A poem celebrating Christian Universalism
Explorations in New Testament Greek: Apocatastasis
By Scott Cairns
*Among obscurer heresies, this dearest rests
within a special class of gross immoderation,
the heart of which reveals what proves these days to be
a refreshing degree of filial regard.
Specifically, the word is how we apprehend
one giddy, largely Syriac belief that all
and everyone will be redeemed – or, more nearly,
have been redeemed, always, have only to notice.
You may have marked by now how late Semitic habits
are seldom quite so neighbourly, but this ancient one
looks so downright cordial I shouldn’t be surprised
if it proved genesis for the numbing vision
Abba Isaac Luria glimpsed in his spinning
permutations of The Word: Namely, everything
we know as well as everything we don’t in all
creation came to be in that brief, abysmal
vacuum The Holy One first opened in Himself.
So it’s not so far a stretch from that Divine Excess
to advocate the sacred possibility
that in some final, graceful metanoia He
will mend that ancient wound completely, and for all.*
Scott Cairns is an American Greek orthodox poet originally from a Reformed background. The poem is written in a ‘difficult style’ and I’m still thinking it through (although I really like it) Here are some notes I’ve made on what I think it means to date – but feel free to correct me -
Apocatastasis is the Greek word for reconcillation - taken as read. And as a doctrine refers to unviersal reconcilliation.
Among obscurer heresies, this dearest rests
within a special class of gross immoderation,
the heart of which reveals what proves these days to be
a refreshing degree of filial regard.
He talks about universalism as a ‘dear heresy’ – so he’s actually in love with this heresy which is immoderate in its compassion
Specifically, the word is how we apprehend
one giddy, largely Syriac belief that all
and everyone will be redeemed – or, more nearly,
have been redeemed, always, have only to notice.
‘Syriac’ – universalism flourished anciently among Syrian Christians (???). I think he may also be referring to Jesus’ words because Aramaic is a dialect of Syriac and the Aramaic/Syriac Abba is used in a later stanza.
You may have marked by now how late Semitic habits
are seldom quite so neighbourly, but this ancient one
looks so downright cordial I shouldn’t be surprised
if it proved genesis for the numbing vision
I guess ‘late Semitic habits’ might refer to the hellish conflicts between the children of Abraham today which shows a complete lack of filial regard/brotherly love…
*Abba Isaac Luria glimpsed in his spinning
permutations of The Word: Namely, everything
we know as well as everything we don’t in all
creation came to be in that brief, abysmal
vacuum The Holy One first opened in Himself.
So it’s not so far a stretch from that Divine Excess
to advocate the sacred possibility
that in some final, graceful metanoia He
will mend that ancient wound completely, and for all.*
These final verses refer to the mysticism of Isaac Luria – who has influenced the contemporary Universalist Jurgen Moltmann – well Moltmann uses Luria’s idea as a good enough poetic image to speak about the unspeakable rather than as a new doctrine.
Luria speculated that in order for the universe to exist – God had to make a space/abyss/vacuum in which God was not so that the universe could exist in freedom. The drama of redemption is of God once again filling his creation so that it turns back to him (metanoia) in freedom so that God will be ‘All and in All’. Isaac Luria was a Jewish Cabbalist who became influential in Christian post-holocaust theology – because Luria’s mysticism ( gave hope to Jews under persecution. Cabbalist Rabbis mediated on permutations of the names and attributes of YHVH for inspiration – often organising the letters into circle formations mimicking the divine wheels in Ezekiel’s vision.
- the medical meaning of ‘apocatastasis’ is referred to in the last line of the poem -
