The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Lurking traditional Christian forums could be unhealthy?

It has come to the point where lurking traditional Christian forums has become mentally stressful because of traditional Christianity’s belief in eternal hell. Yeah - it’s that stressful. I’ve been on a certain forum for many years and have made several bonds on there, but it’s to the point where maybe I shouldn’t be reading certain stuff on there if it gets under my skin.

Has anyone had problems lurking regular Christian message boards ever since they’ve turned away from the eternal hell doctrine? My head wants to explode from all this.

This forum doesn’t look that active - it’s not dead, but it’s not necessarily that active, so it’s not easy for me to cope :frowning:

Hi Lady,

If it is unhealthy for you, stay away. If you have friends there you want to keep in touch with, maybe you can do that through email? Sometimes it’s refreshing to get away from the internet entirely for awhile. :sunglasses:

Sonia

Lady, let me tell you one thing, the reason why people like your Father wants you to become
Muslim is the false teachings of the Christianity, like soul immortality, doctrine of trinity, rapture and hell,
and they believe the hell is after resurrection, but I found few Muslim Universalists around the world,
because God is giving just few people the power to understand and interpret these books, and few will be
chosen for REIGNING with Christ for 1000 years!

the reason that this forum is not so active, is because just few people accepted the Truth which is Universalism :frowning:

many Muslims don’t believe in eternal hell of after death, or I can say most of them who read the Koran.
God gave Muhammad the Koran because of the false teachings of the Christianity from 5th to 16th century,
the big mess that the roman catholic church made :angry:

but that does not mean you should become Muslim, because Koran didn’t ignore the Gospel and Torah,

don’t worry about anything, many can’t bear the burden of Universalism, many includes Muslims
obeying God because of hell, and it’s a shame, nothing but a being a hypocrite,
I commented lot about universalism, and sadly many Christian forums DELETED my comments :wink:

Imagine there is no hell (which is true), NOW keep the commandments, if you can then you are the True Believer
of the Jesus Christ and not a hypocrite, and this will please God!
FEAR CANNOT CAST OUT LOVE, LOVE CASTS OUT FEAR :wink:

get off the fora as soon as you can. you’ll feel better for it. as suggested…get contact details via email for those you can be bothered to stay in touch with.

i have done this recently with facebook (for other reasons, but basically it became toxic for me), and i love it.
i am confident if i need to get in touch with people through other means, i will be able to.

Agreed with Sonia muchly!

^^^ What James (corpselight) said.

Do you believe in the Incarnation of Christ?

thank you guys for your support; glad I found you guys. :slight_smile:

Ladybug,

It’s so pleasant to have you here and we all enjoy you. I think that if you post anything, you’re likely to get a fairly quick response. But . . . if you like joining in on an ongoing conversation, which many of us do, you might enjoy tentmaker.org/forum/ in ADDITION to hanging out here with us. (No fair leaving us for them, though!) Tentmakers is also a universalistic forum, and I believe they may be a little more lively with light conversation and fellowship than we tend to be. EU forum is generally most active on weekends, and especially on Sundays, I’ve noticed.

Love, Cindy

Yes, why not, I don’t know why you asked this? because of the Trinity?
but not as the 2nd person of the Trinity, he was not God in flesh, he was the Son of God in flesh.

1 Timothy 2:5
For there is One God and One mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus,
John 17:3
And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

Do you see a 3rd person of the Trinity here? :smiley:

His only begotten (monogenēs) Son: Monogenēs is a compound word consisting of mono meaning only,
and gennesis, meaning birth (pre-existed before the foundation of the world)

now as Son of Man, or Son of Mary many Muslims say, they believe Jesus was just a Prophet and a Servant,
but in the Bible says too, that does not mean his disciples lied to the world!
so why they are Calling him Isa MASIH?

if I am not mistaken, you can believe in the Incarnation of Christ without believing in the Trinity, right? I was just trying to clear things up. LOL.

Depends on what is being incarnated, Lady. Non-trinitarians can believe in different kinds of incarnation, too (up to and including the incarnation of the only person of the one and only God Most High, as modalists do for example); whereas binitarian theists can believe in the same 2nd Person of the one and only God Most High incarnating that trinitarian theists do. (Stonehouse is the only strictly binitarian author I myself am aware of, but he was also a Christian universalist for whatever that’s worth, and wrote a LOT on Christian universalism, most of which has been lost now.) Bi-theists, by contrast, could believe in one of the two Gods Most High incarnating. Ditto for tri-theists. Polytheists could believe in one of the strongest high gods incarnating, though those entities would still be creatures dependent on something substantially different from themselves for existence. Pantheists can believe in special avatars of the God Who Is All, or could believe we are all incarnations of God. Which is all completely aside from mere manifestations of God Most High (or some lesser lord or god) acting in the natural system.

