Disillusionment, Pyrotheology, and the Death of God: Peter Rollins, Part 1

Break out your dictionaries folks, this one got in the weeds a bit. But if you're familiar with Peter Rollins, you're probably not too surprised by that. Peter is a philosopher, public intellectual, and self-described anti-guru who writes and speaks extensively about concepts like the death of God, negative theology, "pyrotheology," and Atheism for Lent. He's been on our list to talk to since we started the podcast, and we're finally making it happen. And wouldn't you know it, we had so much to dig into that we had to talk to him again, so this will be a two-parter.

Fair warning: Peter has some challenging things to say, pretty much regardless of where you land on the religious or political spectrum. His ideas are not easy to swallow or to understand, but we did our best to get to the bottom of some of them. And we had a great time doing it. Let us know what you think!

You can find the transcript for this episode here.

The bourbon we taste in this episode is Weller 12.

Content note: This episode has some adult themes and mild profanity.

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Transcript

NOTE: This transcript was auto-generated by an artificial intelligence and has not been reviewed by a human. Please forgive and disregard any inaccuracies, misattributions, or misspellings.

Randy  00:06

I'm Randy, the pastor half of the podcast, and my friend Kyle is a philosopher. This podcast hosts conversations at the intersection of philosophy, theology, and spirituality.

Kyle  00:15

We also invite experts to join us, making public space that we've often enjoyed off-air around the proverbial table with a good drink in the back corner of a dark pub.

Randy  00:24

Thanks for joining us, and welcome to A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar. Today, we're talking with someone who I think kind of perfectly sits at the intersection of this podcast, pastor and a philosopher, walking into a bar. His name's Peter Rollins. He is a philosopher, but I would think of Peter Moore as a public intellectual. And this conversation gets deep into the weeds, and it's a really fun time.

Kyle  01:02

Yeah, it was unavoidable, though. You can't talk to Peter Rollins without talking about some deep continental philosophy, because that's just how he speaks. So if you watch his YouTube videos, he's good at applying it and bringing it down to earth, so to speak. But yeah, his whole jam is about let's take some kind of complicated theology and philosophical concepts, and see how it can radically alter our experience of Christianity, and our lived experience of things like lint. So it was like really well time to this conversation, because we were having it just right before Easter. And it's now coming out a little bit after Easter. So we talked with him about a bunch of stuff, some some of his main themes, which are atheism for Lent, which is this thing he has where he leads people through a bunch of atheistic philosophers and sociologists and psychologists, as a Lenten experience, your wife has done it, and apparently really got a lot out of it. Some really fast enough for everyone. As you'll see, he has this whole thing about radical theology and Pyro theology, which is his own thing, the death of God, and that being somehow fundamental to theologizing. What it means to have he calls it a church of the contradiction. There's all sorts of weird stuff going on with Peter Rollins. But it's all fascinating. Yeah. And we try to get to the bottom of some of it, we totally fail. And then we we punt to a second part, there's gonna be a part two to this conversation. Yeah.

Randy  02:27

And as we're recording this, we haven't even recorded the part two. So where you don't know what to expect, except it's going to be fun. Peter does a great job, I think of asking questions that should be asked about the things that we just take for granted in our faith. There's a million things that we just kind of take on good authority, that Rollins has a really good way of saying, Well, why did we do that? Or why did we think that? Or why doesn't this impact our lives? When when he talks about the resurrection, it's in ways of, I don't know, if I believe in the resurrection, because I don't live out the resurrection, he wants to make our faith real and take away all the trappings, if possible, and reduce it down to its most pure form. That's how I would kind of describe Rollins in many ways. But he does it in a very productive, provocative way. And so, if you, if you have a hard time with this interview, know that you're not alone. If you had if this is a little bit too much for you, that's okay. Just give yourself permission to say this is too much. It's not beneficial for me to think about these things, again, like atheism, for Lent, is a good exercise for someone who, who wants to take their faith a little bit deeper, who has some questions and wants to face those questions with a community of people? It's not for someone who is at a maybe a fragile point in their faith or maybe at a new beginning stage of their faith. Peter Rollins is not for that kind of listener. Yeah. Although he'd probably say,

Kyle  03:49

Yeah, but he's also a really great storyteller. He's very good at constructing parables that bring you to the essence of faith and Christian claims and make you wonder about the whole thing, but I think a productive healthy way. Yeah. And he's also like, got a great North Irish desire. Just makes the whole thing so magical.

Randy  04:09

Yeah, we can listen to him. Read the Bible or the phone book, and it'll be great. So I'm excited to talk to Peter. Well, since we are a pastor and a philosopher walk into a bar, we'd like to taste alcoholic drinks around here because they're delicious. And it just gives us this feel of having a conversation in a bar. And a Patreon supporter, and great friend of the show named Tim has graciously sent us a plethora of amazing whiskies to try and so we invited Tim on to sample them with us yet again. Tim, welcome. Thank you so much. So we don't know what we're drinking here. Correct.

Tim  04:53

Correct. This is well, you I'm lucky I know. But

Randy  04:57

all right. That sounds smells like a classic bourbon to me.

Kyle  05:05

Yeah. Yeah. I'm getting definitely, I don't know. All the standard things wood and ethanol and a little bit of glue

Elliot  05:17

apple pie spice when I

Randy  05:18

say classic, I mean because it says yeah, the wood but it has that library musty quality to it. That sounds smells classic to me.

Tim  05:30

Yeah, it's a very oak Ford bourbon, which I enjoy knows what you know, there's a little bit of age probably to it. Yeah, it's burnin my nose.

Randy  05:39

That's really good. Oh, it brings the oak but then on the side and back of my palate is like rose flavor, like some floral stuff going on. I

Kyle  05:51

always like it when the palate is much better than the nose promised. And that's what I'm getting. In this case.

Randy  05:56

This is very

Elliot  05:56

good. Yeah, it fills the whole palette. Like there's something going on in every corner. Very complex. But

Tim  06:03

it's also low proof. So Kentucky hug just enough to know that you're drinking something but it just very drinkable or crushable.

Randy  06:13

I've never heard of the Kentucky hug.

