Yes. Ultimate justice was done on the Cross, and the Cross is the ultimate expression of God’s mercy – the two go together.
And they must because God is Love, so justice must conform to Love, and Love is always merciful.
Yet by the meaning of the Greek word for “perfect” there, it is the striving that is the perfection, the moving towards the goal.
Since you appear to be determined (ignoring the gist to blow up trivialities) to pick a fight…
No… that would be you.
Unlike you I don’t pretend to be other than human. And NO I will not abandon my humanity in the pursuit or defense of stale Christian dogma!
Not in the least. I am not claiming that God can only be merciful or forgive those who repent or at least show remorse. In fact I am not claiming God must do anything. You on the other hand are dictating what is justice and that there has to be consequences.
So kindly get your facts straight.
It is not Christianity dictating anything, but you seem uncomfortable with its conclusions about forgiveness and justice. In truth, I am uncomfortable with the traditional view that grace and forgiveness need human validation to take effect, but you do not seem to have that problem.
Richard
Great reply and no I haven’t heard of MacDonald, my first exposure to Christian Universalism was through the more “militant” David Bentley Hart, haha. I will check it out!
And I think I agree with you - the nature of God the Father is inseparable from the nature of Christ. And my point of view agrees with you, I think - I believe the concept of Love Itself is God. And as I wrote in my essay, just as water is wet and also makes things wet, God is Love and is also the reason any living being is capable of loving. God is the definition of Love.
It is through this lens that I view Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection - a demonstration that nothing, not even death, is greater than Love. Prior to converting to Christianity I used to view Christ’s death on the cross as solely the fault of those who crucified Him using their free will to do so, but now I also see it as nearly inevitable. That is, His sacrifice on the cross could have been avoided, but only if mankind had been 100% aligned with Love’s Will - which we were not, and still are not. I wrote a bit about how our consciousness affects our perception of free will vs predestination, using Quantum Mechanics to support my view on how they coexist.
As for the Old Testament God appearing to be “wicked”, I view it differently. Most of us on BioLogos generally accept the theory of evolution given the vast scientific evidence for it, and I go further to say that the Old Testament describes the mental/emotional evolution of mankind. For example: in a vacuum, slapping a child’s hand is bad. But if it is a last resort to prevent them from touching a stove, it could be perceived as good. The action didn’t change, but our perception of it changed based on circumstances. In this way, I think it is important to read the Old Testament through that lens. When Christ seemingly contradicted the Law, and yet, said He didn’t come to abolish it, but FULFILL it, I think He meant that He came to show the LOVE behind the Law. And even then, He still said He had so much more to tell us that we couldn’t bear at the time He incarnated - which is why I’m a strong proponent of continuing revelation.
I’d say it’s not a matter of more than one God, but of more than one understanding of God that shows through the text – a conflation of numerous views rather than numerous entities. It’s pretty clear early on that the Hebrews conceived of God as a war deity, something that brought baggage with it; a good example is king Saul’s victory over the Amalekites where he and the army decided to keep livestock alive – that was how one dealt with a war deity, by wiping out the enemy and keeping the spoils, including keeping the very best as offerings of thanksgiving. Saul hadn’t gotten the point that Yahweh wasn’t that kind of war deity.
It’s a different kind of power – the kind of power of the Cross, one that doesn’t crush but surrenders. It is after all the kindness of God that leads to repentance, not harshness.
That isn’t relevant for universalism, which isn’t limited in time. If this lifetime is all there is, then the critique of the Pharisees over the Sadducees that there is no real justice is true, and the same could be said about love.
In the world as it is, anyway – yet even here a lot of things get learned without mistakes being made.
Generally I think most here subscribe to the Trinitarian view of God. Personally, I do as well, though I also believe God the Son is not “limited” to human (homo sapien) incarnation of Jesus Christ, but can be generalized to the expression of Love that chooses to take on a finite form so that Love can reveal itself to, and redeem fallen creatures.
If we consider earth to be the only planet in existence, then these two descriptions are one and the same. But I like to describe it this way since I believe there is life beyond earth.
But as was made clear with that incident in the show The Chosen, forgiving was not for the benefit of the other, it was for the benefit of the one doing the forgiving. That’s a different matter than God’s forgiveness, which isn’t for His benefit but for that of the one forgiven.
He wasn’t saying what there “has to be”, he was giving a definition. Whether it’s a good definition is a different matter; consequences can be unjust not least because they aren’t consistent – one man may leave a heater running and his electrical bill gets ridiculously high, another leaves an identical heater running and his house burns down.
Really?
The whole notion behind Christianity is that God is perfect and needs perfection to have a final relationship. The only way that can happen is for God to forgive and cleanse. So it is definately for His benefit.
The fact that we consider the result to be to our benefit as well is beside the point,
Richard
Yes there is certainly a different use of the word “power,” such as when we talk about the power of Jesus to change lives. But I don’t think this is a use of the word “power” which supports Rob Bell’s argument comparing the different powers and saying one must be stronger. This use of power is the opposite of that – it is not about comparing which is the bigger stick (about being the stronger power). It is more like the greatness in being a servant.
