Faith in deconstruction: Derrida and the sources of philosophical theology

This essay argues that Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction offers a resource for philosophical theology by illuminating the unstable and doubled character of its sources. Through a close reading of ‘Faith and Knowledge,’ the article examines Derrida’s claim that religion cannot be traced to a singular origin but is constituted through a continual duplication of sources. Religion, on Derrida’s account, emerges through a constitutive undecidability that also enables its capacity for self-critique and transformation. This claim is extended to philosophical theology itself. If philosophical theology seeks to speak of God through philosophical concepts, it too depends upon heterogeneous sources that cannot be subordinated to one another. It unfolds at the limit where theology and philosophy interrogate and transform each other. Derrida’s displacement of Kant’s religion ‘within’ the limits of reason to religion ‘at’ the limits of reason provides a model for understanding this boundary work. It is argued that deconstruction does not negate philosophical theology but clarifies its textual and speculative condition: a practice sustained by trust and the intertwining of sources that both authorize and destabilize theological speech. Derrida’s contribution to philosophical theology lies less in a doctrinal position than in a way of handling texts, limits, and origins.