The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Freedom and Annihilationism (a retitled thread)

After Pentecost the possibility of universal salvation doesn’t seem all that remote. There is a definite change of message between Christ’s mission to that generation of Jews (He came with a sword) and Church’s mission to the world. I don’t consider that change dysfunctional - “All that the Father gives me…” apparently, the Counselor was teaching the early Church that the Father gave Him everyone.

Aug: Do you think they truly see God for who he is and they see sin for what it is and they choose sin? My understanding is they don’t understand that sin is NOT beneficial. Though we may think it benefits us, we don’t realize it destroys us.

Sahid: I think there may be other reasons for sinning, but the one you gave seems to be prevalent. Ignorance and arrogance top my list.

Aug: How can God intervene derterministically WHILE leaving choices open.

Sahid: He can deterministically cause one thing - say a thunderstorm - while leaving something else open - like my decision to accept or reject salvation.

Aug: And equally so a God who gambles is worse than a God who determines with best results. Perhaps he’s not as bad as a God who determines showing favoritism (calvinism) but he’s def not as good as a God who saves all.

Sahid: “Saves all”… what? Persons? Without free will they aren’t exactly imago Dei persons. More like machines.

RanRan, while I can see what you’re saying, it seems like too much of a disjunction to me. I guess it’s just my personal preference, but if both a unified theology and a dispensational theology are workable, I tend to go for the unified. Dispensational theology strikes me as too ad hoc.

That’s fine. But didn’t you just blow off universalism because you cannot reconcile a quote from Christ with quotes from Paul, Peter and the early church who were taught by them?

If you are truly pursuing a unified theology, how can you pit them against each other and call ‘unification’ an earnest pursuit?

Perhaps, I can help you understand my attempt at unification - Just as Christ did not know the day of His return, He did not know how many the Father had given Him. Was is it a mere few, or some, or all?

Now you can argue from your quote of Christ that only a very few will be saved - and then end up scratching your head at a multitude of saved, resurrected people that was beyond counting according to John. Beyond counting! Is the ‘great’ in ‘so great a salvation’ really just a math problem?

Sahid,

I agree, for me greed and arrogance top mine :smiling_imp:

However I believe these things are things we don’t choose to be. They are things WE ALL are. For everyone has sinned and therfore I hold all at some time are arrogant against God at some time.

I also believe this same greed and arrogance working together blind us from the truth of what lies before us.

How do you think our choices play out sahid? Give talbotts paper a read, the links GM and I sent you and then let us know what you make of his thoughts. Thanks for the good conversation as well.

Aug

GM,
how does this work :slight_smile: how do you define “freewill” in your statement above? I understand you have problems with Lib. and Det. but with that said, what is your belief of “freewill”?

Aug

{waving hand} Speaking as a penitent sinner… um, yeah, actually, I do recognize my sins to be against however much of the light and the truth as I can see. Other failures may be excused out of my ignorance; and I thank God for that. But those errors need forgiveness (from God) and repentance (from me).

This, by the way, is why I do not consider myself to be, in principle, any better a sinner than Satan; even though my sins don’t look as big or as extensive or don’t affect so many people so problematically. I’m better off standing with the publican in the parable, and with St. Paul in his epistle, and regarding myself quite seriously as the chief of sinners. Indeed in some key ways I consider myself to be more ethically culpable in my sins than various non-Christians.

Sahid,

Actually, I would prefer for annihilationism to be set up under its own sub-topical heading somewhere, for threads to be created in for discussion. I think it’s important enough as a topic for that. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to do that myself. (New at being a moderator. {g}) But when-if-ever that happens, I’ll try to find pertinent discussions on it and repost them as new threads in the sub-category, for reference and perhaps even for continuation of previously started discussions.

I would answer the same (among many other things) for universalism. {g!} But I strongly suspect we have significantly different understandings of positive justice and its fulfillment. More on this later.

I’ve commented already on the free will issue, I think. Put somewhat over-shortly, I think people are free, and will remain free, to love and practice their sinning (as some of the sinners are still doing in the final chapter of RevJohn); but they won’t be free to avoid the results of doing so, even if they’d rather be free of those results. {s} And especially they won’t be free of God acting to lead them to repentance and bring them home. (Also topics of the final chapter and final scene of RevJohn.)

