The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Are URist going to Hell?

None of that has anything to do with what you posted (the things I asked for scriptures on) I’m afraid.

Namely this;

Where does it say, specifically, that the higher the authority - the higher the crime, and hence the higher the punishment?

God is not “Anger”

God’s Justice is expressible through anger and wrath. But he is not “infinitely angry”, where as he is “infinitely loving” for example.

Isa 57:16 For I will not contend for ever, neither will I be always wroth: for the spirit should fail before me, and the souls which I have made. -KJV

Isa 57:16 I will not take vengeance on you for ever, neither will I be always angry with you: for my Spirit shall go forth from me, and I have created all breath. -The Septuagint

If an infinite thing (A) is in an infinite sized room with another infinite thing (B) where is the border of separation between infinite thing A, and infinite thing B in that infinite sized room?

And no dear friend, I am not ignoring any of his attributes. I am putting them in their proper context.

God is not Justice without Mercy, or Grace, or Love, he doesn’t express a single attribute without expressing them all; God is One.

When he expresses his righteous justice, it is out of Love - and Love is always for the benefit of the thing it loves, True Benefit, providing for the needs of the beloved, as well as satisfying the noble wants of that same beloved.

When you take Love out of the equation of Justice - you kill both Love and Justice. The same with Mercy, and Grace. You cannot have Justice without Mercy and Grace permanently involved and equally expressed.

You assume I have a presupposition. Please don’t assume. :slight_smile:

I’ve not ignored his wrath, or his anger. I’ve only presented that they are not equivalent to a drunken father beating his child ceaselessly for breaking the family vase - even if it was done on purpose.

It is unloving to eternally torture the prodigal child, and not even leave eternal room for him to return Home.

Until the wicked are made righteous.

Rom 5:19 For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

You assume that I believe his justice is a slap on the wrist? God forbid! A “thousand years” (a long time, but not eternity) of chastening with fire is more than enough, unless one has no concept of mercy, and grace, and justice - and are only interested in revenge, or using God as one’s hitman.

Chastening until one is righteous, and made right is no laughing matter, neither do I laugh at it. Jail is fearsome enough without capital punishment being used in sentencing what is for the most of mankind little more than petty thefts, or at worst grand theft. Not everyone rapes, and murders, and has little girls chained up in their basements for frightening orgies. And for those who do, a trillion years is still not an eternity - but a trillion years is definitely a long time to be in chastening pain faced with the holy God who is an all consuming fire.

It doesn’t tickle the sinner when he’s faced with his own wretched nature, and certainly not when faced with the humiliation of having to repent for it. It doesn’t make me giggle when I’m even convicted of sinning, it certainly will not tickle the sinner in fire when it is being burned right out of him with nowhere to run, or hide - and the deeper he goes in trying to bury himself under himself the more it will burn and the hotter the purifying flame will be.

But he will be purified, just as you and I - who are no less as wicked as Satan himself are being purified.

Using your logic, you deserve the same exact punishment as the rapist. :slight_smile: Even without the “slap on the wrist” statement.

If the wicked man is made right, there is no call for continued chastening, or vengeance. Unless one’s only aim was not remedial justice, but was merely vindictive revenge. Now I am not saying that you are all about revenge, but I am just showing you to the best of my ability what this eternal form of “justice” is in its practical usage.

If there is no remedy, it is merely infliction, if it is merely infliction it is not justice - it is revenge without room for repayment. That is cruelty. And a cruelty that under your logic; we all deserve. And if this is God’s justice, then this is exactly what we’ll get - saved or not. Because if this is God’s Justice which is inseparable from his love - then his Love is expressed this way also…and we are in deep trouble.

He is chastened until he is made right and repents, the family is restored, and there is peace, blessedness, grace, forgiveness, and good will between them. That is God’s Justice.

In other words; When the sinner is made right, and the family is made right, and everything wrong has been made right - Justice has been fulfilled.

His Mercy and Justice are thoroughly inseparable.

Because it isn’t Loving, and it is indeed overkill - because it is irremediable infliction without room for Mercy or Grace or Justice - and therefore it is not Love at all.


As for scripture, in truth you go not from scripture solely - you go from an interpretation of a translation of a copy of a copy of a copy of lost autographs…of scripture. Just to remind you. Because I too go from scripture, I have not built my beliefs on a man-made Babel. I only want to address this because of three reasons, and though you are apologetic about it those reasons are still there;

  1. You assume I believe Justice is a slap on the wrist wink at sin.

  2. You assume I do not have scriptural backing.

  3. You assume I have not fully considered the whole attributes of God as far as my finite abilities are able to comprehend his infinite nature.

All three of these are falsehoods, hopefully not on purpose, but I tell you they are falsehoods so you won’t repeat doing them.

God bless you as well.

