theological porn

I have spent the past few days reading Peter Rollins:  How (Not) to Speak of God, The Fidelity of Betrayal, and The Orthodox Heretic.  I say it’s like reading theological porn because it’s titillating, it makes you feel dirty, and you could lose your soul doing it.  I suspect that Pete would happily agree with this assessment, though perhaps in an ironic way.  He describes a voyeuristic nude scene from the film American Beauty in one of his books, so his writing actually does include a bit of pornography (though to be fair, he uses it to make a theological point).

At any rate, here is my streamlined assessment of his main argument.  For those of you who know Rollins, or for Pete himself, I would like to know if you think this focused presentation omits anything important or misrepresents what he is saying (I have omitted the footnotes for ease of posting).  For the rest of you, pay attention to the final two paragraphs, where Pete has some provocative (pornographic?) ideas on the resurrection.  I’ll post my evaluation later this week, but for now see if you can spot any similarities between Pete and Friedrich Schleiermacher (emergent ideas aren’t new, they are just recycled).

Peter Rollins writes that the heart of Christianity lies in a born again experience which transforms us into followers of Christ who sacrificially love those who are oppressed and excluded.  Anyone who has experienced this life-altering event cannot doubt that they have received it, but they can and should doubt everything they might use to describe it.  They cannot even assert with confidence that this event was caused by God, for God is too lofty to say anything about.

Rollins rightly emphasizes that God is the wholly other Subject who transcends the limits of our minds.  But rather than balance God’s transcendence with an equal appreciation for his immanence, Rollins allows God’s transcendent mystery to overwhelm the immanence of his revelation.  Unlike John Calvin, who said that the majestic God is able to stoop to our level and communicate something of what he is like, Rollins argues that God’s dazzling glory blinds our intellects so that we are unable to know anything about him.  Speaking about God is like gazing directly into the sun; we are so overwhelmed by his presence that we cannot see him.

Rollins contends that because the transcendent God surpasses the categories of our minds, we cannot even know whether he exists.  When we say that God exists we “reduce God to the realm of objects,” forgetting that “God utterly transcends all concepts and thus cannot be approached as an object at all.”  Rather God is “the ineffable source that is received but never conceived.”  Better to identify God with the born again event (which turns God into a verb) and remain agnostic “about who, what, or even if God is (as a being).”

Rollins claims that anyone who thinks they have knowledge of God is guilty of idolatry, for “no concept of God (theism) can do justice to the reality of God.  In this way, all concepts of God are now rejected in advance.”  So Rollins cheerfully recommends “believing in God while remaining dubious concerning what one believes about God” and offers that “when it comes to God, we have nothing to say to others and we must not be ashamed of saying it.”

When asked why he would affiliate with Christianity if he “did not believe that it revealed God,” Rollins responded that the dubious nature of his faith was actually an argument in its favor.  First, “If the truth affirmed by Christianity lay in something that people could intellectually grasp, then the truth of faith would be something that one could hold without ever hearing or following its demand.”  In other words, the shiny object of knowledge may distract Christians from following the path of Jesus and loving their neighbor.

Second, Rollins argues that doubt is essential for faith, for “it is only in the midst of undecidability that real decisions can be made.”  He explains that if two people get married “with the firm conviction that the union will last as long as they both live,” then “no real decision needs to be made,” for “the future is believed to be so certain that the decision to marry requires no decision at all.”  Conversely, if they have doubts about their relationship and what the future holds, only then are they able “to make a truly daring and authentic decision—the only type of decision worthy of the name.”

Third, Rollins contends that the uncertainty of faith purifies our love.  Those who obey Christ because they are confident that he arose from the dead and will shower them with eternal rewards are behaving selfishly.  But those who love without knowing whether Jesus is alive indicate that they are truly born again, for “they follow him without thought of some future reward, and thus they follow him in a truly sacrificial way.”  In this way the resurrection may actually hinder the Christian life, for it is difficult for those who believe in its truth to love unselfishly.

This idea supplies the thesis of Rollins’ book, The Fidelity of Betrayal, where he suggests that we must give up our Christian beliefs for the sake of Christian love.  We must “destroy what we love for the sake of what we love…putting our religion [beliefs] to death so that a religion without religion [love] can spring forth.”  He argues that just as the disciples were left hanging on the Black Saturday between Good Friday and Easter, so we who live on the other side of the resurrection still “wonder if Christ did return and if death was defeated.”  We should courageously accept our predicament, because only this uncertainty can purify our love from self-interest and “approach what the good news of Christianity really is.”