(An incarnation is a special kind of manifestation, but not all manifestations are incarnations. Docetists believe Christ was the manifestation of some deity, perhaps even of God Most High, but do not believe Christ incarnated: born of a woman as a human baby, grew up as a human with a human natural history, able to die the death of a human, etc. Conservative and Orthodox non-Christian Jews might or might not agree that God Most High visibly manifested in a lot of famous and obscure Biblical stories, but usually reject the whole idea of incarnation, and certainly reject that Jesus was Incarnated. Some Christian Jews also reject an incarnation of God Most High, trinitarian or otherwise, though they may accept such an incarnation, trinitarian or otherwise; others go for a manifestation instead, or for an incarnation of something less than GMH, or merely for adoption of a creature not previously pre-existant. But getting back to incarnation instead of merely manifestation… :wink: )

There are lots of theoretical options on incarnation, which a person could believe; to give another example, high Arians typically believe in the incarnation of the greatest creature (the highest super-angel in effect), though not the incarnation of God Most High. Neo-Arians don’t typically believe in an incarnation per se, and tend more toward adoptionism (a creature empowered and given authority by God Most High, perhaps even up to God Most High status – there are a lot of “unitarian” variations), but they could in theory believe that some pre-existent creature, though less than the greatest creature up to then (or later?) became incarnated as Jesus.

There are more variations than this, too. I’m not sure yet which variety Eric has switched to; he started out as an Armenian Orthodox (or so I recall him telling us, though perhaps I’m mis-remembering – my apologies Eric if so), and they’re trinitarian (or historically have been anyway, and I haven’t heard different lately) but along with other “Oriental Orthodox” groups (mostly Ethiopian and Coptic Orthodox now, although one of the Syrian Orthodox groups goes this way) they disagree with other ancient trinitarian groups about the extent to which Christ’s humanity operated with His full divinity: the Oriental Orthodox believe His humanity was completely subsumed by His deity, although they are not docetists – they do historically affirm Jesus’ full humanity, like the Central Orthodox (Roman Catholics/Eastern Orthodox) do, and like the Church of the East does (the Nestorians, Jacobites, and other Syrian Orthodox.) All three ancient trinitarian groups recently got together in past decades and apologized for slandering each other, and officially agreed that while they have some slight but important differences on how the two natures work together, they do all believe in trinitrairan theism and the full humanity and full divinity of Christ.

Anyway, to put it shortly, there’s a lot of scriptural data, and a lot of metaphysical concepts, so naturally there’s potentially and actually a lot of disagreement historically about how best to put everything together. It isn’t a broad topic for the faint of heart to dive into! :laughing:

Jason, I appreciate your explanation but it’s a bit “out there” for me LOL :frowning:

Hi, Ladybug

Jason is amongst our resident philosophers and brilliant (and I don’t always understand him either :wink: ).

I believe the summary might be something like this, and he’ll correct me if necessary . . .

Eric started out on this site as a trinitarian (a person who believes the traditional Christian doctrine of the Trinity). I think this is correct about his beliefs, but I haven’t looked back through his posts. In the past month or so, though, he’s been indicating that he is not a trinitarian. That’s fine; Eric needs to believe what he believes the Spirit is revealing to him. We are all growing and changing in our understanding of Father.

Jason was explaining the varying beliefs of Eastern Orthodox Christians (Eric lives in Iran), and pointing out the different ways they believe in the Trinity. There are always many different nuances in the way people think about doctrines, even when those people belong to the same denomination or branch of the Christian church (and other religions also). Many Protestant and Roman Catholic trinitarians also have varying views as to exactly what the Trinity is and how it works and how God can be three persons and yet remain only one God.

Anyhow, it’s probably safe to say, without misrepresenting him, that Eric believes at this time that Jesus is not co-equal and co-eternal with God the Father. Beyond that, I’d hate to speak for him.

Blessings, Cindy

That was a good summary, and by our standards those three groups would all seem to be “Eastern Orthodox”, but they wouldn’t at all see themselves that way. (They do all see themselves as “orthodox” of course, i.e. rightly representing and praising God. :slight_smile: )

The Oriental Orthodox groups split off from what we might call Imperial or Central Eastern Orthodoxy in the late 300s (though they stayed well within the Empire geographically), and the Church of the East split off from Imperial Orthodoxy (and moved outside the Empire) in the 400s. Even though all three groups sorta kinda reconciled in recent decades, they still have very distinct religious authority organizations. Each of the three groups is really an allied confederation of subgroups, just to make things even more confusing! (Which is why there are at least two and maybe three distinctly different trinitarian Syrian Orthodox groups, for example.)

