The Evangelical Universalist Forum

In All Likelihood George MacDonald Went to Hell

It seems some Catholics are of the opinion that the RCC teaches he is in “hell” & will stay there suffering forever and ever. For example:

https://novusordowatch.org/2017/11/francis-this-pope-heretic-judas-iscariot-saved/

http://www.ewtn.com/v/experts/showmessage.asp?number=393943

I wonder if opinion polls would reveal that hopeful universalism is the prevailing view.

Groups such as JW’s, Christadelphians, 7th Day Adventists, etc, & some annihilationists i’ve encountered on forums believe in “soul sleep”, whereas the historic Christian church has rejected the “soul sleep” viewpoint.

Both sides present many verses allegedly supporting their POV re how they harmonize the Scriptures on this topic.

Following is a site that offers verses in favor of the majority historic Christian teaching & how to explain passages such as those you’ve presented: https://spencer.gear.dyndns.org/2007/10/26/soul-sleep-a-refutation/

Did I say anything about “soul sleep”? I don’t even believe in “souls” in the Greek sense of the word—as some immaterial essence that can exist apart from the human body.

In the Old Testament,the word translated as “soul” means “being.” In the New Testament, the word translated as “soul” means “self.”

How does your POV differ from the “soul sleep” perspective? Your 2nd sentence above, & several other comments of yours i’ve read on these forums, align perfectly with the “soul sleep” viewpoint. https://carm.org/soul-sleep
https://www.gotquestions.org/soul-sleep.html

If people who die don’t go to heaven, hell, paradise or Hades, where do they go? Nowhere? Do they become nonexistent? Do they go into oblivion, until a recreation from the mind of God? Are they nothing until God makes them again from the earth like He created Adam? Do they have no awareness or consciousness, no thoughts or feelings, no actions or choices, until their resurrection?

In the Native American spiritual viewpoint, the world is populated by spirits. In the book The Pipe and Christ: A Christian-Sioux Dialogue …which is a dialogue between Roman Catholic theologians and Lakota medicine men…the Roman Catholic author talks about spirits of heaven, hell and the earth. And contemporary Old Catholic Church mystic Tiffany Snow, also had visions of spirits.

I also hung out for years, with medicine men and women…of the Two Feathers Medicine Clan. They were under the leadership of Duke Big Feather. But they disbanded, after his passing. And there’s only one local Lokota area person - still holding sweat lodges.

These days, I pass my time in:

  • Attending a conservative Anglican church and incorporating Eastern Orthodox theological elements.

  • Engaging in silent Buddhist and Yogia, meditation and contemplation methods…in the spirit of the Franciscans.

  • Hanging out with energy healing groups, that don’t charge and are God centric

  • Trying to “sell” the Zombie Apocalypse, as the most probable - end times, tribulation model.

  • Deepening and studying, the popular romance languages and Japanese.

EXACTLY! When you’re dead, you’re dead.

They go into oblivion, but they are not “recreated”; they will be resurrected at the last day as Jesus taught.

God doesn’t “make them again”; He raises them from death.

Of course not. How could they? They won’t live again until their resurrection.

How will this “resurrection” differ from the way Adam was created?

Will those humans who are cast into the LOF die a second death like their previous death?

No. There is a great difference between the natural body and the resurrection body as Paul clearly wrote in
1 Corinthians 15—as different as a grain of wheat is different from the fully developed wheat plant.

35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?”
36 You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.
37 And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.
38 But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.
39 For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish.
40 There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another.
41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.
42 So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable.
43 It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.
44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.
45 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
46 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual.
47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.
48 As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.
49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
50 I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.
53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.

so Don, if one of my grandsons asks ‘is there a heaven’ what would be your reply?

My reply:
Yes, there is a heaven, but very little is said about it in the Bible.
However, some day all who have died will be made alive once more, and will never die again.

I like it. :grinning:

And since heaven and earth, will be joined together. It might also be in part - a place on earth. :smile:

I provide a link to ‘Justice’. I’m not sure if he mentions Calvinism by name, but he pretty thoroughly goes over all the 5 points in this essay. from http://formerfundy.blogspot.com/2010/08/george-macdonald-on-penal-substitution.html
A snippet:
The notion that the salvation of Jesus is a salvation from the consequences of our sins, is a false, mean, low notion. The salvation of Christ is salvation from the smallest tendency or leaning to sin. It is a deliverance into the pure air of God’s ways of thinking and feeling. It is a salvation that makes the heart pure, with the will and choice of the heart to be pure. To such a heart, sin is disgusting. It sees a thing as it is,–that is, as God sees it, for God sees everything as it is. The soul thus saved would rather sink into the flames of hell than steal into heaven and skulk there under the shadow of an imputed righteousness. No soul is saved that would not prefer hell to sin. Jesus did not die to save us from punishment; he was called Jesus because he should save his people from their sins."
And:
" MacDonald was reared in Calvinism but came to reject the doctrines. He writes:

[T]he notion that a creature born imperfect, nay, born with impulses to evil not of his own generating, and which he could not help having, a creature to whom the true face of God was never presented, and by whom it never could have been seen, should be thus condemned, is as loathsome a lie against God as could find place in heart too undeveloped to understand what justice is, and too low to look up into the face of Jesus. It never in truth found place in any heart, though in many a pettifogging brain. There is but one thing lower than deliberately to believe such a lie, and that is to worship the God of whom it is believed (“Justice,” in Unspoken Sermons , Part 3).

In the sermon “Justice,” cited above, MacDonald lays out his objections to the penal substitutionary theory (PST) of the atonement. He describes the doctrine:"

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/macdonald/unspoken3.viii.html


The truths expressed above are little known throughout Christendom.

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Paidion to DaveB2.0.

To which I add, to his commentary!

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What does that say about the Love of God Omnipotent? Does it have an expiry date like a carton of milk?

Paul says,
“I’m convinced that nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord: not DEATH or life, not angels or rulers, not present things or future things, not powers or height or depth, or any other thing that is created.”

So, as Clement of Alexandria says, “we can set no limits to the agency of the Redeemer to redeem, to rescue, to discipline in his work, and so will he continue to operate after this life.”

IF death can separate someone from God’s love forever, then Paul deceived us, but I’m as convinced as Paul.

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