The Divine Magician Quotes

“Faith, then, is not a set of beliefs about the world. It is rather found in the loving embrace of the world. Because the actual existing church has reduced the Crucifixion and Resurrection to religious affirmations held by a certain tribe, rather than expressions of a type of life, the event they testify to has been almost completely eclipsed.”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“The point then is to help break the false distinction between the idea that there are those who are whole and those who have a lack. For the true distinction is between those who hide their lack under the fiction of wholeness and those who are able to embrace it.”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“The evidence of “forgiveness of sin” is not found in a profession of belief, but in a life freed from self-destructive pursuits, scapegoating, and violence.”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“When confronted with inner conflicts, we are tempted to obscure them by externalizing the antagonisms—something that is done through the hatred of others and/or the hatred of the self (a method in which the scapegoat mechanism is turned inward). The more difficult, courageous, and ethical path involves attempting to face and tarry with the antagonisms.”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“this is not about the mere extension of life along a horizontal plane, but about the deepening of life along a vertical plane. Mere longevity cannot render life meaningful any more than brevity has the power to make it meaningless.”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“Not only this, but churches are ideological in that they create their own constellation of beliefs and practices that tell their congregants how to think and behave. A denomination, for instance, will offer dogmas, doctrines, and rituals that to a greater or lesser extent let everyone know how to interact with the world.”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“God as love expresses the idea that the sacred is not found in a distant object toward which we focus our love, but rather is testified to in the act of loving itself. Faith, then, is not a set of beliefs about the world. It is rather found in the loving embrace of the world.”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“The event testified to within Christianity is evident in a life that has been freed from an idolatrous existence that turns us from the world to an iconic engagement with the world.”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“a scapegoat is that which we blame for not being able to get what we most desire; it is that which takes on the burden of our failure to get what we cannot reach—the sacred-object. A clear expression of scapegoating occurs when some individual or community is collectively viewed by another to be the obstacle preventing the attainment of their ultimate goal. Something one clearly witnesses in the way the figure of the Jew operates in fascist ideology. In this ideology, the Jew is seen to disrupt the society’s organic unity, tribal harmony, and collective identity.”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“Here we see how the barrier between Adam and Eve and the tree creates an excessive drive by making the fruit of the tree into something excessively desired. While Adam and Eve can try to content themselves with substitute objects, they remain enchanted by the illusion of what lies out of reach.”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“There was once an artistically talented teenager who felt unrequited love for a girl in his art class. It so happened that his beloved’s artwork was particularly bad, so bad, in fact, that it was often quietly mocked. One day the boy overheard two classmates laughing about how bad her artwork was. But just then she entered the room, and they quickly changed the subject. After a couple of minutes, the two classmates started playing a cruel game where they praised her for her artistic abilities. She protested, but the classmates kept insisting that she had real talent and should think about exhibiting something in the end-of-year art show. A week later she pulled the lovelorn boy to one side and asked for some advice about a painting. He jumped at the chance to talk with her, and while the work was terrible, he praised it profusely. To his horror, the praise he lavished on it convinced her to enter the painting in the school art exhibition. Because of his love, he didn’t want her to be humiliated, so the day before the show he went into the room holding all the submissions and stole her painting along with a couple of others. Once the theft was discovered, the art teacher quickly worked out who was guilty and pulled the boy out of class. Before suspending him, the teacher asked why he’d stolen the paintings. “That’s easy,” replied the boy. “I wanted to win the prize and so stole the best work.” News quickly spread around the school that the girl had created a masterpiece that might have won the prize if allowed to compete.”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“The Sanctuary was empty and the Holy of Holies untenanted. —BOOK V OF THE HISTORIES BY TACITUS, COMMENTING ON THE DISCOVERY OF GNAEUS POMPEIUS MAGNUS UPON ENTERING THE HOLY OF HOLIES IN 63 BCE”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“In order to destroy the scapegoat mechanism, a different strategy must be adopted. Instead of trying to create a community where there is no outsider, the real answer lies in understanding that there is a sense in which we are all outsiders. In concrete terms, this means that a community faces its own lack, rather than ignoring it and thus creating a scapegoat who must carry it.”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“But the problem is that the fundamental structure of scapegoating is not broken in the acceptance of the latest “other.” If the underlying scapegoat mechanism is not decommissioned, then new “others” will always arise to protect the group from its own internal conflicts. For”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“Faith, then, is not a set of beliefs about the world. It is rather found in the loving embrace of the world.”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“Paul understood that the prohibition (what he called “the Law”) was not the water that extinguished excessive desire, but a fuel that fed it. The problem for Paul was not desire as such, but rather its morphing into an obsessive/excessive impulse through the introduction of a law—a law that tempts us to act immorally precisely by demanding that we act morally.”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith