All it is, is a refusal to see God as anything that is even less righteous than we are. It is ultimate faith in the goodness of God and in the triumph of good in the end, which will not grant any co-eternity to, or any eternal share of itself toward evil.
That is not discontinuous with conditional immortality.
- Sometimes a hyperbole is false. And there’s an instance of false hyperbole: Not every branch can be grafted back in.
- There really are some branches that are dead or too far gone–from rot or lack of water and nutrients or cold freezes–such that trying to graft it into any other plant just won’t work.
- I’ve never tried, voluntarily, grafting any branch into another plant, but my wife has a few times, with plumeria branches. All failed.
- And we bought a couple of apple trees that had grafts from different apple trees. Gave them to a brother who has five acres that has seasonal weather to help put the trees through necessary changes.
- Moreover, not just anybody can graft a bit of living thing into another; takes a knowledgeable person to do the job right.
- The interesting thing about grafting, IMO, is–if you’re the kind of person who believes plants can feel pain–grafting requires cutting: cutting the branch to be grafted and cutting the plant into which the branch is to be grafted. Grafting requires.both cuts: one cut wounds the branch and the other cut wounds the plant into which the branch is to be grafted.
- Two wounds? Hmm, … there’s a metaphor there, for sure, IMO.
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His righteousness so far exceeds our own, it can create counterintuitive notions of morality. He is a judge that cannot be judged. And he is the only being for whom it is right that he loves himself. He creates us to worship him and coerces us to do so by making us joyful when we do.
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Quibble, quibble.
We seem to be having contrapuntal conversations. 
I think this is quite insightful. Some of my compliance may have been because I was a first born, and naturally identified with my parents (but don’t get me wrong–I did get some spankings from my mom later on, and I’m pretty sure they were fewer than I deserved!). I found, in reading Nouwen’s “Return of the Prodigal Son,” that I was much more sinful in terms of the older son’s pride and contempt, than I had realized. I probably obeyed in part because of identification rather than earnestly seeking righteousness. In fact, in my 20s I apologized to one of my siblings when I realized I had been kind of a pill as an older brother, sometimes (he said he didn’t remember that). I also agree strongly that there are strengths in each type. I am amazed at the difference among my own kids. Some kids weep if you look at them sternly, and others push the boundaries. Sometimes that’s not really so much rebellion, as adventurousness. One of my partners told me once that her parents punished her bookworm sister by putting her books in timeout! I know kids who would prefer any punishment to losing their video game time allotment. Some do better with an encouragement, like a carrot; others don’t care what we say. I agree we can’t go with a cookie cutter approach. I wonder if it ties into the “Five Love Languages” theme, a bit.
Thanks.
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(8) The Law of Nature
For that which cannot be shaken shall remain. That which is immortal in God shall remain in man. The death that is in them shall be consumed.
It is the law of Nature–that is, the law of God–that all that is destructible shall be destroyed. When that which is immortal buries itself in the destructible–when it receives all the messages from without, through the surrounding region of decadence, and none from within, from the eternal doors–it cannot, though immortal still, know its own immortality. The destructible must be burned out of it, or begin to be burned out of it, before it can partake of eternal life. When that is all burnt away and gone, then it has eternal life. Or rather, when the fire of eternal life has possessed a man, then the destructible is gone utterly, and he is pure. Many a man’s work must be burned, that by that very burning he may be saved–“so as by fire.” Away in smoke go the lordships, the Rabbi-hoods of the world, and the man who acquiesces in the burning is saved by the fire; for it has destroyed the destructible, which is the vantage point of the deathly, which would destroy both body and soul in hell. If still he cling to that which can be burned, the burning goes on deeper and deeper into his bosom, till it reaches the roots of the falsehood that enslaves him–possibly by looking like the truth.
As found here: Unspoken Sermons by George MacDonald: The Consuming Fire
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That is the hell fire to be most painfully dreaded - and yet, in the end, welcomed. I have to wonder if Lewis’ depiction of Aslan piercing deeper and deeper - painfully so - into Eustace’s dragon scales as he removed the boy’s ‘dragonhood’ might not have been inspired by this. Eustace, as I recall, later described the experience as most profoundly painful, and yet somehow simultaneously delightfully needful too, like when a scab or some dead skin finally pulls away.
[Kendel - you can look forward to that episode when you get into ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.’]
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Disagree. I don’t think it’s wrong to love oneself. Clearly some people don’t love themselves enough, and that’s a problem. At the same time I cannot actually imagine God loving himself
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I don’t think that precludes a limit to God’s patience, that it is not infinite. Some consciences have already been seared, speaking of fire.
To love takes at least 2 people in relationship. So, if, as scripture says “God IS Love”, then this seems to necessitate something like the triune God composed of three distinct persons in one being. Although it is difficult to mentally grasp, the Christian concept of god is thus the only type of God I envision as existing in an eternal relationship of “loving themselves”. Weird, I know…
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That reminds me of The Pleasures of God* – God was happy in himself. People sometimes wonder why God created us, was he lonely? No, he wanted to share his joy.
*The subtitle catches your eye too:
Meditations on God’s Delight in Being God
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What if those whom we love, don’t love us back, is this not love?
And in the context of loving oneself, it’s not exactly same as loving, let’s say your romantic partner, or your child.
