The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

To find God, one has to move beyond the notion of certainty, of God as product, of knowing itself, argues the writer of this often dizzying, deliberately challenging, and purposefully provocative screed about “a salvation that takes place within our knowing and dissatisfaction.” While admittedly that may not sound promising (or at least not very cheerful), this full-scale repurposing of Christian vocabulary and endorsement of theological mystery is often deeply rewarding. Putting his unique and evocative spin on venerable concepts like original sin and idolatry, Rollins (How (Not) to Speak of God) focuses on the crucifixion as “a constitutive experience for the Christian” in which the faithful can experience the divine absence and join the one whose humiliating death has put him outside of all normal ways of construing meaning. Some readers will probably find the writer’s philosophical and passionate dissection of some liturgical and theological conventions offensive (as in his assault on much contemporary worship music and his notion of God as potential idol). But maybe that is, at least in part, the point. (Jan.)