher who confesses that he “rightly passes for an atheist,” possibly make any meaningful contribution to the understanding of Christian proclamation in the postmodern context?¹ After all, is Derrida not the prophet of humanistic relativism or, worse, the Antichrist of textual meaninglessness? He most certainly approaches texts with the genuine suspicion that they are not always as objectively transparent as conservative readers may take them to be. He insists that a close reading of texts will always disclose places where they deconstruct themselves by calling into question their own assertions.² Furthermore, he contends that every attempt to interpret the meaning of a text results in yet another instance of hermeneutics, which is to say, that interpretation always begets more interpretation. Of course, the authorized keepers of orthodoxy, those who defend religious certainty and objective biblical knowledge, fear that if one never escapes hermeneutics, but endlessly struggles with multiple interpretations without ever discovering the stability of cold, hard facts, then theology succumbs to only relativism and intellectual chaos. Certainly such Derridean suspicion should find no place in Christianity, in a religion predicated upon Jesus’ Great Commission to go forth and proclaim the truth of divine salvation. Consequently, Derrida’s “atheistic” philosophy must represent all that is religiously reprehensible in postmodern culture and cannot but be the enemy of Christian faith and proclamation.

Yet the depiction of Derrida specifically and of postmodernism generally as merely the most recent expressions of secular relativism and anti-religious pluralism might well be a misinformed caricature. I personally believe that to be the case. I disagree quite strongly with those who identify Derrida’s approach as destructive of Christian faith, hope, and love and as dismissive of the potentiality of language to communicate divine grace and theological knowledge. Indeed, nothing in his philosophy of language prescribes a rejection of God, truth, or meaning. As John Caputo, one of Derrida’s most careful and creative readers, states it, his postmodern perspectives display an “armed neutrality” toward personal faith and religious sensitivity.³ Derrida remains neutral with reference to the content of belief, neither affirming nor denying specific doctrines, while maintaining an armed diligence toward every human pretension to final and certain knowledge, toward the pretentiousness of becoming doctrinaire. That is to say, Derrida reminds us that we are finite creatures constantly seeking to comprehend existence from within the limited structures of that existence and, therefore, should constantly remain open to different interpretations and alternative experiences. Caputo goes so far as to label Derrida’s position as “religion without religion,” that is, as a genuinely religious position but not one reduced to a particular organized religion.⁴ It might well surprise his detractors when they discover that Derrida himself writes about a personal religion of which no one truly knows.⁵ He calls himself a person of prayer,⁶ argues for the necessity of faith,⁷ writes beautiful essays on forgiveness,⁸ speaks of the possibility of divine grace,⁹ and establishes much of his critical philosophy on close and respectful readings of both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.¹⁰

Proclaiming and Naming an Unnamable God

In many of his major works, Derrida carefully examines various biblical passages ranging from Genesis 22 (the sacrifice of Isaac) to Revelation 22 (the significance of Jesus’ second coming) and contends that one encounters a constant struggle in the Bible with the limitations of words and the impossibility of ever exhaustively explaining who God is and how God works in reality.¹¹ The variety of biblical texts indicate for Derrida that theology, that is, words (logos) about God (theos) that seek to define God in appropriate ways, can never confine God within the restrictions of human concepts or rational principles. His position closely tracks that of Paul Ricoeur who notes that Scripture names God in multiple ways.¹² For example, consider God’s own revelation of the divine name to Moses in Ex. 3:14. God responds to Moses’ request for the divine name by calling himself “Yahweh,” which means “I am that I am.” But this “name” is not a noun but a verb; it is a name that is no name, a “name” that leaves God nameless, as beyond the signifying power of any one sign. If this is the covenant name for God, the personal or proper name for God, then God’s name, Yahweh, means “the one who cannot be named.” One must confess, therefore, that every profession of God inherently speaks about God as the Unspeakable One and seeks to name God as the Unnamable One.¹³

Derrida believes that by naming God as unnamable, biblical and theological texts reveal an essential trait of all language–that language can never totally capture reality but consistently strives for, while never achieving, connection with the object that it seeks to name.¹⁴ Words cannot conquer the difference between sign and object, and words cannot avoid being repeated in different contexts and naming different objects. They also cannot finalize the postponement of total meaning, since words remain vulnerable to different interpretations, which, in turn, result in the persistent deferral of absolute understanding.¹⁵ In other words, Derrida might say of all linguistic meaning that we cannot comprehend it absolutely in the present tense but that with continued anticipation “we’ll understand it better by and by.”

