Dear Theophilus

In honor of All Saints day I have been reminded of my paternal grandparents who we lost last year seven months and seven days a part. I haven't had many dreams of my grandmother and I find that strangely comforting. But I have had profound dreams about my grandfather. He was a simple man of few words and our relationship was always very distant as, I feel, most of his relationships were. The first dream was while he was still alive, just after my grandmother died. While my grandfather was in the hospital, the doctors told the family he had about two weeks left. Two days after hearing that news, my wife, children and I drove down from Seattle. 2 hours into our trip I got a phone call informing me that he had passed. The second dream was a few days after he died. Unassuming Parousia and Inclusion The dream began with my wife, Titus, and I living in a blue house in the middle of a grassy field. There was a knock at the door and our demeanor changed immediately to fear and panic....

I wrote the below for a friend and have been really chewing on it ever since. I think if I could have any theology balance our/my American evangelicalism, it would be this smattering - with its hints of Christus Victor atonement theory, death as God's enemy, and a reclaiming of the resurrection of the body as the ultimate hope for Christianity. " I believe in the ...resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen" (Apostles' Creed). "We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come" (The Nicene Creed). My understanding has only recently been developed. American Christianity tends to emphasize Jesus as the perfect sacrifice/atonement for the sin and evil in the world. But an overemphasis on this, though right, sometimes leaves out too much. This focuses too much on Jesus as divine and leaves out that Jesus is also human. A divine death and resurrection is sad, yet understandable. But Jesus as human shapes our th...