Rollins on new birth

Pete Rollins, The Fidelity of Betrayal:

"This new life that is testified to constantly in the Bible, as our reflections show, cannot be thought of as something that one sees, touches, or ever experiences. It cannot be a mere object in the world. Rather, it can be thought of only as the incoming of that which transforms all our relationships with objects in the world. In short, it is that which fundamentally changes how we interact with the things we see, touch, and experience."

"Religious experience, in it's fundamental form, is not then an experience at all but rather a counter-experience, one that transforms our mode of being in the world rather than being reduced to some strange feeling. With the incoming of this truth nothing necessarily changes in the physical world, no new object enters our horizon. But in its aftermath the person is never the same again, for everything has changed."

"This means that the truth spoken of within the Judeo-Christian tradition transcends the mundane level of debates concerning the accuracy of certain historical claims, interesting as such debates may be. This does not in any way mean that parts of the Bible do not make historical, geographical, and archeological assertions, but rather that the real kernel of Christianity is referring to something infintely deeper, richer, and more esoteric than some factual claim that can be accepted or rejected without any significant change in the individual."

"Because of the utterly immanent nature of this transcendental birth, all reflection fails to grasp it."