Out of all the various Scriptures that Derrida addresses, one specific biblical narrative captivates him and functions as a primary text for examining the fascinating correlation among God, language, uncertainty, and the importance of interpretation. Derrida contends that the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11 offers an amazing tale of divine naming, of linguistic confusion, and of the necessity for translation, a necessity that he believes symbolizes the inherent uncertainty that plagues all language. The story explains the structural openness of language as resulting from an act of God that, ironically, demands translation while simultaneously prohibiting it from being totally realized.¹⁶ Derrida marvels at how the story connects the impossible possibility of translation with a peculiar naming of God, a self-naming of God by God that once again reveals God’s name as unnamable.

Derrida identifies the tower-building community as the post-flood Semites, that is, as the descendants of Noah’s son Shem. Since the Hebrew word “shem” means “name,” the “Shemites” are actually the people of the “name.” These “people of the name” overtly disobey God’s command to diversify and replenish the earth when they decide to remain together in the same place, conversing in the same language, and all for the express purpose of making “a name” (shem) for themselves (Gen. 11:4)! God rejects their arrogant intent to construct a tower to the heavens in order to conserve their unity, their similarity, and their cultural-linguistic identity. He judges them for their refusal to obey his word by disrupting their naming through the disorienting dynamic of another naming, specifically the divine naming of “Babel.” Using Voltaire’s French dictionary as his source, Derrida interprets the word “Babel” as composed of ba, “father” (as in abba) and (b)el, “God,” (as in Elohim), that is, as meaning “Father God.” As a result, “Babel” names the place where God gives the gift of his paternal name. Father God gives that name to his disobedient children as a punishment for their sin, a punishment that results in confusion through the multiplication of tongues, which, in turn, leads to complete social fragmentation on the basis of linguistic incoherence.¹⁷ In no longer sharing the same language, the “people of the name” no longer share the same names for things. They discover their one language to be disseminated, scattered into multiple forms, which results in the dissemination of the Semites and the scattering of them into a plurality of cultural-linguistic communities. Consequently, notwithstanding the Apostle Paul’s later claim that “God is not the author of confusion” (1 Cor. 14:33), here in this story God is most definitely a God whose naming “authors” extensive confusion.

As stated above, what truly fascinates Derrida about the Babel passage is that God’s linguistic judgment upon the people concurrently creates the necessity for and the impossibility of translation. On the one hand, since there are now multiple languages, it becomes incumbent upon the people to discover methods for moving meaning from one language to another. On the other hand, confusion always remains a possibility because meaning can never be moved completely from one language to another. Something always gets left out, left behind, untranslated as the untranslatable. Something is always lost in every translation, which means, of course, that the structural incoherence latent in all language can never be repaired.¹⁸ Derrida insists that this “structural incoherence” typifies every use of language, because every use of language involves some form of translation, either as “interlingual” or as “intralingual.”¹⁹

Interlingual translation refers to the basic process of transferring meaning between (inter) two different languages (lingual), such as translating English into French. This is the usual understanding of translation and the one that specifically applies to the Babel story. Intralingual translation refers to the task of restating a thought expressed in a particular language by remaining within (intra) that same language (lingual), such as an English professor explaining in English a Wordsworth poem written in English! To put it simply, intralingual translation is nothing more or less than another name for the unavoidable necessity of hermeneutics. Indeed, every interpretation comes to expression as intralingual translation, as the intent to explain the meaning of a statement through the use of other words in the same linguistic system. If, as Derrida insists, something remains untranslatable in any translation, then something remains silent in any use of language. The Tower of Babel, therefore, becomes a symbol for incomplete communication, for the unending process of interpretation and for the confusion that denies any final, full, and finished comprehension. Consequently, the Babel narrative functions as a biblical reminder of the unavoidable difference inherent in signs and of the constant deferral of total meaning in all interpretation.

Derrida condenses his reflections on Babel and translation in a rather provocative statement about naming: “nothing is untranslatable; but in another sense, everything is untranslatable; translation is another name of the impossible.”²⁰ This latter term, “the impossible,” functions as a central idea in Derrida’s philosophy. “The impossible” serves Derrida as a cipher for whatever cannot be programmed, foreseen, prescripted, or projected out of an assumed tradition.²¹ We can neither predict “the impossible” on the basis of past experience nor cultivate “the impossible” as if it grew organically out of the soil of stable presuppositions and previous fields of existence. “The impossible” never “is” but always “will be,” or “will have been” in some future perfect that lures the present imperfect forward, inciting every “today” to stay in motion toward an unknown “tomorrow.” As a result, “the impossible” functions as another name for difference and otherness, for the unsuspected something that is always “to come,” the unexpected something that always surprises us—as in “We did not see that coming!” But this means for Derrida that “the impossible” comes as an event, which he defines as always unique and singular, as the coming of the new and of the “first time ever.”²² In other words, event marks the coming (venire) forth (e) of what cannot be programmed or anticipated, of what comes to (ad-venire) or comes in (in-venire) as the unexpected, of the adventure and invention of the future as inconceivable.²³ Since the event cannot be foreknown or foreseen, it shatters every expectation. Because we can neither know nor see who or what is coming, we must live within a functional agnosticism and within the blindness of the unpredictable.²⁴

