I understand your opinion. Im just waiting for the proof other than how you feel about it that also addresses the points I made about spiritual beings. Or show me how the Greek and Hebrew can be better interpreted in such a way that it undermines the typical translation and interpretation spread out through what seems to be every type of Bible.
Thou hast summonsed me from mine lair with the mere thought of mine name.
Sin and evil seem to be doing just fine, but there again never have there been so many and such a proportion of human beings with with such high quality of life. Which doesn’t say much for history. But but, sin and evil rarely destroy those doing it as they have the power.
You cannot destroy an evil religion without destroying its adherents, which covers at least six billion people. Evil emerges from human systems.
And what is the median position between Barthian, Pauline, Jesuist universalism (it’s nowt ter do wi’ me) and God the Psycho-Sadist/Killer? The dualist tendency of polarized angels? That can spread out to those orthodox and heterodox poles. Love wins - all are saved in the faithfulness of Christ - but never by bullying. Never by destroying.
Proofs are for mathematics and pure logic. They have no involvement in anything else. And by pure logic I am talking about conclusions within the science of logic itself. For anything else you have to start with premises accepted on faith – which means it doesn’t really prove anything.
Science in general doesn’t have proofs. There is only what the evidence shows is reasonable. This includes written procedures which give the same result no matter what you want and believe.
In religion you don’t even have that. You can quote and interpret scripture which people twist to mean whatever they choose. In this case, it is ALL about what you want and believe – something which is central to life itself. Those using religion may want a god who will torture and destroy, but most people are fed up with such crap and cannot admire or give any regard to a “Psycho-Sadist/Killer.” So many are turning to universalism.
The median position which still sees truth in the talk of Jesus about eternal torment and warnings of eternal consequences which I give credence to is…
- There is sin and evil but not by the arbitrary dictates of some authority which is just too convenient for those using religion to lord it over others. Instead these things are sin and evil because of what they do to us. These are the real source of torment and destruction. This is easy to believe because the examples in our experience of life are legion.
- There is a hell but it is a creation of human beings not God. This is easy to believe because we see people doing this many times in history and the world. In fact you don’t really need to look very far to find people making life hell for those near them.
- People are tormented and destroyed but not by God – not doing such things to the eternal spirit of people, but human beings doing such things to themselves. Again this is easy to believe because we see people doing this all the time. The practical dictates of evolution and the work of God’s providence in history is an entirely different matter – requiring only a surgeon not a monster.
I guess I’m done because my response is essentially the same as last time if I was invested in wasting my time to help continue a circular argument. Thanks for your unique and interesting thoughts.
I’m always amazed the faith some of you have in your conception of the specific characteristics of God. I realize you are accepting institutional elaborations of what the learned believe the Bible supports, something I cannot conceive of as satisfying my questions. But now in relation to this question about the nature of other denizens of the supernatural … my puzzlement is increàed exponentially. I suppose anyone can start by making something axiomatic and then building from there. I just wonder what purpose it serves. I guess I just prefer my mystery mysterious. If I were to guess or accept on authority something as settled I would fear to discover that I had wondered off on a tangent and deserted the original question.
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I just believe it’s part of being a Berean and pursuing theology. For me even though not all issues are a salvation issue all issues are important and worth teasing out.
I believe systematic theology is really important. As a Christian all my doctrine is based off of scripture. So any time I’m discussing it it’s what I use and what I go to.
If another person provides a theological argument I am more than willing to deconstruct my own. Better explanations have changed my doctrine many times. But I believe that all scripture is meant to studied.
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For me it is more self knowledge than anything else. I know what kind of God I can admire and support, and what kind of god I would oppose.
When it comes to other beings it is a matter of what their existence, nature, and origin says about God which takes me right back to the same issue once again.
Any honest and somewhat objective evaluation of the Bible has to give a range of possibilities. And then we go back to the same question of which of these possibilities can I support and which I will have only enmity for.
Thus in my case it is never an insistence upon the limits of reality. I consider all possibilities and decide on how I would respond to them.
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And again @mitchellmckain. Love has to win, without forcing anything on anyone (apart from resurrection to paradise). That is the only (transcendent) reality.
That is a faith for which evidence is sorely lacking. All of our experience as well as what we read in the Bible tells us something quite different. Love does not win quite often – not in the short run nor in the any long run we have seen.
I have faith too… even if it is a little more modest.
I cannot get round the fact that love is a choice. It has to be. That is a part of what love is. So my faith is that love wins in the sense that those who choose love will find it. But I am afraid that those who choose something different will find that instead. Both what I read in the Bible and what I see in the world confirms this.
@mitchellmckain as in rational deduction (hi Dale!) elsewhere, further evidence is irrelevant. We have the faithfulness of Christ and better minds even than yours accept that. Paul. Barth. I have no idea what choice is, does God have it?
PS I agree that the Bible and the world show love loses in the very main, well it would do wouldn’t it? In the transcendent it cannot or it is worse than useless.
(Hey, Martin. 
)
If rational deduction precludes God from lovingly (and at times sternly) intervening in his children’s lives in time and space, timing and placing, then it is inadequate. [Although it would be the presumedly perfect presuppositions that is really the problem. (A little ration of alliteration. )]
His deduction is in the opposite direction that God will intervene enough to save everyone from any kind of eternal damnation. I on the other hand think God demands our consent. Coming from Calvinism, Klax never saw the need for such a thing. I must admit, universalism makes more sense to me than Calvinism. So that is the real divide here between Klax and myself, since my libertarian view provides me cause to object against the universalist position in agreement with the evidence from the Bible and the experience of human existence.
It is often observed how someone in substance abuse has to hit rock bottom before they will change. But not only will a good portion of people not even even change then, but I think a rock bottom only exists because of how God made the universe to be constrained by the laws of nature – forcing a lot of things on all of us. I think that is gone when we die and this rock bottom disappears leaving us free to pursue our self-destruction without such limitations. I think death is like taking a running leap onto ice where all the friction from the laws of nature disappear and thus we follow the course we have set by our choices in life to its logical conclusion.
Inadequate how? God obviously precludes God doing any such thing, nowt ter do wi’ me.
What course?
Love NEVER fails. That the ‘choices’ in our ephemeral, constrained, deterministic lives can defeat that is utterly absurd.
He also precludes the possibility of God’s special providence in individuals’ lives. If I recall, you have an issue with that, too?
I’m not putting this here necessarily as an endorsement for everything he speculates about, but as usual, it seems to me that conversations with Richard Rohr as in this recent video through “Ragamuffin TV . com” bristles with scriptural insights about spiritual beings.
-Merv
And there is the crux of the problem. Is love something which you can use? I don’t think so. If it is something to use, if it is means to power, then that isn’t love at all.
Yes, love is useless. That is the way it is supposed to be. Because not everything is about power. Not everything is about finding a way to get what YOU want. Some things are about surrendering to what other people want. And sometimes they insist on things which are not good and there is nothing you can do about it.
Oh there is. What could newly transcendent beings in paradise irrevocably insist on that is wrong? And who won’t need deconstructing and reconstructing? You and I will for a start. There’s certainly nothing we can do about our personality issues now.
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