Tim  06:18

Yeah, it's that deep burn down the throat and into the chest. That's what we call the Kentucky hug.

Randy  06:23

All right. More like the Kentucky belts are some

Kyle  06:29

of the best legs I've seen on a whiskey in a long time. And viscosity is great.

Randy  06:35

I love this. Simple. It doesn't like you say it doesn't doesn't burn all the way down. So complex and delightful like this. Yeah,

Kyle  06:44

no, no, it's I mean, it's not the most complex bourbon I think. But it's, it's great.

Randy  06:49

What is it?

Tim  06:51

So this simple is a perfect word for it. This was a shelter that is 45 bucks that you can no longer fine. And that is Weller 12. Oh, man.

Kyle  07:02

Yes. It's so great is that used to just sit on shelves? Yeah,

Tim  07:07

this used to sit on shelves. I feel bad because talking to some of the old guys that are really into bourbon. They're like, I remember when every Friday I'd just go pick up a case a while or 12. And it was my daily drinker. You can't do that anymore.

Kyle  07:19

What's that a $250 Bourbon now, maybe more.

Tim  07:22

It's still MSRP at 60 bucks. But everybody puts it way up. And you're lucky if you ever find it. So

Randy  07:32

I'm not a huge welder fan in general. But I love this.

Kyle  07:35

Yeah, this is great. I've only had this once or twice before, twice before, I think and it's always a treat. Thanks, man.

Randy  07:41

Thanks, dude. Man. Yeah, such a rare treat. Cheers to Tim and Weller 12. Peter Rollins, thank you so much for joining us on a pastor and philosopher walk into a bar. Go Well,

Peter  08:09

it's great to be here. I really appreciate the invitation. As I was saying to you off air. You sometimes you do podcasts and people haven't, you know, don't really knew what your bite but you guys sent me some questions. And I'm actually intimidated because you obviously know your stuff. And you've looked at my work. So I'm expecting to be grilled. Don't

Randy  08:31

be Don't butter us up and say you're terminated because we know you're not. So let's just get out who you are. I'm sure tons of our listeners know who you are. And I'm sure there's some who don't. Your website says that you are an author, philosopher, storyteller, producer and public speaker who has gained international reputation for overturning traditional notions of religion. And here's what I love forming churches that preach the good news that we can't be satisfied that life is difficult, and that we don't know the secrets. Now, that's super tasting. We could talk for a half hour about that alone, but what do you see as your role personally within philosophy within theology within Christianity even what do you do Pete?

Peter  09:13

You know, okay, you know, I'll break the fourth wall here, and maybe give you the gist of what I'm doing without the working night. And as you will know very well that's a bad thing to do. Like philosophy is the art of doing philosophy. It's not about getting the right answer so much as doing the right work, you know, it's right. So I'm going to break that rule that cardinal rule of philosophy and try to get to the heart of what I'm doing and then we can work backwards and maybe pick it apart perfect, but I working within a field of philosophy, theology and other disciplines that okay, not to put too fine a point on it. would say that by contradiction, conflict asymmetry is a dimension of reality, not something that you can overcome, right? So we can feel dissatisfied in our lives and on fantasize meeting a person who will fix that or getting some product or making enough money or finding a religion that will, that will kind of get rid of the dissatisfaction. I would argue that dissatisfaction, but not just dissatisfaction, I'm actually arguing at the very level of mathematics and physics, there is a certain asymmetry, certain, void, a certain lack, that we are obsessed with trying to overcome, but actually, that we need to make space for and kind of embraced. So in that introduction that you read, when it talks about the good news that you know, life is shit, and we don't have the answer. The reason why that is kind of good news is the opposite of most forms of therapy. And it's the opposite of what is often called mental health. Mental health is usually defined as helping people to integrate better into their lives, to be more productive citizens to be more productive workers to be to kind of make life work a bit better. And therapy is often designed to help overcome obstacles. And those are fine things in themselves. But at a deeper level psychoanalysis, which I think show us that obstacles are part of existence, part of who we are. And actually, we need to learn to enjoy those obstacles, enjoy those impossibilities, rather than attempt to overcome them. Is that a good spot to start? Yes, it is gonna take us five hours to unpack that. But yeah,

Kyle  11:49

totally could where does that bump into Christianity for you? So

Peter  11:54

this is what's interesting to me is Chrystia. And I'm not talking about confessional Christianity here, I have to say that sometimes because I forget to say that. And then people are thinking, I'm talking about the type of church that you see at the end of your street, right. But in, in all religions as such, and if for the sake of simplicity, we talk about religion, in terms of, well, let's say in terms of achieving a type of oneness or wholeness or completeness, right? Whether whether basically, we're in an illusion of dissatisfaction, we have to pierce the veil of illusion, or whether it's ontological, it's real, and we have to some way to overcome that. We could talk about religion, as as this attempt to kind of like, enter into a oneness and wholeness, think of fitness, etc, etc. And God is often described as the one that lacks the lack, God is whole and complete. And actually, in most religions, you find a three, a three tier structure, which is an original blessing, an original oneness, a full from that original blessing. And then a return a promise returned to that right and sacred and secular forms. That's your three part dance. So Christianity doesn't affirm Original Sin generally, because they really as an original blessing, there was there was a wholeness and completeness, then there's a full, and then there's a return to wholeness. What's interesting to me about Christianity is in Christianity, you don't really believe in God. Right? Of course, you know, a lot of Christians believe in God or whatever. But that's not the interesting bit may be through a student, you'll find someone who believes in God, technically, Christians believe in the death of God. That's really interesting, right? And what is believing in the death of God? I mean, again, a lot to unpack. But I'll try and get to the core of what I think is that, for me to believe in the death of God is what I would call a double Gnosis. Right? It's not right, because traditionally people will say, God is not dead. If you're an atheist, God is not dead because God never existed. So it's a metaphor. If you're a religious believer, God can't die because God is eternal. You know, debt is the opposite of death. So what does it mean to say, God died? I think you can mean it literally. Not metaphorically, our I believe that it's touching on a deep truth, which is that that reality itself has death or nothingness within it. And in Christianity, you have this interesting moment where Christ Christ, oh, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Which in mythological form is a kind of sense in which God experiences the lack of God, God experiences a division within God's self. And this is the moment when the tangled curtain rips and this is kind of central to salvation. And what I would argue is that thing in Christianity, the death of God is the Neom For the reality, the idea that everything is divided. And actually, instead of overcoming self division, we identify with the asymmetry of reality, and that identification is curative. So I think that's in Christianity, a radical median of Christianity.

