The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Justifying Eternal Punishment

Evangelical Universalism Arguments against Evangelical Universalism
#1

Part of what determines the weight of a sin doesn’t depend on the greatness of the person sinned against but on the greatness of the type of being sinned against. For example: the hateful killing a tree, a dog, and a human would have increasing penalties even if the killing were painless in each instance. This is so because humans are made in God’s image. The Bible says Christ is an eternally greater type of being than any other being. Therefore, rejecting Him and His gift of salvation is a sin that merits an eternally greater penalty than any other type of penalty. This is the sin that leads to eternal death. The penalty here is eternal torment. Now, eternity here is being understood in the classical and traditional, Christian view of timeless eternity. It transcends time altogether, like propositional truth, and is therefore timeless and unchanging. Those who die without God’s grace and fail to enter purgatory enter into this eternity. They therefore become just as unchanging as God and become fixed in their being and unable to repent. They stay evil for all eternity. This is the consequence of their sin. Their torment is therefore caused by their sins themselves. The punishment is therefore just and fits the crime.

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#2

Unless God in His great mercy and Love, rescues them. And why not? He has turned us from rebels to Sons and Daughters; I’m not about to say He can’t do it to everyone. Everyone. :smiley:

#3

So you’re saying that sin and evil have a place in eternity then. I’m not buying that one, Cole. I think that there will be a time that sin will be no more, and that when all things are summed up in Christ, sin will not be part of that. It makes no sense to me.

#4

Cindy,

Evil is outside the gates of the city where righteousness dwells.

#5

This is the BIGGEST deficit with Universalism and it is HUGE… it shares the self-same, and IMO errant, view of “Hell” as does Infernalism; the ONLY difference being the degree of time spent in supposed flames – be they torturous or purifying.

#6

There are two schools of thought on the topic of eternity:

  1. Eternity is a timeless realm without succession, duration, or sequence. There is no “before” or “after” in eternity. All past, present, and future is at an “Eternal Now”.

  2. Eternity is never ending time, without beginning or end. It is forever time, time from everlasting to everlasting.

The Bible says time had a beginning and it will have an end. So, when I refer to eternity, I’m referring to 1.

#7

#8

I disagree with the premise. I see no reason why rejection of God’s love would “merit” eternal torment and retribution. My rejection of his mercy does not injure God or Christ in any way. It quite literally does not make any difference to him. To think that it does is to engage in anthropomorphic thinking.

God wills our good, eternally and immutably. That is his truth. One of the best theologians on this is the Dominican Herbert McCabe. See my summary of McCabe’s reflections here: “Finding the God Who is Love.”

#9

:smiley:

#10

And those verses need to be properly interpreted. The Bible uses anthropomorphic language throughout.

To assume that our sins do not injured or harm God does not mean that God does not love us and does not eternally will our good. To say that our rejection of God does not make a difference to him does not mean that he is indifferent. Quite the contrary. But God is God, the infinite plenitude of life and being. He cannot suffer loss or injury; he cannot suffer pain or grief (except in the incarnate Christ). He simply loves us with all of his being, immutably, unchangeably, eternally, because this is what it means for God to be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

#11

Nowhere does the Bible indicate that this anthropomorphic. Rather, the Bible is clear that the Spirit is a person and therefore has emotions like love. He sees all of reality and therefore feels everything eternally.

#12

This is the BIGGEST deficit with Universalism and it is HUGE… it shares the self-same, and IMO errant, view of “Hell” as does Infernalism; the ONLY difference being the degree of time spent in supposed flames – be they torturous or purifying.

Well if the flames are purifying it’s unlikely it is literal flames.

#13

Cindy,

Evil is outside the gates of the city where righteousness dwells.

Yes but in Rev 22.17 , five verses from the end of the bible everyone is offered a last chance to repent. The gates of the city BTW are always open
so i’m thinking there is a reason for that. The bible does say evil comes to an end.

#14

Michael_Cole wrote:The Bible says Christ is an eternally greater type of being than any other being. Therefore, rejecting Him and His gift of salvation is a sin that merits an eternally greater penalty than any other type of penalty

Interesting, my bible says “the wages of sin is death.”

#15

Michael, your response simply begs the question. All you have done is say, “It’s literal speech, because the text does not explicitly identify itself as metaphorical speech.” The author of Genesis 1 does not state that he is intending a literal description of the creation of the universe with 24 hour days. Are we therefore bound to take Gen 1 as literal speech in its entirety? Are we going to fight all over the Scopes Monkey Trial?

Simply citing biblical texts is insufficient, because there always remains the question of interpretation, both with regards to authorial meaning and to canonical meaning.

The literal attribution of emotions to the transcendent God is more than just a little controversial. Historically, Christian theology has refrained from such attribution. For human beings emotions are intrinsically tied to our physico-neurological condition. If God is immaterial, spiritual, and transcendent, what would it mean to speak of him as having emotions or feelings? Does he feel cross in the mornings when he gets up on the wrong side of the bed?

