How (Not) to Read Peter Rollins or “The Storyteller”

Two years ago I read and reread Peter’s How (Not) to Speak of God. I intended to post on that inaugural volume, but first wanted to read it yet again. I did (not) recommend it to my brighter students. Now his second work has arrived on my desk: The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief. I have finished the first reading (underlined, annotated with lots of question marks, exclamation points, smiley faces and frowns).

For years I have been trying to persuade my students to always listen to their interlocutors carefully and empathetically, especially if they intend to respond in a critical way. I have been afraid that few would do this with Peter Rollins. I still think he is being largely ignored (he is not easy to read [the little stories can be deceiving], though easy to react to). That will probably change. I have not met Peter Rollins, though I heard him speak at a panel once with McClaren and others.

Most theology books don’t matter. This one does. Not because it is right or wrong. But because it may change the conversation. Not everyone can easily read it. And few who can, will be able to quickly glean the wheat from the chaff. That’s what makes a good book; it is over our heads (and perhaps, in places, over our hearts).

I once read a critique of Paul Tillich’s Systematic Theology by Alexander McKelway (a student of Karl Barth’s). It was a model of careful critical engagement. Only when such empathetic and discerning work is done is one really in a position to say something worthwhile about a theologian. I hope some will give Peter Rollins this courtesy. As with Tillich we may well have serious disagreements (and deep pastoral concerns), but we may also have something useful to learn. For an example of some preliminary discussion see the conversation going on at Christians in Context.

By the way, for all their differences, I note some interesting connections between Rollins and Tillich. For example, Tillich was concerned about the tendency in Protestantism wherein “faith as the state of being grasped [is reduced to] the belief in doctrine” (S.T., II, 85). Compare Peter throughout his two volumes, and for example: “God is not a problem to be solved but rather a mystery to participate in” (Fidelity of Betrayal, 115). Tillich famously defines God as “the ground of being.” Peter writes, “God is that which grounds our world and opens a world up to us” (115). There are, of course, vast differences as well.

Rollins makes for a stimulating read. Many of his stories are insightful, and he tells them well. My biggest concern, and I am willing to listen more, is well summarized in McKelway’s critique of what he sees as the central problem in Tillich: “This problem and danger, to put the matter simply, is the lack of a consistent focus on the revelation of God in Jesus Christ” (177). Peter would probably object.

The Trinitarian Story in 100 Words or Less

From the Triune God comes a narrative centering on Christ, God’s incarnate Son, and supernaturally recorded in Scripture. This story begins with creation, reports humanity’s fall, Israel’s history, and God’s redemption in Jesus, the Messiah. People, who by the Spirit’s power repent and believe this good news, experience salvation: deliverance from sin, Satan, and death. United with the crucified and resurrected Lord, believers participate in Christ’s Body, the eschatological community that worships God, serves a needy world, and provisionally embodies God’s coming Kingdom. This blessing is for the whole creation, which will soon be judged and renewed for God’s glory.

Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective

This introduction to Christology is an excellent model of careful, creative, and yet confessing theology. The intentional integration of Christology with a rich Trinitarian theology is refreshing. Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective is edited by Fred Sanders and Klaus Issler.

Here is a sample (following a wonderfully concise and helpful summary of the early church councils on Christology):

“At the center of the open space marked out by the boundaries of Chalcedon are two things: the apostolic narrative of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; and the confession that this person in the gospel narrative is an eternal person distinct from the Father, yet fully divine. What stands in the middle of the Chalcedonian categories is the biblical story of Jesus, interpreted in light of the Trinity” (p. 25).

The following also resonates with me:  “To think rightly about the Trinity, the incarnation, or the atonement, the theologian must think about all of them at once, in relation to each other.” (p. 226).

The Mission of God

Chris Wright has written a magisterial work on biblical theology – and from a missional perspective.  His full title is:  The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. Any danger that a Christ Centered Trinitarian theology might fade into a reductionistic christomonism is warded off by a faithfully Trinitarian focus, and the organic way in which God’s mission in Christ becomes the focus of YHWH’s redemptive self-revelation.  Such a balance is enriched by this thoroughly canonical and missional treatment of biblical theology. 

Christian theology is at its core both mission and ethics.  Along the way Wright wisely treats the ethical nature of God’s mission (see his earlier work on OT ethics).  Surely this book will become a mainstay in missional theology. 

Missio Dei

The value of consciously functioning within a Christ centered trinitarian matrix is, in part, its utility for disrupting fossilized theological systems.  It stimulates a kind of healthy "strategic chaos,"  which encourages lateral thinking about what really matters in the Christian confession.  At the same time it can be fruitfully (and faithfully) creative within concrete historical and social contexts.  Exploring the features of this matrix is the task before us.