When explaining the “to come,” the “event,” and “the impossible,” Derrida resorts to an explicitly religious vocabulary and considers the unexpected coming of the other to be “messianic.”²⁵ By this term “messianic,” he means the “irreducible paradox [of] a waiting without horizon of expectation.”²⁶ Of course, by using this term, Derrida uses an important religious category, one that holds redemptive significance in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Yet, not only does he acknowledge the religious traditions behind the term, he goes so far as to affirm that his language about the promise of the other to come resembles a soteriology, a “saving” (soter) word (logos) intimating that there may be something salvific inherent in the idea of event as a messianic interruption.²⁷ Perhaps not surprisingly, Caputo goes even further and asserts that Derrida’s messianic idea of “the impossible” is not only a decidedly religious category, but also a decidedly theological category. He considers the term to be yet another naming of God and declares that “[t]he name of God is the name of the chance for something absolutely new, for a new birth, for the expectation, the hope, the hope against hope … in a transforming future.”²⁸ The word “God,” therefore, names that divine power that transcends the human and grounds the potential for the miraculous, the unexpected, and the spiritually unique, that divine power that comes “as a Spirit who breathes, who inspires, and whose gentle breath urges us on” into the impossibility of a possibly redemptive future.²⁹

Proclaiming the Truth in Love … and Humility

Now what exactly does Derrida’s curious reading of the Tower of Babel narrative, with its resulting theory of the difference and deferral of translation and its messianic interpretation of “the impossible,” have to do with Christian proclamation in the postmodern context? In order to answer that question, we need only turn from the text of Genesis to the text of Acts, journey from the Plain of Shinar to Mount Zion,, and listen to the first “official” proclamation of Christ’s newly-formed church. In Acts 2, Luke recounts the miraculous events that occurred to and through the church on the day of Pentecost, when Jesus filled his disciples with the power of God. According to the narrative, the disciples obey Christ after his ascending to the Heavenly Father, not by scattering to different locations, but by gathering together in one place in order to await the promised coming of the Holy Spirit. Once the Spirit arrives, he symbolizes his presence visually with “tongues” of fire that divide and settle over each disciple’s head, and, afterwards, when the disciples exit the upper room, the Spirit reveals himself orally as they begin to speak the gospel of Christ in languages that were not their own (2:3-4). This miraculous event attracts a crowd of people who gather together in that one place in order to listen to the disciples. The assembled crowd, however, is totally bewildered by their experience of hearing the good news of Christ’s grace proclaimed to them in their own native languages by individuals who do not know those languages! One might say, that the crowd listens in a genuine state of confusion.

Not surprisingly, the Pentecostal event prompts the crowd to ask the essential hermeneutical question: “Whatever could this mean?” (2:12). The assembled people, who represent so many different cultures and languages, seek to overcome their confusion and to grasp the significance of what they hear. Finally, when some are so confused that they actually decide that the disciples are drunk and merely babbling (Babel-ing!), the Apostle Peter steps forward and delivers the church’s first official sermon, the first formal proclamation of the gospel uttered by the Spirit-filled Christian community. Peter informs his perplexed listeners that they are witnessing the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy. That prophecy indicates that the Spirit will proclaim the salvation of God through human voices, that through those voices the Spirit will call the nations of the earth to respond to that salvation, and that the Spirit will empower them to receive redemption through the medium of their own voices as they call upon the name of the Lord (2:17-21). Consequently, Peter’s sermon indicates that the Day of Pentecost centers on the act of calling, of calling individuals to respond to the Spirit by calling on the name of the Holy One who calls them.

