If you think that, you’re in a deep hole. Me too.
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I’d be helplessy stuck here without God-Incarnate to guide me ever upwards even as I continually slide backwards and stand still as I grow weary throughout the journey.
Vinnie
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Could be a natural progression from conservative to liberal beliefs. We keep holding on to what we can at each step along the journey. Happens across all faith and belief systems I think.
Only reason why I don’t think so is because most CI and U I know are fairly conservative. Some of them even mention their hatred for liberal theologians and liberal theology trying to take a foothold in their beliefs. Most are even YECist l.
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(a) No, but we do choose to mess things up.
(b) I hope so.
(c) Absolutely. But do they know where he is?
(d) Exactly.
Interesting… that’s a neat idea. But to fundamentalism, that could sound like wanting the Bible to be untrue (assuming that, as I was told, the Bible “clearly teaches” that all go to eternal conscious torment unless they pray a prayer). In other words, if Christ wanted it, the Bible would have said it (in that way of thinking).
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I’m not convinced reading works for you. ; - )
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As a guess I’d take you for a CS Lewis type of hell. Maybe annihilation. I could begrudgingly swallow either in lieu of free will. I will admit I don’t want to. I want universalism to be true so I have to be very careful with my exegesis. Desire has a tendency to influence hermeneutics and how palatable we think things are. At least I know my boss though. For those that watched GI Joe way back when… that is half the battle!
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Well, I liked The Great Divorce well enough to read it twice, fifty years apart, and I’ve been exposed to conditionalism, but I tend to think of universalism as being more PC than I’m willing to buy into entirely. There’s also No Exit.
It was a good read though admittedly, it’s been a while. I agree that universalism seems too PC. It’s congenial which makes me suspect of it but I think that is tempered by an understanding that the belief was widely held in the early church and Jewish belief in an afterlife certainly varied from minimal (sheol) to what it was in Jesus’s day which was hardly uniform at the time.
Vinnie
I am a hopeful universalist, but I remain convinced that only God makes the judgment on who is saved. Two points would argue for universalism:
- All of us are ‘slaves’ to sin, so that arguing for a free and uninhibited choice by anyone, is difficult.
- God created everything from nothing, so any loss would be a challenge to God’s omnipotence.
The counter is in my view, the condition clearly taught in the Gospel, that all must repent - this repentance can only be a completely free and uninhibited decision by any of us, so this may go against point 1. Orthodoxy discusses this and consequently proposes that the unrepentant would be given an understanding by God and would be purged from their evil attributes as a result of this understanding of the love of God, and ultimately they would repent. My take is that we all hope the wicked would finally repent in this purgatory.
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I contend that God is omnitemporal (tensed verbs do not really apply, like ‘planned’ and ‘predestined’), and that ties into the wonders of his providential interventions, not that we can get our heads around it. There is an instantaneous and shared cooperative dynamic between his determination and our choice and responsibility – it would have been better for Judas if he had not been born.
If universalism is true, what does it matter what we believe and how we behave here?
(a) I’ve never known a heroin addict who would choose to be that again. We’re messed up. All of us. Those that aren’t are dead.
(b) Why the doubt? Where else?
(c) Do you? Nobody does. Not His problem.
(d) …
Not too bad. It gets worse as you go west doesn’t it?
And we will turn inevitably from our pathetically distorted understanding. To that there can be no unsaved in God, as we will see.
We see acute cases of motivated reasoning fairly frequently.
That’s like asking: “If dad is going to see that all the neighbors get compensated for their broken windows, then what does it matter how many windows I break?”
Such a recalcitrant questioner may be about to find out that there is a lot of life to be lived before, as, and after dad sees that amends are made.
Or whether or not I spill the jug of syrup on the floor - the floor will be clean at the end of the day. So if the result is the same, why bother being careful carrying the syrup? The more time you spend on your knees with buckets and rags on your soon-to-be-clean floor, the less inclined you will be to even entertain such questions in the first place.
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I was a strong opponent of it .But now i just dont know. It might hold true.Because in reality the monsters in this world are the byproduct of the society.You are not born inherently bad(yes im against original sin.I believe every human beign is born pure and good).Society makes you one.
But from the other perspective there are these people whom despite their good/perfect upbringing and their good experiences in life still choose to harm their fellow brother.
Those beigns deserve nothing but eternal punishment.Not annahilation.Slow punishment
So i guess im in the middle kind of?
A just God would understand your need to steel food for example(not money or any other “lustfull"pocessions” if you dont have to eat .
A just God would punish you accordingly if you go and kill for no reason at all.
That said a just God would also forgive you if you go and kill your fathers murderer for example.
Taken to the extreme, maybe, but for the ‘average’ unbeliever?
Yeah. Postmortem moral reconstructive surgery has to be without anaesthetic. I might not be a damnationist, but we must all give account and all dross must be burned off. I wonder how much of me will be left.
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