A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

In and out

Christopher has a post on universalism that pretty closely approximates my own view. In short: we believe salvation is through Christ, but we don’t know how far that salvation extends. We can hope–but not know–that it extends to everyone.

One other point I’d add is that Christians usually presume we’re on the “inside,” and the question is whether non-Christians get “in” too. But an Augustinian account of grace would remind us that we don’t know, definitively, who’s “in” or “out” in this life. The line between the city of God and the city of man isn’t given to us to discern. In the Bible, it’s often the outsiders who demonstrate, in surprising ways, their closeness to God, and the insiders their blindness.

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