So what does this story of flaming tongues and of foreign tongues, of confusion and of call, actually mean for Christian proclamation? I suggest it means that the Pentecostal miracle is the miracle of proclamation as translation. The Pentecostal event results in and from the Spirit miraculously calling fragmented humanity to a new unity, to the reintegrating dynamic of the amazing redemptive power working in the proclamation of the good news of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. The miraculous manifestation of being Spirit-filled is the power to translate the gospel so that all may hear it, although that hearing may still result in the possibility of confusion and misunderstanding. In other words, in the Pentecostal event, the Holy Spirit both reverses and repeats Babel. By enabling the church to proclaim the single message of salvation in multiple languages, the Spirit reunites the nations of the earth who have been fragmented since Babel. He accomplishes this through the “foolishness [confusion?] of the message preached” (1 Cor. 1:21), whereby everyone who responds to this message and calls upon the divine name will be saved. This reunification does not reestablish one single language and culture or confine individuals to one location. It does, however, scatter throughout the earth all those who accept this message of hope and grace in order that they might “translate” across cultures the good news that in Christ all people may share “one Lord, one faith, [and] one baptism” (Eph. 4:5).³⁰

The Pentecostal miracle of translation—although truly an event in Derrida’s sense of unexpected, unique and, therefore, unrepeatable—does, in some manner of speaking, continue to characterize every instance of proclaiming the gospel in the power of the Spirit. Because the Bible always functions as the source of the originary language of the gospel, Christian proclamation depends on the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts of Scripture being translated into the audience’s language (English, German, French, etc.) in order for understanding to occur. When we proclaim the gospel, we either directly read or quote a text from an interlingual translation of the Bible, for example, the New King James Version, or, if seminary-trained, we give our own translation of a text. Of course, the Pentecostal miracle certainly affects contemporary proclamation in a less “supernatural” manner, since we now depend more on education than direct inspiration for the translated gospel. Nevertheless, every contemporary disciple of Christ, as an honorary member of Jerusalem’s Upper Room Community Church, testifies in the power of the Spirit by “repeating” Pentecost symbolically and disseminating the translated divine Word so that its message of hope can transcend cultural-linguistic boundaries.

Yet, Christian proclamation seldom limits itself merely to the reading/translating of a biblical passage. Ordinarily, once we have read or referenced a text in translation, we then proceed to expound upon it, to preach a sermon or to give a testimony, and, in doing so, we move from interlingual to intralingual translation. Every time we stand to proclaim God’s Word, we attempt to restate or repeat the meaning we have “discovered” in the biblical text. For instance, after reading or reciting John 3:16 from an English translation, we may spend several minutes commenting on the verse, explaining it, and restating it so as to apply its meaning to our contemporary situation. We do all of this, obviously, in English, that is, by giving an English intralingual translation of a text we have just read in English! In other words, proclamation always happens “in other words!” When we proclaim the gospel, we constantly strive to be Pentecostal by depending on the Spirit to empower our expression of God’s Word “in other words,” constantly praying that the Holy Spirit will enable the “re-wording” of the Word.³¹ To be sure, proclamation as translation is always a reiteration, a re-wording of a divine Word previously spoken by God, a response to a call issued by the Spirit to go forth and proclaim the good news of salvation. Proclamation, then, can never be the first word but always a second word, a re-wording of a prior word, a recalling that calls others to listen to the message of Christ’s love and to call upon his name.

If proclamation is always translation, and if, as Derrida argues, translation is always hermeneutics, then all verbal testimony to the gospel must tolerate the restrictions inherent in both translation and hermeneutics. Christian testimony simply cannot reach the lofty level of absolute knowledge or absolute certainty.³² It must tolerate the reality that something is always lost in translation and that there is always at least two interpretations of any text. Furthermore, testimony itself ironically contributes to the difference and deferral of hermeneutics, since, as an interpretive translation, every testimony recontextualizes biblical texts by attempting to express their meaning in new historical and cultural circumstances. Such recontextualizations can only occur, however, by actually repeating the assumed meanings of the biblical texts in the form of a new text. Consequently, since re-wording the Word results in re-textualizing the biblical texts, the “other words” of proclamation come to expression themselves as oral or written texts that require interpretation!