Randy  15:19

Yeah. Would you say for up staying within the realm of Christianity that Good Friday or the death of Christ is more consequential or says more than the Easter Sunday or the resurrection? Perhaps? Yeah,

Peter  15:32

I think they're kind of like intimately intertwined. In that like in a dialect, so I'm a dialectical thinker and in dialectics, there is an affirmation, there is a negation and then there is a negation of negation. And these are all interlinked. So for example, someone says, God exists as an affirmation, then someone says, God does not exist. That's a negation. And then you have the idea, which I will go with, which is God as the name for that which does not exist, right. So as simple and vague, you know, God is the name of non existence. So atheism doesn't go far enough, because in traditionally a theism all you have is a negation, all you have is, you know, God doesn't exist, not that there is an existent thing. Not that negativity is a reality, in existence itself. And so, in a similar way, you can say that, this experience of the death of God, this experience of the fundamental lack, at the core of everything is a redemptive experience is a resurrection experience. This is what can be called entering into not a community, but a communion. So a community is a group of people joined together by shared beliefs, shared enemies, shared goals, a communion is a group of people joined together by a shared loss, the death of God, so Eucharist is a meal that you have around the death of God. And for me, the communion is the resurrection.

Randy  17:11

What do you mean by that?

Peter  17:13

That this lack, that is at the heart of everything in communion, and I do want to say enters into us because it's already there. But we invite that fundamental negativity that lack into the very heart of the, of the collective itself. And that becomes a defining feature of that collective, which I think has political and personal value, right? I think it has real value to have a community, or actually union of people gathered together around this death, this loss. And so in a way, it's like saying that you're if Christ if the death of Christ represents the loss of all identity. So you know, Christ represents the one who's cursed of God, the One who is no longer a citizen who is fit, to die, to identify with Christ is to identify with the loss of all identities, to identify with the type of negation. And that, for me, is a type of living the death of God.

Randy  18:18

Thank you, brilliant. One more just down this line, you, you said so many things that we're going to touch on in the rest of this conversation. But I heard you say recently that you're talking about disillusionment, and you said, when I disillusion you so much, you'll never be illusioned by anyone else. Again, that sounds very cool. We would like tell us what you mean by that. When I when I disillusion you enough, you'll never be illusioned by anyone else.

Peter  18:43

Yes, like, I want to be such a bad guru, that no one will ever believe any guru ever again. Right? So I want to be so bad at that. That, that it's really easy because here's the problem that you'll know very well, I'm sure is that when people give up a certain ideology, and by ideology, I mean, a system of thought that covers over the crux of being right so the pinna but but in a nutshell, is what I mean by ideology, ideology, covers over the cracks, or renders them contingent. So all ideology says right, here's the world. And if there are problems in the world, it's because of those people x because of the Republicans because of the Democrats because of because of whoever, because of X kind of we got rid of them. Everything would be great. So ideology functions, always fundamentally on a rejection of contradiction. Okay, this is what happens. Sometimes I get so carried away that I forget the question. You are asking,

Randy  19:43

What do you mean when you say when I disillusion you enough, you'll never be illusioned by anyone else again.

Peter  19:47

Thank you. Thank you. This is also a good way of making sure you're still listening. So what sometimes happens but it's one ideology feels somebody just goes to an ersatz one. So you know, somebody gives up on Christianity. God is the answer. But then they go into psychedelic enlightenment, sexual liberation. They go into commodity satisfaction. There's a whole, by the way, I'm not in any way against things like psychedelic enlightenment, I'm not against polyamory and sexual liberation, right? But if you think that those things are going to be the answer, then you're sorely mistaken. So sorely mistaken that there is a certain kind of, like, we so we move from one wallet to a different Wallet. So at the level of belief, we change our beliefs, but the belief functions in the same way, and we can tend to get carried away. And this happened in the 1960s in America, where all the acid heads became Jesus freaks. Right? And then interestingly, at the moment, I knew a pile of people who used to be Christian leaders who are all getting into psychedelics, right so same thing you know, you get get you kind of get behind Jesus for a bit and then it doesn't really work so well. And then that you know, that's why we've our worship music sounds the way adores because it's all the heavy music so hippie back in 60s, music brought into the church. And now a lot of people say are going the other direction, because we just want to get high, get high on Jesus get high on drugs or get high on technology to take a spite of our bodies right. So, what I want to do when I talk about dissolution in you so much is like, one is, there is I would say a necessity for people to have well and lucky Ania psychoanalysis is called a subject supposed to know, right? It is important for us to imagine, it's not even important for us to imagine all neurotics do right, oh neurotics, which is, the majority of people fantasize that someone has an expert or knowledge of them that they don't have, they can tend to, you know, look at a police officer. And whereas a psychotic looks at a police officer and they just see a person and you Radek looks at a police officer, and they see the law, right. So you know, Lacan famously said the neurology of their which signs and French like the name of the Father, but but he says the psychotic airs because they're not duped. And what he means by that is a psychotic looks at the teacher and just sees a person. And so they're not duped, they see the truth, this is just a regular person, but because they're not chipped, they err, because that teacher can still get your kid go to school. So psychotic individuals can often have real problems with authority because they're not chipped, whereas neurotics are duped. Now, what I want to say is that DigiPen is an important dimension, people wouldn't go to psychoanalysis, if they realize that psychoanalysis is ultimately going to tell them that you can't fix you, and that you have to come to terms with your own dissatisfaction and enjoy it. So you go to analysis, and you almost fantasize that they're going to see if you and very gradually you do the hard work, you start to embrace your own contradictions, and you find freedom. So I alive for people, like in all of these lines of work to do the subjects opposed to know to project on to me that idea. But then ultimately, my purpose is not to do what I think a lot of religious leaders do, which is both for that temptation and think that they are the subjects supposed to know and think that they are some special thing, but rather to use that transparence to ultimately help the person see themselves and work through their own issues. And if that's done correctly, then the need for any subjects supposed to know will be evaporated effectively.

