As pointed out in the Apprising Ministries post Emergence Pastor Rob Bell To Have Friend Peter Rollins In Conference this July pastor Rob Bell, the Elvis of Emergence, will be featuring his “friend” Peter Rollins in Bell’s upcoming pastors conference.

In fact, Bell refers to Rollins as “one of the freshest voices” that he’s heard in this Emergence rebellion against Sola Scriptura, whose basic message appears to be: God has a man-shaped hole in His heart. 

Rollins and Phyllis Tickle scratch itching ears in this following video clip concerning this “Post-Denominational, Post-Protestant, Post-Christendom” thing called ”Emergence Christianity.”

As in Peter Rollins And Phyllis Tickle Discuss Emergence Christianity a transcription follows below:

Tickle: I’m Phyllis Tickle and I’m here talking with Pete Rollins. One of the things I would really like to explore with you…you talk about…every time we go through one of these big upheavals, umm…like we’re going through now, umm…every 500 hundred years were we go through one of these things. And one of the characteristics of it is that, as you know, that the Canon doesn’t change, but the way you look at the Canon turns, just like this, you know, and then you’ve got Wycliffe, and Tyndale, and Erasmus, and the Bishop’s bible, and the Geneva bible, and finally we get the King James, the last time we went through it. But your work on…you’re writing especially in the “Fidelity of the Trail” about the hole in the text, uh…I think constitutes the theology, and the thinking, the philosophic under girding for that shifting that we’re going through right now. Can you talk briefly about the hole in the text; and also, about the danger of the traditional Western, umm…definition of truth, the academic distancing umm…from the text?

Rollins: Absolutely. Umm…there’s two really good questions there.

Tickle: Yeah, I know…there’s two questions in one, but you said I could have one question, so there’s two.

Rollins: I could talk all day…

Tickle: Okay.

Rollins: … I’ll try to keep it quick. Um, yeah, I’m fascinated by the idea that there is a traumatic event in the biblical text; umm…and that this is where the truth of the bible is. Umm…it’s interesting if someone has had a traumatic event…if someone has been abused and they’re in court and they’re talking about it; if they’re very clear in what’s happened and they can give dates and they can give times, then it’s…it’s potentially they’re not telling the truth. But, if actually, the dates and the times do fit and they’re using kind of metaphors, then it’s actually evidence of the authentic…

Tickle: Absolutely. Here, here, here.

Rollins: …the truth.

Tickle: Exactly.

Rollins: So, I see this in the bible. We’ve got all these images of God as a warrior, images of God as peacemaker, images of God who doesn’t change, and who repents, who sees everything and He’s blind to the suffering of the people…

Tickle: Absolutely.

Rollins: …that’s exactly what you would expect, there’s this traumatic core of the text, which gives birth to this kinetic energy, this dynamic use of language and the worst thing we can do is try to make it all fit…

Tickle: Thank you.

Rollins: …as if the truth of God is in the warrior, or the peacemaker or the sum blend of it all, but the truth is in the rupture that creates those words and gives life to those words. I love the idea actually that God isn’t the patch of meaning that we put on the wind of our…of our unknowing, God is the wind and we generate patches to describe the wind.

Tickle: Yeah.

Rollins: That’s what I’m interested in terms of revelation; and its key, um, for me. We think revelation is a whispering in the ear, umm…that we can hear something without changing our life. There’s an old anecdote about the Italian soldiers during the Second World War. There was this group of them that loved the opera, but they were very cowardly. And ah, the chief soldier says to the guys, “Right lads, over the top.” Nobody moves. He says, “Right lads, over the top.” Nobody moves. He says it a third time and after the third time one of the soldiers turns to the others and says, “What a wonderful voice he has.” It’s beautiful, they could hear the message, but they didn’t heed it. And for me, revelation is about, you can’t hear it unless it transforms your social existence…unless it changes you utterly and dynamically. And I think we’ve reduced God to an idea, to something we can speak about, rather than this traumatic event which transforms and changes us.

Tickle: Yeah.

Rollins: So I’m very excited about this…

Tickle: I’m loving this… I’m loving this. And…eh…also you elaborated, at one point, the academic…the…it’s…it’s not that acad…that either of us, I think, is anti-intellectual…I think they would cut us both off at the knees…you know, we’d be a laughing stock if either of us took that position. But, I share with you, if I understand correctly what you’re writing, some sense that uhh…our academics right now, our…our…an academic approach is based on certain principles, or givens, or DNA maybe, of…of the Western tradition…

Rollins: Absolutely…

Tickle: …in which truth is a thing and therefore… Could you speak to that?

Rollins: …Absolutely. I mean, my…what I see through the history of philosophy…and theology…

Tickle: I know your PhD is in….

Rollins: Philosophy…actually when you talk about philosophy today, you often…it means “anti-philosophy” cause “anti-philosophy” is philosophy, so to speak against philosophy is to be philosophical. So, umm…in the tradition there’s this sense, ah, in which we want name God. I mean, there’s a beautiful story…that the first woman in the bible…it’s actually not Eve, but another …some Rabbis they looked at the text and they said, “Oh, on the 6th day God created male and female; and then later on, they see that after Adam had named all the animals and was bored; He created Eve. And so the rabbis went, “Hey, who is this woman that God and Adam never talk about anymore, she must have been a nightmare you know?” They tried to create a woman who was a bit easier to handle. And the story is, yes, Lillith—

Tickle: Never will happen; but that’s okay.

Rollins: Absolutely.

Tickle: (laughing)

Rollins: Well Lillith was created on the 6th day and Adam feared her and trouble was brewing in Paradise so she tries to escape. She finds God walking in the heat of the day and they sit and they talk. And Lillith says, “Can you tell me your secret name…the name you tell no one else?” And God’s in a good mood and says, “What’s the harm…” whispers the ear into Lilleth’s…whispers the name into Lillith’s ear and Lillith grows these massive wings and flies out of Eden. Now, what I love about that story is right from the beginning there’s this sense we’re trying to get the name. It’s in Jewish mythology right the way through to Decarte, who God…we need God to justify existence in the world.

And that…so God becomes an object that we can speak of, and I’m interested in the idea that God is not an object that we can… if we knew the number of hairs on God’s head; God knows the number of hairs on our head…we’re the object and God’s the absolute subject.

One way I think about this is, that not everything exists can be objectified. Umm…if I take my own life…I can’t experience my life; it’s my life that opens me up to experience. Like, I can’t see the light—it’s the light that allows me to see. I say that God is so close and so intimate that we can’t reflect…it’s what we reflect from. And in a sense, then religious experience isn’t experience at all, it’s what allows us to experience everything differently. So God doesn’t enter the world as an object to study, when God enters the world, every object changes for us.

See also:

PHYLLIS TICKLE AND THE EMERGING CHURCH: IT’S NOT IF SOLA SCRIPTURA ENDS BUT WHEN

THE EMERGENCE OF POSTMODERN APOSTLES OF UNBELIEF

RICHARD ROHR: CONVERSATIONS, CONVERGENCE AND EMERGENCE APOSTASY

THE EMERGENCE GOSPEL OF GOOD DEEDS

EMERGENT CHURCH THEOLOGIAN TONY JONES AND HIS UNREPENTANT HOMOSEXUAL CHRISTIANS

THE EMERGING CHURCH NOW FOLLOWING THE EXACT SAME PATH LIBERALISM DID CONCERNING HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE CHURCH

ROB BELL IN A NUTSHELL: THE BIBLE