“I’m not so much seeing revelation as progressive… but it opens its own can of worms — like on what authority does this apparent progressive revelation end with Christ?”
Davo, I’m hearing this as dismissing a proffered interpretation of the Biblical narrative (here as ‘progressive’) based on perceiving it as not supporting one’s desired beliefs (all revelation has ended) or that it raises challenging questions (a can of worms).
My sense is that the main thing relevant to evaluating an interpretation is examination of whether that is what the text itself displays. Here, the question is whether the Biblical narrative displays progress in its’ own views and interpretations. I perceive that as evident.
Bob… you couldn’t be hearing that more wrong as my eschatological leaning doesn’t come into it at all. Plenty of futurists could well be in the same boat.
Well now you’re moving goal posts to “narrative” whereas up to this point generally on the forum this issue has been attributed and discussed in terms of the character or alleged besmirching thereof, of the character of God, with such claims that certain people in the bible misattribute the works of Satan to God etc — which is in essence if you believe Jesus, constitutes blasphemy — bad Moses to name but a few.
At an immediate glance the problem is at least two-fold…
• If so-called progressive revelation comes down to man’s every increasing revelatory grasp then YEP… anything goes — Mohammad, Joseph Smith and as many other self-appointed aficionados leaning on their own understanding saying thus and so in God’s name. Like if Moses who spoke with God face to face can attribute to his Lord the actual works of Satan, as some who claim progressive revelation to be true do, then we’re all sorely lost. So no… man’s every increasing revelatory grasp doesn’t cut it, IMO.
• If so-called progressive revelation comes down to God’s every increasing revelatory presence THEN whatever or however that revelation has been made, even in its apparent infancy, such STILL reflects God. Well consider this: Folk on this forum who hold to progressive revelation openly dismiss certain words recorded as indicating Moses presenting God’s direct words as really being nothing more than Moses’ own deluded or deceived ramblings; AND YET are more than happy to claim this isn’t the case with for example… the Ten Commandments, and yet look at this…
Ex 20:5you shall not bow down before them or serve them. For I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, inflicting punishment for their ancestors’ wickedness on the children of those who hate me, down to the third and fourth generation.
And they claim this actually is God speaking… how is this rationalised up against that oft-touted appeal to 1Jn 4:8, 16? Sorry no… I cannot see where so-called progressive revelation coming down from God’s every increasing revelatory presence to man has any credence either.
I could be wrong but I don’t think that bird flies…
Someone upthread has probably mentioned this already, but if it’s a question of people going through the eonian fire the most being the most perfect (or something like that), then there are two more points to factor into that evaluation.
1.) Per GosMark’s report, everyone gets salted with the unquenchable fire of Gehenna, “the fire the eonian” as it’s called in GosMatt (twice, including when talking about how it is reserved for the devil and his angels). Salting is the best of things, and leads to being at peace with one another.
2.) The holdout evildoers aren’t working with the fire (which on this theory is the Holy Spirit, our God the Consuming Fire). They’re working against the fire. If you strive against the fire into the eons of the eons, while other people have accepted and are cooperating with the Holy Spirit for those same eons of eons (acquiring the fire, as the charismatic Christian youth rally likes to put it!), then who has the advantage in working with the Holy Spirit? Obviously, it’s the people with the most experience at it! If it’s a mere question of exposure time, everyone gets the same exposure time, or if anyone gets more it’s the people who started cooperating early. If it’s a question of quality of exposure, the people cooperating get vastly more of that than the people rebelling against the fire for equivalent amounts of time.
This is aside from the observation that any talk of Satan’s reconciliation in the Bible has him eating the dust of his humility and being a pet for children, so no, he doesn’t get to go back to being his prior authority – not so far as we’re told.
Consequently, I don’t regard this as a hidden problem for universalism. However, as someone may have already mentioned upthread, the idea that Satan would regain his former authority was a big stumbling stone for the acceptance of Christian universalism in the patristic ages, so the concept is an old problem! (And not particularly hidden, since this was part of Justinian’s denunciation.)
