Chapter two is about “getting the
‘who’ right” which is to appreciate that we are created in the image of God. Rohr
interprets this as “humanity’s objective unity with God” which he contrasts
with a view of humanity as totally depraved. Rohr seems to be saying that, in a
sense, we are already in union with God; many just lack the inner experience of
this and therefore, in another sense, are disconnected.
On the one hand, Rohr claims that
“the great illusion that we must all overcome is the illusion of separateness.”
On the other hand, he writes of “disconnected people” and “the state of believed
or chosen autonomy” and sin as “a state of living outside of union.”
I think I know what he is trying
to say (God’s arms are wide open; it’s our resistance to receiving the gift
that is the problem) but I do not find his way of putting things attractive.
I remember distinctly one
occasion when I heard someone use the language of “total depravity” in a way which made me recoil but nevertheless I do not warm to Rohr’s opposition to such
language. I think I know why theologians have coined it and what they meant by
it. I doubt that Rohr does, or that he can imagine any sense in which this
phrase may be considered truthful. Am I a theological snob who does not want to
be associated even in his own mind with theological illiteracy? I don’t think so
and yet I feel embarrassed at what seem to me cheap shots here and elsewhere.
Rohr claims that “most people
have never noticed that on the first and second days it does not say that it
was good!” He’s probably right. With his usual self-confidence he asserts: “The
Bible does not say that [the separation of darkness from light and the
separation of the heavens above from the earth below] is good–because it isn’t.”
As seems typical for Rohr’s writings, there is no need to explore options or
weigh up arguments. Rohr presumably now apprehends the truth intuitively as anything that aligns with his vision. A moment’s thought
could have shown that there may be a problem with the view that “separation” (interpreted
as dualism) is not said to be good because it is not good – see the separation of land and sea which appears to
be good in Genesis 1:10 and the summary statement in Genesis 1:31 which surely
looks back to all six days. Rohr probably did not bother to look at a Genesis
commentary but if he happened to chance upon one that does not (at least
implicitly) explain why “good” does not feature at the end of the first two days,
he should get a different one.
I am afraid, to me this failure
to engage with other voices just looks like arrogance, given the
importance of the claim. “The rest of the work of the Bible will be about
putting those seeming opposites of darkness and light, heavens and earth, flesh
and spirit back together in one place. They have really never been separate,
but remember, ‘sin’ thinks so.”
In the same vein, Rohr believes
that “the ark is an image of the People of God on the waves of times, carrying
the contradictions, the opposites, the tensions and the paradoxes of humanity.”
In line with this Rohr then
defines forgiveness as “mutual deference” in which one accepts reality by
forgiving “reality for being what it is.” Thus you experience “God’s unmerited goodness,
the deeper goodness of the one you have forgiven and...your own gratuitous
goodness too.”
The section on “the garden of
knowledge” is revealing. Rohr reckons that the major heresy of the Western
church is “demanding to know and insisting that I do know!” While I can vaguely see
what he means, Rohr’s penchant for exaggeration and blanket condemnation rather
puts me off exploring this further.
A sentence at the bottom of page 38 reinforces a suspicion that grew
in me as I read the first chapter, namely that most of Rohr’s judgemental statements
are directed (also, primarily?) against his own (former) self: “I came out of the seminary in 1970
thinking that my job was to have an answer for every question.”
By contrast, I think it is possible to be both analytical and humble (Thomas Aquinas?), to seek answers without believing that we can ever have all the answers (let alone believe that God won’t love
us until we do – see previous chapter), to appreciate the gift of positive knowledge as well as to value the gift of unknowing (Hildegard of Bingen?).
As three “bookmarks” for union Rohr
introduces “water, the first invitation to an inner life of union...blood,
which symbolizes the difficult price of union...bread, the ongoing feeding of
that union.” It is probably difficult to get the symbolism of bread wrong.
Blood is more complex (see my entry in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology,
2000); Rohr seems to think nearly exclusively of sacrifice. Water is
ambivalent, flood and river being two very different motifs; Rohr seems unaware
of this. Maybe I can receive some valuable un-knowing from reading subsequent
chapters, maybe not.
Again, the final pages offer
material that I can affirm (nearly) without irritation. The one thing we most need
to know in relation to who we are is that we are “in Christ” -- although I suspect
that Rohr believes that every human being is in Christ which would then be
equivalent to being made in the image of God. I think it is possible to speak of an objective change from not being in Christ to being in Christ without (a) claiming a change from God hating to God loving us, or (b) reducing the change to an inner experience.
