"Divine atheism": Does this make any sense to you?

Peter Rollins is a (really!) liberal Christian theologian and church leader working in a seemingly negative-theology tradition. He does workshops were he for example tells Christians to be atheists. I found out about him through the podcast "Conversations from the pale blue dot" on which he did an interview. You can listen to that episode here:
http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=12149

The above video is taken from Rollins' VIMEO page at:
http://vimeo.com/peterrollins/videos/

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• atheism
• christianity
• theism
• peter
• pete
• rollins
• apophatic
• negative
• theology
• liberal
• progressive
• irish

[tky011]

By rejecting all supernatural claims, one can easily reject all his concepts, ideas and images of god at once without being "connected to an affirmation". Unless he decides to redefine god as a grapefruit or something.

[wimsweden]

@tky011

He could be a monist for all we know, making the concept of "the supernatural" as foreign to him as it is to us. "God" would then = reality when we're not there pereceiving it via our senses, ie "Ultimate Reality". However, that would be a kind of pantheism that's far removed from classic Xianity. I do see panentheistic/pantheistic tendencies in many progressive Christians today, though, as they struggle to keep their faith up to date with our current level of knowledge.

[kelbykross1]

interesting and all.

not my POV, but an evolution toward the 'righter' idea on religion.

Honestly if people like Ken Ham and other fundamentalists thought this way, i would be much happier. I wouldn't agree still, but an undefined God is much closer to reality (if such a thing were to exist) than tribal people defining God based on themselves.

[apologetickid]

I keep watching these videos of Peter Rollins, just waiting for him to say something so crazy that I am forced to disagree with him. And he always does. And then, he goes just a little further beyond "crazy" and enters into a different level of orthodoxy, in which I find myself more challenged by his words than concerned with whether or not he's "right".

[brambonius]

Nothing liberal about Peter Rollins. Classical Christian liberalism would be built on rationalism, this is built on old Orthodox ideas of negative apophatic theology on the one hand and postmodern linguistic deconstructionism a la Derrida on the other hand.

[robyngraves22]

I think you guys are going off on tangents...Peter Rollins is part of the Emerging/Emergent Church movement.....Rob Bell is travelling a similar path....Rollins has simply taken it farther...for example...he runs a community that is made up of atheists and theists coming together. Ultimately it's all heading towards universalism...and it's a method of unravelling our mixed up theologies and philosophies. Sorry folks, materialism doesn't answer everything. Humility is still required.

[wimsweden]

@tky011

"but they're still presumably convinced that such an image exists somewhere in there"

Yeah, you're right. All negative theology is never entirely negative. They're still building on certain positive assertions.

[tky011]

@wimsweden

Well, I meant the metaphorical hiding place in the theological forest of confusing concepts and deceptive definitions. :) They may be in doubt about whether they've found the correct "image" of god, but they're still presumably convinced that such an image exists somethere in there, letting their best guess about its nature guide their actions and form the basis for their moral framework.

[tky011]

@wimsweden

Sure, some christians manage to force the puzzle pieces together by defining life and existence to so as to be indistinguishable from death and non-existence. That strikes me as both blatantly dishonest and a colossal waste of time. If their god's influence is so insignificant that it literally cannot be perceived, why do they mislead people into praying to him for help?

[wimsweden]

@tky011

"But they're only doubting whether they've found the true hiding-place of the invisible unicorn, not whether the unicorn really exists or whether they should follow its instructions." Not just the "hiding place", also the nature/properties of this entity as well as what it desires is put into doubt.