*For he will render to everyone according to his works: to those who by perseverance in well‑doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and are not persuaded by the truth, but are persuaded by wickedness, there will be wrath and fury.
Affliction and anguish for every person who does evil … but glory and honour and well-being for every one who does good … For God shows no partiality. (Romans 2:6-11)*
I’m not a “hyper-universalist” — I don’t believe in the ‘hell’ of universalism; I’m an inclusive prêterist, better called a pantelist i.e., ALL is fulfilled BOTH eschatologically AND redemptively, with the “gehenna” of the gospels referring to Jerusalem’s AD70 inferno where the city/temple became a ‘lake of fire’.
Rom 2:7 to those, indeed, who** by endurance in good acts are seeking** glory and honor and incorruption, life eonian;"
It says they are seeking life eonian. It doesn’t say they get it by doing good. Paul later shows they can’t get it by doing good; that eonian life comes through what Christ did. Paul reveals that all men are sinners and wanting of the glory of God and that death passed through into all mankind and for that, all sin (Rom.5:12). Then Paul reveals the solution to the dilemma in Romans 5:18,19, how Christ has done what was necessary to undo mankind being made sinners.
If people “go to heaven when they die,” why is there a need for the resurrection of the dead? And if there is no resurrection, Paul says our faith is in vain and we perish. So if we go to heaven when we die, that must be a horrible thing that we still perish if there is no resurrection.
And why did Peter tell the audience in Acts that David has not gone to heaven? And why did John tell his readers that only Christ has gone to heaven if everyone goes to heaven when they die?
When we go to Heaven our salvation is not yet complete. In Heaven our souls will be purified and made sinless, but we still will not be complete because we will not in Heaven have our bodies back. We get our immortal bodies at the coming resurrection. At the resurrection of mankind and the transfiguration of the entire creation (both of which occur at the Second Coming) our salvation will be 100% complete. And that is the beginning, not the end. Then the real story starts. All of fallen history is a false start. We haven’t even begun yet.
Before I answer your questions about Peter and John, please give me the chapter and verse of the passages you’re thinking of. I want to make sure we’re thinking of the same verses before answering.
The Bible doesn’t say our souls go to heaven when we die. It says they go to the unseen from where they came. The body returns to the soil from which it came and the spirit returns to God. Since God is everywhere, it doesn’t have far to go to return to God. God breathed into Adam the breath of life. That was his spirit. Soul is the result of the coming together of the spirit and body. In Genesis it says God created Adam of the soil of the ground. When He gave Adam his spirit the bible says “he became a living soul.” So when one dies their soul become nothing again. Soul is just the sensations. The Bible says the soul is in the blood. Cut off the blood supply to your foot and it “goes asleep.” In effect you are cutting off soul to the foot or sensations.
That’s a good example, Geoff. One can be saved from a particular sin without yet having been saved from all sin.
Correct.
I trust you mean that in the Orthodox way—that all people will end up in the same place or condition—that God’s beloved children will experience God’s consuming fire as God’s love, whereas those who reject Him or even hate Him will experience God’s consuming fire as God’s wrath.
George MacDonald taught the same. In his novel Adela Cathcart, Book 2, he wrote:
C.S. Lewis, who considered GMD to be his mentor, in The Last Battle of the Narnian Chronicles, wrote that when everyone went to Aslan’s country, most rejoiced. But the black dwarves who were in the stable when they were taken imagined that they were still in the stable. When they were offered choice food, they thought they were being offered rotten turnips from the stable, and so they rejected it. When they were offered choice wine, they thought they were being offered urine from the cattle troughs, and they rejected it with disgust.
I agree.
