Quotes from Peter Rollins

What we find within the Christian tradition is a beautiful way of remembering, embracing, being nourished by, and living in the light of this miracle despite all the legitimate concerns and doubts we may have concerning it. For Christianity, at its best, offers us a community of people who have likewise been knowingly marked by the miracle and who wish to celebrate it through shared rituals such as prayer, meditation, fasting, liturgy, serving the poor, fighting injustice, and so on.

So then we must be wary of spending all our time poring over the words, talking about them, and memorizing them, for it could well be that such activities could mask the very Word that they bear witness to. Our task is not simply to return to the Bible, but to return to the life-giving Word that gave birth to the Bible and that speaks through it—hearing the message by living it out rather than merely rejoicing in its eloquence.

the a/ theistic approach can be seen as a form of disbelieving what one believes, or rather, believing in God while remaining dubious concerning what one believes about God (a distinction that fundamentalism is unable to maintain).

authentic faith is expressed, not in the mere acceptance of a belief system, but in sacrificial, loving action.

The difference between the idea that our Christian traditions describe God and the view that they are worshipful responses to God is important to grasp, for while the former seeks to define, the latter is engaged with response. By charting the latter course, those within the emerging conversation perceive a very different way of understanding theology. It is no longer thought of as a human discourse that speaks of God but rather as the place where God speaks into human discourse.

Our 'theological' musings can thus be called a/theological insomuch as they acknowledge that we must still speak of God (theology, as traditionally understood) while also recognizing that this speech fails to define God (a/theology).

God is not a theoretical problem to somehow resolve but rather a mystery to be participated in. This perspective is evidenced in the Bible itself when we note that the term 'knowing' in the Hebrew tradition (in contrast to the Greek tradition) is about engaging in an intimate encounter rather than describing some objective fact: religious truth is thus that which transforms reality rather than that which describes it.

Even if one has progressed far in divine things, one is never nearer the truth than when one understands that those things still remain to be discovered. He who believes he has attained the goal, far from finding what he seeks, falls by the wayside.

While he possesses all the positive attributes of the universe (being the universal Cause) yet, in a more strict sense, He does not possess them, since He transcends them all; wherefore there is no contradiction between the affirmations and the negations, insomuch as He infinitely precedes all conceptions of deprivation, being beyond all positive and negative distinctions.

Take this wine, my dear friend, and drink it up, for it is my very blood, and it is shed for you." All this makes you feel painfully uncomfortable, and so you shift in your chair and fumble in your pocket, all the time distracted by the silver that weighs heavy in your pouch.

Judas is here a symbol of all our failures, and Christ's actions demonstrate his unconditional acceptance. Judas helps to remind us of Christ's message that he came for the sick rather than the healthy, and that he loves and accepts us as we are.

Leave behind the senses and the operations of the intellect, and all things sensible and intellectual, and all things in the world of being and non-being, that thou mayest arise by unknowing towards the union, as far as it is attainable, with him who transcends all being and all knowledge.

God's Word cannot be heard without being heeded; it cannot be received without being incarnated. Indeed, it is only in being incarnated that one can say that it has been received.

For instance, the words love your neighbor should not be thought of as sacred or divine. These words are no more than words. They take on a revelatory role only when they are lived, that is, when someone actually gets their hands dirty and loves their neighbor—in other words, when this phrase is incarnated in action. The idea of loving one's neighbor is the Word of God, not when it is merely affirmed, but when it is lived.

Therefore, it is impossible to affirm God's Word apart from becoming that Word, apart from being the place where that Word becomes a living, breathing act.

The Word is formed only when it is performed; it exists in the world only when it is lived out by a subject who dwells fully in the world. Is this not the logic of incarnation?

Tucked away in a tiny corner of heaven, away from all the grand mansions and streets of gold, there is a cramped little stable. It doesn't look like much inside or out, but on a clear night you can see the stars shine bright amidst the cracks, and you can feel the warm breeze caress your skin. In this kingdom, that is where I live, and you would be welcome to live there with me.

If we dream of faith leading to the accumulation of profit—as so many Christian preachers are quick to say on television, in great cathedrals, and in overflowing stadiums—we betray our deep-seated desire for a treasure that exists over and above faith. Yet, compared with faith itself, all else is but straw.

But the problem is that the fundamental structure of scapegoating is not broken in the acceptance of the latest "other." If the underlying scapegoat mechanism is not decommissioned, then new "others" will always arise to protect the group from its own internal conflicts. For

In order to destroy the scapegoat mechanism, a different strategy must be adopted. Instead of trying to create a community where there is no outsider, the real answer lies in understanding that there is a sense in which we are all outsiders. In concrete terms, this means that a community faces its own lack, rather than ignoring it and thus creating a scapegoat who must carry it.

Indeed, Anselm, who is often seen as a key thinker in claiming that God is conceivable, writes that when gazing upon the Lord, the eye is darkened, noting that: Surely it is both darkened in itself and dazzled by you. Indeed it is both obscured by its own littleness and overwhelmed by your vastness.

In the logic of faith it is only by renouncing the wealth directly, saying, "I do not care about what I get from this sacrifice; all I want is you," that we discover the wealth indirectly.

Therefore, Lord, you are not merely that than which a greater cannot be thought; you are something greater than can be thought. For since it is possible to think that such a being exists, then if you are not that being, it is possible to think something greater than you. But that is impossible.

The Sanctuary was empty and the Holy of Holies untenanted. —BOOK V OF THE HISTORIES BY TACITUS, COMMENTING ON THE DISCOVERY OF GNAEUS POMPEIUS MAGNUS UPON ENTERING THE HOLY OF HOLIES IN 63 BCE