Well, sure, Yahweh could be said to not need anything at all. But that doesn’t mean Yahweh hasn’t manufactured a need for it (Lapsarian-Calvinism) or that His creation has necessitated it (infralapsarian-Calvinism, Arminianism, Catholicism and so forth). The latter obviously seems to be a friendlier God. Do you seriously find a Lewisian hell (Yahweh eternally offers salvation to an eternally resistant Adam) more nonsensical then the hell of Edwards?
that sounds like the Gnostic heresy that believes that flesh is inherently wicked.
do you believe that Jesus came in the flesh?
Yes, I believe Jesus is who he said he was… The Word made flesh, full of grace and truth. The great I Am. The Son of God, The Messiah, The King of kings and the Lord of lords among other things. More importantly my personal Lord and Savior.
excellent…we have common ground. 
No, I find them about equally nonsensical — though Edwards description provides a much more cruel depiction of God’s character. Indeed it makes Him out to be a cosmic sadist. George MacDonald wrote:
Chris,
You are claiming that aionios means eternal in the verse that say He will not remain angry forever, right? Isn’t aionios used there?
roof
In Micah, at least, the Hebrew is l’ad (“enduringly” or something like that, probably the closest thing to “forever” Hebrew can muster, including olam) and the LXX Greek is eis martyrion (“for a testimony”).
Edit to add: L’ad can also bear the sense of “for a witness,” and though it’s a dubious translation contextually, it’s kind of wonderful to think that God, the Delighter of Unchanging Love, does not want His anger to be the the testimony the world has of Him. I wonder if a purposeful double entendre might have been employed here.
Chris,
You are claiming that aionios means eternal in the verse that say He will not remain angry forever, right? Isn’t aionios used there?
roof
Hey roof, aionios is a Greek word and this is Hebrew. Whatever the meaning of the Hebrew word translated “forever” here means, the message is clear that God doesn’t stay angry, but delights in showing mercy. I haven’t looked into the word, but the understanding that I have is that the Hebrews didn’t really have a concept of what we call eternity.
It’s interesting to me how much these verses are overlooked in that they describe God’s character as one who doesn’t remain angry and who delights in showing mercy and we say that he is like that when we are alive, but our death seems to change God’s character because now, all of the sudden, he does remain wrathful, angry, without mercy forever. It just doesn’t make any sense. I really don’t know why translators translated aionios “eternal” in light of what the rest of scripture says about God. To me it is a clear contradiction–especially in light of the fact that the Greek allows them to translate it differently.
Dirtboy,
I discussed above a little about the Hebrew word translated “forever” and the how the LXX translators rendered it in the Greek Old Testament. As for why they did what they did with aionios in light of OT Scriptures that wouldn’t allow for that, I wonder why the Pharisees in Jesus’ day believed in eternal torment despite an Old Testament prophetic tradition that simply would not allow that kind of God. If I had to guess, part of the issue was importing belief in an eternal Hell from Hellenism, whether Pagan philosophy or Pagan mythology, probably a similar problem to the one the Early Church faced on the matter. A classically trained fourth-century translator like Jerome would have understood aionios via Plato, not via first-century Semitically-flavored Koine.
In my next life I’m coming back as snitzelhoff. 
David
isn’t also it possible they were tainted by the Zoroastrians during their stay in Persia?
this has been my pet theory, though i lack the means to prove it. but certainly it seems before Persia (though it may’ve been later) they suddenly started having ideas of an afterlife different from Sheol (the grave).
the Zoroastrians, from what i’ve read, had a very developed Heaven and Hell. they also had an equal and opposite evil god to oppose and balance the God of Good, which may’ve led to some of our more outlandish depictions of satan ruling his hell.
Hey roof, aionios is a Greek word and this is Hebrew. Whatever the meaning of the Hebrew word translated “forever” here means, the message is clear that God doesn’t stay angry, but delights in showing mercy. I haven’t looked into the word, but the understanding that I have is that the Hebrews didn’t really have a concept of what we call eternity.
