The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief

As I continue to read through Peter Rollins' forthcoming book, "The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief" (Paraclete Press, June 2008), I find that Rollins challenges the very foundations of our traditional conceptions of Christendom in the Western world. I just finished chapter 4, and there is much to consider. Before I begin, I am reminded of how important it is to own what you believe, so allow me to get on the soapbox for a moment; what I mean is that we should not, and cannot, claim an idea or concept as our own until we have spent sufficient time and energy investigating the strengths and weaknesses. In other words, let's not stand by, or reject, some idea just because this preacher or that theologian says you should. At one point in my life I was an atheist, and while the reasons are irrelevant for my point here, that experience has instilled in me the value of questioning what some say should not be questioned; if, ultimately, for no other reason than to strengthen and legitimize for the individual, the position that one has chosen to adopt. This book, so far, has been a great opportunity for me to explore questions that I would not normally have considered. I would also recommend that one be honest with themself beforehand about their views on postmodern thought if one chooses to pick up this book; so often I see people come to the conclusion about a book that you pretty much knew they would before they started. This is true in the case of those on both ends of our contemporary polarizations-In other words, be willing to genuinely question yourself! To the extent that you do not do this, is the extent to which you are owned by the ideas of other people. Alright, I'll stop preaching and get down to business!

In chapter four, Dr. Rollins suggests that our modern approaches to the text have been obscured by, "intellectual presuppositions that we have unwittingly inherited from our Western philosophical tradition, and that we have then imposed upon the biblical text." More specifically, Dr. Rollins says that 'our conception of truth, at its most basic level, refers to anything that shows itself to us as an object of contemplation via historical, mental, necessary, and contingent modes.' Ultimately, he claims that this point drives our approach to the biblical text; that this presupposition is the primary factor in determining what questions we ask regarding the text, and how our synthetic, theological constructs take form to describe it. Consider the following two block quotes:

"The result is a belief that we can distill the truth of faith into various sacraments, creeds, doctrines, historical interpretations, and even scientific theories, all of which are able to do justice to the claims of these ancient writings. The Word is taken to be something (the words of Scripture) which we can assess and interpret (stretching and distorting it until it becomes intelligible to us).

The net result is that we approach the Bible as something that can be analyzed and assessed, much as a sociologist contemplates society or a biologist reflects upon organic systems. It involves interpreting the meaning of, and then rationally assessing, such things as the possibility of miracles, the existence of Jesus, his death on a cross, his subsequent resurrection, and his ascension into heaven. In this way Christianity is judged to be true or false depending upon whether our interpretation of various biblical claims describes factual historical events.

The almost universal embrace of this approach concerning truth ensures that both those who embrace Christianity and those who do not universally assess it in terms of whether certain ideas concerning the world, God, and salvation are correct or incorrect, plausible or implausible, confirmed or placed into question by empirical data. The job of the Christian apologist is thus to show that religious claims can be accepted as possible, plausible, or even compelling. There are numerous ways in which apologists for the faith will attempt to render their faith into an object that can be reflected upon and defended. This will generally involve a mix of basic philosophical reason, appeal to scriptural claims, and reference to personal religious experience."

Ultimately, this presuppposition that Rollins cites rests on the assumption that:

"If the claims of Christianity are not open to being assessed in this way, the only alternative would seem to involve rejecting them as meaningless, a view that was developed by the philosophical tradition called Logical Positivism. This movement argued that if something is not able to be judged true or false, likely or unlikely, then we are rationally compelled to ignore it as irrelevant. For example, Logical Positivists would say that if someone claims that God exists but cannot be seen, heard, or experienced, then this is much like saying that pixies exist but cannot be seen, heard, or experienced, a statement that is not even worthy of being considered as true or false (for how would one go about proving or disproving it?)."

One aspect of this chapter that is very interesting is Rollins' survey of mythological and philosophical thinking through history, specifically geared toward demonstrating his point that mankind has repeatedly set its sights on capturing the essence of God's through various modes of description. His survey of Augustine, Duns Scotus, and Descartes was particularly intriguing and helpful for making his point.

Overall, it seems that Dr. Rollins wants to highlight the idea that because of the way man's inquiry into the nature of truth, at least in the western world, has developed, we have come to domosticate the notion of God. In other words, our method inquiry has led us to be inappropriately ambitious and confident about our ability to describe God's ultimate reality. We have reduced God to ways in which we describe his supposed essence.

This is where Dr. Rollins' notion of the "eschatological wHole" seems to be important; as I understand it at this point, this idea entails that while what is presented to us in the biblical text is a testimony or pointer toward God in one sense, it is also evidence of God's essence as being somewhat beyond us in that it does not provide a descriptive or experiential window into God's ultimate reality. The best example he provides for this, which occurs in chapter 3, is based on a picture of human relationships; he says that while we know the other to which we are connected, we are not privy to the same internal reality that is present to the person's own experience of their own conciousness. To the extent to which this is the case, it is also true that we both know and do not know the person to which we are related. This felt sense of lacking, says Rollins, should also apply to our conception or approach to God through the text.

Toward the very end of the chapter, Rollins offers the following analysis of the contemporary church:

"This outline of examples derived from mythology, Scripture, theology, and philosophy is designed to show that there has been a long and varied tradition that has been interested in articulating the name of God, of speaking about God as a being like other beings, albeit the great being. When this idea is imported into Christianity the assumption is then made that God’s existence and nature are offered to the mind via revelation.51 In this way the Bible is approached as a type of divine textbook that provides us with information concerning God. Such thinking continues today in churches that assert that we can know God and the mind of God to some degree so long as we follow the correct, spirit-inspired, interpretation of Scripture. Even though the believer will point out that we see through a glass darkly, it will be claimed that we can say something substantive about the source of our faith via the presence of creation, Scripture, and religious experience. Indeed, it is claimed that if we were not held back by our own intellectual limits and sin then the source of faith would become even more visible to us, for it is our own limits that hold us back from grasping God rather than something fundamental about the nature of God."

It seems clear at this point that Rollins is still setting the groundwork for his alternative proposal; this chapter consisted mainly of historical analysis, tied to hints that there is another way to approach God and the Bible. At this point, my questions for Dr. Rollins are limited to the following two:

1. Might one distinguish between the actions of God, and the mind or essence of God when we speak of what can be known about God through the Bible or other forms of revelation? It seems like, from the vantage point of your proposal, it might be easier to speak of the actions of God with regard to the world and humanity. If so, what might this amount to?

2. Is it ever reasonable, in your view, to make ontological inferences about God? If so, could you explain this?