BY JEDIDIAH PASCHALL
There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early. Psalm 46: 4-5 To understand the foundation of the city of […]
Read MoreA Prayer of Confession Forgive us Lord, For not gazing with gratitude Upon the dandelion, Whose beauty is no less stately than the rose; Dancing on a dilapidated lawn beside the ramshackle home, Dazzling us with her sunfire shine, Reminding us that no overlooked corner, no overworn space is incapable of being touched by […]
Read MoreIlaria Ramelli is a superb scholar, and if you are at all inclined to look into the subject of Christian Universalism, she would be among the first I would recommend consulting. Her most recent volume, A Larger Hope?, Volume 1: Universal Salvation from Christian Beginnings to Julian of Norwich is a highly accessable summary of her […]
Read More“When people dismiss early Christian universalism as an aberration in Christian theology, dreamed up by Origen in the third century under the influence of paganism and later discerned to be heretical they err on several counts. First, they fail to appreciate that Origen’s theology of apokatastasis was primarily a synthesis of much earlier Christian ideas, […]
Read MoreThe following is an excerpt from Erich Auerbach’s 1929 publication, Dante: Poet of the Secular World – ‘The story of Christ is more than the parousia of the logos, more than the manifestation of the idea. In it the idea is subjected to the problematic character and desperate injustice of earthly happening. Considered in itself […]
Read More“And the smoke of their torment rises for ages of ages” – Revelation of John 14:11; The New Testament: A Translation, David Bentley Hart The smoke of the torment of the damned is the incense of their righteousness. So this smoke will ascend to the presence of God forever and ever; so, that this offering […]
Read MoreFor Whom the Bell Tolls No man is an island, Entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thine own […]
Read MoreIn what is my estimation, John Steinbeck’s finest novel East of Eden, he moves in and out of a sermonic discourse that thunders from another place where beauty dances in the human heart and speaks to the kind of experience that shatters the dim world we so often feel confined to: Sometimes a kind of glory […]
Read MoreWhen you’re going to hit something on the nose, hit it hard and fast and often. — Aristotle… or Confucius (whatever, I found the quote on the internet) … Only the flicker Over the strained time-ridden faces Distracted from distraction by distraction Filled with fancies empty of meaning… — TS Eliot from Burnt Norton, […]
Read MoreFor those of us, myself included who retain ties to evangelicalism in some way (I would say I am evangelicalish of a small c- catholic variety), have to overcome some serious obstacles to embrace an orthodox understanding of Christian Universalism. Micheli, a Methodist minister, and host of the excellent podcast Crackers and Grape Juice, where […]
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