Randy  23:19

I love it. Yeah.

Kyle  23:21

I have so many questions. Yeah. Where to start? Just as a quick aside, and then we'll move on to something else. That whole last five minutes started with a question about something you said sounding kind of Guru ish, is not something I plan to ask about. But since Randy brought that up, it seems to me and I've actually voiced this to other philosophers. It seems to me that one of the most guru ish things that there is,

Peter  23:50

is to say, I don't follow me, I'm not a guru. Yeah.

Kyle  23:54

Well, in that way, yes, but also like the tamping down or the, somehow my guru to him is beyond all the other guru items, or my version, if you want to use the disillusionment is going to cure you of all other disillusionment. And it's like the best sales pitch. And for some personality types, it wouldn't work for all people. But for some personality types, the best possible sales pitch is the sales pitch. Like, this is the like brute existential truth about reality and it's dark and meaningless. And that just draws certain kinds of personality. You could be theoretically a very successful guru with that.

Peter  24:33

That's very true and also but I'll also add this the reason why I can say this, rather than having not to say it so that I can be effective in my work is because saying that doesn't change up like you know, me saying, oh, people will treat me as a subject supposed to know and we do that so transference can occur and then through the transference, they develop a curiosity with their unconscious and through that they, they ultimately find a way to embrace their contradiction and enter. Can you Then they go, okay, but they still treat me as a subjects poster. No, brilliant, that's fine. I can be honest. And also the structure still works. And people still engage with that, but hopefully in an ethical way. Right.

Kyle  25:13

Okay, well, that raises a whole host of other questions of how we set the ethical boundaries. Maybe we'll get to that later. I don't know how long this conversation is gonna go. Okay, so many questions. Let's start because we were talking about Easter. And we're in a period of Lent right now, let's just stay on that theme for for just a second. So several years back, I read a book of parables that you wrote called The Orthodox heretic. It was part of a book club, and somebody suggested it, and I really enjoyed it. And it was long enough now that I'm wondering what your take on some of those is at this point, but one in particular, that I actually went back and reread in preparation for this because it's about Easter. And it tells and as far as I understand that these are parables that are original to you riffing on some stuff in the Bible, mostly. And so one of these little parables is the tale of a group of disciples who don't hear about the resurrection. So Jesus dies, they're devastated. And then they just leave, and that they maintain their community for like a century or so before news ever reaches them. That, hey, the resurrection happened. But they've been like consistent and devoted disciples that whole time. And so the news that Jesus was raised from the dead, since most of them into joy, except their leader who was devastated by it. And so it's kind of a reflection from you on why he might be reasonably devastated. And the way that you write it, it's kind of a critique of this sort of evangelical Christianity as personal salvation view, or, you know, fire insurance or whatever. And it definitely works is that but it hit me differently this time when I reread it. And so I'm curious how you think about it this far later, because when I reread it this time, it feels you describe it as like a prolonged Holy Saturday, for these people, like a century long, Holy Saturday, which I get, but to me, it feels more like the absence of Lent altogether, because there is no resurrection. And so the the religion that they've been practicing for, like a century, to me, is an ethic. And that's distinct from a religion. Right? Yeah. And I don't mean that as a put down, I think it's, it's an admirable thing to have a consistent ethic like that, but it is still merely an ethic and from and for me, personally, that makes it existentially empty. It's not it's not a religion. So I'm think of this in like Kierkegaardian terms, right? So we've got this character, clean MCUs, who represents in some ways, the most religious you can be without a without ever actually having faith. And that's to me what that community is, because unless there is a defeat of death in arisen, God, there simply isn't Christianity, at least not in a character guardian, since there is no faith, there's no worship. And I'm somebody saying that as I don't know, whether I believe in the bodily resurrection, or like that changes based on the month, you know, or what's going on in my life. So all that to say, how do you think about that parable? Now? What does it mean to you now?

Peter  28:10

Yeah, no, I totally agree. I, you know, I actually just, I'm doing a book study on my first book at the moment, and, you know, entering into a very critical engagement with that first book. And I would definitely also entered your critical engagement with a lot of what's in that book that you're talking about the Orthodox heretic, and yes, I think that there is an issue with that parable, I knew what I was attempting to do in parables, obviously can have a contextual dimension. And I think that someone might get something interesting out of it still, I probably was reflecting on the idea of what does it mean to have a norm, economic form of religion that was so to attack something that I liked, or the parable first, and then I'm going to come right into agreeing with you maybe for the opposite reasons, but is, is what I was trying to explain one of the interesting things about predestination, which is wonderful, I mean, one of the things that most people miss slavery, she's at talks about this, and he put me on to, but she's really affirmed predestination, because of its ability to free you from an economic form of ethics. Because if you you know, you're predestined to be saved or not, well, there's no point trying to be good to win God's favor or whatever, right? You're good, you're going to be good or not like the the economic reward, punishment thing is actually completely taken out of predestination, which is very freeing, because then you just go Well, are you attack or not? Right? Because you know, you're not you're not trying to do it, the wind god. So that's what I was trying to explore that parable. And actually the end, which I'll just mention, because you didn't say it explicitly, maybe you didn't want to give away the ending. But the reason why the leader was unhappy was because of this because they tried to live the teachings of Christ. of Jesus without thought of any eternal reward they just did it because they believed in these teachings no he was worried that because of resurrection that people would just follow Jesus to get to heaven again at the punch line of the of the parable so however in in trying to critique an economic thing and also get the reader to think about that what's the difference in gift an economy right gift as a non economic sacrifice? That was the purpose of it. But the problem with it is it's all too easily progressive it signs like a red letter Christian powerful and I'm fundamentally you know, not a progressive I'm not a red letter Christian. And there's a number of reasons for that. One is exactly what you said is it's an anti ethics great be good that's that's not religious. That's part of being human right. You know, there's nothing overly interesting about what is your what you find in Christianity as to any other religion, there might only be one ethical innovation in Christianity, you know, forgive somebody before they, before they ask for forgiveness is potentially the, you know, vaguely interesting thing. What is a primary interest in me and Christianity is what you're touching on, which is a very big fan of Carragher. I'm more of a Hegelian but I like your hugger.

