book report: The Divine Magician by Peter Rollins (2015)

back cover

Instead of introducing the book I hope you, my dear reader, will read this image of the back cover to get the gist of this "incendiary" reading. Dr. Peter Rollins has his PhD in Post-structural Thought. I don't know what that means either, but I've heard him many times on multiple podcasts and have always found him intriguing, especially when I heard him promote this book, The Divine Magician. How can I best summarize this? And remember to have mercy on me, because I am not nearly as well read as Dr. Rollins on Freud and the continental approach to psychology. So this is equivalent to a third grader trying to explain to classmates drug metabolism...

A magic act has three components, the pledge, the turn, and the prestige. The pledge is the rabbit being placed in the top hat. The turn is the turning of the hat to show the rabbit is not there, defying physics. The prestige is the return of a rabbit but in a new, completely irrational or unexpected location. For the case of Jesus in 2nd Temple Judaism,  the pledge is Jesus placed on the cross then in a tomb. The turn is the rending of the temple curtain, showing nothing was there where God was supposed to be. The turn is also the original ending of Mark's gospel, where friends show up to find an empty tomb. The prestige is different for different people, which is why it is not time bound. For Doubting Thomas it was a display of Christ's wounds. The disciples on the way to Emmaus, he appeared as a walking companion, who finally revealed himself when they broke bread together, then disappeared. For Saul, the zealous persecutor of Christians, it was a vision on the Damascus Road.

The "trick" worked, because we kept looking at the way things were formally. For instance, scapegoating, is humanity's technique for alleviating social strife as explained thoroughly elsewhere by Rene´ Girard, whether it be puritan girls accused of witchcraft or enemy tribes providing human sacrifices. Between the Romans and the 1st century religious leaders in Israel, Jesus was the scapegoat. I will share many passages from this book, and here is the first; Rollins's take on the scapegoat.

...the radical reading claims that the very act of scapegoating is a fundamental failure, but a failure that opens up a victory. For it is when we realize that the destruction of the scapegoat is powerless to help that we can realize that listening to the scapegoat is where the transformation lies.
In this radical reading of Christ's crucifixion, it is only after Christ has been killed that we realize the failure of our scapegoating and the realize that what we thought we needed to destroy in order to get to the sacred was in fact sacred. This is captured powerfully in the response of the Roman centurion who proclaims, "Surely this was the son of God," once Jesus has died.
Here the centurion symbolically stands in for the one who realizes that the obstacle was in fact the way. p. 143

This failure of scapegoating was amplified in Saul cum Paul. Rollins writes of Paul,

He dedicated himself to a community of neither/nor – neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female. By breaking down these tribal identities, he drains scapegoating of its power. This is not to say that Paul wasn't a man of his times with views that reflect those of his day, but his lasting insight was one of a new type of community that would caut against the various tribal identities in operations at the time...
It is this disturbing, disruptive, and destabilizing idea of neither/nor that has been domesticated and effectively silenced in the church, arising only on the edges of the religious tradition in mystics like Meister Eckhart (who was accused of heresy) and Marguerite Porete (who was burned at the stake). p. 145

The irony is the attempt of Christ and Paul to unite divergent tribes through love results in division. "A new conflict arises, not between different groups, but between those who are open to change and those who hold stubbornly to their tribal identities." p. 149 Rollins sees the new church as neither reactionary (conservative) nor inoffensive or anemic (liberal or prosperity). Rather, "The radical community is thus the place that displaces us, the place that challenges us to be in the world but not of it, to embrace the oppressed and be transformed by them." p. 150 The issue is not belief, but the fantasy of belief. For example, fundamentalists believe the Bible and believe God heals through prayer, but they believe only so long and pray as long as it takes to dial 911. He observes, "it is actually the 'full believer' who is more of a threat to Fundamentalist and conservative communities than the one who claims that those communities believe too much...Many of the people who move beyond Fundamentalist communities are not the ones who avoid taking it seriously, but precisely those who take it more seriously than the majority. It is these individuals who are confronted with the true horror of what they affirm...The problem with unbelief here is precisely that it enables people to keep believing." pp. 152, 153 I do not want to harp on fundamentalism alone, he also speaks about liberal communities, but I understand so well what he is speaking of, as I lived it. He goes on, "It's not, then, that the Fundamentalist affirms that 'God'... is alive. It's that she subjectively claims this "God" is alive, while demonstrating her unbelief in this 'God' through her actions. While being affirmed as alive, this idol is already dead." p. 161 As to the other end of the spectrum he writes,

...while fundamentalist...churches tend to encourage their congregants to use their beliefs to avoid a confrontation with the trauma of unknowing and facing lack, the liberal communities tend to encourage a repression of that trauma through their liturgical structure. While those in more liberal...circles would generally reject the idea that "God" protects us from difficulties and doubt, their hymns, prayers, and creeds often affirm those very ideas. The consolation isn't in the actual beliefs but rather is imbedded in the practices. p. 161

He continues, "By using rituals as a way of cradling our belief, we outsource our Fundamentalism and enlist a third party to protect us from the trauma of losing the sacred-object." p. 162 The empty tomb, the "turn" of Christianity, in Rollins's view asks us to abolish our naïvete´.

The point then is to help break the false distinction between the idea that there are those who are whole and those who have a lack. For the true distinction is between those who hide their lack under the fiction of wholeness and those who are able to embrace it. p. 163 

And this sounds to me straight out of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's as if Bill W figured all this without a PhD. I am not saying this is Rollins's point, but it's what I hear as I come to end of his book. I would say this final quote I'll make aligns with what I hear as well.

If we move away from the importance of what we believe to questions concerning how our belief functions, then it's easier for us to acknowledge that there might be some of the theist, the atheist, and the agnostic in each of us, even though one might take precedence over the others. p.172

I am not part of AA. But then neither am I an expert in post-structural thought nor continental philosophy. However, in my limited understanding of both I hear an overlap. Even if the nod to AA is tacit on Rollins's part, I have read overt admiration from church leaders and thinkers to AA as a beautiful model of a faith community.

Rollins is not saying church should become AA. But I think he reaches a similar place that Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith did in 1935, and that countless others have before and since, including Jesus and Paul. It's not enough to believe in charity but not give away your money. It's not enough to believe in love correctly yet never practice it. It's not enough to admit you are an alcoholic, although it's better than denying it, then keep drinking. Radical belief starts with radical honesty which results in radical inclusion. This is something I can get behind.