The Evangelical Universalist Forum

EU: A most frustrating “argument” vs U.R.

Evangelical Universalism Arguments against Evangelical Universalism
#47

Hi auggy – and good to see you more active again!

My frustration is really at the thought that some would see my vision of UR (which is about the most stunning act of God I can imagine in some ways) as actually contributing to the very thing which compelled (if that’s the right word…) Christ to the Cross. That really kills me. That somehow, because I see through the din of sin into that future where God is triumphant and saves all, I’m actually enabling sin. That hurts. Hurts because it’s so incorrect!

And of course you are correct auggy to suggest that from the perspective of one who has not believed in hell (me) it all gets confusing. So it’s very ironic I think that part of my embrace of UR included an embrace of the idea of “hell”! Not ECT hell though; but a “place” (whether a physical place or an emotional place? or both…) where ones sin and rebellion come into sharp focus and one can run no further and thus faces, for the first time, the nature of his true condition. That purifying, not punishing Fire.

As to we UR believers being all over the map with our various theologies and doctrines, JP has regularly reminded me of the vast varieties and ways of holding to UR. GM’s Introductory chapter in ALL SHALL BE WELL makes that point very dramatically for me. It’s a really fabulous chapter I think. Now my sense is that this huge variety of doctrine and varied emphasis is something you find a bit (for lack of a better word) annoying or irritating or frustrating. Correct me if I’m wrong about that…) and I certainly can see why.

However, I also can see it from the positive side; UR being the BIG TENT gospel under which ALL come to worship God. The God who loves extravagantly and whose Grace is the ultimate solvent and cleanser. And all mediated through the person of Jesus – though many will make that discovery later rather than sooner. So for example UR forces me to be far kinder with those who hold to a believe like Penal Sub which in the past I have found utterly abhorrent. UR describes finalities and doesn’t get so bogged down in mechanisms and means. And it forces us to implicitly admit that our views on the doctrines we now hold dear will most likely be altered and modified as we mature in the very presence of God.

Further, I think that BIG TENT of UR is SO big that it can easily accommodate people like our own JeffA who, not being sure there even IS a God, can still dream and hope of UR as the great final answer to all our questions about life and meaning and duty and so on.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!!!

TotalVictory
Bobx3

#48

TV, thanks for that. I agree. If there is one thing that UR has done, it’s given me a more external perspective of others. I often am trying to see things the way they do and then try to understand how it is they come to their conclusion. But if there is one thing that is true, most people, so it seems, who embrace EU, tend to not care about the rapture question. So the Big Tent metaphor is something I relate to. True, it’s not always the case but I think generally speaking it is.

The other note is that every church has it’s differences. It’s a matter of whether you want to stay and attend that denomination.

Still, I think you should try to remember that the argument you raise is based on a misunderstanding of UR. I think what’s frustrating for me is that it simply doesn’t matter if it’s misunderstood or not, they’ll still continue to argue along the same lines…and perhaps that is where your frustration lies?

#49

Tv, what I’m really trying to say - though not well - is that I find it totally reasonable for people to respond like - Oh, so I can live a life of sin and still go to heaven, then I’ll rob a bank now and reap the rewards of God. That is an objection that is completely normal. Though we’re being completely misunderstood, it is totally normal for one to make that objection. I still do find it to be our responsibility to explain the misunderstanding; that may be a tall order.

#50

I recall talking about UR with my Uncle and Aunt and they responded similarly to Luke when he states:

For me this is like a Christian about to step on a tripwire just before the bomb goes off.

One thing I’ve been learning is that people seem to not really graps the power of allegory or metaphor. I read not long ago that C.S. Lewis was being won over to theism by J.R.R Tolkien due to Tolkiens argument for the power of allegory. I don’t know exactly what that means but regardless, it meant something to me.

When people respond with - Oh, I can go to hell for a few years and get out…then I’ll live a life of sin - I challeng them; so far there have been NO TAKERS. Here’s the challenge:

Go to a swimming pool, drench yourself with BBQ lighter fluid and then light a match. Give it a go for 5 seconds and then jump in the pool. Ok, lets really test it, give it a go for 10 minutes. OK OK, make it an hour. Try grabbing the hot end of a red hot poker and hold on for 1 minute.

Jesus gave us illustrations to communicate the seriousness of hell and God’s wrath. But it seems Christians aren’t impressed with it UNLESS it’s forever. So if God doesn’t make it eternal then it just aint good enough.

If a house was burning and your Christian brother/sister was trapped inside, would you relax? If being punished in hell for 10,000 years is so easy then why are people afraid if their loved ones are burning in a house for 10 minutes?