#16

Michael,

I enjoyed reading your post. I think, though, you need to ask yourself this question. What is your ultimate authority of belief? Is it St. Paul? Thomas Aquinas? Creeds? The Gospels?

To me, the only God worth believing in is one infinitely good. Any image of God or idea of him that has in it any darkness at all, I think too mean and little and small to be the real God. Do you really think we could think too good of him? That we could “over-hype” him, as it were? I don’t.

So that is my ultimate authority - my own experience (subjective, sure, but so is everyone’s and that’s inescapable and therefore moot) of what “goodness” means. And I can’t for the life of me think that a being who would be satisfied (and particularly get some sort of “satisfaction” from beholding) the eternal torment of sentient, conscious beings made in his image and therefore in some deep way very like himself could ever be “good”. If words have any meaning at all, such a being could never be good any more than a square peg could fit into a round hole. How could such a being be anything but the most hideous thought the human mind can conceive? What is the motive of such a being other than delighting in sheer malevolence and, in a sort of way, self-mutilation?

So you could quote verses and doctors of the church and creeds till the cows come home backing up eternal torment and it doesn’t mean a thing to me. I’d believe in my conception of God - that is, as a being unsurpassingly all-good - if there was no Bible, or even no Jesus. Because that idea is my ultimate authority. It’s the only thing worthy enough to be the object of faith. The human mind of its own reaches into infinity; it yearns for breath from the mountaintops of eternity and the founts of very life itself. Nothing short of an infinitely good God - that is, a being perfectly beautiful in every way - can satisfy it. Man cannot live by bread alone; and his soul shall starve on low notions of the divine. Thus he eventually casts them off and looks for the real thing, the thing that can satiate his hunger.

So what, Michael, is your ultimate authority? What would you say right now is a notion too mean for you to think of God? Indeed, is there anything you would not believe? Ask yourself - what could your authority right now say (be it St. Thomas or St. Paul) that you would not believe?

#17

Not for God. If God is love then He has emotions. Love is an emotion. It also rejoices with the truth. God is grieved at evil and rejoices with good. From eternity He has foreknowledge of everything that is going to happen. He has an infallible evaluation of the facts. Therefore, without emotions God would lack intellectual capacity.

No, He has felt everything from eternity. God’s emotional life is infinitely complex and cannot be grasped by the finite and limited mind.

Even if you are right the argument still holds. You don’t have to harm someone to have done something wrong. If I hatefully kill a human painlessly it carries more weight that if I hatefully killed a dog painlessly. Rejecting Christ is to reject God and His grace. This separates one from God and His grace and has infinite consequences because of who God is.

#18

Rejecting Christ is to reject God and His grace. This separates one from God and His grace and has infinite consequences because of who God is.

The consequences are what God decides the consequences will be, not because of who God is. If you think the consequences are because who God is (BTW God is love/light/Spirit) can you support that?

#19

Is love an emotion? What is an emotion? Can we conceive of emotions apart from all physicality? What does it mean to attribute emotions and feelings to the utterly transcendent, immaterial and eternal God? I honestly do not know the answer; but I am leery of the easy attribution of feelings to God. I suspect we attribute feelings to God because we feel that God’s life would be diminished if he did not have an emotional life as we do; but why should I believe that is true? Is God’s life diminished if he does not, by nature, have a physical body? Of course not. Yet the lack of embodiment would be a diminishment for us.

It’s quite one thing to say that God retributively punishes someone for violating the Law (“Do not reject my mercy or else”); but it’s quite another thing to say that my free rejection of God entails, by my own choice, my separation from God. C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce is a good example of the latter.

If we are going to attribute feelings to God, then I propose that God grieves when we sin, because by our sin we separate us from that fulfillment of our being that he eternally wills for us. He certainly, however, does not get angry because we have offended his honor. That would impute weakness of character to him.

#20

Love is an act of the will but it’s also an emotion. One piece of evidence for this is found in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, where Paul says that you can give away all your possessions to the poor and still not have love. Evidently, then, love is more than an act of the will, because you can have a sacrificial act of the will without having love. Also note that in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, love is said to involve various affections: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

That love involves not only the will, but also the affections, is born out in everyday experience. Imagine a husband who seeks the welfare of his wife, but doesn’t enjoy doing it. Would his wife feel loved? We doubt it. Even if the husband did not dislike serving his wife, but simply was indifferent in doing it, she still would not feel loved. This is because we intuitively recognize that emotions are an essential part of love. Love includes not just willing, but also preferring and wanting and delighting.

Love is an emotion. It rejoices with the truth. God is grieved at evil and rejoices with good. From eternity He has foreknowledge of everything that is going to happen. He has an infallible evaluation of the facts. Therefore, without emotions God would lack intellectual capacity.

Are you satisfied with mystery?

Not necessarily. Scripture speaks of a holy and just anger.