I only “abandon” “free will” insofar as I recognize that we are derivative creatures who cannot ontologically become self-existent like God but must be dependent, immediately, upon His providential action for our existence and, mediately, upon the natural system characteristics around us. My will is not free to act in independence of all these things, although it is free to act in dependence upon these things. Moreover, at the moment, I find that my will is not even as free as it could potentially be; because it routinely under temptation pressure from various sources (both rational and non-rational).

Derivative free will, and the importance of being children of God made in His image thereby, is extremely important to my theology–the freedom of my rational action is in fact the first and key positive evidence in my systematic apologetic for accepting theism and rejecting atheism to be true. (Much as for Lewis in M:aPS, especially the revised 2nd edition.)

It is also exceedingly important to the themes of my series of novels; where, not incidentally, the villains (at all levels of characterization) routinely act to eliminate and enslave the wills of other persons, seeing them as competitions and threats to themselves. Moreover, the devils (Rogue Agents) have a vested interest in only perceiving God to be that way, i.e. like themselves, with their chosen motives, except more powerful. Ongoing attempts to lead them to repentance are typically rejected as being some kind of seductive trick to enslave them–because that’s what they would do! (It’s an ironic reversal of the Golden Rule, of course.)

As for justice, if it wasn’t for the absolute necessity (on pain of His own self-annihilation) of God acting toward the fulfillment of justice, I doubt I would be a universalist–I certainly wouldn’t be as certain about it. {g} The fulfillment of justice is utterly crucial (in several senses of that word) to my theology and especially to my universalism. But again, I suspect we have at least one critical difference in our understandings of justice.

In which case the question must then be asked: how can annihilationism result in fair-togetherness being fulfilled between God and the annihilated spirit? Or in fair-togetherness being fulfilled between the spirit and any other derivative person? If God annihilates me, or by His choice allows me to annihilate myself, is He acting to accomplish fair-togetherness between myself and those whom I have sinned against? Or is He acting to accomplish something else?

Note: I am not asking whether I am acting, as a sinner, to accomplish fair-togetherness between myself and anyone else. Obviously I am not!! Is it not obvious, rather, that my insistence on trying to enact non-fair-togetherness is, itself, why I am sinning, doing injustice, unrighteousness, and ultimately acting against God Who in His righteous self-existence is the final standard of morality? If I am courting annihilation by my sin, is it not obviously because I am acting against the active principles of basic Existence Himself, upon Whom I must necessarily depend for existence?

But my non-fair-togetherness is not what I am asking about. I am asking, is God, in choosing to enact or accept the annihilation of me, the sinner, supposed to be acting toward accomplishing fair-togetherness in regard to me?–or acting to accomplish final and irrevocable non-fair-togetherness in regard to me?

(You might decide that now is a good time to dis-accept the Greek word translated “righteousness” as meaning “fair-togetherness”… {g!} I have never yet met a non-universalist who didn’t eventually do this, btw, when the topic came to that point.)

As do I, within the limits necessarily intrinsic to a derivative creature (such as myself) who is not I AM THAT I AM.

Certainly!

True. But it would not necessarily be unfair to the person to prevent the person from achieving that annihilation (regardless of whether the person is seeking annihilation per se). On the contrary, the whole possibility of being fair (or unfair) to the creature depends on the creature remaining in existence. By definition, frustrating the will of the creature is not the same as revoking the free will of the creature. The frustration itself may be fair or unfair, depending on the intentions of the frustrator, but even unfair frustration of the will is still different from revoking the free will of the creature. (Some of my villains prefer frustrating the wills of others to destroying them as persons, for example. In practice they cannot permanently, or even really at all, destroy other persons as persons; though those persons can be removed eventually from their influence, and so be mistaken for destruction. The Roguents think of this as ‘fragmenting’ of the soul.)

Of course! But then the question has to be asked further: how is God loving the sinner by allowing annihilation? (Much moreso by actively enforcing annihilation of the sinner!–which I repeat seems to be attested to frequently in scriptural testimony, insofar as some kind of ‘annihilation’ may be said to be being done.) The object of His love is now utterly gone. The sinner is certainly no better off thereby! This isn’t a case of being loving by allowing an insistent child to be punished by achieving the result of what she’s insisting on; true love (which hopes for all things) might do so with the hope that this would help the beloved learn to do better. But the beloved cannot learn to do better after annihilation.

Beyond all this, there is a final critical problem: on your own terms “it would be an ‘unfair’ treatment of this person to revoke free will at this point” of annihilation. But the annihilated person has no free will!–and the bill for that result lies with God, Who has chosen to allow the annihilation at best (and probably enforced the annihilation as an active punishment of the person.)