Moreover, as Derrida reminds us, texts summon forth both several different translations and also several different interpretations. To be sure, even the sacred texts of Scripture, as written texts, may actually demand that we affirm the tensions inherent in multiple and varied inter- and intralingual translations. Yet, what if those tensions were not textual problems needing solutions but were powerful indicators of the divine riches of Scripture? Perhaps the revelatory dynamic of God’s written Word depends upon just such ambiguities and tensions; that is, perhaps the Spirit’s inspiration and illumination truly depend upon the inexhaustibility of discontinuous readings, of textual differences actually woven into the warp and woof of biblical language. For example, consider the Apostle Paul’s great Christ hymn in Philippians, where he imagines the Incarnation as a process of kenosis, of divine “emptying,” whereby Jesus takes on the form of flesh so that he might offer himself as a sacrifice for salvation. By relinquishing (emptying) his equality with the Father, Jesus humbles himself and becomes a servant for the purpose of redeeming us from our sin through his death on the cross (Phil. 2:6-8). In Colossians, however, Paul states that the Incarnation results from a process of plerosis, of Christ as the “fullness” of God existing in bodily form. Incarnation results from God’s glory being fully enfleshed in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Now which is it? Is Incarnation the result of kenosis, of emptying, sacrificing, and relinquishing, or is it the result of plerosis, of fullness, completion, and the “saturated phenomenon” of divine presence?³³ A good Derridean postmodern answer to this question might be, “Yes!” We must interpret the miracle of Christ’s Incarnation by using several symbols, even apparently conflicting ones, since the reality of that redemptive event does not lend itself to the similarity and singularity of just one “translation.” The Scriptures themselves, therefore, may exploit textual tensions and difference in order to reveal something of the wonders of God’s salvation, wonders that cannot be totally unveiled through absolute knowledge.

So what does the tension between revealing and re-veiling, between the privation in translation and the plurality in hermeneutics, actually mean for Christian proclamation? I believe it means that we must maintain what T. S. Eliot calls the “wisdom of humility” and not be arrogant enough to think that we can so fuse our re-wording of God’s Word to God’s Word itself that we confuse the two and fail to remain open to the Spirit’s correction and conviction.³⁴ Derrida and Caputo have admonished us about becoming too self-assured when speaking words about God, but that admonishment may become even more critical when we claim to be communicating the Word of God or confessing that we have received a Word from God. How can I as a sinful, finite human being have the temerity to put myself forth in public as an Amos speaking for the Lord or as a John the Baptist calling others to Christ?³⁵ Think of the audacity it takes for me to claim to be proclaiming the Word of God, to contend that the Spirit has inspired me to stand as the proxy of God with the authority to voice God’s thoughts. Think also of the intellectual difficulties associated with such a contention. When I seek to communicate the gospel verbally, I do know that what will proceed out of my mouth will be my words, my talk about God predicated upon my own personal interpretations; however, I do not know conclusively whether my words will mediate God’s Word, whether I will genuinely translate what the Spirit wishes to communicate through me.³⁶ My proclamation may only be telling the audience what I want them to hear, not necessarily what God wants them to hear.

Still, does the postmodern emphasis on hermeneutical difference and deferral not threaten to deny the courage of knowing God’s mercies, the stability of resting on God’s promises, and the comfort of the surety of God’s redemption? Does postmodern thought not threaten to exile us to a desert of relativism and meaninglessness? Indeed, it does. On the one hand, the postmodern reminder that uncertainty and risk haunt every attempt at translation and interpretation may undoubtedly provoke the unsettling fear of relativism, especially when those attempts characterize the proclamation of Christ’s gospel. Uncertainty and risk may well disrupt any absolute conviction that we know God’s will, that we comprehend God’s directions, and that we can boldly speak God’s revelation. On the other hand, however, postmodern thought may encourage a salutary hermeneutical humility by reminding us that it is impossible for any of us to know absolutely that our talk about God is God’s talk about God, since we can never rise above the mediating limitations of our language, our culture, or our ideological traditions in order to hear the unfiltered, pure voice of the Deity.³⁷ Subsequently, we validate our claims to proclaim the Word of God only through faith and hope, for we can only speak by believing that God has spoken to us and only proclaim by hoping that we have not been deceived by others or have not deceived ourselves.³⁸ Ironically, the humility instilled by postmodern theories calls us to recommit ourselves in faith and hope to the Spirit of God.³⁹ We cannot simply assume that we know the mind of God but must trust that the Holy Spirit will give us utterance as on the Day of Pentecost and will enable our language to mediate proper knowledge of God and of God’s will. Conceivably, therefore, postmodern hermeneutical humility may well encourage us to speak for God and to God only with “fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12).⁴⁰

