Peter Rollins: How (Not) to Speak of God: God-Talk part 2

Rollins offers another argument against theology as ideology, i.e. that tries to define God. The starting point of his argument will be surprising given what we saw in the last post – theology is no longer a place where we speak of God. Rollins’ argument begins with attributes of God and concludes we cannot do theology as ideology.

The argument proceeds from two different angles or aspects of God’s transcendence. First, he offers a biblical argument that God is beyond naming. After surveying some examples of biblical accounts of God’s being beyond “conceptual idolatry.” (12) We find that “the Bible not only describes God with a multitude of names; there are also key moments when we find that this is complemented by the idea of God standing beyond every name.” (13) Rollins concludes after further survey of the text that “The multitude of competing ideological descriptions concerning God, combined with the anti-idolatrous claims of the text, infer that we can only speak of God’s otherness and distance even at the very sight of revelation.” (15)ⁱ

Rollins also argues from God’s hyper-presence. “Hyper-presence is a term that refers to a type of divine saturation that exists in the heart of God’s presence.” (23) Even in the presence of God we cannot define and grasp him for his presence overwhelms both our understanding and experience. Rollins’ emphasizes that God is not transcendent because he is absent and remote, “but precisely because God is immanent.” (24) And here his two threads of argument come together, “God remains transcendent amidst immanence precisely because God remains concealed amidst revelation. In this reading, Christ, as the image of the invisible God, both reveals and conceals God: rendering God known while simultaneously maintaining divine mystery. Here the God testified to in Christianity is affirmed as an un/known God.” (25)

Due to the transcendence and hyper-presence of God, he cannot be reduced to our understanding. Thus, “God stands outside our language regimes and cannot be colonized via any power discourse.” (41) In short, due to the transcendence and hyper-presence of God theology cannot operate as ideology.

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i My goal here is not to enter a debate about Rollins’ biblical interpretation, although it seem to me that his biblical argument is far from conclusive. Regarding the names of God, Rollins does consider YHWH and offers argument that this name, by being absent the vowels needed for pronunciation, does not commit conceptual idolatry.