Kyle  31:22

I don't think that's possible for a huge critic of Hegel, just so we're clear.

Peter  31:31

Yes, that's true. But there's a there's a question mark as to whether Kierkegaard was really a critic of a certain reading of Hegel, actually, whether you can integrate Hegel and Kierkegaard into Hegel, which I would say you come but anyway else besides is like, I think yeah, Kierkegaard BSC got taught by who was it was not Schopenhauer. But basically, Kierkegaard was very influenced by the lectures of one of the thinkers at the time, he was very, very critical of you anyway. So the thing about the parable is yes, it's a it's about being good. It's about not having a rewards based ethics. Fine, fine, fine. But actually, the interesting thing about Christianity for me is the death of God is precisely or and precisely, this idea of negation, and precisely this idea of not being a nice person, that's fine. Say, Let's, let's all try to be nice people. But what does it mean to identify with a fundamental negativity, at the heart of everything? That's what I'm interested in? I don't think progressivism does that. Because progressivism is basically I think, more ethical than anything else. Jesus was crucified because he was a nice guy tried to stand up against injustice. And this is what happens if you stand up against unjust grid, nothing wrong with that kind of thing. But it doesn't really rise to the level of Christology. I'm closer to conservatives and fundamentalists here in the sense of I'm interested in Christology, but I am the opposite of fundamentalist in that I think Christology is ultimately about the death of God, not not about God as substance, but about God as absolute negativity.

Kyle  33:10

But it's the Evergreen

Peter  33:12

with up to the MC. And you're right, you're right. Like, I'm embarrassed about some of those parallels.

Kyle  33:17

Okay? Well, I didn't my intention was not to make you embarrassed about anything, but to see how you've rethought it, because that's kind of your thing, right, is to rethink these things and continually revisit similar stories and see the new meanings that they have. So yes, can can we camp here just for a second? Or did you have something just really burning that?

Randy  33:34

I've got things but you can go, okay.

Kyle  33:38

And I can kind of combine this with my other question, which is about atheism for Lent, while we're on the on the theme of Lent. So maybe describe briefly what atheism for Lent is why it exists. So just some background for me. I remember when I graduated college, my, my mentor, my philosophical mentor handed me two books on graduation, and one of them was Midwest false suspicion and critique from the early 90s. That makes this case that we should read, particularly, the kind of you describe them as functional atheists, or economic atheists are psychological atheists, like Marx, and Freud and Nietzsche. We should read these people for Linton that was his, his thesis. And

Peter  34:20

its reason for that, by the way, do you know that that's where I was inspired to be?

Kyle  34:23

I was gonna ask you if it was, yeah, yeah. And so I've loved that. And I had, you know, I had the that very experience with Nietzsche, like deepening my faith in a way that he probably would have hated, but like recognizing that he was super right about most of it. And then that changing fundamentally how I related to God and the church. And so I was I really like what you do with atheism for Latin. I want you to describe it a little bit. But the more I hear you talk about this negation stuff, the less you're just totally honest. It I'm struggling to make sense of it, to be honest, and that includes the The idea that somehow the death of God is primary, when to me the resurrection is primary, which is very directly the overcoming of the death of God and of all death. And that life is the point. And, and there's also I think, a deeper Galleon thing going on here that I just don't understand some some My My background is probably more analytic but I went to a department that had a lot of continental influence. So I've read lots of different kinds of philosophy and and I've just never been able to have a straight conversation with Galen.

Peter  35:31

Maybe not today, maybe you can help

Kyle  35:33

me understand what the hell dialectic means. Because you talk about, and I, there's parts of this that I can really get on board with. But when you take it to a certain extent, it's like that stops making sense to me. So like, you talk about when you critique something so hard that the next version of that thing comes out of the critique. Right, are you I think you've used the phrase sublimation when you're talking about it. So you have a thesis and you have an antithesis. And like, when they get to their fullest point, it's not at their weak points, I heard you say that, that the true critique comes in, it's when they're like at their strongest point. And then they kind of sprout their own critique, right. But I just think of all these counter examples. So that's just clearly not true. Like, sometimes you just have a fundamental disagreement. And I would think of theism and atheism as a great example of this, which is, you do a whole lot with there being this other thing that comes out of that, that seeming disagreement, but then there's actually this some kind of synthesis later. But to me, it's like, if I try to make a synthesis out of that, at bottom, I'm doing a disservice to both sides, because there really is a true fundamental, as far as I can tell, impassable disagreement between people who call themselves atheists and people who call themselves theists and making some interesting philosophical, third thing is fine, but it's not what they're doing. So that's a whole lot of stuff I just threw at you do with it? What? Wonderful,