Perhaps–just perhaps–when admitting the necessity of constant interpretation, Derrida and Caputo express a position faithful to Scripture’s revelation of the Holy Spirit. In the verse quoted at the beginning of this essay, Jesus informs Nicodemus that those born of the Holy Spirit are like the wind that blows in an essentially agnostic manner. No one may know its origination or its termination. Its effects may be experienced but never with absolute certainty. I consider Jesus’ statement not only to be a word about the children of the Spirit but also to be about the Spirit himself. The offspring of the Spirit may not be decisively and completely known precisely because they exemplify the very characteristics of the Spirit himself. The transcendence and holiness of the Spirit disallow anyone from defining and confining the Spirit’s power in weak human categories.⁴¹ The Spirit moves as he wishes, often covertly, sometimes overtly, but at no time can we domesticate and dominate the Spirit’s influence. The Spirit exemplifies Derrida’s “to come,” that surprising event that cannot be anticipated and manipulated, the messianic mystery of a divine presence that always escapes every human endeavor to grasp it and hold it and use it for personal advantage. The Holy Spirit, therefore, is always a spirit of undecidability, of promise, of the unexpected things that “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man” (1 Cor. 2:9). The Spirit reveals these things to us, because he knows the mind of God. We can only know them as the Spirit gives them utterance and communicates them to our spirit. Because he does so always in various cultural forms and through the limitation of human language, we should be vigilant not to reduce the Spirit’s testimony to worldly wisdom or to weak concepts controlled by human ingenuity (1 Cor. 2:11-13).⁴²

Perhaps–just perhaps–it is not merely coincidental that the Apostle Paul, when writing about spiritual gifts–including the gift of “tongues” and the necessity for translation and interpretation! (1 Cor. 14:27-28)–writes that we “know in part” and “prophesy [proclaim] in part” (1 Cor. 13:9). He attributes our partial comprehension and communication to our “reflective” limitation; that is, we now “see in a mirror dimly,” unable to bring our knowledge into the transparency of a fully-focused spiritual acuity.⁴³ Paul uses the Greek word ainigma for “dimly,” a word that translates into English as “enigma.” Consequently, a certain enigmatic quality defines our knowledge of God as long as we exist within the finite structures of our languages, our cultures, and our traditions.⁴ Of course, Paul also acknowledges a messianic motif, a “face-to-face” understanding that is yet “to come,” when we will know fully even as we are known (1 Cor. 13:12).⁴⁵ Yet, until that future perfect messianic event occurs, we are left to walk by faith and not by sight, to hope in that which is not seen, and to respond to every situation in the spirit of a love that is never guaranteed a return (13:13).

We so often find ourselves echoing the confession of the hopeful father in Mark, who admits to Christ that he believes but needs help with unbelief (Mark 9:24). Likewise, we find ourselves repeatedly testing the wind, trying to ascertain whether what we feel is truly the gentle touch of the Spirit, or yet another blast from the winds of deceitful doctrine (Eph. 4:14) or another tempest blown up by our own infidelity (Jam. 1:6). As the Apostle John so wisely warns us, we must frequently “test the spirits” (1 Jo. 4:1-2), for not all spirits come from God, not everyone who claims the Spirit’s authority to speak a word from God comes from God, and not everyone who might genuinely believe that the Spirit has spoken to him has correctly interpreted his experience. Even when we are convinced, in good faith, that we speak in response to the Spirit who has spoken to us, that is, when we believe we feel the internal witness of the Spirit as confirmation of an interpretation, of an action, or of a proclamation, we face the possibility of mistranslation and misinterpretation.

In reality, even the Spirit’s influence on our interpretations is, itself, functionally a matter of interpretation, yet another instance of hermeneutics. We hear a word, read a text, or experience some feeling, and we then interpret it as a sign that the Holy Spirit is communicating with us, leading us, or authenticating our doctrines for us. But postmodern thought insists that interpreting signs never gives us absolute certainty or complete knowledge, which leaves open the real potential for hermeneutical error, even when we seek to decipher the Spirit’s presence. Consequently, that “funny feeling” or “strange sensation” that we interpret as evidence that the Holy Spirit has filled us and empowered us to proclaim God’s Word might not be the Spirit at all but merely an “undigested bit of beef,” the residual effect of the pizza we ate at the Sunday School party the night before.⁴⁶ Indigestion or inspiration? Egocentric desire or divine revelation? Passion for power or humble piety? The Spirit of God or self-righteous certainty? What truly motivates and authenticates our proclamation?

