BY JEDIDIAH PASCHALL
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 […]
Read MoreOriginally 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 […]
Read MoreI 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 […]
Read MoreImmemorial 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 […]
Read MoreOh 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 […]
Read MoreI 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 […]
Read MoreMy 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
Read MoreSometimes 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 […]
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ST. JUDE'S TAVERN 