Baptism with Fire and St. Gregory of Nyssa’s On the Resurrection: “…He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” (Matthew 3:13) The fires of hell are a reality that cannot be dismissed in any honest reading of the New Testament. However, as I have stated throughout this series on Universal Salvation, the issue […]
Originally posted on Eclectic Orthodoxy: When first presented with the universalist hope, many Orthodox and Roman Catholics immediately invoke the authority of the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553), citing the fifteen anti-Origenist anathemas: “Apokatastasis has been dogmatically defined by the Church as heresy—see canon 1 … case closed.” Over the past two centuries, however, historians have…
As I continue to work through this series on Christian Universalism, I think it is important to reiterate that the classic doctrine of Universalism (termed in Greek as apokatastasis) as developed by the Church Fathers and later Christians in the broad-stream of orthodoxy (Eastern, Catholic, Protestant) do not deny the existence of hell. Rather, the […]
I have a conflicted relationship with suburban life, not because the suburbs are any more or less defective than the city, but because I have a conflicted relationship to life in this world. There’s beauty and ugliness, beauty in the ugliness, and ugliness in the beauty I suppose. The trick is to find hope and […]
Immemorial mountains cradle the suburban roads smoldering in the vale, Summer mirages’ liquid dance, And rhythmic beating through black arterial lines In the shadow of sacramental signs of consumptive desire – empty promises of sexed satisfaction and satiated hunger on every noisy corner, That rip like razor-wire through lungs empty of the sacred Breath. Still […]
Oh yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, to sins of will, Defects of doubt and taints of blood; That nothing walks with aimless feet, That not one life shall be destroy’d, Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made […]
I am working on a larger piece of poetry, which will take me a good deal of time to complete. I enjoy the poetic process because, if nothing else it affords me the opportunity return to my most natural state; namely the exploration in that liminal zone where I can test the limits of sanity […]
My inner nerd rejoices at all things Tolkien. Fr. Kimel has a great post up on my favorite section from the Silmarillion, the Ainulindalle – so for those of you who love Tolkien or great cosmogonies, enjoy: via Ainulindalë: The Creation of the Angels
Sometimes words stalk me in the middle of the night. There’s some stuff I have been mulling over for a while now and I suppose that the subconscious pools bubbled up to the surface and woke me up. So, I wrote. In the end all art is theft (I think I stole this line as […]