Hey Oxy,

Sorry this is so long, but I just couldn’t stop writing: I would love to talk to you a little bit because I too am a conservative Christian. But I have, over the past 2 years, been making a slow journey in the scriptures to believing the scriptures when they say, “I will reconcile all men to myself”, and “it his will that none should perish but all come to eternal life”, and “in Christ all will be made alive”. I know there are scriptures that are supposed to counter those, I am not ignorant of the debate, it’s just that when we let scripture interpret scripture we often let one scripture take the lead and make the others follow. For example, Thomas said of Jesus, “My Lord and my God.” Because of this, when we see scriptures that call Jesus a man, we temper it with the fact that he IS God. When we run into more difficult scriptures, like John 17:3, a verse that Jehovah’s Witnesses love so much, where Jesus says “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” We respond to the Jehovah’s Witness that scripture must interpret scripture. Taken by itself, we would agree that Jesus would be calling the Father the only true God while putting himself outside of that category, but taken with scripture as a whole, Jesus is obviously saying something else and not denying his own deity (for another discussion altogether). We give other scriptures priority to John 17:3 because they speak so directly to who Jesus is (whereas 17:3 is commenting primarily on who the Father is)

OK, getting back to the idea that Jesus will reconcile all men to himself. We need to take scriptures that speak the most directly to what God’s plan is for us and let others be “honed” by those. For example, when the scriptures say that in Adam all were lost and in Christ all were saved (paraphrase), we read quite clearly and unambiguously that God intends to redeem all mankind. Not only that, but we also see this same message preached, in the same manner many times over throughout scripture. Each time quite unambiguously. What are we to make of this conflict? Historically we have taken the “hell texts” and defined the “universal redemption texts” with them in mind. All will be saved, EXCEPT those who are lost. The problem here is that many of the hell texts, when truly looked at, in context, are MORE ambiguous than the UR texts. I’m not saying that they are ambiguous, mind you. Just more so than the UR ones. What I have been doing for the first time is asking myself, "How would the scriptures look if I interpret the partial salvation texts with the UR texts? What if I interpret the hell texts using the UR texts? I have been studying the scriptures with this in mind and it is not a one-time, sit-down and have a proof-text war session type bible study. It has been a long, complex and deeply rewarding study, regardless of where I end up. Every position has tough texts. The Calvinist has to deal with the “whosoever” texts and the “ALL MEN” texts. They have to re-define them using their “stronger” texts about predestination. The Arminian has to deal with the “those I have foreknown I have also predestined” texts and they use other “stronger” texts to redefine them. You see it with every major position – even the fundamentals-- there are difficult texts, as I have shown. We would like to think that the bible is like a jigsaw puzzle with each part having a perfect fit. Now, from God’s angle that would most likely be true, but even the most brilliant theologians/scholars have not been able to put it all together into one cohesive finished product.

I own an excellent book by Gleason Archer called, “The Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties” Gleason Archer was a brilliant conservative scholar who read over 20 different languages and had more respect for scripture than any other I have ever known. But even with that, his book was quite hefty. The bible is a difficult book and as much as we would like it to be a simple black and white, perfect fit for our doctrines, it isn’t quite that simple. There are highly respected conservative Christian scholars with different viewpoints on the rapture, the millennium, the kingdom of God, prophecy, the exact meaning of the atonement, etc. , and they all fall within the category of orthodox Christianity. Yes, there are non-negotiables, but even those have their difficult texts – some very difficult. The question here then, with the UR texts such as Collosians and Romans, what do the scriptures look like if you use these texts, and there are many of them, as the “stronger” text? What if, for example, I suppose that when the scriptures say:

Philippians 2:10-11 (New American Standard Bible)
so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

that it means That all of the tongues that are confessing are those of souls who have been drawn to Christ? What if the confession is from the heart? The scriptures do teach that no one can confess except by the Spirit of God. An unbeliever cannot truly confess Jesus as Lord and nothing in these passages indicate force. What if, when the scriptures say:
Romans 5:18
Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people.

that it means exactly what it says and that Paul thought that eventually all would be justified, exactly as it is written? Then I would need to look at the texts that seem to limit this and see if they can be seen any other way, **which is exactly what we do with every other doctrine when we run into difficult verses. ** We harmonize them. Sometimes it seems that we do some serious twisting to make things “orthodox”. I mean we really have to tweak a lot of the “works” passages spoken by Christ to tie them in with the justification by faith passages by Paul. If you took Christ at face value you would think that folks were saved by works. In fact, an oft used hell text, the sheep and the goats, says that the “eternal” state of those judged will be determined by whether or not the people fed, visited, and cared for other believers. It says nothing of justification by faith, or the resurrection, or the atonement. You would almost think that Jesus was talking about something else altogether!

This is what I am doing. I’m going to scripture the way I always have and shaping verses with other verses very carefully. My eyes have been opened up to many things. It’s fascinating how much you DON’T see when you think that the scriptures MUST say a certain thing i.e. I was raised during the Jesus movement and we always thought Jesus would return before we saw each other again at a camp or some other meeting. Heaven was always right around the corner. It was always about going to heaven. It’s amazing how many verses about earth that you miss when you think that earth is irrelevant in the afterlife. What is the new earth for anyway? I would encourage you to look at it in this manner and see if, perhaps, the bible might have something different to say about redemption. Something exciting and amazing. Something that shows that God actually DOES accomplish His will; where God actually DOES win; where the gospel DOES show itself to have greater power than sin and satan; where the blood of Christ has greater authority than the desires of Satan; where the wooing of the Holy Spirit is powerful; where God is sovereign & victorious rather than a guy who wishes that he could save all mankind but, after doing his best and putting together the ultimate plan of salvation can only get a tiny percentage to go His way because sin was more powerful than Him. The traditional view doesn’t harmonize with scripture very well to me.

Chris

If love means I must care for my parrot, love means God must care for me. Love isn’t an option. It’s an obligation.

Many, many people suffer undeserved and unremitting sorrow. It seems God has failed in his obligation to love, and they have a right to know why.