Now I do not intend to offend anyone’s religious experience or to dismiss any genuine movement of God’s Spirit. I simply want to be honest regarding a postmodern affirmation of the Holy Spirit. That affirmation grounds a serious caution to us as children of the Spirit not to underestimate the necessity of interpretation and the risks and potential for error and deception that accompany it. Postmodern thought can ensure that we always remain allergic to the definite article, never reducing God’s Word or the Spirit’s Work to a “the,” as in “the” truth, “the” interpretation, or “the” sign of divine influence. By avoiding the myopia of the “the,” we can be attracted to plurality and difference, to the spiritual excitement that comes from expecting the unexpected fullness of God, the gracious extravagance of the Spirit’s gifts, and the brilliance of Christ’s light as it is refracted through the multiple prisms of different people and different perspectives. Finally, postmodernism can feed a much-needed addiction to spiritual humility by enabling us to embrace the risk inherent in faith and hope.⁴⁷ It reminds us that we proclaim God’s Word as finite, sinful creatures, devoid of omniscience, storing God’s precious treasures of grace and forgiveness in “earthen vessels” so as to keep us reliant upon the divine power and not our own (2 Cor. 4:7). It prohibits us from quenching the Spirit by forcing him to fit inside our limited expectations, by reducing him to our frail theologies, and by imprisoning him in the conceptual structures of our own intellectual attempts to make a name for ourselves. In other words, postmodern piety can keep us walking and proclaiming between Babel and Pentecost, and always doing both in the power of the Spirit.

PR

Notes

¹ Jacques Derrida, “Circumfession: Fifty-nine Periods and Paraphrases,” in Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 156.

² Jacques Derrida, Points . . .Interviews, 1974-1994, ed. Elisabeth Weber (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), p. 82.

³ John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion Without Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), pp. 12-19.

⁴ Ibid., pp. 194-96.

⁵ Derrida, “Circumfession,” p. 156.

⁶ Ibid., p. 188.

⁷ Jacques Derrida, “Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of ‘Religion’ at the Limits of Reason Alone,” in Religion, eds. Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 18.

⁸ Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, trans. Mark Dooley and Michael Hughes (New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 25-60.

⁹ John D. Caputo, Kevin Hart, and Yvonne Sherwood, “Epoché and Faith: An Interview with Jacques Derrida,” in Derrida and Religion: Other Testaments, eds. Yvonne Sherwood and Kevin Hart (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 39.

¹⁰ John D. Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida (New York: Fordham University Press, 1997), p. 21.

¹¹ Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, trans. David Wells (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 58-81; Jacques Derrida, “Of an Apocalyptic Tone Newly Adopted in Philosophy,” in Derrida and Negative Theology, eds. Harold Coward and Toby Foshay (Albany: SUNY press, 1992), pp. 50-67.

¹² Paul Ricoeur, “Naming God,” in Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, trans. David Pellauer, ed. Mark I. Wallace (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), pp. 227-28.

¹³ Cf. Richard Kearney, The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), pp. 22-24.

¹⁴ Jacques Derrida, On the Name, ed. Thomas Dutoit, trans. David Wood, John P. Leavey, and Ian McLeod (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), pp. 48-49, 69; Jacques Derrida, “How to Avoid Speaking: Denials,” in Derrida and Negative Theology, p. 74.

¹⁵ Jacques Derrida, Positions, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 8-10; Jacques Derrida, “Différance,” in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 8-9.

¹⁶ Jacques Derrida, “Des Tours de Babel,” in Acts of Religion, ed. Gil Anidjar (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 104.

¹⁷ Ibid., pp. 105-108. Jamie Smith concurs that God judges the Semites for rejecting plurality and difference by striving to maintain a rebellious unity, which goes against the divine plan for creation. See The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), p. 33.

¹⁸ Ibid., pp. 108-109.

¹⁹ Ibid., p. 110.

²⁰ Jacques Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other; or, the Prosthesis of Origin, trans. Patrick Mensah (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 57.

²¹ Jacques Derrida, “Psyche: Inventions of the Other,” in Reading de Man Reading, eds. Lindsay Waters and Wlad Godzich (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), p. 36; Jacques Derrida, Negotiations: Interventions and Interviews 1971-2001, ed. and trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), p. 344; Derrida, On the Name, p. 43.

²² Derrida, “Psyche: Inventions of the Other,” p. 28.

²³ Ibid., p. 42; Derrida, Negotiations, p. 96.

²⁴ Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), pp. 135, 143; Cf. also Jacques Derrida, Memoires for Paul de Man, trans. Cecile Lindsay, Jonathan Culler, Eduardo Cadava, and Peggy Kamuf (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), p. 160 and Jacques Derrida, “The Spatial Arts: An Interview with Jacques Derrida,” in Deconstruction and the Visual Arts, eds. Peter Brunette and David Wills (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 27-28.

²⁵ Jacques Derrida, The Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, & the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 28; Derrida, Negotiations, pp. 361-62; Derrida, “Faith and Knowledge,” pp. 17-18.

