[This series is part of Section Four, Ethics and the Third Person. An index with links to all parts of the work as they are posted can be found [url=https://forum.evangelicaluniversalist.com/t/sword-to-the-heart-ethics-and-the-third-person/1335/1]here.]
[This series constitutes Chapter 43, “The Highest Death”.]
[Entry 1]
I have previously decided that the consequences of my sin must logically, ethically entail that I shall certainly die.
And I have been discussing what kinds of death should take place in me as a consequence of my sin.
I decided that my utter annihilation was a technical possibility, but that it would be inconsistent with the hope of the fulfillment of God’s love to me if He allowed the total fulfillment of the consequences of my wishful, willfully chosen intransigence. So although that type of death is possible for me–and even remains possible for God Himself, although He never has and never shall choose it–I think I can deductively conclude it shall never happen to me. My physical dissolution makes no difference: I, me, myself, shall by God’s grace somehow continue.
And, perhaps I will continue rebelling and thus insisting upon the debased death of rebellion, against life and love and reality–abusing the ever-given grace of God.
I have been inferring these potential modes of death by examining the sorts of death which I have already discovered that God chooses to put Himself through, or might possibly choose. He might possibly choose self-annihilation, which would be the necessary consequence of intentionally fracturing His eternal Unity of self-existent self-grounding. But you and I are still here, so He never has and never shall choose to do anything which results in that.