No but it goes to the whole argument of love being the stronger power. The problem is that universalism is trying to make everything about God alone, when it simply isn’t about God alone. People can be irrational and often are.
I don’t find your suggested fantasy as being even remotely believable or desirable. It suggests to me a world where people have been turned in docile sheep. Not interested.
A fascinating aspect is that the Cross is portrayed as a machination on the part of Satan and his ilk. I keep thinking about that while re-watching episodes of The Chosen, seeing Jesus do some things in order to avoid the dark powers figuring out what He was up to, indeed even some prophecy serving that function (e.g. “Zeal for your house will consume me” – think about it). So the Cross wasn’t just the result of human sin, it was a plan that the “principalities and powers” hatched to do away with God, totally failing to understnad that getting crucified was the point.
Not just seemingly; there are instances where He overturned it. My favorite is where Torah says to take an eye for an eye, but Jesus says “No”; yes, we take it as a limit on what could be done, but that isn’t how the Hebrew reads – it says “you shall take”.
It can be generalized because it was specific. Theologically the difference is incarnation vs. incarnational; God always acts incarnationally because He became incarnate (and yes, that can go circular; God became incarnate because He is incarnational).
That is claiming human morality is the pinnacle or even only morality to which God must conform. A little vane don’t you think?
Richard
Interesting comment! First off I do not necessarily define Love as a power in the same way you do, I believe Love is the essence of Life, and just as scripture says, sin is death. That is, “evil” is simply the absence of love, of life. It is not in competition with love as it has no Source. Just like you can shine a flashlight to illuminate the dark, but (maybe there are exceptions) you cant shine a “darklight” to darken a bright room.
This is how I view God’s omnipotence. Now, as for your comment on God’s plans seeming to “fail”, I both agree and disagree with you. Love, also known as God, is a contradiction! That is what makes Him so mysterious and yet known! He is the Alpha and Omega. A servant leader. The beginning and the end. From a human perspective, it is most times difficult to hold two seemingly contradictory views - even in Quantum Mechanics, wave functions collapse when they are observed. Our consciousness cannot hold the duality (wave and particle) of matter, and observation forces matter to “pick a side” from our point of view.
Through this lens, i can say yes, it might have appeared that God’s plans didnt work out, when we view things through a finite lens. But time does not exist to God! Even death is not a hindrance to His plans, as Christ’s resurrection and Romans 8:38 say.
An analogy: I make music. To an observer who only watched me create a first draft of my song (and watched me discard some parts), I might have appeared to have failed. However, to me as an artist, even those discarded parts influenced the final version of my song. Viewing time linearly, they were simply paths I needed to traverse to get to the final release.
How much more God, who is not bound by time, but experiences everything at once! The depth of His omniscience is almost inconceivable by the human mind, although we are all trying our best to make His eternal mystery fathomable.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8 ends with “Love (God) never fails”.
Whether or not time exists is a different issue – what matters here is that God, like the ultimate artist, takes the flaws in His material and still makes beauty; that is to say, even the “failures” get included in the design, to the point that it becomes hard to tell failure and success apart.
I was pondering this last night in connection with Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem failing to see “the things that made for peace”. The odd thing is that if they had seen those things, the Cross wouldn’t have happened – so was that a failure or a success . . . or both?
I think that is as much a limitation as saying that He is confined to acting within time. All we can say is that He experiences time differently than we do.
Ah yes I agree, even attempting to describe how He experiences time puts limitations on Him😅
I feel like discovering God has truly begun to make me humble, just the recognition of how infinite He is makes me feel so small - and yet, He still considers me important to reach out directly to me! How can you not simply bow in complete reverence?!
Nonsense. It says absolutely NOTHING about God.
You may be willing to make this bit of rhetoric an excuse for abandoning your humanity in pretense to some kind of divine superiority when it is convenient for propping up dogmas, but I am not.
Thank you. I will not argue with you. Naturally we look at things differently and I don’t expect or need that to change. But for some things you say I have a comment in reply.
This is evidence that we can hold contradictory views even if it is difficult. Yes we should consider when this is the right thing to do, but we should have good reasons when we do so.
In that regards, the most I manage is to sing at church. I am good and math and science… (shrug). No I don’t think it makes me smarter or right about things. Though it is certainly a lens for my thinking about many things.
I would disagree with the first but agree with the second and disagree with the third. Modern scientists have discarded the idea of absolute time. There are many measures of time and while God is not bound by time, I think He can and does use it as He chooses. And no I don’t think God annihilates time. And no I don’t think God collapses the superposition of possibilities which the future consists. I think God participates in our lives to write the future together with us. To see the future as already written only works for a Deist God who does not participate but only watches.
Never fails at what?
