If a writer is so cautious that he never writes anything that cannot be criticized, he will never write anything that can be read. If you want to help other people you have got to make up your mind to write things that some men will condemn.
— Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
| 0 commentsThe Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief
By Peter Rollins
Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2008
Review by Carl McColman
In this book, Peter Rollins expands and deepens the apophatic/postmodern re-visioning of Christian theology/mystery that he first introduced in his first book, How (Not) to Speak of God. Rollins is a philosopher/theologian whose work appears to be all about dismantling unhelpful boundaries: between philosophy and theology, between church and culture, between liturgy and theater or liturgy and life. In The Fidelity of Betrayal he begins with a reflection on the story of Judas, and without falling into the trap of dancing with old gnostic heresies, he asks an explosive question: could it be that Judas’ betrayal of Christ was actually an act of faith and fidelity? He takes the question further by comparing the relationship of Judas and Jesus to that of Abraham and Isaac — when Abraham “betrayed” Isaac by taking him up the mountain to sacrifice him, a surprise ending to the story deposited a ram into Abraham’s hand (worse luck for the ram, I suppose, but at least it left Abraham and Isaac to work out how they could take their father-son relationship forward after that). No ram or lamb appears in the gospel narrative to spare Jesus the cross, and so Judas ends up taking the bullet that Abraham dodged. But Rollins isn’t satisfied with traditional readings of these narratives, and keeps pushing at his question: what if betrayal is really what it’s all about?
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