Peter  36:54

there's a lot in that. And I'm tempted to go a couple of directions. So you may choose your own adventure here. One is, I might try to get because what you're describing when I talk about a thesis, antithesis, or an affirmation negation, negation of negation, and you can say yes, we can think of lots of counter examples. So maybe, but that's kind of almost like, you know, a very simple example, what might be interesting is to go to an example that I think is much stronger, a stronger, a stronger definition of what I mean by dialectics that I think would appeal to an analytic philosopher. So I'm trained in continental philosophy, as you knew, I did do a little bit of analytic philosophy. And personally, I'm actually fine. I'm very interested, you know, the physicist, Roger Penrose at all. He's a very interesting mathematician and physicist, he's not a philosopher, but, you know, analytic philosophers will like that stuff more than Continentals. Anyway, there's it, I think I can use some of his work to describe what I mean by dialectics. So should we do theism for that first? And maybe, maybe I'll give it I'll give a little bit of an overview what it is, I'm sure it is. And we can go from there. So yeah, if it wasn't for that is a decentering practice that I do, designed to help people enter into, and feel this relationship and this discussion on this dance between affirmation and negation. And so you know, overlength people every day get a reflection from a great thinker. I mentioned that the book that inspired this was Merrill Westfall, suspicion and fear that you mentioned. And interestingly, that book, he's a confessional Catholic philosopher, it was really just reading Nietzsche, Freud marks for your back as kind of like purification readings, atheism, for land has developed a lot since I was teaching that book, know what it is, is the first week, we look at standard arguments for the existence of God, you know, the teleological cosmological ontological arguments, then the next week. So that's the affirmation God exists. The next week then is the first negation. And that's that's kind of what you can describe as traditionally a theism. We look at the best arguments that are kind of like argue that God doesn't exist from things like logical inconsistency. We know the problem of evil, to the burden of proof to kind of the various arguments that have been used by philosophers to critique it hasn't like week three is where it gets interesting, because week three, enters the first form of what I would call theologically a theism. So most people today think that he had theism, theism are completely opposed. And if you watch YouTube videos, there's a theist and an atheist, and they get together, but actually, there's lots of shapes of atheism and theism. So the mystics were a group and continue to be there continue to be mystics, who really drew out the idea that the word God is a signifier that signifies something beyond signification. So that's a very key concept. Right, and Anslem is really the one who gives that definition of God. So we have all of these words that signify things. But when we use the word God, we are describing a reality that is beyond signification. And one of the results of that is that you have to negate all the things you think, right? Because that's idolatry, right? So there's a form of atheism as a purification process where you have to disbelieve what you say about God. So there's a naming of God and a Dini, a man of God, answer them basically, as you know, in the pros lobby on said that God, I mean, he basically said, this is God is that, Dan recetas? Exactly, actually, God is that van which none greater can be conceived. And it's a really interesting statement, because he doesn't say God is the greatest conceivable thing. Because then you could conceive something greater than God, I could conceive of something beyond conception. So Anslem says, and because God has to have maximal properties of excellence, if you can think of something greater than God, that's a that's a paradox. That's a vicious contradiction. So he says, God must be that which scans beyond conception, because God is hyper present hyper nonnamous, God saturates us with Uber, proximity, etc, etc, etc. One of the greatest philosophical mistakes, I think, is your like, marry on who, you know, argues very, very well for this idea of God as our religious experience as a saturated phenomenon of short circuiting, that type of all that comes from being overwhelmed anyway, right. So that form of theism is also atheistic. In fact, atheism is actively described by some of them saying that, you know, Meister Eckhart says, may God rid me of God, that there is always an atheistic purification process, right. So that's three, three, very quickly, week four is then a negation of that, because that becomes a new affirmation of source. And then you get into what you talked about the functional protects people like Freud, and Nietzsche marks, they are not interested in arguments against the existence of God, right? They're interested in what's going on in religion. So this is a massive turn to something else. So what these guys are doing is, it's funny because what for your backdoors, as a very interesting thinker is he always says the Mystics are kind of great, be a mystic have your saturated experience of God in the mind and brain. And that is the bit that's the extra mental remainder. Right is religion. So the Mystics are the original spiritual but not religious, right? spiritual but not religious. It's like you can have this spiritual encounter, and religion is the extra mental remainder. That's your fragmented attempt to make sense of the spiritual experience. Right? So the Mystics are the original spiritual, but not religious. And of course, for your back brilliantly says, Well, I'm religious, but not spiritual. And he says, I think that's what Christianity is, he says, the most interesting thing is what people do, what religion is and what we do with it. And he famously said, theology is anthropology. He says, religion tells us about ourselves, it tells us about, for him, the essence of humanity, etc, etc. But Marx, you know, made that more precise. But But But still, the move is interesting. This is the move to go in, like the bit that you're throwing away. That's really interesting. That's something that we can do something with anyway. So that's then the negation of the mystics of sorts is a different type of negation, but it's like go have your spiritual experience, but leave us with the religion. And then the week after that is the theological existentialists who fully embrace the imminent critique and go like it's religion on the meatiness of religion and evidence going on. That's the interesting stuff. But in that there is something otherwise than being so as a different ship. That's not the mystics who say God is hyper being in someone like Paul Tillich, God is the grind of being that's a different ship of religion. And then that keeps going and we go through another ship of religion. But the point of the atheism for Lent is you start to see that atheism and theism have had different forms of relationship than just the there they're opposed. They become increasingly enmeshed in an interesting way. And the reason for doing this up to length is because let you experience God in the words of GK Chesterton, kind of experiencing a form of existential atheism. Oh, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? So, anyway, that's what atheism for Lent is. And it's an attempt to help people experience how indication is a part of the life of religion and not the opposite of Do you want me to give you like, I think, proof that you might find convincing about what I'm saying.

Randy  44:53

I don't care if I do.

Peter  44:58

Okay, well, I'm writing about this at the moment. I Got back to writing and writing a book at the moment and I'm delving in which is a bad idea but in mathematics and physics, I'm very interested in girdles and completeness theorem because in a nutshell girdles and completeness theorem proves that a mathematical system that tries to be complete and consistent will always have a non computable dimension. So, that means that there is if you are a naturalist in terms of CSV or if you're a materialist and Yuko, everything in the universe is computable, theoretically with a Bryggen of Brienne. Well, girdles Incompleteness Theorem says, Well, no, there's one exception to that. There's everything is computable. Except there is also something that is true, but not provable. Right? That's that's doing this thing. And if people don't understand it in a very superficial way, what a very good analogy is, if I invented and this wasn't my metaphor, somebody else's. But if we imagine that we've built a universal truth machine, a machine that can compute anything and prove anything that we put into it, then Google basically showed that you could put this machine into a corner and do something like James T. Kirk did once in one of the episodes of Star Trek, where he said, you can make one statement that the universal truth machine can't prove, but that's true. And basically, that statement is G an algebraic term g equals the universal truth machine cannot will will never say this is true. So you can't put that into the machine. Because if the machine proves its true, then it's false. So it can't do anything with it. But it's true. It's it's as a statement as a it's a true statement that cannot be proved. No what what, Roger Penrose pen ruse read, sorry, Roger, Penrose argues, is in a similar way. One of the problems with physics that we have is how do you have a theory of everything Quantum Theory of Everything, right? You've got the deterministic world of general relativity, and then you've got the quantum world non determinism. Right? And we've Well,

Kyle  47:14

that's, that's controversial.

