Addresses the promises and perils of postmodernity for the church today.

John Riggs argues for a common ground between postmodernism and Christianity, focusing on how this applies to issues such as reproductive rights and the ordination of women, gay men, and lesbians, and suggest that Christianity avoid the extreme positions of either completely accommodating itself to or completely rejecting postmodern culture.

The author of What Would Jesus Deconstruct? makes “a bold attempt to reconfigure the terms of debate around the topic of divine omnipotence” (Choice). Applying an ever more radical hermeneutics—including Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology, Derridian deconstruction, and feminism—John D. Caputo breaks down the name of God in this irrepressible book. Instead of looking at God as merely a name, Caputo views it as an event, or what the name conjures or promises in the future. For Caputo, the event exposes God as weak, unstable, and barely functional. While this view of God flies in the face of most religions and philosophies, it also puts up a serious challenge to fundamental tenets of theology and ontology. Along the way, Caputo’s readings of the New Testament, especially of Paul’s view of the Kingdom of God, help to support the “weak force” theory. This penetrating work cuts to the core of issues and questions—What is the nature of God? What is the nature of being? What is the relationship between God and being? What is the meaning of forgiveness, faith, piety, or transcendence?—that define the terrain of contemporary philosophy of religion. “Caputo comes out of the closet as a theologian in this work.” —Catherine Keller, Drew University “Caputo has a gift for explaining Continental philosophy’s jargon succinctly and accurately, and despite technical and foreign terms, this book will engage upper-level undergraduates. Includes scriptural and general indexes . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice

John Riggs argues for a common ground between postmodernism and Christianity, focusing on how this applies to issues such as reproductive rights and the ordination of women, gay men, and lesbians, and suggest that Christianity avoid the extreme positions of either completely accommodating itself to or completely rejecting postmodern culture.

Demonstrates how to reconcile postmodernism with Christian faith.

John Riggs argues for a common ground between postmodernism and Christianity, focusing on how this applies to issues such as reproductive rights and the ordination of women, gay men, and lesbians, and suggest that Christianity avoid the extreme positions of either completely accommodating itself to or completely rejecting postmodern culture.

The modern era is over. Assumptions that shaped twentieth-century thought and culture, the bridges we crossed to this present moment, have blown up. The postmodern age has begun. Just what is postmodernism? The average person would be shocked by its creed: Truth, meaning, and individual identity do not exist. These are social constructs. Human life has no special significance, no more value than animal or plant life. All social relationships, all institutions, all moral values are expressions and masks of the primal will to power. Alarmingly, these ideas have gripped the nation's universities, which turn out today's lawyers, judges, writers, journalists, teachers, and other culture-shapers. Through society's influences, postmodernist ideas have seeped into films, television, art, literature, politics; and, without his knowing it, into the head of the average person on the street. Christ has called us to proclaim the gospel to a culture grappling with postmodernism. We must understand our times. Then, through the power that Christ gives, we can counter the prevailing culture and proclaim His sufficiency to our society's very points of need.