²⁶ Derrida, The Specters of Marx, pp. 167-68. Cf. also Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell, p. 23.

²⁷ Derrida, Monolingualism, p. 68; Derrida, Negotiations, p. 362.

²⁸ John D. Caputo, On Religion (New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 11.

²⁹ John D. Caputo, The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), pp. 9, 38.

³⁰ Jamie Smith also notes the relationship between Babel and Pentecost as promoting God’s affirmation of diversity, concluding that “truth, in creation, is plural.” He also concludes that God’s creational desire for difference and otherness holds ethical implications for how all of the individuals excluded and alienated by society relate to the Kingdom of God (The Fall of Interpretation, pp. 59-60).

³¹ Cf. Curtis Freeman, “Toward a Sensus Fidelium for an Evangelical Church: Postconservatives & Postliberals on Reading Scripture,” in The Nature of Confession: Evangelicals & Postliberals in Conversation, eds. Timothy R. Phillips and Dennis L. Okholm (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), pp. 168-71.

³² Cf. Paul Ricoeur, “The Hermeneutics of Testimony,” in Essays on Biblical Interpretation, ed. Lewis S. Mudge (Philadelphia: Fortress Press), pp. 145, 149-50 and also Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell, pp. 167-68.

³³ I borrow the terminology “saturated phenomenon” from Jean-Luc Marion. See “The Saturated Phenomenon,” trans. Thomas A. Carlson, in Philosophy Today: Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, vol. 21, eds. Leonore Langsdorf and John D. Caputo (Spring 1996), pp. 103-24.

³⁴ T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), p. 27.

³⁵ Jamie Smith suggests an interesting solution to the problem of how finite and sinful individuals may properly use language to reference God. He claims that words of praise are not inhibited by the difference and deferral that characterize language itself nor by the flawed nature of those who use that language. As one proclaims God by glorifying him, one directs others away from the self in order to experience the divine Other as the presence of the Spirit of grace and love. See Speech and Theology: Language and the Logic of Incarnation (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 128-29.

³⁶ See Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All its Worth: A Guide to Understanding the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1993), pp. 14-17.

³⁷ See Phillip D. Kenneson, “There’s No Such Thing as Objective Truth, and It’s a Good Thing, Too,” in Christian Apologetics in the Postmodern World, eds. Timothy R. Phillips and Dennis L. Okholm (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995), pp. 162-67.

³⁸ Brian McLaren reminds us that Christians should never forget that we do not merely proclaim answers, as if we were only information technologists, but we also proclaim mysteries that provoke new questions. See The Church on the Other Side: Doing Ministry in the Postmodern Matrix (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1998), pp. 78-79.

³⁹ Leonard Sweet calls humility “the open sesame to spiritual awakening,” which then gives us the confidence to walk in the Spirit by staying on our knees before the Lord. See SoulTsunami: Sink or Swim in New Millennium Culture (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1999), p. 313.

⁴⁰ Stan Grenz and John Franke insist that we must acknowledge the Spirit’s guidance always within the context of the corporate confessions of the Christian community. Spiritual interpretation and proclamation, therefore, must never be reduced to the subjective level of individual experience. See Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), pp. 66-68.

⁴¹ Jean-Luc Marion calls such categorical confinement of God a “conceptual idol,” because we often yield to the temptation to replace God with our ideas about God and, in turn, to worship them as false gods. See Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being: Hors-Texte, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 16-17.

⁴² Henry Knight confesses that a “gospel free of culture is not a human possibility”; however, he warns against accommodating “the integrity of the gospel” to the control of culture. See A Future for Truth: Evangelical Theology in a Postmodern World (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997), p. 134.

⁴³ Cf. Merold Westphal, “Phenomenologies and Religious Truth,” in Phenomenology of the Truth Proper to Religion, ed. Daniel Guerrière (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), p. 117 and “Positive Postmodernism as Radical Hermeneutics,” in The Very Idea of Radical Hermeneutics, ed. Roy Martinez (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1997), p. 48.

⁴⁴ Cf. Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell, p. 159.

⁴⁵ Cf. Jacques Derrida, The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translation, trans. Peggy Kamuf (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), p. 123.

⁴⁶ Scrooge attempts to dismiss the reality of Marley’s ghost with these words. See Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (New York: Atheneum, 1966), p. 25.

⁴⁷ Merold Westphal defines faith as “the willing vulnerability to and acceptance of divine revelation” (emphasis added). See Transcendence and Self-Transcendence: On God and the Soul (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), p. 209.