But Davo, when I speak of whether there is “progress” in the Bible narrative’s “views and interpretations,” I do centrally mean that its discussion of the “character of God” progresses.
So when you respond to my view that evaluating this should be based on “what the text itself displays,” by emphasizing that such a reading would leave you feeling “sorely lost,” it appears that you confirm my perception that conclusions here are often shaped by what one desires to believe (here in a kind of revelation that provides secure certainty).
But I cannot see how what a text’s interpretation would make us feel would change what the text objectively displays. Thus I continue to think that that’s the main thing that should be evaluated.
Or maybe I’m too much of an empiricist.
So how do you understand what this… “text objectively displays” below, i.e., how is it to be… “evaluated”? — do you agree God actually said this, or in light of the 1Jn 4:8, 16… “interpretation” is this more evidence of Moses purportedly misrepresenting… “the character of God”?
Ex 20:5you shall not bow down before them or serve them. For I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, inflicting punishment for their ancestors’ wickedness on the children of those who hate me, down to the third and fourth generation.
Random thoughts: this is why I mentioned ‘mega-issues’ that are prior to our interpreting the text.
-It takes interpretation, as we all know. The New interprets the Old - Romans and Hebrews being the biggies in that respect; the New is what is most important. AFAIAC.
-Who was God speaking to, when, what came before that and after that, what was the occasion, what was the intent? What do we know now that they did not, about “God’s character?”
-What does ‘jealous’ mean? Perhaps "“very watchful or careful in guarding or keeping?”
-I don’t see the point of saying, especially with the OT - ‘there’s the text’. We don’t do that in any book at all that we are trying to understand. We look for connections, for flow, for secrets unlocked, for light to help us. We don’t have just the OT, we have the interpretation in the New.
And still we have to choose, based on ALL we know, whether a verse is telling us something about God, or telling us something about an ancient race trying to get it right. Actually, they weren’t trying most of the time, but that’s another story.
Thanks davo. I may not fully grasp your inquiry. But I’d understand Exodus 20:5 to say that one big command God told Moses to deliver was not to worship idols, because God’s jealous intent to have their sole allegiance meant that the punishing consequences that he would administer would extend to several generations of their children.
You appear to ask if this “misrepresents” God’s loving character in light of 1 John? If you’re asking if I take punishing disobedience as necessarily contradicting love, no. I’d follow Talbott and Parry in seeing that divine punishment can be redemptive and consistent with holy love.
If in our discussion about possible ‘progression,’ you’re asking if understanding the apparent notion that punishment of children for their parents’ guilt is right, I am open to the possibility that interpretations of this may progress.
Ezekiel 18:20 may reflect a development of this tradition: “The one who sins is the one who will die. The child will not share the guilt of the parent… The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them.”
I dont think the Legalism is necessarily a dogmatic stance. I do agree that it does seem like the popular approach in Western Christianity, and has been severely abused. I am not so sure why the Catholic Church and its protestant offspring have gone on the path. Possibly it was the culture that the Gospel was presented in the Roman world. Because the Pauline epistles, particularly the book of Romans uses similar language of law and penalty. A little while ago, I saw a video on a Protestant getting a tour of Eastern Orthodoxy, and this priest essentially said that God essentially life, and to reject life is to reject God. I think Pope John Paul II had gone in the existential direction, where he explained that Hell is the rejection of God. I think the theory behind attending mass is that one participates in the mysteries and liturgy. As far as I know, the Eastern Orthodox agrees with this position on the divine liturgy, and do not look too highly on not attending. From what I know, the Scholastic approach uses a philosophical way of looking at theology, and place a heavy emphasis on the good, true and beautiful. The only modern scholastics I am familiar with are C.S. Lewis, Peter Kreeft and Bishop Robert Barron. I know of the ancient scholastics like Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquintas. Not sure about others, or if Augustine of Hippo fits in the scholastic tradition. Yet I have not found too much orthodox support for the Scholastic approach, and tend to favor apophatic theology.
