Universal Christ

In his decades as a globally recognized teacher, Richard Rohr has helped millions realize what is at stake in matters of faith and spirituality. Yet Rohr has never written on the most perennially talked about topic in Christianity: Jesus. Most know who Jesus was, but who was Christ? Drawing on scripture, history, and spiritual practice, Rohr articulates a transformative view of Jesus Christ as a portrait of God’s constant, unfolding work in the world.

The great fourth-century church father Basil of Caesarea once observed that, in his time, most Christians believed that hell was not everlasting, and that all would eventually attain salvation. But today, this view is no longer prevalent within Christian communities. In this momentous book, David Bentley Hart makes the case that nearly two millennia of dogmatic tradition have misled readers on the crucial matter of universal salvation.

In his landmark book The Universal Christ, Richard Rohr articulated a transformative view of what it means to recognize Jesus as "Christ" - as a portrait of God's constant, unfolding work in the world. Now, in partnership with Patrick Boland, a psychotherapist and member of Rohr's Center for Action and Contemplation community, he invites listeners to engage with the themes of the book through spiritual practice.

The experiential and transformational teachings brought to each human being by Jesus of Nazareth transcending religious beliefs, creeds, cultures, and time. The essence of the teachings of Jesus called the Anointed One is the awakening of the spiritual depths of human beings in a way that utterly transforms their understanding of themselves and of their relationship with life. Our world desperately needs such a unifying vision and a sense of common ground among people and cultures. It is the mystic first and foremost who reveals the spiritual home that we all share and the wondrous purpose ...

I've studied the sayings of Jesus for over twenty years as my daily devotion. Interpretations of these sayings - both historical and spiritual - vary widely. I'm indebted to the Jesus Seminar for drawing scholarly distinctions between sayings that were likely spoken by Jesus, and those likely written by later editors and redactors. (I've kept my illuminations to the former.) Gentle as poems and pithy as koans, the words of Jesus will open our hearts forever when we take them in.

Robert William Dale (1829-1895) was an English Congregational church leader based in Birmingham. In "Christian Worldliness" he explores the endless conflict between Christianity and worldliness. He warns of "the bitter melancholy, this profound discontent with all things in Heaven above and on the earth beneath". Rejecting the idea of "the sanctity of misery" he criticizes the Book of Ecclesiastes and the image of the traditional "Romish Saint", and concludes by stating that for the miseries which we cannot avoid, Divine love offers infinite consolation.