That’s fairly easy. The Incarnate God, Jesus Christ himself was faithless in it, in your sense of the word.
Just watched the video. That was phenomenal. I might have to buy every one of his books now…
1 Like
Yeah - I know ‘-isms’ like ‘universalism’ are scary to many here; and I think I follow Macdonald in not trying to attach myself to any of them, though I realize that others here feel free to apply the label to me. Which is neither here nor there to me. The only thing I [should] care about is following Christ as His spirit reveals the righteousness of God - whatever ‘-isms’ that may cause us to embrace or shun - so be it. So don’t sweat it that you can’t dictate what the final destiny is of anyone. That isn’t our job anyway. Our job is to follow the righteous, loving, and merciful God of Christ, and to be like that.
I’m not shying away from my ‘-ist’, though, and if limited immortality is true, then we shouldn’t decry “annihilationism”, either. Labels have their place – we could not communicate without them.
Absolutely. There were things he did not shy away from, too, like warnings the about the dangers of wealth and the width of gates.
It is clear that you have chosen to accept his justice. But the vigor of your asserting it counts little toward persuading anyone who doesn’t start off agreeing with you, Dale. That sort of exuberant but carte blanche approval makes one wonder if you fully appreciate why others do find it a challenge to their faith.
You have a problem with the God you don’t believe in being fair. Huh.
No, I’m just saying how it looks from the outside.
It looks like there is a problem with God being fair.
I don’t understand.
No, Jesus saves. In the times of the restitution of all things. The perfect righteousness of full equality of outcome. Not some meaningless infinite calculus of saved/damned on the scales of Ma’at.
I agree. I just talked about this one with my aunt, a deep thinker, last night. Is the NT account an accommodation to our faulty ideas of where Heaven is? It’d be sort of like the OT account of the Flood and the 6 day creation. Good one.
He is a great thinker. One of my favorites is “Is the Atheist My Neighbor?”. I also found “What’s So Confusing About Grace” very helpful. I’m currently reading “Jesus Loves Canaanites.” You might like his “Ten Worst Defenses of the Canaanite Genocide.”. The Ten Worst Defenses of the Canaanite Genocide - Randal Rauser
I don’t agree with him everywhere, but his point of trying to argue from the other person’s perspective (steelmanning instead of strawmanning) is a great starting point.
1 Like
I do think that’s why Jesus did it.
Jesus understood the mythology of the “ cloud rider “ and so his accession was meant to fit the image. But to me it’s still a bit ridiculous and theatrical. I guess it would be like if I was in a room and about to leave and I decided to vanish with a popping sound as I turned into smoke and went out a chimney.
1 Like
Not the same thing at all. You’ve been watching too many “Bewitched” and “I Dream of Jeannie” reruns.
If you “doubt” a literal ascension, what’s the probability that you would buy into the prophet Elijah’s departure from earth in a chariot of fire drawn by horses of fire? (cf. 2 Kings 2:11). Or the less dramatic departure of Moses, who died, was buried by the Lord, and showed up 1,000+ years at Jesus’ Transfiguration.
Suppose you died and were transformed from a corpse into a spirit. Where do you think the spirit SkovandOfMitaze is going to go and how do you think you’re going to get there? Are you just going hang around on Earth, wandering around until the Earth disappears? Or are you going to look for a teleporter and hope that you’ll fade out with a click of the “On” switch?
Great question, but I’m confused. Does a spirit “go” anywhere in our three dimensional universe? Isn’t it more of another dimension? In the same way that God doesn’t have physical nostrils, don’t we sometimes use anthropomorphic and terrestrial images to convey a spiritual concept? Thanks, Brother. 
Few things.
Never once did I say I doubt a literal ascension. I said the opposite.
Yes it is the same thing. What’s being compared? A theatrical departure based on myth. Exactly the same thing.
When we die we are dead and go to the grave. Hades. Awaiting whatever happens at the white throne judgement, unless it’s all so symbolic that it has already occurred which is just as likely. In that case. No idea how it plays out because I won’t be sure what a restored heaven and earth actually means.
1 Like
Of course in the context of this thread, the relevance has to do with explaining why some people inside the fold leave. So it can appear that way inside and out. This doesn’t bother me or contribute to my staying on the outside because I don’t conceive of God as acting, thinking or being anything like a human. The significance I would attach to a human doing some of the things attributed to God in the OT don’t apply from my POV.
Since you don’t believe in God, I’m not sure I understand about your conceiving him to be anything.
Christians understand him to have personhood.
Well I’ve covered that so many times it probably doesn’t need repeating. But right, I don’t think of God as a being anything like a human.