Wow… has it really been !!!11-1/2 months!!! since I last posted in this thread?? {squinting at date on my previous comment here…} {feeling reaaaalllly old}
What’s worse, I was catching up on backposts back then, too!
Oh well.
First: speaking as one of the admins, I (for one) am not inclined to ban anyone yet. More on that later, maybe; but BA has been far more polite so far than some other people have recently been. And we didn’t ban them. He (or she) isn’t name calling or cursing in the threads yet for example, or telling us we promote devilish lies, etc. (Since I don’t know your gender, BA, I’ll default to neutral pronouns which in English are masculine, too.)
[Note: this post was actually composed late Wednesday morning, and was at that time up to date. If things have progressed along that line since then, let me know. But I was thinking of particular examples leveled [u]against BA since he arrived.]
Second: BA may not be aware that many of us keep track of post activity by means of the “view active posts” hyperlink (found near the top of the main index page, not far under the site announcements). If he thinks there are people who only keep track of one or two categories, he may only be trying to start discussions with people who haven’t yet seen what he’s trying to say, by multi-posting in disparate categories.
Third: Not all universalists believe the same things about eschatology, nor about prior theological categories which may make differences in eschatology. Some of us are preterists (to give the example most relevant to my back-post catching-upping --I’m currently catching up on threads related to that topic, which have been very popular recently), some of us are tribulationists of various sorts, some are undecided-or-other. As another example, some of us are penal substitutionists (of various kinds), some of us are something else. Relatedly, some of us believe there will be no punishment by God at all, whereas some of us believe there is still punishment by God on the way but we have further differences about what’s involved on that (or are agnostic about it). Some of us believe salvation is primarily focused on being saved from sin (and we have varying beliefs about that), some of us believe it’s primarily about being saved from something else (death, God’s wrath, etc.). Some of us profess unitarianism, some of us profess trinitarianism (and some of us mean variant things by that from each other), at least one of us is a modalist (though I haven’t seen him around recently), and some are undecided; and for some of us, this makes a huge difference in relation to our universalism, whereas for others of us the fundamental theology is of no particular relation to our universalism.
So it isn’t quite fair to BA, to say that he “doesn’t understand us”. ”We” aren’t nearly so united in our universalism as that!
Fourth: we do all, however, take the scriptural witness seriously and are trying to understand and learn from it. That, by his own testimony and evidence, includes Born Again, too. (It also includes Jeff, by the way, BA.) Whatever exegetical faults we think others are committing (whoever ‘we’ are), whatever willful blindnesses we think others are engaging in, whatever misunderstandings we think others are incorporating or building their positions from: the fact is that we all know quite well that we are taking the scriptures seriously and trying to understand and learn from them–even when other people charge us differently. Consequently, we should all be very hesitant about making that charge against other people. Because we all know how we feel when people make that charge, inaccurately, against us ourselves. Treat others the way that you want to be treated yourself. Or, if anyone prefers to have no mercy instead, well we were told about that, too, and how God would treat us for any insistences on our part along that line.
Fifth: yes, it’s annoying when people simply assert points as being obviously true when ‘we’ know better (whoever we are). And it’s annoying when, asked for evidence or rationale for a position, the person replies with what looks to us like more ungrounded assertions (whoever ‘us’ is. Are. Whichever verb tense works better there in English… )
But all of us have, in fact, some pretty complex beliefs on the topics we’re trying to talk about; and as a practical matter it isn’t always possible to give a short, complete answer providing all our grounds for what we believe. Moreover, our own understandings of this or that or these or those pieces of data, and what the data means, and how they logically connect to one another, won’t always be the same as that other guy’s understanding of the same data; and it may not always be possible for any of us to easily say why there’s a difference in our understandings there. That certainly doesn’t mean none of us have, in fact, done our best to understand the material, including in subordinate cooperation with the Holy Spirit. When any of us find ourselves in a position where we’re kind-of flailing around for an answer, not because we have no answer but because we have so much answer we don’t have a clear idea where to begin; then we ought to be able to sympathize that maybe the reluctance of our opponents to speak comes from a similarly perceieved overabundance of answer. At the same time, if we have come to think (rightly or wrongly!) that the other person is someone who isn’t going to treat our answer respectfully, or with the competency we believe we ourselves have on the topic, then once again we ought to be able to sympathize that maybe our opponents’ reluctance to answer our questions stems from a similar perception on their part about us. (Whoever “we” are.)
Sixth: there are in fact people who willfully cheat in discussions; and that’s a sin. And there are in fact people who try to troll other people on message boards for their own amusement; and that’s a sin, too. But we all, like Sts. Paul and Peter, are sinners. (Except for those of us who are not sinners and so who never do anything ethically wrong ever, or not anymore–unlike, for example, Sts. Paul and Peter. ) Examining ourselves to make sure we are being fair, instead of unfair, to our opponents, may not keep them from being unfair to us. But our duty is to be fair even to our opponents, under God. If we are not working toward fair-togetherness with our opponents, then we are the ones who are not being righteous.
Whoever “we” are. Whether that’s me, or another admin or mod, or any other universalist here of any kind, or any non-universalist here of any kind, or any non-Christian here of any kind.
If anyone believes someone here is being persistently unfair to you, then you have a choice: you can either keep interacting with him, or not. But if you do (or even if you don’t), your own duty is to be fair to that person whether or not that person is being fair to you. That isn’t an ethical option.
(Or, if anyone here thinks that fairness to an opponent is an ethical option, let me know so I can ban you and save the forum the trouble that your insistence on unfairness to an opponent is going to bring. I strenuously doubt anyone here will think so; but in case I’m wrong about that, speak out now and save the admins some time. )
As to whether the admins will ban someone for whatever reason: that’s our call. It’s also our responsibility if people are aggrieved because we allow leeway for people to act unfairly. But other people are not our puppets, so we have to allow them that leeway. Also, though God is inerrant and infallible, we admins (and mods) are not; allowing leeway helps protect other people from abuse on our part as the local authorities. That doesn’t mean we won’t ever take action. It does mean that it’s tough to strike a balance between providing for, and enforcing, a civil polity.
But obviously, anyone who doesn’t help us in providing for that civil polity, is lining themselves up to be zorched. Because we do take our responsibility seriously, and we don’t like it when the civilians are unhappy due to leniency on our part about how people are treating each other. Abuse our grace at your peril.
And that’s all I have to say on that matter at this time.
Less despotizing, more substantially commentating from me next, hopefully, at some time (most likely Saturday).