Poets and Prophets
Author Jeremy Bouma is live blogging Peter Rollins at a conference. This is very inspirational material that elevates Spirit over religious systematics. I find Peter’s manner of  questioning and wrestling to be deeply authentic, reflecting the very God-given creativity, curiosity, and wonderment we are all given as children, but so often smother as adults.  See also Trent’s heart-felt invitation echoing this same unbridled desire to really be who we were created to be, to move unrestricted in that same natural optimistic flow and stream which created all things – the cry of those painfully aware of how we compromise and commandere (a.k.a., religion, superstition) this perennial Gift.
From Jeremy’s pen (excuse syntax – this is live blogging – ital mine):
christianity is fundamentally violent…against the principalities and powers. Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King ruptured the systems. System is not that which you see, but that which you see through…these people doing something powerful.
Revelation not about revealing. We think revealing…God whispering in the year. A theologian talks about God like a biologist talking about bio-life. The question is not is Christianity true, but what does it mean when it claims to be true…we then just assume its like the truth of biology. Revelation does not mean we have information about God, like a biologist has something on bio-life.
The desire to speak of God is ancient. If you can name God you can have power. But is this idea of NAMING something that God plays along with? Possible to exist in reality and so majestic that it cant exist in the mind. God not anonymous. He is hypernonymous…don’t know something because there isnt access. God is not unknown because he doesn’t exist; he cannot be known because he cannot be grasped because of the excess…like the sun.
The Bible is divine because of the tension and problems and difficulties. Of course you are going to have a breakdown of words when you have the infinite entering into the finite. Of course we are going to blow up and combust.
The unnamable is omninamable…when confronted with the trauma of God not reduced into silence, but into poetry, prophecy, and preaching. As soon as you name God you create him in your image. Theology is like us trying to draw God. Jesus tears up our images of God, not paint them. As soon as we start putting words to God peoples God’s look like them…God is not the patch of meaning on the wind of our unknowing…he is the patch of unknowing we put on our wind of meaning.
Moses…Jacob wanted to know God’s name. But he didnt give it. We dont name God, he names us.
The point of incarnation is not God being revealed and we now understand it…its now the mystery is here and brought among us and lives with it. The mystery is deepened. The mystery touches us.