We have been saying much about the Trinity.  But it must be emphasized that we are advocating a Christ-centered trinitarian model.  This is critical.  A theology whose christology cuts loose from its trinitarian moorings quickly sails away from Orthodoxy.   But a trinitarian approach that is not sensitive to the primary historical, redemptive and revelatory function of the Son,  runs the risk of being an abstraction.  The faithful Christian confession must be both christocentric AND trinitarian. 

The christological focus keeps us close to the missio Dei, and thus to the heart of things.  Those theologians who are moving towards a "missional" theology, and the churchmen [/women] who follow in their trail, are to be celebrated.  Perhaps it is time to critically and prayerfully reread David J. Bosch's monumental work, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission.

In his closing section ("Whither Mission?"), Bosch writes, "The missio Dei purifies the church.  It sets it under the cross — the only place where it is ever safe.  The cross is the place of humiliation and judgment, but it is also the place of refreshment and new birth" (p. 519).  May the Lord purify the church today!

“Theology” in Cultural Perspective

Today many careful scholars are contributing toward a theology that flows in a healthy direction.  A stimulating work is Colin Greene’s Christology in Cultural Perspective.  The opening statement is rich: “At the centre of Christianity stands not a timeless truth, nor a principle, not even a cause, but an event and a person - Jesus of Nazareth experienced and confessed as the Christ.”

This volume is a helpful model for serious theological work.  Is Green an advocate for a Christ centered Trinitarian theology?  Note the following:

“Hitherto, postmodernity has been almost entirely an exercise in radical deconstruction, decentring and wholesale dethroning of usurpers and pretenders to the throne of absolute power and truth.  The resulting epistemological blitzkieg has devasted the intellectual landscape of modernity beyond repair including the ideological interment camp to which religion has been banished.  If this analysis is correct, then the opportunity is there to try to construct again a sustainable, credible and intellectually convincing christological vision of reality…

[After summarizing some helpful recommendations on Christology, he then concludes]

We have arrived at a point where Christology dares to go no further, except, as we have indicated, when it is subsumed within a Trinitarian expostion of the doctrine of God and that is not our particular task” (pp. 351, 368).

Ah, but at the end of the day [and at the beginning] for the believer, this MUST be the task. 

“What is man?”

Theology begins with anthropology, for this is where the gospel begins, with the man Jesus.  This may sound counter intuitive, but how else does even a secular person begin to think, except with the Psalmist's question, "What is man…?"  And does not the believer begin to do theology when he or she meets Jesus, the living Christ?  We then ask anew, "Who am I?" At the end of the day the Divine answer for both the believer and the beloved other is the same:  it is not, "You are Adam," but rather, "Behold, my Son!"  

"Let us make man in our image" is the sacred narrative's beginning [when the Word was with God and when the Word was God, and when the Spirit had moved across the face of the waters].  But the end of the story [the "telos"] is found in Jesus.  In Christ the human image is perfected [and the Word was made flesh]. 

So in this sense to do anthropology is to do Christology.  Here heaven and earth kiss; the question of transcendence and immanence is answered. Such reflections on the person of Christ, within the context of the Trinity, hold answers which we need for the postmodern turn and beyond. 

Postmodernism, Hermeneutics, and the Future of Theology

The current interest in postmodernism, the emerging church, and the question of truth [as important as these issues are] should not distract the church from the larger task of actually doing and living theology.  We must be about the constructive task of reading and living the gospel for our own moment. 

A work that I have found helpful toward this end, but which seems to have been largely neglected, is Jens Zimmermann's  Recovering Theological Hermeneutics.  The subtitle is An Incarnational-Trinitarian Theory of Interpretation.  Given my interest in a Christ centered Trinitarian theology, the title alone had my undivided attention.  The book was not disappointing. 

He concludes, "Complemented by the doctrine of the Trinity, incarnational theology offers an ontology that places being-in-community at the heart of reality and gives ethical transcendence definite contours in the divine kenotic and redemptive events of cross and resurrection" (p. 318).   Here is meat to chew on.

The community and ethical focus resonates with me:  "Selfhood is understood as person in relation, a subjectivity that neither begins with, nor is defined as, solitary, independent consciousness but is brought to life by the call of the other….I have argued that this call is possible only as the electing call of God in Christ, by which we gain an identity that is sustained not by us but by concrete hermeneutical appropriation in community through word and sacrament" (319).  This naturally needs careful unpacking and that is what the book is all about.  I trust this wets the appetite.

And the Word was made flesh…

Many theologians are speaking afresh of Christ within the context of the Trinity.  I am fully persuaded that this is the right direction for the Church.  Over the last seven years, I have been struggling to teach theology to college students.  I am finding that a christocentric trinitarian matrix holds promise on several fronts.  I am moving in that direction, and integrating more and more of my work within that framework. 

The Trinity is what makes the gospel possible; it is what distinguishes orthodox Christianity from every other religion, philosophy, or worldview; it is what shapes the believer's experience within the community of faith.  A careful integration of relational theology within a trinitarian matrix, centering on God's redeeming self-revelation in Christ, can be amazingly fruitful.  Welcome to the conversation!