“Do Not Grieve”

John Sheveland sets the theme of reconciliation in Barth’s Church Dogmatics 3, no. 2 and 4, no. 1 in conversation with Vedanta Desika’s discussion of Bhagavad Gita 18:66 and its call to take refuge in Narayana alone. In both cases, the futility of the human condition is real, but secondary to the power of divine salvation. Human beings thus live in a paradoxical situation of having been reconciled, yet living much of the time as if that were not so. Sheveland concludes his essay with “pastoral gleanings,” drawing out practical constructive implications from this comparative encounter.