Some will tell you they love your shoes or handbag, the use of verb ‘to love’ seems to be very frivolous in English language…
I just treat this as a metaphor. What is love? Chemical reaction in our brains? A noun? a verb? How can anyone or anything be that? So I just take it as a metaphor, same if we say about someone for example “he’s kindness personified” etc
I do believe in holy trinity, but not for this reason. There’s no need for actual relationship for love to exist IMO. Many don’t love God, even though God is supposed to love everyone, but none of us has an actual relationship with God, so does that mean there’s no love? Surely not. I just can’t see God having the need to love Himself, in the same way we have as humans.
So what about ‘love your neighbor as yourself’? Sounds like a mandate to love yourself, for if you don’t, you cannot properly love anyone else.
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For any of you who may be longing for Lewis to ‘move along’ beyond this subject of fear and fire, you’ll be happy to know today’s snippet was his last of many drawn from the ‘consuming fire’ sermon. Tomorrow is a singular excerpt from “The Higher Faith”, and then he moves on quickly from that. So here is today’s, as found here: Unspoken Sermons by George MacDonald: The Consuming Fire , and I left this one as just the bit that Lewis included.
(9) Escape is Hopeless
The man whose deeds are evil, fears the burning. But the burning will not come the less that he fears it or denies it. Escape is hopeless. For Love is inexorable. Our God is a consuming fire. He shall not come out till he has paid the uttermost farthing.
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I’m not one usually for daily devotional booklets. But one that was given me had an interesting (to me) take this morning: a reminder that ‘burning’ isn’t always a bad thing that we typically make it out to be - as associated with punishment, torture, and death. This daily thought drew on the commentary of the two on the road to Emmaus: “Were not our hearts burning within us as he talked with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us?” And yet, they had not even yet recognized who it was who was walking with them at the time - not till he revealed himself to them. While they were still just listening, it was a holy burning indeed.
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Okay … I know I wrote that the above would be the last one (from the ‘consuming fire’ sermon) - but since Lewis only included the abbreviated thought, I can’t resist also including all the very end of MacDonald’s sermon here, all the rest of his words directly following Lewis’ quote above. So read on … if you dare.
If the man resists the burning of God, the consuming fire of Love, a terrible doom awaits him, and its day will come. He shall be cast into the outer darkness who hates the fire of God. What sick dismay shall then seize upon him! For let a man think and care ever so little about God, he does not therefore exist without God. God is here with him, upholding, warming, delighting, teaching him–making life a good thing to him. God gives him himself, though he knows it not. But when God withdraws from a man as far as that can be without the man’s ceasing to be; when the man feels himself abandoned, hanging in a ceaseless vertigo of existence upon the verge of the gulf of his being, without support, without refuge, without aim, without end–for the soul has no weapons wherewith to destroy herself–with no inbreathing of joy, with nothing to make life good;–then will he listen in agony for the faintest sound of life from the closed door; then, if the moan of suffering humanity ever reaches the ear of the outcast of darkness, he will be ready to rush into the very heart of the Consuming Fire to know life once more, to change this terror of sick negation, of unspeakable death, for that region of painful hope. Imagination cannot mislead us into too much horror of being without God–that one living death. Is not this to be worse than worst ‘Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts imagine howling?’
But with this divine difference: that the outer darkness is but the most dreadful form of the consuming fire–the fire without light–the darkness visible, the black flame. God hath withdrawn himself, but not lost his hold. His face is turned away, but his hand is laid upon him still. His heart has ceased to beat into the man’s heart, but he keeps him alive by his fire. And that fire will go searching and burning on in him, as in the highest saint who is not yet pure as he is pure.
But at length, O God, wilt thou not cast Death and Hell into the lake of Fire–even into thine own consuming self? Death shall then die everlastingly,
And Hell itself will pass away,
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.
Then indeed wilt thou be all in all. For then our poor brothers and sisters, every one–O God, we trust in thee, the Consuming Fire–shall have been burnt clean and brought home. For if their moans, myriads of ages away, would turn heaven for us into hell–shall a man be more merciful than God? Shall, of all his glories, his mercy alone not be infinite? Shall a brother love a brother more than The Father loves a son?–more than The Brother Christ loves his brother? Would he not die yet again to save one brother more?
As for us, now will we come to thee, our Consuming Fire. And thou wilt not burn us more than we can bear. But thou wilt burn us. And although thou seem to slay us, yet will we trust in thee even for that which thou hast not spoken, if by any means at length we may attain unto the blessedness of those who have not seen and yet have believed.
THE END.
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Thanks for including the end, too. All the more terrifying but yet more hopeful as well. This sermon is going to take some study and thinking over.
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Yes - I’m SO glad that (at yours and others insistence) we decided to mind our 'p’s and 'q’s with copyrights because having the expanded and more complete versions of thoughts is so much better than the small bits I would have limited myself to (with all due and continued respect to Lewis).
If all these things don’t drive one to just go and read MacDonald’s sermons in full to get his unabridged thoughts - I don’t know what else could.
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I think that your (and Lewis’; and also Michael Phillips and Richard Beck’s) translation helps, but I do find that Macdonald’s sermon language is a bit archaic. It’s a bit like the nice church at the west end of town, who mainly speak in KJV–it takes some getting used to. I like the gist, as in that case, but sometimes I appreciate the NIV (or Message) translation!
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