Thanks for the apology. No hard feelings. I’m overbearing far more often than you. Hope your trip is going well.
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I don’t think anyone is beyond salvation. No matter how evil they may have been. Just like I don’t think anyone is beyond corruption no matter how good they were. I do agree that most people who are very evil never gets better because it took a while for them to get there and they don’t truly want to break the habits. But anyone can. God’s arm is not to short to save anyone. However, many never reach out. They pursue sin without repentance and never hear their name called, snd never receive the grace and mercy God offers through Christ and they are destroyed.
Am I right in understanding that you do not believe in eternal conscious torment in the lake of fire? I assume you shy away from the horrors that that represents, especially if you are called to an eternal life of joy, peace and love as a Christian - by a supposedly all-loving GOD?
Perhaps you should see a slightly different view - those who are judged and thrown into the lake of eternal fire are already dead! Just read the text carefully. Yet there they are - called from wherever they were dead to face that final judgement - fully conscious of their ultimate fate.
Also, Jesus made an incredibly detailed over-emphasis as to the horrors that await in hell - three times in Mark he explains to his audience that it is better to gouge out an eye, cut off a hand or a foot than it is to go into hell. Why would he do that? We know that repetition in the bible stands for great emphasis, so it must be very, very important not to miss just how bad it will be in hell.
Why would one fear God who is after all the one who, after the body has been killed, has authority to throw the soul into hell? What is there to fear about hell if it was just a case of poofing out of existence? If that were the case then sinners can eat, drink and be merry because in the end they just POOF and be gone! Where’s the justice in that?
I believe that once a soul enters existence, it exists forever in a conscious state - that is what I glean from the texts in the bible. YMMV.
Yeah I think he is one of a few who like the idea of annihilationism.
I would agree with you that this doesn’t quite fit with the teachings of Jesus. It also seems like an empty threat to me. Many including myself find the idea of nonexistence or oblivion rather sweet – in my case just a little too easy. Seems to me, the whole point of all this religious stuff is that there is no escape, and nonexistence is the ultimate escape.
HOWEVER, I don’t think it is so black and white because consciousness itself is far from an absolute either/or thing. Rather it is something which varies considerably and indeed one of the problems with sin and so many self-destructive behaviors is the damage it does to our awareness of other people and the world around us. Therefore people are not even equal in their awareness at death and I think greater awareness is a reward for hard work and never a punishment for naughtiness.
So while I think Jesus clearly teaches that there is no escape, I think there is considerable room for the possibility of diminishing awareness. Thus I have said I am an advocate of the median position of EDCST - eternal diminishing conscious self-torment, for I definitely believe that hell and torment is always something people do to themselves. The God I believe in is not the torturing devil of ECT or the soul destroying monster of annihilationism.
So, if God’s arm is not too short to save anyone, then why are there still people out of His reach? Why do people have to “reach out” as you say?
Perhaps it’s a much more different story - maybe it’s a case of no one is able to reach out at all because they are all spiritually dead (Eph 1,2)! Only the spiritually alive can interact with God because God is spirit. Hence, it comes down to the necessity that God has to make the dead alive, give them a re-birth before they can interact with Him? Hence it is up to God as to just whom He sovereignly decides to grant life. God willhave mercy on whom He will have mercy.
Sinful mankind has no choice in the matter - other than to keep on sinning, even if they desire to have a god in their lives, they will only ever make up their own rules as to how to appease their god in order to have eternal life.
Actually, those who disbelieve the permanence of being truly born again and that their adoption is secure do, if they would look at one of their favorite arguments against ‘OSAS’*.
It has been discussed elsewhere:
*‘OSAS’ is not my term of preference, because it is so often used disparagingly against those who know their salvation is secure, and I think the arguments of those who use it are simplistic, as just demonstrated. But oh well. 
Interesting take on it…I see it somewhat differently but on that same line of thought:
In hell, where God has excluded his mercy, there can be no repentance from sin because only God can provide the means for that. So the conscious soul in hell keeps on sinning forever. And God exercises His wrath on that sin as it occurs - forever. If there were a diminishing level of sin to the point of no sin, then surely the person would be sinless, eventually? So why should they be in hell forever? Just a thought.
As far as conditional immortality is concerned the next time I get into that convo will be on a thread I made after I organize a few dozens verses to showcase my opinion because it’s too time consuming to respond to this or that repeatedly. But yes you are correct that I recognize that the Bible does not teach that the wages of sin is not eternal life full of torment, but it’s death. It’s their second death.
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Indeed. But I take the magical element out of that to say the physical world largely IS the means. It is because the physical world operates by the mathematical laws of nature which cares nothing for our beliefs and desires, that things force themselves into our awareness and more often than not bring us down to that rock bottom where repentance can seem like the only way out. I often use the analogy (for death) of running out onto a frictionless surface, where we keep moving the same direction with no way of changing our momentum. The laws of nature of the physical world provide the friction by which we can change direction and all of that vanishes with the end of our physical life.