At the very least, insofar as God does respect and value the free will of the child whom He has made a free-willed creature in His image, God will act to prevent His beloved daughter from destroying her free will.

Precisely because He does truly love her. {s!}

Well, yes, it would pretty much have to. {g} But then, by the same principle, the annihilation passages might be among the ‘poetically not literally true’ passages.

Moreover, the Biblical descriptions of post-mortem hope and reconciliation would have to be relegated to this kind of poetic truth. Other non-universalists have to do the same thing, of course (or else deny the hope and reconciliation in the passages altogether); but if you are like other annihilationists of my acquaintance, you probably believe annihilationism to be more merciful and humane than hopelessly unending torment. I know that that would give me an extra problem in relegating the hope of reconciliation in those passages to poetic coloring. (This is aside from trying to figure out what they were supposed to be poetic coloring about.)

From your following comment, I think you really meant “dependently” instead of “independently”. {g} Strictly speaking the quoted piece above should have read “we can only exist dependently on God, or else cease to exist, if God so allows it.” Had you meant something more or other than “dependently on God”, you’d’ve been talking about cosmological dualism (at best). Which wouldn’t be ortho-trin theology.

…then the person He loves would be annihilated.

{shrug}{g}

I do agree, however, that if He revoked the free will of the creature seeking the destruction of her existence (and thus of her free will), thus destroying her as a person, “then he has done so at the expense of love, since love requires freedom.”

Aquinas wrote that the screams of the tormented will sound like music to those at the wedding party. Color it Poetic Straw. The merciful and humane are a strange lot - squeamish calvinists invented the idea that all (elect and non-elect) babies go to heaven unless they live long enough to account for their actions - then some or most are destined for torture for having the bad luck of growing up. Pressed on that bit of nonsense, the humane calvinist has them annihilated rather than face the music.

At it’s root, annihilation of the immortals is more akin to Hinduism than Christianity - an endless cycle of death and rebirth - without continuity. In the end, it’s every cow for himself.

In my own experience, Arminians are just as likely (maybe moreso) than Calvinists to be annihilationists.

Also, I doubt annihilationism per se can be considered an endless cycle of death and rebirth. Annihilation might be considered an escape from the endless cycle, but that’s hardly something Christian annihilationists are hoping for! The comparison to Hinduism seems to be reaching pretty far.

The point I was trying to make and one which I have confronted annihilationists on, is the impossibility of annihilating that which is immortal. Christ was raised immortal - His body was, obviously, not immortal before His own resurrection. If a single resurrected person can be extirpated, then that extirpation is possible for all, including Christ. There is no cycle of death and re-birthing in historic Christian thought simply because annihilation of the redeemed* has never been taken seriously. Taken seriously, it will always beg the question, “What happens to the extirpated immortal?” The Hindu answer being as silly as the next - because it’s actually a nonsense question.

  • which is all of humanity since all are resurrected from death.

Except that our immortality is conditional on God; Who is the one that would be doing the annihilating (or else allowing it). Our spirits are not intrinsically self-existent.

Possible, yes. It’s technically possible that the Father could annihilate the Son (including the human nature thereof), although if He did so He would be committing self-existence suicide. That isn’t ever going to happen, or we wouldn’t be here to talk about it; but it is nevertheless technically possible for God to do that.

My problems with annihilation are not about the impossibility of it.

There is certainly a sense in which ‘redemption’ or ‘raising up’ must be said to be occuring in the resurrection of the wicked as well as the good; and I certainly don’t see the point to resurrecting the evil only to annihilate them afterward. But neither to I consider it a technical impossibility. (And as already established, we disagree as to whether the evil are instantly resurrected to the zoe eonian like the good. But that is another discussion.)

Jason,
I can’t say that any of us really are free especially when viewd as a non-believer. It is they that I consider here. While at this time I do hold that there is a strong sense of truth of this for even the believer it is untilmatley true of the unbeliever. What I mean is the unbeliever has NO way of knowing that sin is not beneficial to them. It is their blindness to this fact of which why they do not turn to the righteoussness of God. In other words they are confused.

Aug

I agree our spirits are not intrinsically self-existent - but, other than God, what is?

As to your other point…the resurrection depicted in the last judgment are people not spirits… and the sheep are not His ‘little ones’, i.e. the church is not present, having gone straight to the party…then who are the sheep and the goats?

