These fragments speak of truth to me which has, is and will continue to sustain and enliven me.     

A:
Romans 8:38-39   38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,  39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  

New Revised Standard Bible

        I understand this to be an inclusive rather than an exclusive statement. That is to say in Jesus the Christ, God’s unconditional love for all of creation was uniquely revealed for and to human kind. I understand “Jesus the Christ” to refer to the various and many witnesses down through the ages, including but not limited to, The Bible as well as the centuries of doctrines and creeds (accepted and those designated as “heretical) and historical lives as well as living affirmations.

B:
 “I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John that God loves the world. I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. I believe that divine love, incarnate and indwelling in the world, summons the world always toward wholeness, which ultimately is reconciliation and atonement with God.”
       
Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays    

        I agree with Berry’s about taking of the statement from the Gospel of John literally.  It is the Gospel’s testimony that I take literally not as the “Word of God” but as the assertion from the gospel according to John.  Secondly, and more important, I understand “atonement” to mean opening God’s unconditional love in a way which  cannot be broken.  It is the sense of Emanuel “God With us.”

C:
“MOYERS: You write in here that before birth, there was God. And after death, there is God. And that's all that matters with you. But how do you know that?
       
COFFIN: That's you don't know, once again, intellectual certainty. It's not believing without proof. It's trusting without reservation. You and I can trust each other, because we know each other, and love each other.
       
Same thing with God, you know? You trust God. And that's what faith is. Being faithful to your understanding of God. It's not a question of believing without proof. It's trusting without reservation, that God is good. And that something you've experienced the presence of God in your own life. And that's what you trust.”

Excerpt Transcript from NOW with Bill Moyers and the late William Sloan Coffin  March 5, 2004 Channel TpT2 (Twin Cities PBS). The reference is to Coffin’s book “Credo”

        Belief is grounded in doctrine whereas faith is grounded in trust.  Further, trust is grounded in relationships of mutuality. 

More on all of this sooner than later . . .