Bob,
in your last response to Dual Citizen, it’s Paul not Steve 
But more importantly, Paul’s words were “that those reconciled to God would be punished in the age to come.” Paul’s saying there is an inconsitency with Parry’s words.
Auggy, thanks for the good corrections!
It’s my opinion that Parry can drop this since people who are reconciled to God are punished as well in this age. If Paul says well they’re not under condemnation, that’s because of the repentance and “reconciliation” that occured for them which is required for salvation.
Being a good Calvinist I’m sure Paul could appreciate the difficulty of God reconciling enemies to himself and they’re needing to reconcile themselves to God.
Jason, I’m not able to find the original article offered up by PaulM. So I am relegated to pulling the substance of the argument out of the postings and inferring from you responses. What I’m reading in a nut shell is that PaulM argues from I Cor 15 and Col 1 that:
- UR works if one accepts the eschaton as a dynamic eternity where there is room for God to continue to act through the ages of the future to reconcile those lost to the divine with continuous acts of grace.
- However, if one interprets the eschaton as being static; then there is no room or point in time (e.g., or sequence) for God to act in reconciling the lost.
- PaulM contends that the bible offers no clear indication that the eschaton is dynamic; rather all descriptions offered are fixed images which would suggest that the eschaton is a post judgment static state of rest and joy for those who have believed in the gospel vs. judgment and darkness for those who have rejected the gospel.
- Since there is no place in a static state eternity for a postmortem reconciliation, there can be no UR.
Is this the argument PaulM is asserting? Please correct me if I’m missing something. After more than half a century of reading I still find I can get things miss-construed (e.g., myscontrewed? miskonstroughed? … wrong).
RVallimont
Yes, PaulM shut down that Wordpress site some time ago. I don’t know why, but only one article remains (on free will) because that article was getting the most hits.
I didn’t archive his article, unfortunately; and I know PaulM has talked with Chad McIntosh (another friend of mine, Arminianist if I recall correctly) since then. I still haven’t gotten around to analyzing Chad’s article on accepting ‘universalism’ verses at face value but in favor of ECT, nor PaulM’s discussion with him on that.
Paul might prefer to post an updated version of his article here (which was an initial attempt at formulating the argument in the first place). Hopefully he’ll see the activity on this thread in his email and bring us up to date on it.
Having said that, and keeping in mind that I’ve slept several months since carefully considering his article, your summary seems pretty close to the gist of it. I think his wording was more like ‘the Bible nowhere teaches a continued not-yet in the age to come’. (That isn’t a quote as I don’t have his article at hand anymore. I quoted liberally from his article in my reply, but didn’t always directly “quote it”, unfortunately.)
PaulM and I both agreed that the scriptures teach eventually there will be no more ‘not-yet’ (in regard to salvation anyway), and that while from God’s eternal perspective this has already been accomplished, for practical temporal purposes it will only be brought to fulfillment in the Day of the Lord to come. He and I differed over whether the fulfillment ended at the beginning of that Day (so to speak) or not; and over what the fulfillment of that accomplishment actually involves (all sinners, or only some sinners, being brought to perfect righteousness.)
I didn’t gather that PaulM was trying to argue that the eschaton would be utterly static (with the saved never learning anything further or accomplishing anything new), if that’s what you’re asking.