In general, I am far more in agreement with Orthodox thought than I am with the wide variety of positions taken in this forum, such as those taken by fundamentalists and preterists. However, I do not believe that our minds (or “souls” or “spirits” if you prefer) survive death and go somewhere after death. I believe our minds are an integral part of our whole being and cannot be separated from our body. That is why Paul said in 1 Cor 15, that if there is no resurrection we might as well eat and drink, implying that all we’ll have we’ll get in this life. Also, with respect to the resurrection, he said, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, were are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Cor 15:19). As Qaz pointed out, is there any essential purpose in the resurrection if we go to heaven at death? You say that getting our bodies again will make us more complete. But why not be content to live eternally as disembodied spirits? No, we are a complete entity. Our body and our mind are but two aspects of this entity. When we die, we are dead. And we’ll stay dead until God or his Son raises us from death.
But that’s the whole problem qaz… too many people ignore semantics and consequently make all manner of wild and incorrect generalisations. That said, I think Geoffrey comes close to the mark…
There are a few options, but it could well simply be that John’s “sin unto death” references a known criminal offense where that under Jewish law ‘the death penalty’ was the ultimate outcome, i.e., the “sin unto death” was notably any capital offense, as per the likes of…
I think this is the most direct and least complicated understanding of John’s “sin unto death”.
Well, you have published some material about the different ideas about salvation So I think it could be beneficial if you would briefly expound on those different ideas. If possible.
My idea is not to put you on the spot , but to maybe expose a different way of looking at this subject
Eusebius, In your post, you say that the soul becomes nothing again. One cannot create something out of nothing. All that God has created comes from Himself. So I would say that the Spirit God gave to Adam, or mankind, would be His own Spirit.
qaz, I tend to agree with Davo on the point that we mustn’t read into Scripture something that is not there. I believe only God and the people that have already left this earth, know what happens in the afterlife. In reference to your question to Davo about the sin leading to death, my guess would be that we need to hit rock bottom sometimes in order to come to our senses. For example, if one is persistently sinning, forgiveness has no effect on them. Receiving the full consequences of their sin may be the best thing for them.
I should imagine it’s pretty obvious IF one considers that USUSALLY pardon is associated with “forgiveness” THEN John would likely being saying don’t think you can use “forgiveness” to excuse away certain consequences of certain actions… can you not see that??
I think both are true. If I understand TV evangelist Joel Osteen right. What is inside of us, I interpret as the Holy Spirit. All that we are, is really the result of God - via Christ. And we need to honor, the image of God within us.
Actually, he’s just taking the same Old Testament and New Testament stories and giving them a different beat.
Nice thoughts but they aren’t in the Bible. I agree with you (shocking, I know ) that what we are is the result of God.
Sure we should strive to be good people and helpful to others. But Joel is just a name it claim it preacher. I think the apostle Paul would be considered a failure under his paradigm. I think Joel just wants more of his sheeple to go out and get more money so he can get it from them. Neither Christ nor Paul would build a huge mansion like he lives in.
The gospel isn’t about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. It is about “if you are poor, don’t aspire to be rich.” That’s what Paul said. Paul says when one aspires to be rich they fall into a trial and trap swamping men in destruction.
Eusebius, from your post above, I get the feeling that you have something against man being able to accomplish things. As Psalms 8:4-6 says, “What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that you visit him? For you have made him a little lower than the angels, And you have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet.” Man is made of the substance of God, that is His Spirit. What else can we be made of? According to you, our spirits come from nothing. I suppose God created us out of thin air? Yes, we are able to accomplish great things because as HFPZ quoted above, “there is something inside of you that is greater than any obstacle.” To better understand the Scriptures, we must understand the terms being used. Christ means " the anointed one" and from what I understand, the “anointed one” is anyone who obeys and follows the Spirit of God that is inside the heart and mind. In this case there are many who are “Christ”, and they have done many a great work. But, we must also come to “Christ” as an individual in order to carry on the work. In other words, each of us must learn to stand on our own two feet and walk with God as well.
On another note, there is nothing wrong with having money as long as our riches come about through honest hard work. There are many examples in the Bible of men of great wealth, including Abraham, Joseph, David etc. In the picture that you show of the man’s mansion, I would say that many people were paid to build it. So, in this, jobs were created and families were fed as a result.
No matter how bad things seem 
) that what we are is the result of God.