Anyway that is not what my Bible says…
4 Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; 5 it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
I think your translation/interpretation sets people up to lose their faith. Love certainly does fail and it does so a lot in this world. I think the point is that love is the only thing which endures.
It has nothing to do with my humanity.
You are out of line
Richard
Yeah I think I agree with that - without participation from God then it reverts back to Deism (I was a deist before find Christ!!!). I still struggle with the concept of time.
On the other comment, my translation says “love never fails” where yours says “love never ends”. Interesting how the same original text can be translated so differently. I like love never fails just as equally, because to me that is a description of God’s omnipotence. Scripture says all things work together for good for those walking in love.
My universalist theology just takes it a step further to say that everyone is walking in their own idea of love (a la Socrates: no one does evil willingly) however twisted or selfish their current perception of love might be. And the path to reunification with God is a correction of that perception.
Basically, the only thing I think is ultimately predestined is the reunification of the image of love in every man with the Source of Love itself. Our free will gives us flexibility in how to get there.
Interesting discussion!
I have been researching some of this for a book and am writing.
There are many today that find traditional theology of “everlasting damnation” with eternal torment not compatible with divine mercy and Jesus own prayer of forgiveness on the Cross. Even worse a theology of a select chosen to find salvation and the rest not chosen and therefore damned. .
Granted that some form of reckoning of evil must take place, yet any evils committed by even the most evil people we can think of are finite compared to eternity. How can God “eternally” torment anyone?
Many non-believers are no more evil than those who profess faith. Many non-believers are people of love and charity, but just revolted by evils religions themselves have fostered.
Paul Tillich wrote that the idea of Eternal Damnation implies a split within the character God that is nonsense.
I think Christ re-defined (or more to the point - completely overturned) what victory looks like. Humanity has always admired external things like strength, intelligence, beauty, victory over foes, opponents, and competition (whether in playful arena or in more serious conflict itself) …all the stuff we bestow awards for and that helps anybody climb the world’s career ladders. The love revealed to us in the gospels, in passages like 1 Corinthians 13, and more to the point - revealed by Christ himself, admires none of those things, but celebrates something else instead: victory in the inner parts over one’s own sinful nature. Things like patience, gentleness, and kindness (especially when lavished on enemies) don’t get one ahead in all those external worldly senses. So in one sense love seems to fail almost immediately by the world’s standards. The cross is about as far from ‘success’ as one can get. And yet even all the way to death itself, Christ never allows any of the principalities or powers (or standards admired by the world) to get their foot in the door with him. His love remained unbeaten, whereas we so badly want him to give in and respond to enemies on their own terms: with forceful vengeance. We thirst for them to be put in their place, a thirst that drives the plots of nearly all shows and super-hero plots of the entertainment industry. [Every super-hero ever is just yet another expression of our idea of what we think a real savior ought to look like - what we so badly want them to look like; think about that! - “come down from that cross, Jesus,” we still ask today with the original mockers!] Even in our own modern evangelical/industrial complex (a term coined by Skye Jethani) we have given Jesus a make-over in our creeds and talked ourselves into believing that when he comes back, it will be as a ‘bad-ass’; this time to get the job done right (i.e. - as we would like to see it done). It’s as if we imagine he will be admitting, yeah - I know I said all that stuff about loving enemies, turning the other cheek and all that, but that turned out not to work, so we’ll try it y’alls way this next time around. And we imagine him repudiating his own teachings and lived example. We built an entire dispensationalist industry around that recurring (and always Satanic) delusion. It was Satanic when Cain gave in to it, the same when Peter tried to talk Jesus into living by it, and remains Satanic now as we still continue to fall for it today. Revelation even shows us John’s own vision of the Lion of Judah - and what he’s shown is a lamb, and a slaughtered-looking one at that! The conqueror on the white horse doesn’t come with a sword in his hand like a warrior, but with his weapon being his mouth - or more precisely, the words coming from his mouth! It is truth that achieves the real and lasting conquest. The final conquest of our hearts, which (the military imagery notwithstanding) is not a conquest of domination or coercion at all (like such things always are in the world’s way of doing things.) But is an apocalypse of revelation into our idolatry with the principalities and powers (‘revelation’ being what ‘apocalypse’ really means). The only thing I (and each of us) need utterly vanquished is the sin I harbor in my own heart. That is the true conquest which must (and will) happen if the gospels and epistles are to prove true.
This may not seem to directly connect to ‘universalism’ or those sorts of themes of scandalous grace, but yet I think it kind of does. There is no “out” group like the world (and our political parties and tribes) so desperately want us to maintain opposition towards. Sure - there is much evil to oppose, as always. But it is always first and foremost the evil found in my own heart, and that is where my opposition is required. Not the more sweetly tempting pastime of hating on all my favorite out-groups, while giving myself a pass as an alleged ‘soldier for the right side’. Christ really did turn things upside down - or rather gave us the still-too-rare glimpse of what they actually look like right-side-up.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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