No incarnation

Zizek (The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?) consider’s John Caputo’s On Religionto be the “ultimate formulation of Derridean deconstructive messianism” (256). Caputo reveals that deconstruction is a “Jewish science” at war with idols and even, Caputo says, with incarnations “because incarnations are always local occurrences” (quoted in Zizek, 257). Deconstruction maintains the gap between the ineffable Event that simmers within the name or the actual, ensuring that no contingent instantiation is ever identified with the Event.

Then Zizek offers this sharp critique: “In this ‘deconstructive’ way, every particular taking sides, every instantiation of theDivine, is relativized, has to be taken and practiced with ironic distance: wheneverwe focus on a particular formulation of the divine, ce nest pas a. Withinthis space, there is simply no place for the paradox of Christian Incarnation: inChrist, this miserable individual, we see God himself, so that his death is thedeath of God himself. The properly Christian choice is the ‘leap of faith’ bymeans of which we take the risk to fully engage in a singular instantiation as theTruth embodied, with no ironic distance, no fingers crossed. ‘Christ’ standsfor the very singular point excluded by Caputo: a direct short circuit, identityeven, between a positive singularity and the divine Event” (258).

Why Caputo’s whiskered liberalism should be considered edgy is something of a mystery.