Kim Gentes

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.[1]

Thus launches a compact and insightful book on the Christian church for the postmodern age.  The book is “How (Not) To Speak of God” and is written by Peter Rollins.  This book is a philosophical building block for what is considered a new brand of Christianity- one that places itself beyond Catholic or Protestant confines as a re-invention of the foundational core Christian tenants of faith on a new trajectory than previous “Christian” classes of belief.  As with all belief centered in logic, foundational comprehension and exploration of such belief begins with language.  Rollins begins and fuels much of his book with the clarifying of language in his “emerging church” conversation.  This is done through visiting constructs such as definitions, re-definitions,  syntax (a/theology, a/theist, mis/understood etc) and even ambiguating subject/predicate grammar (God rid me of God[2]).

The purpose of Rollins use of language in this way is to break ground on traditional use of language against which our faith is eventually handcuffed into suppositions that it cannot adequately make it s way free of. As you can see from one of the opening arguments (top), one of the primary points of his re-imagining what it means to talk about God is to re-think about how conceive about him as an object in a sentence. The noun for God, in Rollins logic, is itself rife with our own thoughts about that noun. We name it and believe it in a circular motion, which continues to define who God is by our use of a label-- thus an undefinable God has become something by use of such a label that we cannot be sure he is.

It is with this kind of linguistic and philosophical approach that How (Not) To Speak of God uses to arrive at several points such as the meaning of what it is to be a Christian, what it is to become one, what belief is, reason and its place in belief, influenced observation (Heisenberg principle), ideology as idolatry, revelation as concealment and more.  He then explores many inversions of current orthodox belief such as a/theistic belief- the concept that our deconstruction of edifices about God (what he calls “unknowing”) actual lead us closer to God by removing what we think of God. He says this well:

This a/theistic approach is deeply deconstructive since it always prevents our ideas from scaling the throne of God. Yet it is important to bear in mind that this deconstruction is not destruction, for the questioning it engages in is not designed to undermine God but to affirm God. This method is similar to that practised by the original cynics who, far from being nihilists and relativists, were deeply moral individuals who questioned the ethical conduct they saw around them precisely because they loved morality so much. This a/theism is thus a deeply religious and faith-filled form of cynical discourse, one which captures how faith operates in an oscillation between understanding and unknowing. This unknowing is to be utterly distinguished from an intellectually lazy ignorance, for it is a type of unknowing which arises not from imprecision but rather from deep reflection and sustained meditation.[3]

All of this redefinition is helpful to allow in the inverted /dark side of thought as things which can become a vital part of faith- dis-belief, doubt, longings, sorrow and hunger.  Rollins hopes that his straightforward, though at times over-done, approach allows a more holistic exploration of broad formation of “theology”. His goal is to bring religion back to the ability to build in a orthodoxy of both knowing God and a tradition of self-critique, saying “To be part of the Christian religion is to simultaneously hold that religion lightly.[4]”

Rollins has a target, however, beyond just language and philosophical theological editing.  He leads the reader to a point of both the need for transformation and the need for a desire for transformation[5].  This is an important primer to creating a fresh man/God vacuum expository (Pascalian God-shaped hole: retold) he sets up the focus of need (hunger) that leads his readers to the primacy of Christianity.  For Rollins, the climax of all thought towards God leads self-critiquing people to the core tenant of love, but even that is re-envisioned:

Thus we can never rest easy, believing that we have discovered the foundations that act as a key for working out what we must do in different situations: for the only clear foundation laid down by Jesus was the law of love.[6]

The remainder of the book deals with practical exploration, including several case studies (examples) of gatherings that Rollins and others have designed to help with post modern expression, in the form of art/drama and concept that allow the attendants to enter imaginatively into this process of deconstruction and opportunity for re-envisioning God not as we see him now, but as we are relearning.

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Review by Kim Gentes

[1]Rollins, Peter. “How (Not) to Speak of God”. Kindle Edition (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press 2006), Location 238

[2]Ibid., Location 265

[3]Ibid., Location 642

[4]Ibid., Location 971

[5]Ibid., Location 1054

[6]Ibid., Location 1333