This is not to say that God does not also intervene at times in order to bring us to repentance – I do believe in that. Indeed, I think God usually has to liberate our free will from sin to some degree in order for us to choose Him over our sins.
No. Sin is a progressive degenerative thing. It does not diminish but increases. But sin is also destructive. It destroys free will, awareness, and ultimately everything of value within us. So sin increases at our expense and we definitely become less as sin consumes and destroys us. God is not the destroyer – sin is the destroyer. God’s wrath as Paul explains in Romans 1 is to let sin have its way with us – indeed to let us have what we have so foolishly chosen.
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I thought this recent sermon of Bishop Barron’s to be an excellent commentary on our attitudes about salvation (and who all will be saved) and worth re-opening and adding into this thread.
-Merv
This is a useful discussion of hope for all are saved. There is a comprehensive discussion on universal salvation at https://afkimel.wordpress.com/.
I made the mistake of starting to watch, which is extremely rare, and got to him blaming us for our suffering, because God is love and because we’re free.
Of course I agree whole-heartedly with everything Bishop Barron says about hoping that all will be saved and how hope does not equal knowledge or expectation that all will be saved. The sermon taught me the term “apocatastasis” for the heresy of knowing all will be saved – very interesting. I very much believe in the Godly characteristic of seeing the good in people – and this hope that all will be saved aligns with that. So, I was also giving a big AMEN when he speaks of God being about love only. I believe that too. Yes God gets angry but it is out of love for those who are abused.
My biggest criticism perhaps came at the very beginning, where I thought his explanation of hell was rather lame. He gives an emphatic “of course” to the question of whether hell exists, but his reasons are not so convincing especially in a world where the numbers of unbelievers are increasing. How can they relate to this equivalence of hell with resisting God’s love or the usual formulation of being separated from God? It sounds like a definition straight from people obsessed with God and religion – and it is little reason for any reaction from them but derisive laughter.
And yet there are millions of people, believers and unbelievers, who if you ask them if there is a hell – they too will give an emphatic “of course!” And it is because they have BEEN THERE! I KNOW hell exists because I see it right here on the earth in the inhumanities of man in the treatment of their fellow human beings. And compared to THAT hell, Bishop Barron’s anguish at resisting God’s love or even the classic fiery furnace is a JOKE! It is frankly an INSULT to those who have experienced hell on earth themselves. (and if you are wondering… I am not one of them – I just have the empathy to see it. At most I have merely peered over the edge of the pit and shuddered.)
My vision of hell is nowhere near so lame and tame. By comparison finding myself in one of the Hollywood versions would have me smirking. My vision of hell is being eaten alive by our own sins… our own self-destructive habits tearing down everything good within us until WE become the evil we hate most. That is the hell I fear!
Bishop Barron’s analysis of “enter by the narrow gate” using Luke 13 is superb! Of course my own frequent ranting against entitlement and against making God a Christian property is quite in agreement with everything he says at the end of the sermon.
Stuck waiting at the pharmacy waiting for an rx. This thread popped up again and I had uninterrupted time to read most of it. Fascinating. I’ve never read so many different views spelled out so clearly. Thanks for this (frustratingly thought-provoking) thread.
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This is not to say there is no truth to this at all. Hardly. I very much believe that God is the source of what we need in order to make an eternal existence worthwhile. I believe in an infinite God, with no end to what He has to give and there is only eternal life because there is no end to what we can receive from Him.
But I don’t think the danger is that God will withhold such things if He is angry with us. I think the danger is that our own self-destructive habits can destroy our ability to receive them. What good is all that God has to give in order for us to build ourselves up when we are too busy tearing ourselves down?
This is relevant:
It is extremely presumptuous of any finite human to think they have the wherewithal to determine what “competent love” looks like with respect to God. That’s a brute fact.
Then there is what justice for lèse-majesté, “to do wrong to majesty”, might entail (one might expect some serious repercussions if they called a queen a whore to her face). That’s something that Job did not do amidst his many sufferings:
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Imagine trying to be the perfect Christian and the guy next to you who kills murders rapes etc etc ends up in heaven with you. Seriously i cant understand this rationale
My opinion and I think it’s correct some sins are unforgivable . Period. Not everyone will go to heaven . The fact that even some here are “hoping” for this to be true it just baffles me.
You guys have put love infront of justice and refuse to see anything else.
My question to every Christian that considers this. Is a vengeful God more attractive than the all loving one?
I used to think that way. Now I’d rather choose the God of Israel that looks over his children and provides justice at any way(even if it means whiping a whole village out) rather than the one who would forgive someone who did harm to his child
Are God, Jesus, Grace, & Mercy impotent and limited?
Are They “rejectible”? [A new word that I learned today.]
Seems to me that anyone who denies that they are rejectible, disagrees with Jesus’ words: about “the unforgivable sin”. If they are rejectible, at what cost?
So,are an eternally rejectible God, Jesus, Grace, & Mercy impossible?
In the end, the only thing that matters is my opinion. Or does it?
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