A latter-day guide for the perplexed …

… Owen Barfield and the power of words, (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

So Barfield’s spiritual awakening, fleshed out by his study of words, led him to a fresh account of the meaning of Christianity: humankind has undergone an alienation from God that in turn enabled the return of a freer humanity to God. Felix culpa! Happy Fall! It was Augustine’s discovery when he realised God as “more in me than I am in me” and that God was “waiting within me while I went outside me”. Perhaps it was a parallel insight that led Karl Rahner to make his well-known remark, “The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all.”