I think they outta take Jesus seriously and realize, no matter how long, the point is…IT"S BAD!

#51

But have you noticed that it’s the Christians who tend to talk like that not the sinners :smiley: . It’s as if the only thing holding them back from all that stuff is their decision to be Christians. Scripture, however, seems to indicate that the sanctification process writes God’s laws on the heart of the believer which should result in them genuinely not wanting to do any of those things mentioned. Yet to an outsider like me it seems that their faith is just another kind of ‘law’ that curbs their natural tendencies rather than purging them away by turning the person around to the place where there is no desire to do those things.

For the record - I don’t want to do any of those things anyway. What UR does for me is hold out the hope that, even if I find it impossible to believe that any of it is true, even to death, if I’m wrong, there is still hope.

#52

Sadly, I’ve come across that before too :frowning:

#53

Well put Jeff :sunglasses:

#54

I’ve been thinking about that–about why it is that people say that–I think it’s part of the power of the lie that makes a mockery of God’s justice. The lie says God’s a tyrant that’s going to inflict unimaginable torment on his enemies forever. When you tell people that it’s not true–that God will inflict just punishment on those who deserve it, they say, “Oh, that’s not so bad.” And it’s because the lie is so horrendous that in comparison the truth seems trivial. But only in comparison. Like you say–no one will take you up on your challenge.

The truth is that no one will evade the just consequences of unrighteousness. And we’ll not be reprieved until we repent from our hearts and choose life. Anyone who really has the mindset of wanting to continue sinning only shows that they deserve hell–that they are not yet reconciled to God, or that their submission to God is only out of fear of what he will do to them–not out of love for God and the things He loves.

(Isa 29:13) The Lord says: "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.

But I doubt the people who make the objection really want to continue sinning–hopefully it’s a hypothetical knee-jerk response!

Sonia

#55

Alex,

But how this any different to Adam and Eve’s situation, they knew what was necessary to the make the right decision, but didn’t?

I wrote: “Adam and Eve where in a better state to choose God then Hitler after a million years in purgatory and they didn’t choose God.” and you said:

In what ways? :sunglasses:

In regard to God giving people over to what they choose, you said they it would only be for a time. How do get that from Romans 1?

#56

They knew God was good, they didn’t know anything evil. The knew living in proper relationship with God was good, but nothing of what it was to live without a proper relationship with God and the pain and suffering that it brings. They knew enough to make a decision but not enough to make the right decision, which would have been to not disobey God.

Pre-fall Adam and Eve knew nothing of sin, pain & suffering, however, they knew lots about what it was like to be close to God. Pre-Hell Hitler knew a bit about sin, pain & suffering and a very little bit about God. After a million years in Hell Hitler will know everything about sin, pain & suffering and hopefully a lot about God too. Hopefully, when God sits down with him and asks him to be reconciled, Hitler will agree that God’s way if definitely better than his own way and ask for forgiveness (if not, he obviously needs to spend some more time in Hell!).

I’m glad you asked, I’ll do it in my next post. For the extra challenge I’ll try to stay within only the first chapter :mrgreen:

#57

Sweet, I didn’t have to go far to find something which looks like UR :slight_smile: Note, not just any obedience, but the obedience from faith.

Time for bed now but I’d like to continue through the rest of Romans 1 tomorrow :sunglasses:

#58

If only I had the aritculate tongue of Jeffa. Well said and yes, this is yet another facet of such responses. People love sin and if they could have it both ways, they would. Talbott makes this clear (and I think he’s right), anyone who does so is only blind and in bondage (deceived). Yet, we hear it all the time from Christians.

While I find it to be a normal objection…divorce is normal, violence is normal, racisim/favoritism is normal…
so though it’s normal, it’s truly revealing and invalid.

#59

Yes: this is at the heart of my frustration I think… :cry: :cry: :cry:

TotalVictory
Bobx3

#60

TV,
I totally relate. I once had a friend who approached his pastor because in the sermon the pastor was using noah and the family being in the ark 7 days before the flood to be a picture of the church being rescued (pre-trib raptured) out of the world. My friend showed him how the bible stated that Noah and the family were in the ark ON THE DAY the flood gates opened. The pastor admitted he had misunderstood the text of Genesis and then later continued to still employ this argument. My friend was apalled but still is under that pastors leadership.

While it’s true, it’s not good to just pack up and move along with every disagreement, I could not take it. I would have to leave.

When people realize what SLJ and Jeffa are saying, I tend to think it won’t matter…they’re still bent against the idea that the wicked will inherit the kingdom of God - even though they get that we don’t endorse that.

