Divine Dance By Richard Rohr Extract

With a foreword by author, Wm Paul Young and accolades from Brian McLaren and U2 singer, Bono, The Divine Dance (Richard Rohr with Mike Morrell) has been cited as having the “wisdom of CS Lewis and the accessibility of Rob Bell”.

So it’s no surprise that The Divine Dance has proved to be a popular choice, amongst a new generation, in the United States looking to unpack the complex issue of The Trinity.

We’re sharing an extract below, to begin to open up the work of Richard Rohr and Mike Morrell:

“I believe we’re at precisely such a moment when it comes to our images of God. Instead of the idea of the Trinity being an abstruse conundrum, it could well end up being the answer to the foundational problem of Western religion.

Instead of God being the Eternal Threatener, we have a God as the Ultimate Participant - in everything - both the good and the painful.

Let me try and describe two paradigms in sharp contrast.

Instead of an Omnipotent Monarch, let’s try what God as Trinity demonstrates as the actual wondrous shape of the Divine Reality, which then replicates itself in us (see Genesis 1:26) and in “all the array” of creation (see Genesis 2:1).

Instead of God watching life happen from afar and judging it…

How about God being inherent in life itself?

How about God being the life force of everything?

Instead of God being an object like any other object…

How about God being the life energy between each and every object (which we would normally call love or spirit)?

This allows God to be much larger, at least coterminous with the ever-larger universe we are discovering and totally inclusive - what else could any God worthy of that name be?

Instead of the small god we seem stuck with in our current (and dying) paradigm, usually preoccupied with exclusive, the Trinitarian Revolution reveals God as with us in all of life instead of standing on the sidelines, always critiquing which things belong and which things don’t.

The Trinitarian Revolution reveals God as always involved instead of the in-and-out deity that leaves most of humanity “orphaned” much of the time (see John 14:18).”

Extract Taken from The Divine Dance (Rohr, 2016) pages 36-37. Used with permission (Published by SPCK).