Okay, I’ll get back to the point. I have found that the legalistic approach is still too widely used for pastoral reasons. But I would have to say that the legalistic approach is just a dumbed down, and has been more detrimental. As to the matter of missing mass, I have always been skeptical about this(as soon as I became able to think on my own about religion). I would agree that it is spiritually healthy to have some form of public worship, which most Christians, whether Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant acknowledge. But somehow, I cannot help but think much attachment to legalism is a difficulty in confronting the dark side of the legalistic approach, and the wrongs committed with the legalistic approach. But I find that the orthodox church is just at risk of legalism, such as the awful tollhouse teaching, and has had just as much bad fruit.
Very true. Geoffrey (a former EO forum member), did talk about that very thing. I think all Christian branches (RC, EO and Protestants) - have “skeletons in the closet”. I suppose if one is “truly” optimistic…One has to be a die hart, 5-pointed Calvinist…along with being a philosophical admirer, of Arthur Schopenhauer
Let me quote a bit, from the critics:
The opponents of toll houses argue that it is a form of gnosticism, or neo-gnosticism, and claim that the teaching is opposed to the church’s catechism and other Orthodox teachings
Opponents of the teaching also consider it similar to the intermediary state taught by the Catholic Church in its doctrine of purgatory.
However, the bad part of it in Orthodoxy, in my opinion, is that it was taken literally like there are actual aerial spaces in the sky and that the disincarnate soul somehow travels through space, and each of these spaces is ruled by certain demons.
Then the idea got to be that you weren’t being prayed for to get delivered from these demons and purified from these sins, but the claim became that you are being punished. That is what happened in the Roman Church. The idea was that in each tollhouse you have to get punished for the sins that you have committed under that particular category. Well, I don’t think that is the Orthodox teaching.
My opinion, to sum it up, is that it is a very classical traditional Orthodox allegorical teaching that began to be too literally interpreted, and therefore got deviated in various ways, so that you get to the point where a guy like Archbishop Lazar (Puhalo) just about denies the doctrine totally and claims that praying for the dead is just an act of love and whatever happens when you die, you die and that’s it.
I honestly believe that is not the traditional teaching. The traditional teaching is that you have to enter into the presence of Christ and be purified and delivered and forgiven whatever sins you are hanging on to. The allegory is that these are named, the point being that the more we are purified before we die, the better off we are. When a person does die, we who are still alive on earth pray for them that they would be making it through, so to speak, that their death would be a purification from their sin, that they would accept the risen Christ and they would accept his grace and his forgiveness, and that they would enter into Paradise.
Actually, this last paragraph quoted - is very important. Roman Catholicism talks about purgatory. But is it a place or a state? I say it’s the state of being purified. And with that definition, Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy - are on the same page. The question for universalists ( or hopeful ones, like me)…, is does this opportunity for purification - get extended to everyone after death? My plan of action is to finish the RC-RCIA program. That finishes next Tuesday. And spend a year, with the EO (American branch). Which ends in the fall around October. Then decide who I affiliate with, for the rest of my life.
I can just image, what it would be like…to pass through one of those “toll houses”:
Quite so. His administered… “punishing consequences” indeed as per the fair warnings later expounded in the curses of Deut 28 as was seen, testified and outworked in Israel’s OT story — and in fact right across into Israel’s NT story, as per the prophet like Moses (Acts 4:22-23), i.e., Jesus, and His warnings of the little apocalypse.
Agreed… and that then as I see it would be, for example, the same principle at work we see in the hyperbolic commands of the Amalekite controversy; to where the end results in temporal death for some and yet there is full and merciful restoration to follow, as per Rom 11:32.
No metaphor. The unearthing of many reports in that area at that time, and in adjoining nations, shows a marked tendency to inflate the egos of rulers and to strike one’s potential enemies with fear, by over-inflating the number of victims (and atrocities) in one’s written account.
I agree, but there is no archeological evidence for much of the biblical narrative. Yet Bible believers have still taken its’ story as a cue for their own lives. Thus considering the moral implications of its’ accounts seems to remain relevant.
That’s another reason why I stress that the NT is our guide, because it sheds light on the old. 9 out of 10 doctors agree that we should get our doctrine from the NT and stop stressing over the OT.
