Last week I promised to re-open the elephant-sized door and discuss Last Judgment. I’ll frame my comments here around the questions of universalism. Universalism is an ancient view in Christian theology that all creation will ultimately be restored and commune with God. That God’s last words to us will be a repetition of God’s first words: “It is good.” I hope that turns out to be the case. But I am not a universalist. Not quite anyway. Who Gets to... Read more
Last week, in a blog about faith, I wrote the following: If we decouple self-awareness about faith from anxiety about the Last Judgment—a crucial decoupling, if theology is to have integrity—then honest conversation about the persuasiveness of the faith can be a beautiful thing. Two of you asked me to expand on that line. I’ll do my best. Theology from the Brainstem Integrity there is the key word. Or at least one of them. Imagine, for instance, a case of... Read more
Now they will rest before shouldering the endless work they were created to do down here in Paradise. That closing line of Toni Morrison’s novel, Paradise, leaves so many questions unanswered. Not the least of which is whether the “they” of the line are real, dreams, or dreaming realities. I don’t mean that as a critique. The late Morrison was a master of the blended realities of what she called “village literature.” Her novels imitate the oral traditions of campfire... Read more
Some time ago I had a student in my office who was having a crisis of faith. Actually, it wasn’t so much a crisis as an honest admission that she was finding the sorts of things we say in the Creed to be hard to accept. Even though I teach folks who have already discerned a vocation in Christian ministry, it’s not that rare, in fact, that I have these “threshold” type conversations of one sort or another. From time... Read more
At Home by the Water Rivers make good boundaries. Not so much for keeping unwanted strangers away: they are a bit fickle for that work. Their depths fluctuate, and the water level changes seasonally. Besides, humans are pretty good by now at building boats and bridges. But that’s not really the purpose of good boundaries anyhow. Like a zipcode or the four mountains of Navajoland, boundaries let us know where we come from. Where we are at home. They show... Read more
Warning, readers: today’s column walks through some weedy speculative philosophy. To quote Lemony Snicket, you should probably stop reading now. There. You’ve been warned. The Limits of Experience I’ve said before that I’m interested in thinking of heaven as something other than an after life. By that I don’t mean to say that there is nothing but this life as we experience it. I also don’t want to say that there is no resurrection at the end. I mean, rather, that... Read more
“Growth in holiness and ascent from grace to grace does not occur automatically, but actively… ‘synergistically,’ in Christ and with Christ….” —Sergei Bulgakov Bulgakov and Me As a Wesleyan, raised on a steady diet of sermons on sanctification in Nazarene Churches, there’s a certain retrospective obviousness to my finding my way to Bulgakov’s theology of deification. I first heard the name Sergei Bulgakov from one of my professors, Gene Rogers. Gene was reading the Russian theologian in French translations in... Read more
As Easter approaches in western Christendom, I find myself asking a very basic question of Christian faith. What is resurrection? Resurrection in Galilee In Mark’s account of the end of Jesus’ life on earth, Jesus tells his disciples what will happen at the end. But it’s not the way we usually tell the story. “You will all become deserters. … But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.” It’s a strange little detail, isn’t it?... Read more
Going Up In Mark 11, Jesus goes up to Jerusalem. It’s odd: the text repeats those directional adverbs—up and down—on several occasions. Cartographers point out that these are elevational directions rather than the cardinal sort. Jerusalem lies to Galilee’s south, so you can’t go “up” there. But it is higher, by some 2000 ft. But I suspect that there’s more to those directional adverbs. Think of the way the Hebrew poet speaks: “I lift up mine eyes to this hills”... Read more
On the eve of Holy Week, I’m noticing the ho-hum way Mark’s triumphal entry account concludes. Let’s call it the paradox of the palms. “Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked round at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve” (11:11). A bit of an anti-climax, after all the hosannas. Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem is a strange story. Its significance isn’t quite clear in either the... Read more
The Diagonal Way
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