The only model that has ever made sense of this to me came from my sister, who was a manufacturing and quality control engineer; she likened it to the quality requirement demanded by almost all Japanese companies, 100% inspection and 100% to standards – anything that wasn’t 100% failed.
But that doesn’t cover “hell”, since failed units weren’t put off somewhere that they were locked in forever, they were scrapped and ceased to exist. From various bits of reading I’ve done, including some of the Fathers, I find that a viable possible interpretation, and I have a firm reason for it: nothing exists apart from God continually sustaining it, yet Hell is spoken of as the absence of God – but if God is absent, then existence will cease.
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St. Roymond: Interesting analogy, and I can see why this view might make sense to many. Yet I can’t quite get there in my own mind. As if, with a God who is merciful as well as just, there must be some “opportunity for healing and growth” after the decease of our physical body – in another realm or condition we don’t understand. This idea sounds a bit like the purgatory of Catholicism, doesn’t it? To purge…to get rid of, to cleanse, to empty, to shed what is harmful or not needed…not for the purpose of being left empty but to make space for something new? Grace? Not purity for its own sake – as if this is the only state or condition in which we’d be allowed to enter God’s nearer presence – but because a condition of more grace, love, etc. is what we were created for and can be/do with the help of God.
I hope for this!
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Mervin, Thank you so much for replying! Will search for related topics here and do some reading. I was glad to find this forum as, in my experience, it’s not easy to find folks at church who have the interest, energy, or time to wrestle with these issues. But they have always “bothered” me in a positive way. Much of what is talked about here is far above my paygrade, as they say, but I think the musings of ordinary people count for a lot in any discussion of God and of faith and science. Thanks so much again for the warm welcome!
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Oh - there’s quite a bit of “high-falutin” expertise of technical sorts that’s way above most of our paygrades here - and some of those folks are pretty good about accomodating our level of expertise (or lack of) whenever we take a deeper interest and ask. So don’t let that scare you off.
I like how you put that. I’ve personally been “bothered” in a similar way too, I think - if I hear you correctly. One of my favorite “go-to” authors of recent years in regard to God’s punishment / atonement / wrath / love - is George MacDonald. His writings (both novels and sermons) have had a profound influence on where I am right now with all that. I think I now have a much more joyfully worshipful view of God than I used to have.
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Mervin, this is sooo helpful for me, as I want to travel to a more joyful place in worship/contemplation/daily living and relating, and thinking. God’s wrath, atonement and related subjects, for me, can be deeply saddening and intimidating; I’m searching for a different way of understanding what we call redemption.
Some of the traditional language sounds transactional, when most of me wants some other kind of relationship with God. Can’t “to redeem” mean “to make whole?” To supply a needed element or elements one is missing? I remember reading an interesting note in one Bible that, if one is a widow, your Redeemer becomes your husband; if an orphan, your Redeemer is your father/mother; etc. Your Redeemer makes you whole.
Can “repent” mean “to turn” toward grace/the good, and not just to “stop whatever you’re doing wrong?” Can it be a reference primarily to grace…to what is awaiting us as we shift our awareness, perspective, and behavior based on these?
I think Catholic bishop Robert Barron has said that re-pent (French “penser,” to think) can mean to re-think, “to change the mind you have.” Can this be invitation, and not sound like a threat? I think about this often during Advent, when we hear about John the Baptist. Perhaps Jesus calls John great because John tells us this is the essential – this turning toward – an experience, if we are willing, to be drawn, attracted to Love, and live our lives differently as a result?
I can see that discussing ideas here will tempt me to fall down the rabbit hole LOL! Will the house be cleaned today? The wreath hung? Maybe not… 
I’ve listened to a lot of Bishop Barron too over the years and have a lot of respect for him too.
Transactional! Indeed I think that comes near the heart of much objection that people like MacDonald and so many other more recent voices too have found with so much recent (and not-so-recent) Christian tradition. I heard/read one other (I can’t remember if it was a MacDonald piece - or maybe it was Richard Rohr) describe it this way: So many want to think of Christianity in contractual terms (which certainly does seem to be the tone of so much Mosaic law of the Torah) when we should instead be thinking of it in convenantal terms, or so the compelling case is made from the gospels and epistles.