Bare with me, but I think they are the ‘SUBJECTS of the kingdom’ mentioned in Matt 8:12. Locked out of the party for His invited (and accepted) nobility.

Why is that important? Because as we look at election, we find that some are elected to nobility and some as commoners.

To be a believer (and I honestly can tell you that I wouldn’t have believed without His help), to confess Christ here and mean it and act like it, is the hope of nobility in His kingdom.

My point: the sheep helped His noble ones and the goats hindered them, but BOTH are subjects of His kingdom and BOTH are clueless non-believers. Read Matt 26 and see if it isn’t so…

Hey, it’s my paradigm and I’m stickin’ with it! :unamused:

J: Moreover, at the moment, I find that my will is not even as free as it could potentially be; because it routinely under temptation pressure from various sources (both rational and non-rational).

S: The way I’m used to speaking is of libertarian freewill with two categories: free and coerced. The tempted individual is just as free as the untempted individual unless this temptation involves coercion. Are you, as a tempted individual, able to both give in and to resist temptation? If so, you are 100% free as far as that choice is concerned.

J: In which case the question must then be asked: how can annihilationism result in fair-togetherness being fulfilled between God and the annihilated spirit? Or in fair-togetherness being fulfilled between the spirit and any other derivative person? If God annihilates me, or by His choice allows me to annihilate myself, is He acting to accomplish fair-togetherness between myself and those whom I have sinned against? Or is He acting to accomplish something else?

S: But the choice is not so simple. If fairness requires separation, then there must be two sorts of fair-togetherness. One that emphasizes the ‘fair’ and another that emphasizes the ‘togetherness’. I take myself to be the former. You envision a system in which you and I are unable to permanently separate ourselves from God. I don’t. Your questions above only beg the question.

J: (You might decide that now is a good time to dis-accept the Greek word translated “righteousness” as meaning “fair-togetherness”… {g!} I have never yet met a non-universalist who didn’t eventually do this, btw, when the topic came to that point.)

S: No, thank you.

J: As do I, within the limits necessarily intrinsic to a derivative creature (such as myself) who is not I AM THAT I AM.

S: Necessarily intrinsic? Is God too weak to create beings which can exist independently? Is he unable to create beings like him, in his own image?

J: On the contrary, the whole possibility of being fair (or unfair) to the creature depends on the creature remaining in existence.

S: This is entirely false. The only way to make it true is to load the vocabulary so as to assume the conclusion. Nothing about the word ‘fair’ implies the continued existence of it’s object. All that is required for God to be fair to a creature is for the creature to exist at the moment. Its future existence or lack thereof has nothing necessarily to do with the fairness of its treatment at the moment.

J: By definition, frustrating the will of the creature is not the same as revoking the free will of the creature.

S: When I speak of freewill I do so in the libertarian sense i.e. free to do X and not to do X. To frustrate libertarian free will is to revoke it.

J: But then the question has to be asked further: how is God loving the sinner by allowing annihilation?.. The object of His love is now utterly gone. The sinner is certainly no better off thereby!

S: Turn it around. How is the sinner loved by having his freewill removed? Interpersonal love is lost at this point. The sinner has his imago Dei amputated.

J: on your own terms “it would be an ‘unfair’ treatment of this person to revoke free will at this point” of annihilation. But the annihilated person has no free will!

S: But the annihilat-ING person does.

J: At the very least, insofar as God does respect and value the free will of the child whom He has made a free-willed creature in His image, God will act to prevent His beloved daughter from destroying her free will.

S: Agreed.

J: But then, by the same principle, the annihilation passages might be among the ‘poetically not literally true’ passages.

S: Note that none of my argument has been based upon any of these passages. I’m just making the case that libertarian free will and universalism (the more-than-just-hope kind) are inconsistent and that LFW and annihilationism are consistent.

J: …but if you are like other annihilationists of my acquaintance, you probably believe annihilationism to be more merciful and humane than hopelessly unending torment. I know that that would give me an extra problem in relegating the hope of reconciliation in those passages to poetic coloring.

S: I don’t make that argument. I think I agree with it, but it’s not my motivation for adopting annihilationism.

J: From your following comment, I think you really meant “dependently” instead of “independently”. {g} Strictly speaking the quoted piece above should have read “we can only exist dependently on God, or else cease to exist, if God so allows it.” Had you meant something more or other than “dependently on God”, you’d’ve been talking about cosmological dualism (at best). Which wouldn’t be ortho-trin theology.

