On Unity in Messiah

“Because there is one bread we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Corinthians 10:17). On the surface, the singleness of the bread seems to ground the unity of the body. And yet the one bread stands for the crucified body of Jesus Christ, the body that has refused to remain a self-enclosed singularity, but has opened itself up so that others can freely partake of it. The single personal will and the single impersonal principle or law-two variations of the transcendent “One”-enforce unity by suppressing and subsuming the difference; the crucified Messiah creates unity by giving his own self. Far from being the assertion of the one against many, the cross is the self-giving of the one for many. Unity here is not the result of “sacred violence” which obliterates the particularity of “bodies,” but a fruit of Christ's self-sacrifice, which breaks down the enmity between them. From a Pauline perspective, the wall that divides is not so much” the difference” as enmity (d. Ephesians 2:14)."

Miroslav Volf, Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (p. 47)

On Temptation, Spiritual Warfare and Victory

"The Elder Moses, who dwelt in Petra, was at one time sorely harried by lust: when he could no longer endure to hold himself in his cell, he set out to tell it to the elder Isadore: The latter asked him to return to his cell. But Moses did not consent, saying, 'I cannot, Father.' And Isadore took Moses and brought him into the house. And he said to him, 'Look at the sunset.' And Moses looked, and saw a multitude of demons: and they were in commotion, and rousing themselves to battle. And again, the elder Isadore said, 'Look to the East.' And he looked, and saw an innumerable multitude of angels in glory. Whereupon the elder Isadore said, 'Behold, these are they that are sent to our aid: those that are climbing up in the west are they that fight against us: and they that are with us are more than they that be against us.' And the elder Moses thanksed God and took courage, and returned to his cell." --Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Vitae Patrum) 18.12

Al-Ghazali on the Shame of Hell

"Suppose a certain king had been celebrating his son's marriage. In the evening the young man goes off with some companions and presently returns to the palace (as he thinks) intoxicated. He enters a chamber where a light is burning and lies down, as he supposes, by his bride. In the morning, when soberness returns, he is aghast to find himself in a mortuary of fire-worshipers [by which he means Zoroastrians], his couch a bier, and the form which he mistook for that of his bride the corpse of an old woman beginning to decay. On emerging from the mortuary with his garments all soiled, what is his shame to see his father, the king, approaching a retinue of soldiers! Such is a feeble picture of the shame those will feel in the next world who in this have greedily abandoned themselves to what they thought were delights."

--Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, The Alchemy of Happiness, ch. 4