It’s interesting to me how much these verses are overlooked in that they describe God’s character as one who doesn’t remain angry and who delights in showing mercy and we say that he is like that when we are alive, but our death seems to change God’s character because now, all of the sudden, he does remain wrathful, angry, without mercy forever. It just doesn’t make any sense. I really don’t know why translators translated aionios “eternal” in light of what the rest of scripture says about God. To me it is a clear contradiction–especially in light of the fact that the Greek allows them to translate it differently.
So then that verse, if it doesn’t mean forever, does it mean that God doesn’t stay angry for “long ages”?
Psalmist,
In my next life I’m coming back as snitzelhoff.
Your Karma is that bad, huh? 
Corpselight,
isn’t also it possible they were tainted by the Zoroastrians during their stay in Persia?
this has been my pet theory, though i lack the means to prove it. but certainly it seems before Persia (though it may’ve been later) they suddenly started having ideas of an afterlife different from Sheol (the grave).
the Zoroastrians, from what i’ve read, had a very developed Heaven and Hell. they also had an equal and opposite evil god to oppose and balance the God of Good, which may’ve led to some of our more outlandish depictions of satan ruling his hell.
Zoroastrianism is certainly a possibility; however, as I understand it (and I haven’t studied it in nearly enough depth to be mistaken for an authority on the matter), Zoroastrianism posits a final annihilation of the wicked.
So then that verse, if it doesn’t mean forever, does it mean that God doesn’t stay angry for “long ages”?
Don’t you see what I am saying: you are taking a verse that says that God will not be angry forever (presumably aionios, no?) and then not letting it mean forever in the verses that speak of punishment?
Roofus,
We have, as I pointed out, a slightly different vocabulary at work than the particular vocabulary around which those arguments are generally made. Ad (here translated “forever”) tends to carry a somewhat stronger idea of permanence than olam (the Hebrew word most often translated aionios in the LXX). The more I study ad, the more I’m realizing that its basic definition appears to be something permanent enough to be set up as a testimony for generations to come (hence its dual usage as “permanent” or “forever” and “a testimony”)–and THAT, Micah says, is not what God’s anger is. Of course, that not withstanding, the usual argument on our end is not that the pertinent words in the original languages CANNOT mean “forever”–only that they need not, and that there are solid exegetical reasons for thinking they do not in the particular instances in question.
Aionios is, unfortunately for both sides, something of an ambiguous term, and doubly so when the rather stretchy idea of “characteristic of an age” is brought into it (since both “characteristic” and “age” can be bent to fit more or less whatever shape the user wants them to). But its very ambiguity lends credence to the Universalist argument within the New Testament; the Jews of Jesus’ own day used terms that were significantly LESS ambiguous, like aidios or even “deathless” or “immortal” to describe the eschatological punishment that would come upon God’s enemies.
Indeed Roofus!
ahh ok, that’s news to me. i may need to dig a bit deeper, but i thought their god of evil ruled over them forever, i wasn’t aware there was an end.
i may have to dig deeper.
thanks!
I was studying the nature of revelation to the gentile world a little while back. I’d kept hearing about zoroastrianism and how it was where the idea of hell came from. Then I did a little digging on it. And it seems that the original worship in zism (too long to keep writing out) was monotheistic. And what we “know” now was really a mixing of the pagan beliefs zoroaster came out of after he died. There were followers of his that polluted the simple mono-theism with all the other things, there are minor deities, hell, etc. There was a long struggle and eventually the mixers won. There isn’t much evidence either way, but the earliest records seem to point to the simple mono-theism. If I ever have time I might did deeper and get back to that study it was interesting, but God had me put it down at that point, when he showed me a cypher into the kingdom inside.
Sorry to go off topic. Now back to our show…
Thanks for the reply. I didn’t realize (I think I pointed out my uncertainty about it) that a different word was used. If I take your word for it, my argument loses its’ clout (at least on the grounds offered).
mixing with paganism and creating both devils and hells…
gosh that sounds familiar!
thanks mate