Bernard J. Lurie
The Resemblance of All Things is a poetic consideration of God, the nature of things, and possible events, with all the permutations thereof, that may occur down through the ages to all that does or may exist. In discussing God, the poem considers the philosophical and religious problem of evil and argues, like the philosophical and religious problem of evil and asserts that the presence of evil is not inconsistent with God’s existence. Like the philosophical school of Compatibilism, the poem also argues that free will and determinism are compatible, and not logically inconsistent.Resemblance masterfully expresses, in a traditional poetic format of seven-line stanzas of iambic hexameter verse, that there is no thing that is truly limited to being only what it initially appears to be. Each thing bears a reflection of other things, and there is a resemblance from one thing to what it is not. All things, in turn, also bear a resemblance to God.As the poem says, ''And this must be the task of art and prophecy - / To speak that yet unknowable consistency / Of every thing, no matter seeming how unlike!''