Peter  47:17

Yes, that's kind of Britain. Okay. Well, that's good. Yes. And we'll go with it for a second and then I'll give you a pan ruses response. And then yes, if you want to, we can, we can pick up but if but at the moment, there isn't a theory of everything right at the moment. One thing that's really struggling is, is quantum mechanics can't deal with gravity, right? That's the big issue, you know, so there's, rather

Kyle  47:37

than it can deal with it in so many ways, and there's no evidential way to choose whether

Peter  47:42

new evidential way to choose yes, it's all speculative, like string theory, multiple universes, etc, etc, which I don't go with, right for, for this reason, actually, is if it's true, that girdles Incompleteness Theorem shows that there is something that is true, but not provable. Right? Penrose calls this proto consciousness, right? Because consciousness is a second order reflection on computational reality, right? So we are self conscious, because we are in the world, and we're doing our things all conditioned by all sorts of factors, but we also have this thing where we can reflect on that, right. So Prudhoe consciousness is the idea that the universe has within it a non computable dimension, which actually cancel the potentially the issue of why we have function collapses into into a determinate position, because there's always within reality, something non computable, right. The reason why I mentioned in all of this, it might be get too technical, is because dialectics is really just the idea that there is an inherent, non deterministic kind of kernel within reality, that means that it can never be totalized that reality can never be totalized. That's that's all dialectics is. It's that it's that notion. And but yeah, anyway, do you want us to come back on any of that, and we can,

Kyle  49:17

I would so love to come some of that. But I don't know if like, I don't know, if I can I'm getting I'm getting the cut it off signal from our, from our producer, I'll say one tiny thing that you're not allowed to respond to. And that is that I think you might be making the same mistake some of the physicists I see making, which is they want to reify their formalism, and then just not think about the deeper metaphysical or epistemic problems with with doing that. And so when I'd look at something like the Incompleteness Theorem, applying that just directly to what the nature of the universe might be, like, one it's not what girdle intended. But second, like what's the motivating reason to do that? Like there is a phenomenological world that is clearly different from how axiomatic systems work, and I just don't see the argument From here's how it works in this niche, you know,

Peter  50:04

I know I'm not allowed to respond without saying one thing I want to say 100 things I'm gonna say one thing, which is that weirdly, this is one of the bizarre things of high mathematics and physics seem to be spookily interconnected. So it's not, it's not a big jump to say that something at the core of mathematics might give us an insight into the core of physics and vice versa, because weekly mathematics gives us such spookily accurate, which

Kyle  50:33

is just another way of saying physics is mathematical all the way down, I'm saying, taking that and then applying it to something about, you know, existential human life, or meaning or religion, or, I don't know, any, any way of describing the universe that isn't in a physical formal system. I just don't see that connection like this tells us something true about the world that we should then find some congruence with how we like deeply experienced, do you

Peter  50:59

think you're kind of in the Euro old school idealist like you in the sense like we're outside of the natural?

Kyle  51:05

No, no, no, I don't I don't want to go that far. No, it's just we construct these tools and these proofs or these proofs of non proofs, or whatever, for very specific purposes, and then it requires extra argumentation to apply those to broader things, which is often lacking in people who want to want to make them mean more than they seem to me on the face

Peter  51:26

100%. Otherwise, they might trees and philosophy. So interestingly, I've come to physics and mathematics, only, very late and also only in the sense that I find what is happening. And Hegel has a really interesting connection with some things in physics, but like some like slot machines that I think is written well on that and his book, less than nothing, I think is a it's a very good book on those connections. But yes, let's get too lost in the weeds.

Randy  51:53

We need to talk some more. And again, Kyle, Kyle throws the hard balls and curveballs and everything. I'm gonna throw you the soft balls, because I'm a pastor, which means that I'm not an expert at anything except for being a pompous dick. So I do you were getting at a lot of this in the in the beginning of our conversation, Pete and I've heard you talk in ways like this that I want to just ask you and just have you go on about a little bit. I've heard you say that we humanity are looking for God to fill the emptiness the abyss of emptiness, like Pascal kind of famously got to, but you say that perhaps God doesn't feel the abyss? Perhaps God is the Abyss itself. Can tell us what you mean by that?

Peter  52:34

Yeah, this is this is very key. So there's various ways various ships of understanding God, for example, I mentioned a couple of them earlier, there's goddess hyper being, there's God, a Supreme Being or goddess grind of being etc, etc. I personally don't think that institutional religion Christianity has the so far theorized and created a practice of a notion of God that you find in someone like for example, some movie but and others, but of that, in a sense, there is an inexistent thing. That means again, like so, and this is probably the big difference in analytic philosophy and continental philosophy, analytic philosophers tend to think nothing is nothing and continental philosophers tend to think nothing was something honestly, they got,

Kyle  53:26

which one makes more sense to you listener?

Peter  53:32

I know I'll lose everybody on that. But then I've got the chance to convince them here. So you could say that zero is an interesting thing like that zero was very controversial number and some people thought it was demonic because nothing doesn't exist. So when you signify nothing by putting a circle and going that signifies nothing, some people thought that was anti God because God is everything and to symbolize nothing to symbolize privation is to kind of symbolize what is not God but the zero is just a is just a rendering nothing into something we do it all the time but that's a form of of nothing, that is something square root of minus one imaginary numbers etc etc. So in a nutshell, I want to argue like here's very practically I'll say very practically we live in what you know be Yong Chol huncles the world of pure positivity it seize the day life hack, you know do be the best that you can be etc etc. And it'd be be be an even negativity noi becomes a way of being more positive you do therapy in order to be a better worker you sleep because that actually makes you more efficient you know you kind of like you know in I lived in LA people can't even do drugs without having a mean something you have to do to meet God or to be creative or to kind of you know, be one with everybody right this there's so even even spaces religious space because this you know, festival is a religious thing, which was a big simply a sheer destruction without reward like you destroy an animal you don't eat up, right? So you're getting rid of this, this this realm of negativity, the negative. And we're in this is a world of pure positivity. And I think some of the symptoms of pure positivity are fatigue, burnout, depression, I would argue as well, more controversially, but even certain things like autism can be seen as interconnected with these with the world of pure positivity that we're in. So when I talk about the spirit, the need for a desert and the basis for a space of pure negativity, for this experience of negation and contradiction at the heart of everything. One is I'm thinking that is very important for our own health. I believe it's also very important for politics. But also I want to say, there is there is a precedent to saying that the signifier, God signifies that which cannot be signified I in signifies negation. So the mystics were the first to explore that. But there's other ways to understand that idea. But I would say that I am being very traditional when I say that God is the signifier that signifies that which cannot be signified. Therefore, God is a signifier that signifies indication a lot, and that's vitally important. So

