Sublime

In other words, in much popular modern Christian thought we have made a three-layered mistake. We have Platonized our eschatology (substituting “souls going to heaven” for the promised new creation) and have therefore moralized our anthropology (substituting a qualifying examination of moral performance for the biblical notion of the human vocation

We are merely and forever inside of the divine flow, just like Isaiah’s “rain and snow.” Forgiveness is not some churchy technique or formula. Forgiveness is constant from God’s side, which should become a calm, joyous certainty on our side. Mercy received will be mercy passed on, and “will not return to me empty, until it has succeeded in what it

Christ clarifies and specifies the nature, aim, and trustworthiness of all God’s dealings with us because Christ is where those dealings with us come to ultimate fruition.

This is at the heart of the way in which I believe we can today restate the doctrine of final judgment. I find it quite impossible, reading the New Testament on the one hand and the newspaper on the other, to suppose that there will be no ultimate condemnation, no final loss, no human beings to whom, as C. S. Lewis put it, God will eventually say,

we’re all sinners who deserve death and separation from God. For those of us who don’t get that, we’re the ones for whom things aren’t fair—we do not get what we deserve.

And I include myself in the criticism. We as the American church need to take more ownership for our collective sin, our obsession with things that will not make an ounce of difference in heaven, and our failure (past and present) to stand up and speak up for the poor, for the stranger, for the ones who don’t look like us.