I can’t say enough good things about this book by Peter Rollins. I would argue it should get the “emerging church book of the year” award (if there was such an award). It really documents the hearts and minds of the emergent theological conversation. At least it captured mine. At times I wonder if the Emergent movement/conversation will end up becoming just a trend offering a new cosmetic face for conservative Evangelicalism, but this book is a stride in the right (errr... left) direction. It will keep the conversation grounded in critical thinking and followed by controversy. If you have any interest at all in philosophy/theology (I’m not sure you can really separate those two things) then you will want to read this book.

Most philosophy books are daunting and most philosophers are bad writers, but I can’t believe how readable this book really is. It packs an incredible amount of information into a small package without feeling like I was getting short changed. The ideas are well developed and wonderfully presented. Absolutely ZERO fluff here. I must have highlighted 40% of the text while reading it. The tie to emerging post-modern thought is clear in the title of the first chapter “'Rethinking Orthodoxy: From Right Belief to Believing in the Right Way”.

The first half of the book is philosophy/theology and the second half is a description of several alternative ritual/worship services that his small community (IKON) in Ireland has developed to play out their unique sense of orthopraxy. The communities tag line is “iconic apocalyptic heretical emerging failing”. That is interesting to say the least.

Rollins suggests a view of God "a/theism" which is both theistic and atheistic at the same time. It is a way of speaking and at the same time not being able to speak about God. This view understands God is real unlike the view of atheism and is also not concealed or “unknowable” as in agnosticism. For him, God is not absent or unknowable but is “hyper-present” which means we are bombarded with so much information about God (everything we experience and feel) that we can’t decipher it all or explain it other than through crude metaphors describing our experiences of God. The result of this overflow of data creates the appearance of absence or concealed presence but it is not really absent or concealed. I'm not sure yet if this is differnet than the PanENteistic view of God I've come to grips with lately, but it feels better for some reason.

My weak attempt at summarizing his thoughts here just makes me realize how great this book really is. (not) Speaking about God is a very difficult thing to try and do. He is impressive to have done it in a book that is getting such rave reviews by some important people (and not so important people like me). Read it! My review doesn’t do it justice. Also, if the word "philosophy" scares you then read it anyway. There is more to the book than philosophy. My guess is that this book will create philosphers and theologians out of some people that had not put much thought into the subjects.