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I am Mike Noakes.
That is was my pipe.
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(thoughts)

"Before the beautiful-no, not really before but within the beautiful-the whole person quivers. He not only 'finds' the beautiful moving; rather, he experiences himself as being moved and possessed by it."
- Hans Urs von Balthasar

"Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."
- Flannery o'Connor

"Christians are called to leave behind, in the tomb of Jesus Christ, all that belongs to the brokenness and incompleteness of the present world. It is time, in the power of the Spirit, to take up our proper role, our fully human role, as agents, heralds, stewards of the new day that is dawning."
- NT Wright

"When we think our brother or sister has sinned against us, such an affront is not just against us but against the whole community. A community established as peaceful cannot afford to let us relish our sense of being wronged without exposing that wrong in the hopes of reconciliation."
- Stan Hauerwas

"Advertising treats all products with the reverence and the seriousness due to sacraments."
- Thomas Merton

"All the believers were of one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possesions was their own, but they shared everything that they had."
- Acts of the Apostles

"For evil men account those things alone evil which do not make men evil; neither do they blush to praise good things, and yet to remain evil among the good things they praise. It grieves them more to own a bad house than a bad life, as if it were man's greatest good to have everything good but himself."
- St. Augustine

(reading)

The Eucharist of the Early Christians

The Collected Short Stories, Flannery o'Connor

The Kingdom of God is Within You, Tolstoy

(have read)

Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Pope John Paul II

God is Near Us, Pope Benedict XVI

Heretics/Orthodoxy, GK Chesterton

Sonnets from the Portuguese, Elizabeth Barret Browning

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Monday, October 09, 2006

Ten propositions on hell

Stolen from Dan at On Journeying with those in Exile.

Let us begin by asserting that:

(1) Jesus saves us from hell in the same way that he saves us from death.

This can then be rephrased in a more provocative manner:

(2) Jesus does not save us from hell any more than he saves us from death.

Yet:

(3) Our salvation from death does not prevent us from dying. Rather, our salvation from death is a salvation that leads us through death.

Consequently:

(4) Our salvation from hell does not prevent us from "descending into hell." Rather, our salvation from hell is a salvation that leads us through hell.

If this is the case then:

(5) What we mean by the word "hell" must be reconsidered.

As we do this we must note that:

(6) The references to hell in the early creeds (the Apostles' Creed and the Athanasian Creed) occur within the domain of Christology (and they are not a part of the assertions about the final end state of humanity -- which only speak of the "resurrection of the dead" and the "life everlasting").

Therefore:

(7) "Hell" must be understood within the framework of Jesus' mission.

When this occurs:

(8) "Hell" is best understood as the place where Jesus' ultimate, and salvific, solidarity with "sinners," with the god-forsaken, and with those who experience the utter extremes of exile comes to its fullest expression.

Furthermore, it must be remembered that:

(9) Christians are called to participate in the mission of Jesus, not because Jesus' victory was incomplete, but so that Jesus' victory can be implemented in the present.

Therefore:

(10) Christian's are not saved from hell, if that is taken to mean a complete escape from hell. Rather, Christians are saved so that they can participate in Jesus' descent into hell, and share in his mission of salvific solidarity with the god-forsaken.

posted by -mike- at 3:25 PM

 

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