MacDonald is a severe critic of anything that gets reduced from the trust of a loving relationship down to mere transaction between parties. And he takes that criticism to the heart of some of our atonement theology of recent centuries. And a lot of strict doctrine-oriented people will probably dismiss his freedom in all that as being “over the pale” for themselves. And indeed MacDonald doesn’t ever really “enter into such fray” on those terms as he seems to have little interest in convincing or compelling people to this or that conviction of his own. He insists that if you and I and anybody else just come sit at Christ’s feet and begin to seek - not just knowledge - but obedient response to him, that all this other stuff we may be so right or so wrong about will all be addressed when Christ sees fit to address it. That’s how I would characterize MacDonald’s attitude, anyway. And yet … yet … (this is just me claiming something on MacDonald’s behalf that he would probably never claim for himself) … in a height of irony, I argue that MacDonald is more steeped in both testaments of scripture than many a strident voice today that claims to be at such pains to defend “the bible”. That is, after reading MacDonald’s unspoken sermons, he seems more scripturally grounded to me today than just about any other popular, evangelical voices that clamor for their tribal followings today. I.e. - the more I read the Bible, the more MacDonald’s discipleship and insight flows from it and makes Christ-centered, joyful sense of it all, and the less biblical today’s ‘biblicists’ are revealed to be in comparison. At least that’s my own provocative take on it. And don’t get me wrong - I probably don’t agree with MacDonald on everything either. (I’m an Anabaptist - we’re going to be outliers on so many fronts!) But after reading GM, I don’t sweat those differences any more.
It may be self-serving of me to bring this up again - but some time ago I started up a bit of a “pet thread” that in a devotional sense followed a C.S. Lewis book titled “MacDonald” where Lewis highlighted favorite excerpts of his from GM’s works. It’s been a few months since I last added to that, but I was doing it daily for quite a while and kept it up as long as interest persisted. You might find a few nuggets of value among that already lengthy thread.
O my goodness…You have made my day and my week. Thank you so much for your thoughtful response. I am a huge C.S. Lewis admirer, and as such, have heard of George MacDonald. But I have never explored his work. Just now, I read a little on Wikipedia, and if I may say so, he seems to be my kind of guy! Four years ago, I was fortunate enough to visit Cambridge, England, and walk the paths at the university traveled by C.S. Lewis. More recently, I visited Scotland and have developed a great affection for it and will now know it as G.M. homeland. For someone not familiar with MacDonald’s work, what would you recommend I start with?
Transactional and contractual are descriptive words for some of our Christian theology, aren’t they? For me, this is deeply disturbing and limits God in an “unjust” way. For decades I’ve struggled mightily with various theories of atonement, penal substitution, etc., and have come away intellectually unsatisfied and, more important, dispirited/bewildered/sorrowing. I love this Wikipedia bit: “MacDonald rejected the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement as developed by John Calvin, which argues that Christ has taken the place of sinners and is punished by the wrath of God in their place, believing that in turn it raised serious questions about the character and nature of God.[citation needed] Instead, he taught that Christ had come to save people from their sins, and not from a Divine penalty for their sins: the problem was not the need to appease a wrathful God, but the disease of cosmic evil itself.”
Your comment on MacDonald’s truer fidelity to the Bible than that of some past and present influential others is so interesting. I used to read the scriptures a lot and no longer do but intend to return. At times, it’s easy to become befuddled about what the Bible is: a book, a collection of books, all literal truth (I’m not in this camp), wisdom literature meant to raise questions as it answers others, etc. I admit to being a cafeteria reader…I find the OT very difficult but pick and choose wise and comforting passages from Isaiah and Jeremiah; Psalms, Proverbs, and more. It occurs to me that many of us are just trying – on a good day LOL – to ask, “What does repentence look like in my particular life today? What do I do? What do I not do? How can I be loving, both to others and myself? Not just hear the Word but do some work, so that God may make abode with me? And trust. Not primarily to believe or give intellectual assent to doctrine or dogma, but to trust?” This last, the hardest thing ever.
Mervin, thank you so very much. I will look with pleasure and interest at the thread you mentioned. This is a wonderful Christmas gift. At the end here, I see this post has little to do with science!
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That’s true no matter who you are; we have experts on various things, and some whose expertise isn’t what it used to be, and things can get technical enough at times that most of us fairly often are left clueless. So you’re in good company.
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As a lifeguard I formed my own view of “repent”: it’s what a drowning person does when a rescuer yells, “Come this way!” It does no good to just stay put; what’s need is to change course and keep moving.
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When people tire of scriptures - or how they are so often used in today’s evangelical cultures, reading somebody like MacDonald is a great way to fall back in love with them again. Not because MacDonald pushes that (… how often has GM called attention to things Jesus taught like in John 5:39-40! …) but because MacDonald tirelessly points toward Christ. And because the Bible (especially the recorded gospels) also points us toward Christ - which is exactly the value that GM sees so well. But he will never confuse the signpost itself for the person it points toward. I love that about him!
