Quotes from Peter Rollins

After that day, the father began to take an interest in his son's life

It is in this way that we should approach the story of the pearl of great price: understanding that if we were to sell everything that we possessed in order to own a priceless pearl, then we would become the poorest of all, having nothing of value except for the pearl itself. We would not be able to purchase food or pay for shelter. We would be destitute. The only thing we would be able to do would be to sell the pearl. But then we would no longer have the pearl.

For Anselm there are three levels of existence. The first, and lowest, level is that which exists only in the mind (for instance, a unicorn). The second refers to those things that exist both in the mind and in reality (such as a horse). The third level is that which exists in reality but which cannot be contained in the mind (i.e. God). It is this third level of existence that has often been overlooked by the Church, and yet it is here that we find God.

Faith, then, is not a set of beliefs about the world. It is rather found in the loving embrace of the world.

The paradox of the pearl lies in the idea that, in becoming the poorest of all, we simultaneously become the richest of all. The poverty is not then a first step toward the treasure; rather, the poverty is the very place where we find it. Hence, we can make the rather counterintuitive claim that, in the realm of faith, it is only in renouncing our desire for wealth that we discover it.

We must speak and yet we must maintain our silence, we must maintain distance amidst the proximity of God, and we must worship while being careful not to make God into the object of our worship: for God is the subject before whom we worship.

For while we do not grasp God, faith is born amidst the feeling that God grasps us.

playing at the entrance of the hut. "Whose children are these?" he asked.

The Truth in Christianity is not described but experienced. This is not then the affirmation of some objective description concerning Truth but rather describes a relation with the Truth. In other words, Truth is God and having knowledge of the Truth is evidenced, not in a doctrinal system, but in allowing that Truth to be incarnated in one's

The life of faith cannot be treated in the way we approach objects such as computers (which become more understandable the more we dissect and explore them). Persons of faith are not ones who act like rational detached individuals who are coldly assessing the evidence of their faith in the same way that a mathematician considers a formula.

This story thus explores the controversial possibility that Christians are not called to believe in the Resurrection but rather are called to be the site where Resurrection takes place—the site where Christ's presence is testified to in action.

Speaking of God in Northern Ireland has too often fomented distrust and prejudice, not peace and reconciliation; speaking of God has too often been part of the problem, not of the solution

In the aftermath of God's happening the true worshiper attempts to paint the most beautiful pictures imaginable to reflect that happening. It is this heartfelt endeavor to paint the most refined and beautiful conceptual images that speaks of God, not the actual descriptions we create

When the truth affirmed by Christianity is thought of as constituting a series of factual claims open to being assessed by intellectual experts, Christianity opens itself up to a corrosive form of doubt that threatens to destroy it. Later I shall be exploring the deep importance of doubt in the life of faith. However, this importance can only be understood if we think of the truth affirmed by Christianity in a way that is freed from the realm of objectivity.

That which we cannot speak of is the one thing about whom and to whom we must never stop speaking.

That which we cannot speak of is the one thing about whom and to whom we must never stop speaking.

The argument is made that naming God is never really naming God but only naming our understanding of God. To take our ideas of the divine and hold them as if they correspond to the reality of God is thus to construct a conceptual idol built from the materials of our mind.

Love is the crazy, mad, and perhaps ridiculous gesture of saying yes to life, of seeing it as worthy of our embrace and even worthy of our total sacrifice.

Here God is not approached as an object that we must love, but as a mystery present in the very act of love itself.

Faith, then, is not a set of beliefs about the world. It is rather found in the loving embrace of the world. Because the actual existing church has reduced the Crucifixion and Resurrection to religious affirmations held by a certain tribe, rather than expressions of a type of life, the event they testify to has been almost completely eclipsed.

Orthodoxy as right belief will cost us little; indeed, it will allow us to sit back with our Pharisaic doctrines, guarding the 'truth' with the purity of our interpretations. But orthodoxy, as believing in the right way, as bringing love to the world around us and within us … that will cost us everything. For to live by that sword, as we all know, is to die by it.

The point then is to help break the false distinction between the idea that there are those who are whole and those who have a lack. For the true distinction is between those who hide their lack under the fiction of wholeness and those who are able to embrace it.

The problem with so much religious communication is that it aims at changing our minds. The result is that we can hear the message of the preacher without necessarily heeding the message; we can listen to the "truth" and agree with it, yet not change in response to it.

Our real beliefs are generally not to be found at the level of ego.