George MacDonald

George MacDonald (1824-1905) was a Scottish author, poet, and minister, born in Huntly, Aberdeenshire. After a brief pastorate at a Congregational church in Arundel, England, he turned to writing and became a pioneering figure in modern fantasy literature with books such as Phantastes and The Princess and the Goblin, alongside dozens of novels and theological works. In his Unspoken Sermons and elsewhere he rejected Calvinist ideas of predestination and penal atonement and expressed hope, in the tradition of Gregory of Nyssa, that all people would ultimately repent and be restored to God. His writing profoundly influenced later authors, most famously C. S. Lewis, who regarded him as his master.

The theological heart of the great Scottish storyteller. In these essays — 'The Consuming Fire,' 'Justice,' 'The Last Farthing' — MacDonald preaches a God whose very fire is love, whose punishment is purification, and from whom no soul is finally lost. Too universalist for the Calvinism he was raised in, he became the wider hope's poet; C. S. Lewis later called him 'my master,' and through Lewis his vision reached millions more.

(Note: this summary was automatically generated and may be inaccurate.)