Fascinating little vignette of D.B. Hart on the all encompassing nature of Universal Restoration. The upshot is so important regarding the hell/heaven debate: Historic Christian Universalism is NOT a little squabble about some minor issue of theology – No, it is grounded in the most important implications of an infinitely robust Christology – where the Cosmic scale shines blindingly forth in its glory – that Christ is the Redeemer of “all things” precisely because He is the Creator (and, therefore, Lover) of “all things”!
The Bible doesn’t give you imagery of some other place than this world. In the Old Testament, the New Testament, in the Prophets, in Paul—the only image of salvation that there is, is cosmic. It’s always not just human beings praising God but all the animals of the land and the sea. It’s a restored creation. It has a new Jerusalem in it—that imagery of a purified Jerusalem descending to earth. There is no notion of going to some ethereal heaven apart from the rest of creation.
The imagery is of a renewed world, a renewed cosmos in which everything—mineral, vegetable, animal, human—is present. The ground of all nature is personal presence. That’s more original than everything else. I think that is a reality that one can confirm in experience not just through some sort of set of metaphysical commitments.
It’s clear that, when you interact with animals, you’re interacting…
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Sovereign Love 