Carrying the Cross
Just thought I would offer a small excerpt from my forthcoming book The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief (release date 19th June – but this seems to change on a daily basis). This quote is from chapter one and encompasses the primary question that I address within the book,
There are countless people who betray Christianity, individuals who turn their backs on its message because they no longer believe in it or because it asks too much of them. But there are a few who betray Christianity, not because they no longer believe in it, but because they believe in it so deeply, because they understand that unless the seed of our Christianity falls to the ground and dies it will remain a single seed, but if it is allowed to die it will produce many seeds.
With this in mind we may wonder whether the deepest cost entailed in embracing the radical message of Christ—that we lay down our life and pick up our cross and follow him—may not simply be the call to sacrifice our own life (something we are asked to do before we pick up the cross), but the call to sacrifice what we love more than our life.
The cost of Christianity, for so many, is thought to lie in the demand that we die to ourselves for the sake of our Christianity. The cross we are called to carry is thus one upon which we are to be put to death. But what if this cross we bear had another meaning? What if the cross that we are called to carry is not for us at all but rather, like the cross that Simon of Cyrene labored beneath, is really for another—a cross for us to crucify what we love? Is it possible that the cross we labor beneath must be used to crucify our Christianity? How many of us can truly understand this question? How many of us can really know what it is like to destroy what we love for the sake of what we love—to be the most faithful of betrayers? Yet perhaps it is precisely this that we are being called to: engaging in that most difficult task of putting our religion to death so that a religion without religion can spring forth.
Tags: Fidelity of Betrayal, Peter Rollins, seed falls to the ground
May 3rd, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Thanks for the excerpt… looking forward to more.
“Yet perhaps it is precisely this that we are being called to: engaging in that most difficult task of putting our religion to death so that a religion without religion can spring forth.”
Your closing phrase brought this question to my mind: here are you, to some extent, developing Bonhoeffer’s theme of ‘religionless Christianity’ in the light of post-modern insight? Bonhoeffer’s theory is left tantalisingly open in his letters from prison. I have the feeling he thought of the concept in modernistic terms, yet I always had a niggling idea that ‘religionless Christianity’ could find some sort of realisation as we shift out of modernity… though I find it quite difficult to articulate why.
Or, I could be way off the mark here. Anyhow, thanks for the excerpts – enjoying them.
- PJW
May 3rd, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Interesting thoughts Pete. I’m interested to see what this looks like fleshed out a bit
May 4th, 2008 at 4:48 am
Hey. The late Bonhoeffer does indeed haunt the idea’s I am exploring. As he was so tragically murdered before being able to develop his ideas on religionless Christianity it is difficult to know where he would have ended up. There are those who simply read these latter fragments in light of his previous work and those who see these fragments as signaling a break with his earlier thought (most notably the Death of God theologians of the mid to late 20th century).
I absolutely agree about what you say concerning the later Bonhoeffer and the influence of modernity. At the very least this is where the death of God theologians took him. And I too wonder if Bonhoeffer would have developed a more ‘post-modern’ theological project out of the initial thoughts penned while he languished in a prison cell.
While it is impossible to tell I would, at the very least, claim that the religion without religion theology that I explore (and which can be seen brilliantly espoused in thinkers like Caputo) is faithful to the opening Bonhoeffer created. I even, like yourself, have a hunch (which really means a hope) that Bonhoeffer would have developed in that direction.
In short Bonhoeffer’s thoughts on religionless Christianity did not have a deep impact upon the development of my thought because there was too little to really get my teeth into, however, looking back at his work, I feel that the position I currently take has deepened and enriched my understanding of his words immensely and may even be true to the direction he was taking them.
June 11th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
I wonder what we are left with, in a “religionless” christianity. Is that just an impossibility? Is it ridiculous to think that a human being could not be religious? Is that like being born of a family but disowning them…or being born into a family with its own language, but, striving to eradicate the traditions that are inherent in that structure, to get to the “true essence” of family life?
This all makes me think about how we operate in our given narratives. Do we conform to them, or not conform to them, or to we come up with other more convoluted ways of engaging with them, that seem to live out some sort of frustrated, and self-sabotaging desire fulfillment.
Anyway…sounds interesting…enjoying the words.