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Dougald Hine's avatar

Reading this, what came to mind for me is the correspondence between the relationship of the Day of the Lord to the Greater Hope, in the way you describe it, and the relationship of Good Friday to Easter Sunday. In each case, the latter can't simply cancel out the former, or make it any less real. A phrase that came to me last Easter: "the Resurrection doesn't undo the Crucifixion, it changes the meaning of it" – which seems as though it would fit the relationship between the penultimate and the ultimate that you are describing here.

Anyhow, this is the second mention of George MacDonald that I've come across today, so I'll take that as a hint.

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David Summers's avatar

This is excellent, and pulls together some ideas I've been turning round in my mind from time to time over a few several years. Certainly the strong Biblical thread of God's justice needs to be held alongside the promise of universal restoration.

I'd add two things though. One is that I believe God's justice is ultimately restorative justice. No ultimate good is done by punishment - and certainly not eternal punishment. (Have you discussed this in the prison?) The other, and I think the more fundamental one, is that contemporary evangelicalism gets it wrong in being too "me-focussed". Salvation is about my well-being. Conversely, the gospel is primarily about God's glory. Not in the perverted sense expressed in Rabbie Burns's brilliant satire on Calvinism ("O Thou that in the heavens dost dwell / What as it pleases best Thysel / Sends ane tae heaven and ten tae hell / Aa for Thy glory / And no for ony gude or ill / they've deen afore Thee") but in the spirit expressed by Jesus "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven".

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