Kyle  56:21

kind of related to some of that, and one of your videos, I think it was a video on this church with a contradiction thing that you're doing. And which if you want to briefly set up, that's fine. You talk about and I think it's related to what we were just saying about negativity, you talk about the this is how it read it anyway, the inadequacy of epistemic humility, which is where maybe a lot of progressive religious folks end up and that spike piqued my attention, because we talked about that all the time on our show. That's kind of our recurring theme. I introduced Randy way back at the beginning to this idea of epistemic humility. And as a

Randy  56:54

pastor, I was like, no, but no pastors have epistemic humility.

Kyle  56:59

Yeah, and so it's kind of honestly what we aim for on the podcast, it's very Socratic thing for me, like if I can get my students to just at the end of the course, admit that they didn't know what they thought they knew coming into the course I've succeeded philosophically. And we aim for something very similar here. But you seem like you thought there was like an inadequacy in that view. And it's related to your whole thing on negativity. So can you spell that for us a little bit?

Peter  57:20

Yeah, if you lie me, I'll tell a little story. And then on pocket very quickly, a little story that I told the first time I ever spoke publicly. And that is, it's not my story. But three people die on the same day, mistake, an evangelical pastor, and as fundamentalist, the old one. And as we know, you have to get an interview with Jesus before you get in. So the mistake is the first and he goes into the interview room, that little signs turn around, he's in there for an hour, he comes out and he's like, smile, and he's laughing to himself. Oh, he says, I knew I was wrong. I knew I was wrong and walks into heaven. Then as the evangelical pastors turn, he gets up dust donors bail walks in confidently. He's in there for about four hours and the door opens and he comes out and he goes like, Oh, Hi, can I think so wrong? Devastated, walks into heaven. Finally, as the fundamentalist turn, he gets up, walks into the room, little signs turned around, and he's in there for about six hours, and then the door flings open and Jesus comes out and says, Hi, can I have been so wrong? Right? Like, I love that little story. And when I first told that story, I affirmed the surface reading of which is basically we should all be like the mistake, right? That's kind of like, you know, that's the joke. We want to be like the mystic, we do want to be like the fundamentalist. That's epistemic on diet and unknowing humility. But more recently in in the book I'm writing at the moment I retell that story. And I say, No, we need to be more like fundamentalist, right? That what happened is the fundamentalist goes into the room, and is asking all these questions and searching, searching, searching. And then Ultimate Reality goes, how good I've been throwing in other words, what you find is that date isn't IN YOU JUST IN YOU DON'T is also woven into the very fabric of reality, it's well made. That is an argument for saying that there is, you know, we are gonna have to unpack this in our next session, but a spontaneity and novelty and non deterministic dimension at the heart of being itself and that's ontological unknowing. So epistemological unknowing is I don't know that's very clear regarding even said it, you know, like, we don't know God news, right? God's got the blueprints for Wheaton. ontological unknowing, is saying God doesn't have the blueprints either. Right? There's that, that that, that there's a radical unknowing, that is in the heart of of reality. And here's the, here's the important thing, this thing because I'm not a postmodernist, right, I did my PhD and post modernism, funnily enough post structuralism, but but like, epistemological unknowing can very easily bleed into this idea that we don't know that there's some course we don't know stuff. I Watch YouTube religiously. I learned things all the time that I don't know, of course, there's stuff we don't know. Right? That's obvious, right? What is more crazy is what if we can know that there is an unknown ability and incompleteness or inconsistency within reality itself, and that is not an unknowing that's actually a knowing of unknowing we, we can get into probabilities, but there's a certain dimension of reality that is newer, even within evangelicalism, there is the open theism stuff so even within you know, there is this this is not even unprecedented within a conservative world like if a lot of confessional Christians are white handed in their version of this as well. I saying something different from them, but it's not million miles away. So if I remember the question correctly, because I always forget the the I want to move people epistemological unknowing is a great first step. It's a great place to go. But what I want to say is actually what's amazing is, there is a dimension of unknowing that we can do, and I'll just give you the name of it and various domains. But I think I think in mathematics, it's girdles and completeness theorem. In physics, it might be Heisenberg's uncertainty in politics, it's called democracy, the non at oneness of the, the social body that creates civilization. In biology. It's called abolition the non oneness of organisms that create complexity in the realm of the psyche, it's called the unconscious, not the union unconscious, the Freudian unconscious, right? That this consciousness is not at one with itself. In the realm of I've done most of them, but in the realm of religion, it's the death of God. Right? So for me, the death of God is like so in all of these fields, what we're discovering in different ways and different forms, is the truth that is not computable manifests itself in different ways in different ways, even in sociology, what a society or society filled with just individuals, or is it some collective that individuals are subsumed into, but no, society is the impossibility of answering that, right. So anyway, all of these disciplines and anthropology with levy strokes come to what I want to argue, which is that this fundamental rupture or non oneness, so reality isn't one and reality isn't two and reality isn't multiple reality is not one. It's Trinitarian. And, again, this is what I think you find in Christianity.

Kyle  1:02:37

I did not expect the conclusion of that. So that was a nice twist at the end. I really appreciate. There's lots more to follow up on unfortunately, we've come to the end of our time here. Can we continue this conversation later?

Peter  1:02:49

Absolutely. I

Randy  1:02:50

would love to. Yeah, absolutely. We can't wait for part two with Pete Rollins. Pete, thank you so much for giving us your time and sharing some thoughts. This has been so fun.

Peter  1:02:58

All right. Oh, I love that I love the can't wait for party.

Randy  1:03:14

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Kyle  1:03:30

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Randy  1:03:38

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Kyle  1:03:46

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Randy  1:03:50

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Kyle  1:03:51

Cheers!