Disentanglement vs Deconstruction

In the world of religious trauma, many people advocate theological deconstruction.

I understand. '

I really do.

I have done a great deal of deconstruction myself. However, that looks very different when you have theological training. When you believe the Bible has true meaning and you have the training to do exegetical work, deconstruction isn’t about tearing down what you believe, but examining it critically in light of proper research. I have started calling this work Disentanglement. It is the process, not of rejecting those things that you believe to be true, but instead of examining critically your theology to find the threads of abusive of abusive theology and removing them from your theology.

You begin to examine your theology and assumptions. You delve deeper. You seek to understand why abuse happens. First and foremost, you recognize that God is not abusive. Proper theology leaves no room for abuse. You quickly realize that any theology that supports or allows abuse is bad theology. It is a perversion of God’s will.

Rejecting free will and the resulting relational interplay between God and mankind creates an abusive theology.

Rejecting the supremacy of the Bible in favor of continuing revelation creates an abusive theology.

Ignoring the work of the Holy spirit creates an abusive theology.

Ignoring historical context and proper scholarship in regards to the relationship between men and women and their relationship to leadership in the church (to wit, complementarianism) creates abusive theology.

Seminary teaches theology. More importantly, it teaches the questions to ask. There are certain things, elements of theology that should be held as sacrosanct. But we must also remember that theology is always derivative. The Bible never says that God is triune, but we derive that idea from the things taught in the Bible. Things like the trinity, that God is Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, and Omnibenevolent should be clung to as necessary to the fundamentals of the Christian faith. Other questions, those things that result in denominational splits, should be closely examined.

While deconstruction may reject things like the infallibility of scripture, disentanglement requires holding tightly to such theologically orthodox positions. While deconstruction often results in heterodox theology, disentanglement done properly will not.