Category Archives: Rohr, Richard

Richard Rohr’s ‘Universal Christ’

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The Universal Christ (London: SPCK, 2019)

Richard Rohr’s latest offering will, as with his previous books, delight some and perplex others.  His many fans will love his fresh, imaginative, free-association, experientialist approach.  His critics will be distressed by what they see as his careless irrationality.  Count me among the latter; one of those ‘who value plodding virtues such as accuracy and attention to what the scriptures and teachers of the tradition have actually said, [and] will find difficulty with the sweeping generalisations, questionable assertions, and Aunt Sallys that Rohr frequently sets up, so as then to be able, triumphantly, to knock them down’

(Edward Dowler, writing in the Church Times).

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‘If the church were Christian’ – 1

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In his 2010 book, If the Church Were Christian: Rediscovering the Values of Jesus, Quaker pastor Philip Gulley offers a recipe for, well, making the Church Christian.  Richard Rohr thinks that the recipe is ‘superb’.  (Actually, if these two men are on the same page about what a desirable form of Christianity would look like, then I prefer Gulley’s more straightforward approach.  Rohr’s slipperiness is reflected in this wording…

‘Jesus is a model for living more than an object of worship’ (my emphasis)

…whereas Gulley says that if the church were ‘more Christian’:-

‘Jesus would be a model for living rather than an object of worship’ (my emphasis).…

‘If the church were Christian’ – intro

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In his 2010 book, If the Church Were Christian: Rediscovering the Values of Jesus, Quaker pastor Philip Gulley offers a recipe for, well, making the Church Christian.  Richard Rohr thinks that the recipe is ‘superb’, and restates it in the following words:-

  1. Jesus is a model for living more than an object of worship.
  2. Affirming people’s potential is more important than reminding them of their brokenness.
  3. The work of reconciliation should be valued over making judgments.
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Scripture: three steps forward, two steps back?

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No thoughtful reader of the Bible will deny that there is progression and development as God’s revelation unfolds.  Sometimes, this means that the old has become redundant, in the light of the new.  The good becomes the better, and the better becomes the best.  Read the book of Hebrews if you have any doubt about this.

But this is a far cry from the teaching of Richard Rohr, who says:-

‘Scripture is a polyphonic symphony, a conversation with itself, where it plays melodies and dissonance— three steps forward, two steps back.

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What’s wrong with Rohr?

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Some months ago, I was asked by a Christian friend to read, and comment on, ‘The Divine Dance: The Trinity And Your Transformation’ by Richard Rohr (SPCK, 2016).  We met, prayed together, discussed the book, and parted without really achieving a meeting of minds about whether this book is a reliable guide to a trinitarian spirituality, or is deeply flawed.

It gives me no pleasure to find fault with an affable Christian teacher, or to contradict a Christian friend who, along with many others, says that he has found Rohr’s teaching profoundly helpful.…

Dances with the Trinity?

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Important to Richard Rohr – important enough to use it as the title of a book – is the idea of the Holy Trinity as a dance.

Rohr explains:-

‘At the heart of Christian revelation, God is not seen as a distant, static monarch but— as we will explore together— a divine circle dance, as the early Fathers of the church dared to call it (in Greek perichoresis, the origin of our word choreography). God is the Holy One presenced in the dynamic and loving action of Three.’

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The ‘cosmic Christ’ and the ‘historical Jesus’

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Over the years, a number of attempts have been made to put some kind of wedge between ‘Christ’ and ‘Jesus’.  Some, for example, have distinguished between ‘the Jesus of history’ and ‘the Christ of faith’.  Philip Pullman, in similar vein, would have us imagine ‘Jesus’ as a ‘good man’ and ‘Christ’ as a ‘scoundrel’.

A couple of months ago, I read Richard Rohr’s book The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (Whitaker House: 2016).

I had been prompted to read it by a friend, who had felt reassured by Rohr’s challenge to evangelicalism’s ‘exclusivism’ and thought that this book offered a new and better way.…

Did Jesus know Greek?

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‘The New Testament itself is written in a language Jesus never spoke.’

So claims Richard Rohr (The Divine Dance: The Trinity and your transformation) in a throwaway comment.  It is one of a large number of careless and inaccurate statements by this writer.

The two main languages spoken by Jews at the time were Aramaic (in everyday communication) and Hebrew (in more formal religious matters).  But what about Greek?  This language had been spoken in Palestine for several centuries. …