“How (Not) to Speak of God” Book Review

How (Not) to Speak of God by Peter Rollins.

About ten years ago, Jodie Foster starred as atheistic scientist Dr. Ellie Arroway in a sci-fi film called Contact. Arroway detects and decodes radio signals to Earth containing plans for constructing a transport device. It transports a person through wormholes to different places in the universe. Arroway ends up as the one to travel in the pod. As the pod travels at warp speed through the wormholes, it stops periodically to give her glimpses of incredible celestial events. She is ripped out of one place and travels through another wormhole, only to be dropped in another place. At one point, she witnesses the formation of a galaxy. With tears running down her face, she exclaims, "It's so beautiful… they should have sent a poet. I had no idea."

To some degree, that is the sense I got from Rollins as he struggles with talking about and relating to God. God is so completely beyond our comprehension that language is utterly useless. And yet, to use Rollins' words, God is "hyper-present." This is different from saying that God is immanent. God is so utterly "present" that this, too, is incomprehensible. There is a sense in which we must be both theistic and a/theistic. Rollins writes, "Our 'theological' musing 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)." (21) He is reacting in part to fundamentalism. "…fundamentalism can be understood as a particular way of believing one's beliefs rather than referring to the actual content of one's beliefs." (26) This should give you some idea of the issues Rollins is addressing.

Somewhat like Dr. Arroway, we are transported in this book from one glimpse of the a/theological universe to another. Rollins is not so much trying to give answers as to offer different lenses through which to view our deepest questions. I found much of his critique, stories, and analogies very helpful. For instance, he writes about the difference between the finite and the transfinite. There is an infinite set of numbers, but between any two numbers, there is a transfinite set of numbers (ex., Between 1 and 2: 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, etc.) There is an infinite set of numbers between 1 and 2, but those less than 1 and greater than 2 are excluded. (60) I began to think about how useful this is as I reflected on the metaphors and parables used in the Bible.

I would not say I entirely endorse everything I found in this book. I question his take on evangelism. The conservative wing of the Church has often made "proclamation" the core of evangelism, while the liberal wing has made "dialog" the core of evangelism. Like Rollins, I believe a relationship centered in an ethic of other-centered love is central to evangelism. But Rollins writes about sharing life with others and evangelism is about seeing what God is doing in the lives of others. As we share our lives, we become evangelized by seeing God at work in others. I have a sense of what Rollins is driving at here and share some sympathy with it, but a short shrift is given to Jesus' injunction to "make disciples." I don't think he wrestles with that tension enough and leans too much toward a "let's dialog" approach.

Rollins divides this short book into two pieces. The first part consists of five chapters offering wide-ranging and provoking theological reflections. The second half of the book has ten short worship experiences that Rollins offers to illustrate his point. The book is grounded in his work and life with an emerging community called Ikon in Northern Ireland. It is a relatively short book (144 pages) but also deeply challenging. Some have suggested that what Rollins writes here goes to the core of the questions in the Emerging Church conversation. That is an accurate assessment. If you are looking for answers in a nice tidy box, this likely is not the book for you. But if you want to be stretched in a very engaging way, you may find this book a pleasurable read, just as I did.