But they could all be called “Eastern Trinitarian Christians” and that would work okay. :slight_smile:

He seems to have gone with a universalistic Muslim group now, if I gathered that correctly from what he has recently written? – which would certainly be interesting. (Even moreso than being Armenian Orthodox. Not to be confused with orthodox Arminians! :laughing: )

Hi Eric :slight_smile:

The rapture has never been a teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. It originated in the nineteenth century with a variety of Protestants know as dispensationalists. It’s still a minority view even among Protestants – I don’t believe it.

Soul immortality is also a belief that not all Christians hold to (it’s not a subject that I’m vexed about)

Christian universalism has very ancient roots in the faith as has belief in the Trinity - both predate the Roman Catholic Church.

Obviously the majority of us here are Christians and, like you, most of us don’t believe in eternal hell. I’m not sure what the proportion of Christians who do not believe in eternal hell compared to those that do are – but it might be similar to the proportion Muslims who do not believe in hell compared to those Muslims who do.

Many of Christians here – myself included – believe in the Trinity – but we don’t believe in three gods. Rather we think of the unity of God in terms of a mystery of a community of persons in loving oneness. I’m not sure that the Quran condemns belief in the Trinity per se. It seems to be talking about a heretical sect who believed in three gods – a Mother a Father and a Son - if you look closely.

Granted there are lots of verses in the Koran that seems to speak against Incarnation – but it is only fair to us Christians to recognise that we have not made a man Jesus into our God – rather we believe that the Jesus the Christ was ‘sent down’ on God’s initiative.

And we’re your friends here – and none of your comments have been deleted as far as I know.

Blessings to you Eric

Dick

Yes, all of you are right and my comments have been deleted in other Christian forums, not here! :slight_smile:

Hi Lady!
In my opinion, the whole point of receiving the all encompassing love of Christ is that we can then pour it out upon the world. We are blessed so that we can become blessings. So, in this view, if we try to keep this love to ourselves like the servant who buried his treasure in the ground, we won’t truly be receiving the love, because love is a gift that is best received when it is given in return. Jesus used the analogy of living water (their culture’s way of describing running water) when speaking with the Samaritan woman at the well. This is how I think of the way the Holy Spirit acts. The love of the Holy Spirit is not something I can contain within myself - it is so voluminous that it simply must be poured out of me like a running stream! This being said, I think we are kind of like God’s hospital crew to the world - we’re supposed to take part in God’s healing work. And it may be that right now is not the time for you to be taking part in this work, but rather, it may be time for you to heal. You may need time to bask in the rays of the Father’s love, so that your spirit can heal, and be released from all fear. My prayer for you is that once you have experienced the healing love of the Father, you will come to a point where you will feel ready to take part in overcoming the world, and driving out the darkness with the light of the Father’s love! Please note that I am not suggesting that this must be done in an internet forum. We each have different callings. You may be called to present God’s universal love to a next door neighbor, to a family member, to people you go to church with - I do not know your calling. But I think you will receive one. Know that the Father loves you, and His love never fails! :smiley:
Geoff

Has anyone had problems lurking regular Christian message boards ever since they’ve turned away from the eternal hell doctrine? My head wants to explode from all this.

I’ve been posting on another Christian forum for a couple of years. Like you say, you can make friends on them.

My posts in discussions have reduced considerably since accepting to notion of EU - it affects everything. Universalism is a banned topic on that forum other than in the Unorthodox Theology section. I’m still active in there, mostly still exploring EU and finding how infernalists (love that word) handle some of the verses and arguments that support EU.

The problem with that is, some of the arguments against EU can appear reasonable and as a new EU-ist it can undermine what I’ve recently come to accept.

This place seems different - more hard-core, if you will. I love the posts, but boy are some of them in depth?! I’m not uninteligent, but I do need to refer to dictionary.com when trying to understand some of the posts :slight_smile:

I do understand your quandry, LadyBug.

Hi Mike - and welcome to the forum from a fellow Brit :smiley:

Personally I find it highly comforting and encouraging that there are so many clever, learned and studied people on this forum who believe in the truth of UR. I may not be able to follow all the more complex theological and scriptural arguments either :smiley: . But I’m jolly glad that Greek scholars and historians and theologians here alike subscribe to UR. And I can tell you from personal experience that every possible (well, almost :laughing: ) argument against UR - scriptural or philosophical - has been discussed, and in most cases comprehensively refuted, here.

And if you do happen to come across an argument against UR on another forum, by all means reproduce it here. I think you’ll find somebody here will soon put your mind at rest about it :smiley: .

Not, of course, that you need to be a philosopher or a theologian to understand the simple message at the heart of the ‘real’ gospel - God is love, and love never fails :smiley: .

All the best

Johnny