S: I mean exactly what I said: no more, no less. I do not mean the watered-down ‘dependently’ nor do I mean the over-the-top dualism. All I mean is that if God removes his providence, whatever existence a person has is no longer dependent (for sustenance, of course I don’t mean historically) on God. If this person lingers for a while, this is an independent lingering. I’ve not yet heard a sound argument which shows such lingering to be impossible. But if we are created in the image of the independently existing God, then why not? If this excludes me from ortho-trin theology (which of course depends on who claims to be its keeper), then so be it. Note that there are still quite a few significant differences between the hypothetical lingering soul and God which make ‘dualism’ a less than accurate label for my position.

J: …then the person He loves would be annihilated.

S: Yes.

Read the first couple pages of the Talbot paper. I’ll read the rest when I have time. But he is addressing what “many libertarians” say and concede, not LFW itself.

I would argue much the way a father can love his child yet restrict his child from choosing to play on the freeway. Simply because the child may DESIRE to play on the freeway does not require the child be able to choose (by executing his desire) to play on the freeway.

God’s love is demonstrated in the very nature that he does not allow suicide that is irrepairable.

Beyond this again is the fact that one man is born to Osama Bin Laden and one born to Billy Graham. As if the two have “free” abilities to come to the same decision. It’s like saying a severely retarted person and a genius are expected to write similar papers concerning quantum physics. How could it be?

If a personal relationship dissolution is demanded if he restrict choices, than how is God gambling his children establish wonderful relationships witht he ones who chose rightly? They chose rightly with a Gambler?

Again, in LFW lifes a crap shoot.

I don’t think God restricting choices which lead to eternal seperation (meaning never to be reconciled) means the personal relationship has to be destroyed.

Aug

Auggy and others…

Things have been hectic back here, with my brother’s wife having had a stroke (and grand mal seizure) while recuperating from the C-section and spinal tap. I’m hoping to get back to this thread (and others) on Saturday sometime. Meanwhile business and busy-ness are taking up all my spare ergs (or whatever neuronic activity is supposed to be measured in. :confused: )

A: I would argue much the way a father can love his child yet restrict his child from choosing to play on the freeway. Simply because the child may DESIRE to play on the freeway does not require the child be able to choose (by executing his desire) to play on the freeway.

S: The situations are not entirely analogous. Is the father refusing to ever let the child move away from home permanently? This crosses the line from loving to abusive. That’s what God does under hard universalism. The person may have all sorts of temporary freedom, but God will eventually cause them to want to come home.

A: Beyond this again is the fact that one man is born to Osama Bin Laden and one born to Billy Graham. As if the two have “free” abilities to come to the same decision. It’s like saying a severely retarted person and a genius are expected to write similar papers concerning quantum physics. How could it be?

S: I don’t really understand this. I don’t claim that children have a choice of parents.

A: If a personal relationship dissolution is demanded if he restrict choices, than how is God gambling his children establish wonderful relationships witht he ones who chose rightly?

S: How is he gambling? I don’t think I understand the question. He’s God, omnipotent. That’s how.

A: Again, in LFW lifes a crap shoot.

S: If you are talking about who your parents are, then yes life’s a crap shoot. But that has nothing to do with LFW. Universalism puts us in that same boat. If you are talking about our choice of eternal destiny, then crap shoot is not an accurate description. ‘Free’ is not the same as ‘random’.

A: I don’t think God restricting choices which lead to eternal seperation (meaning never to be reconciled) means the personal relationship has to be destroyed.

S: Then we have different ideas of what it means to be personal. I say the father who never allows his son the ability to move away permanently is treating the son as an owned object and not as a person.

Sorry for the huge delay. Business and busy-ness and health issue problems back here. (Ishy’s doing better but has a small blood clot in her brain, which already put her into at least one grand mal seizure. The baby’s fine at least.)

Yeek, trying to catch up with this discussion will be a challenge…

You mean God doesn’t strive in the heart of unbelievers as well as believers concerning sin? (yeesh… one wonders how any of us came to repentance of our sins… :open_mouth: :wink: )

I think unbelievers do have ways, by God’s grace, of knowing that sin is not beneficial to them; but I also consider this element to be beside the point. The problem of sin isn’t that sin is not beneficial to the sinner (even though that’s true, too); but that sin is ethically wrong. And God is going to lead sinners to understand sooner or later that their sins are ethically wrong, however much they may squint their eyes and ears against such understanding.

(Edited to add: by “sinners” I’m including myself, too. :imp: :slight_smile: )