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. You’re UK, well, you’re Ireland obviously…we in this country who are part of the Emergence movement or who are at least observers of it or watchers of it, umm…tend to be very parochial and tend to think of this as if it were American or North American phenomenon, and you and I both know it’s not. Can you, uh…say sort of briefly what’s happening in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, well, in your part of the world? This…the…the whole thing as a historian of this movement or whatever it is we’re going through, uh…it seems to me that in North America, we’re 25-30 years behind where for instance, you and Ireland are, or the UK, or New Zealand, or Australia because we secularized a little later, for good reasons in the last century, but can you talk about some of the differences? And maybe some of the tensions even that are inherent within the UK part of the movement if…if they are there as they are here in this country already we’re beginning to….

ROLLINS: Yeah.

TICKLE: …get some tensions here.

ROLLINS: Yeah, I mean in terms of the rest of the world, I know we’ve been kind of exploring these things for other alternative terms for alternative worship…

TICKLE: Sure.

ROLLINS: …in the early 90s.

TICKLE: And fresh expressions is a nice place to tell at least part it, the UMC and the state church.

ROLLINS: An interesting thing…when Ikon started, we…we gave it five coordinates kind of…a way to understand what we were doing. The coordinates were icons: Ikonic, Apocalyptic, Heretical, Emerging and Feeling. So we put the word Emerging in there…

TICKLE: Yes.

ROLLINS: …but we’d never heard of the Emergent Church or the Emerging conversation. We were surprised about a year later we started getting asked to these emerging conferences…

TICKLE: (Laughing) Who knew?

ROLLINS: …who knew you had these and that they existed?

TICKLE: You know, the first time in this country that term is used is in 1970, when Larson and Osborne actually do a book called the “Emerging Church”; and I read it the other day just to be sure, it’s downright prescient if you put it back for us 38 years, you know…and I think we just didn’t realize.

ROLLINS: Well you see there’s something in the air, and it’s the coolest condition.

TICKLE: Yeah, well of course.

ROLLINS: We were…in Ireland completely divorced from everything going on in the UK, the rest of the UK, and in America, Australia and New Zealand, but we were catching the cold; the virus was going around…

TICKLE: Sure.

ROLLINS: …And so, we realized that without even knowing it, we were experiencing the same conditions and exploring the same thinking; and actually, at the time we didn’t have a clue what we were doing. What…what I’ve done now is I’ve…I’ve made justifications for everything – I can justify everything I’ve done, but…

TICKLE: (Laughing) Of course.

ROLLINS: …I really didn’t have a clue…it’s retroactive justification…you know?

TICKLE: Of course.

ROLLINS: …you just…you live life forward and you reflect on it backward as Kierkegaard said.

TICKLE: Yes.

ROLLINS: So, we were just playing and realized other people are playing and coming to the same conclusions and…and in the same kind of…in the same place as we are. It’s very exciting.

TICKLE: Yeah.

ROLLINS: I think one of the keys for me was when I realized that Christianity is more of a wrestling, and a journey and a transformation, and not trying to nail down some correct answer. I love the story of the…the Rabbi…this young guy comes to him and says, “I want to learn the logic of the Hebrew people and the logic of God,” and uh…the guy says, “Go away you’re too young.” And the young guy says, “No, no, I know Aristotelian logic, I know Symbolic logic, I want to know the Hebraic logic.” So the Rabbi says, “I’ll test you, I’ll ask you a question.” He says, “Okay.”

“Two guys come down a chimney, one has soot on their face and one doesn’t. Who washes their face? The young guy says, “The guy with the soot on his face.” And the Rabbi says, “Of course not the guy without the soot. He looks at his friend, realizes his friend’s got soot on his face so he thinks, “I’ve got soot on my face.” The guy says, “Okay, okay, test me again.” The Rabbi says I’ll ask you a different question. “Two guys come down a chimney, at the bottom of the chimney, one has soot on their face and one doesn’t. Who washes their face?” The guy says, “Well, the one without soot on his face.” And the Rabbi says, “Look, don’t try to be clever, of course not. The guy with soot on his face feels it in his eyes, tastes it in his mouth, sees it on his hands; don’t be so stupid.”

And finally, the young guy goes, “Sorry, sorry, sorry. Test me one more time.” The Rabbi says, “One more question. Two guys come down a chimney, at the bottom of the chimney one has soot on their face and one doesn’t. Who washes their face?” The guy says, “The first person, but for different reasons.” And the Rabbi says, “Go away, they both wash their face. How can you not come down a chimney and not know that you’ve got soot on your face?” I love that story because I think it captures the logic of the Judeo-Christian tradition – that it’s about wrestling and fighting and not about some high pinning down the right answer.

TICKLE: That’s right. It uh…it is that whole business of some sort of right reading of the text…

ROLLINS: Yeah, which is…which is…

TICKLE: …yeah, that has informed the last 500…oh, it has informed more than that. When we said we were Post-Protestant, we really are talking about that as much as anything. I love…whatever it is…that this thing is that we can’t quite name. I love the playfulness, but I love the fact that the playfulness almost always leads to wisdom. I mean, that’s good playfulness…

ROLLINS: Ah, yes…yes.

TICKLE: …in the way that kids play in order to arrive at some truth that’s not a thing.

See also:

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

THE EMERGENCE OF POSTMODERN APOSTLES OF UNBELIEF

THE EMERGENCE CONVERGENCE APOSTASIA-POLOOSA

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