Did you know that John Calvin was a sickly man his whole life, that he suffered a number of maladies including TB and heart problems along with malaria, and that he also endured kidney stones?
On one occasion, he passed a stone the size of a chestnut…
not Calvin's actual stone...
Wouldn’t you be a bit cranky too?
In taking the risk of being crude…to pass a stone that huge must have meant he was built like a donkey… I am bent double in thinking about it…
Hey… curious – I was just talking to someone yesterday who claimed that: a) Calvin’s crankiness was due to his many maladies; and b) Barth’s universalism was due to his happy-clappy Mozart-loving ways
what’s your question?
i’ll venture an answer on barth because i know the case to be that his universalism (which he never admitted) was based on his unswerving sense of hope and his belief that people only rejected God because they were badly informed about him. a fact god would himself correct one day.
but he rejected being called a universalist because he denied every attempt to put god in a box. god wont be controlled. he is wholly other and can do as he pleases. period.
that i would not know. i only suspect that it was more than painful- and he admits as much.
but- to continue the crudity- big things can pass through small openings. think childbirth.
@Jim
Yes you are right. The bodies ability to do what it does sometimes boggles belief.
I have seen jars of kidney stones in museums and such places from when people have collected them and thought about the process of collection.
On another note; interesting thoughts about Barth’s position on universalism… what are your thoughts on the subject?
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@Jim
Yeah, more a curious fact than a curious question I suppose. I agree that Barth’s universalism comes from his unswerving sense of hope – I guess my friend was speculating that this unswerving sense of hope was due to his personal temperament as much as to the Scriptures