Pullman is cross-pressured: even as he dismisses God and attacks religion, he feels the echo of transcendence.

Is there a way for us to talk about Christian eschatology that both acknowledges brokenness and affirms goodness?

We often make mistakes by misjudging others.

If that body was really gone, if Jesus had come back to life, then the matrix of reality is altered; tragedy is not the final result of goodness.

The texture of suffering is changed when we see it and begin to experience it as being redemptive.

To offer a penetrating and nuanced vision of grace, like Victor Hugo does in Les Misérables, takes an attentive, serene, generous, creative, and skillful pen.