I was amused this morning to read this interview in the NYT Stone in which the stolid Gary Guting tries to pin down the slithery John Caputo regarding Derrida's religionless religion. The Deconstructionist project is simply one of radical hermeneutic openness that is suspicious of any limiting interpretation, and so that's the game Caputo plays with Guting every time Guting tries to 'interpret' what Caputo means. "No, no...that's not it, that's too limiting." I get it, but there are limits to how much of this open endedness any sane person can take.
While I, like Derrida, am attracted to the Augustinian idea of "doing truth", there is a self-defeating open-endedness to Deconstruction that is the opposite of the incarnationalism that is the essence of Christianity. Freedom cannot mean for Christians keeping your options--even your hermeneutic options--open. Freedom is there to be used, and you use it when you make commitments, and when you make a commitment--among them a faith commitment--it has limiting consequences. But to refuse to choose leaves you forever on the outside shut off from another kind of possibility.
In Christianity radical open-ended freedom is--must be--crucified. In Christianity choices are--must be--made that lead to very concrete limiiting of one's possibilities. In Christianity it is through the narrow gate that one passes into another level of freedom or liberation that simply isn't possible if one remains entranced by this dance of differences.
The path through that narrow gate is not one of peace and security, but of taking up burdens and sooner or later embracing anguish of the Dark Night through which we must all pass. It's not supposed to be easy. Such an exercise of freedom that results in such a commitment is for grownups who know what they are getting into and are willing to pay a price.
One of the commenters said that Caputo should read more Kierkegaard and less Derrida, and I couln't agree more.
See also Il n'y a pas de hors-texte