Aug

#61

GM kindly let me post the chapter on our forum, so if you haven’t read it yet see… “All Shall Be Well”

#62

I think someone called that “Catholic” once… :mrgreen: (One of the things I really like about the Roman Catholic Church is that, of all the ancient versions, even Jewish “Messianic Christianity”, it seems to be best about giving a home to different types of people together.)

It’s probably also indicative of “Katholicism” (in the older sense of “universalism”) being the salt and leaven and remnant of the remnant that helps keep the whole lump holy. Consequentially, it doesn’t surprise me that different universalists, coming from where we’ve been differently scattered, have different focuses. Even the positions I would consider to be technical heresies could be construed (by someone like myself anyway :wink: ) as overfocusing on one or more important truths (to the detriment or denial of other important truths) that I would otherwise agree with.

#63

Another GM (George MacDonald) believed in the reconciliation of all to God. That GM lived most of his life in the 19th century. He died in 1905. Clearly GM believed in salvation from sin, not salvation from hell. He said in one of his writings that a lot of people feared hell rather than the thing that really ought to be feared ---- sin. Sin is to be feared because it destroys, but hell is God’s means of correcting and purifying sinners.

Here are some excerpts from Chapter 1 of The Hope of the Gospel which may be relevant to this discussion. This chapter is called Salvation from Sin:

The wrong, the evil that is in a man; he must be set free from it. I do not mean set free from the sins he has done: that will follow; I mean the sins he is doing, or is capable of doing; the sins in his being which spoil his nature, the wrongness in him, the evil he consents to; the sin he is, which makes him do the sin he does.

He will want only to be rid of his suffering; but that he cannot have, unless he is delivered from its essential root, a thing infinitely worse than any suffering it can produce. If he will not have that deliverance, he must keep his suffering. Through chastisement he will take at last the only way that leads to liberty. There can be no deliverance but to come out of his evil dream into the glory of God.

The Lord never came to deliver men from the consequences of their sins while those sins remained. That would be to throw the medicine out the window while the man still lies sick! That would be to come directly against the very laws of existence! Yet men, loving their sins, and feeling nothing of their dread hatefulness, have (consistently with their low condition) constantly taken this word concerning the Lord to mean that he came to save them from the punishment of their sins. This idea (this miserable fancy rather) has terribly corrupted the preaching of the gospel. The message of the good news has not been truly delivered.

. He came to work along with out punishment. He came to side with it, and set us free from our sins. No man is safe from hell until he is free from his sins.

Not for any or all of his sins that are past shall a man be condemned; not for the worst of them does he need to fear remaining unforgiven. The sin in which he dwells, the sin of which he will not come out. That sin is the sole ruin of a man. His present live sins, those sins pervading his thoughts and ruling his conduct; the sins he keeps doing, and will not give up; the sins he is called to abandon, but to which he clings instead, the same sins which are the cause of his misery, though he may not know it — these are the sins for which he is even now condemned.

It is the indwelling badness, ready to produce bad actions, from which we need to be delivered. If a man will not strive against this badness, he is left to commit evil and reap the consequences. To be saved from these consequences, would be no deliverance; it would be an immediate, ever deepening damnation. It is the evil in our being (no essential part of it, thank God!) —this is that from which He came to deliver us — not the things we have done, but the possibility of doing such things anymore.As this possibility departs, and we confess to those we have wronged, the power over us of our evil deeds will depart also, and so shall we be saved from them. The bad that lives in us, our evil judgments, our unjust desires, our hate and pride and envy and greed and self-satisfaction ---- these are the souls of our sins, our live sins, more terrible than the bodies of our sins, that is, the deeds we do, because they not only produce these loathsome characteristics, but they make us just as loathsome. Our wrong deeds are our dead works; our evil thoughts are our live sins. These sins, the essential opposites of faith and love, these sins that dwell in us and work in us, are the sins from which Jesus came to deliver us. When we turn against them and refuse to obey them, they rise in fierce insistence, but at the same time begin to die. We are then on the Lord’s side, and He begins to deliver us from them.

From such, as from all other sins, Jesus was born to deliver us; not only, or even primarily, from the punishment of any of them. When all are gone, the holy punishment will have departed also. He came to make us good, and therein blessed children.

#64

Paidion,
Excellent, and thanks for that. Isn’t it the truth that God seeks not to just save us from hell but from the masochism and sadism we all commit. God want’s us changed (a new creation). Amen bro.

#65

I’ve always thought that salvation from hell was a by-product as Jesus was said to save his people from their sins (not necessarily from the consequences of their sins).

#66

As I see it, they’re one and the same - to be seperated from God is hell. So I don’t rule it out, but see it as being synonomous.