You ask where to start … and I am almost at loss. Are you a story reader who likes fiction and fantasy? Any of MacDonald’s stories will give you a taste of that (and of him - his fixation on Christ shines through even in so much of his fiction). If you devoured things like the Chronicles of Narnia - then you might enjoy “The Princess and the Goblin”. But just to add some reality in here (as I note over in the Lewis / MacDonald thread) - Lewis actually referred to MacDonald as a 2nd or even 3rd rate story teller. It wasn’t his literary prowess that Lewis admired him for (and called him ‘his master’) … it was GM’s passionate love of Christ and his way of communicating that - seeing GM have a way of cutting right to the heart of things with his words and his characters. You can really see GM shining through in Lewis’ own Christian life and writings. [Despite Lewis’ criticism of GM’s story-telling style - I happen to think his stories are first rate - they catch me anyway. One of my favorites is “The Curate’s Awakening” - but a lot of others are right up there too. One of his that did not captivate me (like it apparently did Lewis) was GM’s “Phantastes”. Apparently I have different tastes than Lewis - or am just not as cultured in all my literary understandings as Lewis was. It was GM’s other stories that drew me in.]
If you’re somebody who likes to dive right into the deep end, and get GM’s sermon thoughts undiluted, then his unspoken sermons will give you that - all of which are available online for free. I can link you to any of those (three whole series). And there is one in particular that I’ve heard some refer to as his “magnum opus” work - a sermon in that series titled “Justice” - and in it he lays bare everything you were just speaking of in your prior post about atonement and his reaction to penal substitutionary atonement. I see that the wikipedia bit you pasted on this gives a “citation needed” request with it. The sermon I mention would be just the perfect citation for that point - maybe I should add it to that page. In any case let me know if you want links to any of those series of sermons or that one in particular. If you’re wading through the GM thread, then you’ll find links to various of those sermons among those posts.
[another added edit - just to help prepare you if you try the deep dive; reading GM’s sermons can sometimes feel like you’re trying to read dense passages of the King James Bible. Maybe not quite that bad - but almost. I can’t speed read them anyway, but when I take the time to ponder - it’s always been rewarding. His literary style is highly didactic (or maybe I mean rich with dialectic) - as in he’s very conversational. He will carry on conversations with an imagined partner, and then give answer to the response. Until you get used to this about his style, some bit may catch you by surprise - how could GM think that?! - and then you realize he’s putting it out there as something that needs an answer - which he proceeds to give.]
I’m so glad you’re interested in all this stuff! You’ve made my day too! Sorry I’m not quick in responding. Sometimes I’m hanging out here for a while and give immediate responses, but today I’ve been out and about a bit doing other things.
P.S. If you’ve ever read Lewis’ ‘Great Divorce’ story, then you’ll recognize a lot of MacDonald influence there. And in fact one of the heavenly tour guides in that story was in honor of G.MacDonald is my understaning. Or maybe in the film depiction. It’s been a while so I can’t remember the detail of that.
-Merv
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Paul does the same thing, and there are places where something he wrote gives a completely different message when he does – and places scholars still argue over.
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welcome to the forum. haven’t been here for a while myself so was interested to catch up on the thread.
My explanation stated further above is simple, the sin symbolised in the fall as the poetic description of puberty, the separation of the self from the eternal line of authority, thus the end of eternal life. In other words, if you do not feel part of the eternal line of life you live in the present and die with it. Death is the logical consequence of separating oneself from God, not a punishment by God. He doesn’t say “if you eat from that tree I am going to kill you” but warns his children about the consequences of rejecting the authority of the father and not be part of him any longer but be your “self”
It is that what makes us different as a species, that moral agency that comes with realising the self we inherited with the moment of getting self conscious.
In Jesus we are offered the tree of life as to learn to be one with God again, if we let him live in us so we learn to live in him again
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It’s amazing how many people don’t recognize this! I think Augustine’s original sin concept and then Calvin’s legalist attitude makes people see punishment where there are just consequences.
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what divine penalty do you think of? Physical death is not a penalty for anything but an unavoidable part of reality. After all, the material reality is bound to a time based order. It is how you define your “self” that makes all the transition
what was the science bit you wanted to talk about?
St. Roymond: I like this.
Marvin, thanks so much for the welcome. I would guess many of us think, related to punishment, that “the wages of sin is death.” Physical death? Spiritual death, while embodied, and/or after physical decease – in “hell”/separation from God?
Just realized that the word “eternal,” as humans use it, refers to time. Is eternity a human, space-and-time-related concept, or is it a perpetual “now?” I am confusing myself LOL!
St. Roymond: Your comment reminds me of what I read yesterday about George MacDonald saying that Jesus came not to save us from divine punishment for sin, but to save us from sin itself.
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As I understand it, if you live outside of time eternity would be an instant.
Richard
I take my view from my older brother the mathematician and computer specialist who applied math to describe God: we will be living in additional dimensions, one of which is likely to be a new time (-like) dimension, so out experience of things may be so different from what we can imagine now that “confusing” is by far too mild a term.
It’s annoying because when he was talking about it I could follow it and grasp the wonderful difference he spoke of, but it’s one of those things that makes sense while listening but once apart making sense of it fails
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St. Roymond: I understand that annoyance at losing the particulars. Most of the time, I have to be satisfied with a high-level concept like a new dimension…for me – not a math-oriented person – this “feels right” and appeals to the imagination.
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