How do you feel about premarital and extramarital sex (with someone you find remarkably attractive)?
Do you find that “instinctively repulsive” (and have you always)?
Given a choice between being a hammer or a nail, which would you find “instinctively repulsive”?
Are you saying that Christ acted out of instinct, or that God could have avoided all this necessary sin and suffering by just creating a race of Christs?
Have no answers … but my speculations run thusly:
God makes good universe, but one with free willed agents who have the potential to actualise non- or anti- God (ie evil, with its concommitent suffering) - but needn’t. But they did … (think open Theism + FWD + cosmic Warfare theodicy)
God, knowing always this was a possiblity, has a rescue plan ready - and more than a rescue plan, a means of turning (redeeming, subverting, re-creating) the evil itself into something good; a way of making the gratuitous and freely actualised evil into something that will add greater depth and resonance to the universe forever: He has Himself nailed to a cross. Note: God couldn’t be crucified until death, evil and suffering had entered the world … (think kenotic self-limitation, salvation history, progressive revelation, cosmic warfare + vale of soul making)
And it is by this sacrifice that He draws all to Himself - for it is in the cross that evil becomes a weapon against itself (if they knew what they were doing …), a collapse of the epistemic distance between humanity and God, a rout of satan, a perfecting of Christ … (think moral influence + Christus Victor)
And when beings healed of spiritual blindness see the cross for what it truly is then they will realise all they need to realise to become ‘free’ and ‘in Him’, and from that position they will ever grow into perfection, incresingly heading into the mystery of God and love, and will never fall (or be able to fall) … (think universalism)
And that eternal reign will constantly develop, grow, push forward, voyage and adventure in God … (think divinisation)
Now, on top of all that, I should note that ‘kingdom increase’ could easily refer to the church-age in a amillenialist/postmillenialist/preterist schema - I’d want to say it means that … plus the above also.
Does any of that make any sense? 
Well said pog. 
I’m saying we always act according to our nature. We always try to realize our deepest desires. To do otherwise is inconceivable. Try it sometime. What we call “will power” and “personal choice” are my deepest desires being made manifest. Out of the heart, the mouth speaks. It’s quite deterministic.
Christ lived according to his nature. His choices revealed his deepest desires.
I find in myself a superposition of two radically different natures: good and evil; light and dark; Gollum and Smeagol. I’m impure. Alloyed. ie. a good thing with bad things thrown in. There’s an evil spanner in my works. The bad will be destroyed in the refining fire, thank God, but why make me like this in the first place? I really don’t know. I can only speculate. (Ponder the uses of alloys, for example.)
I thought you were saying more than that.
I thought you were saying that God could pre-program “free” creatures so that they would instinctively find self gratification at the expense of others repulsive, and self denial for the sake of others attractive (without any experience, learning, or walking in the shoes of others.)
I thought you were saying He could have bypassed the fall in Eden, and Calvary, by simply creating a race of Christs (who instinctively chose good over evil, and could never sin.)
If you can’t see how it might be an oxymoron to call these creatures of instinct “free,” can you at least see how deeply you disagree with Prof Tom Talbott’s thesis?
Have you read it?
willamette.edu/~ttalbott/Determinism.pdf
From your comments I take it you’re an ultra Calvinist who totally disagrees with everything Prof. Talbott said here, but I’m not really interested in your views on predestination (i.e. that we’re all currently vessels of honor or dishonor because we were predestined to be.)
I invite you to start another topic heading on that if you like (and I think you, and Don, and Pog might find you have a lot to talk about there.)
What I’m interested in here is whether anyone sees any way (given the universalist interpretation of 1 Cor. 15:28) that other worlds, with erring mortal creatures on them, might be created after the consummation of God’s plan for this cosmos?
After all the posters who believe in UR here, all the ETers who disagree with them, all the good and bad, Christian and non-Christian who have ever lived and died on earth (and any other planets that might now be inhabited), and all the now fallen angels are reconciled with God, will that be the end of God’s creation of sentient beings?
Will there never be anyone new to say hello to?
Does the expression “of the increase of His government” in Isaiah 9:7 suggest there might be?
These are the questions I have, and that I’d be interested in getting some of your views on here.
BTW: Here’s a passage from Perelandra (part of C.S. Lewis’s fictional space trilogy):
“Then it is Maleldil’s puropose (Christ’s purpose) to make us free of Deep Heaven. Our bodies will be changed, but not all changed. We shall be as the eldila (angels), but not as eldila (angels). And so will our sons and daughters be changed in the time of this ripeness, until the number is made up which Maleldil (Christ) read in the mond of His Father before times flowed.”
“And that,” said Ransom, “will be the end?”
Tor the King (the Adam of Venus in the space trilogy) stared at him.
“The end?” he said. Who spoke of an end"?
…“About this time we will not be far from the beginning of all things. But there will be one matter to settle before the beginning rightly begins.”
“What is that?” asked Ransom.
“Your own world ,” said Tor, “Thulcandra” (Earth.) The siege of your world shall be raised, the black spot cleared away, before the real beginning."
Is there room for this in Universalist Eschatology?
epm.org/resources/2010/Mar/28/it-possible-ages-come-we-will-travel-other-planets/
I am not sure the meaning of the Is. 9.7 passage. It is possible it is a figure of speech. I can’t agree with such statements as “It may be that Christ’s government will always increase because he will continually create new worlds to govern” since Paul says “Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father” and “when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.”
There seems to be a permanency about this passage. Does God become ‘all in all’ one day, to give it all up the next? Did Christ subject himself one day, to only unsubject himself at a later point in time? I just don’t see that happening, and don’t think Paul envisioned it either.
While it can be argued the context of the Pauline passage is humanity, the subjection of Christ points to all creation being brought into subjection. It seems to me this points to a completion in the number of finite beings, with no more created beings past the point God becomes all in all. It just doesn’t seem to square with the passage.
A puzzlement to me is how it will be possible to rule a universe with so few human beings. Only those that endure, can reign with Christ. I certainly wouldn’t include myself in that list. I doubt there would be any more than a few individuals each century, to attain this reward. These are just my imperfect thoughts.
But wouldn’t “all creation” include only those finite beings who had been created up to that time?
Here’s how I just posed the question on another Christian forum.
What does this passage mean?
Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all. (1 Cor. 15:24-28.)
Is this the end of God’s acts of creation?
Will there be no more worlds?
Does this point to a completion in the number of finite beings, with no more finite beings being created past the point where God becomes all in all?
No more children born?
No more mothers and fathers pushing baby carriages anywhere?
And if there are more, wouldn’t they most likely sin, and wouldn’t they have to learn about what “The Son” did for them on our world, and wouldn’t He be back in business as Mediator (with God no longer “All in All”)?
Here’s an answer I just received from a minister with Global Missions (publishers of The Sharon Star, and believers in UR.)
Hello Mike,
No. I wouldn’t say that 1 Cor. 15:28 points to a completion in the number of finite beings, with no more created beings past the point God becomes all in all. I would say that I don’t know what God’s going to do at that point. To my knowledge, He hasn’t revealed that yet. God has told us a little about the Kingdom Age, but I don’t know much about after that time. Do you know of any scripture that makes this obvious?
What do the rest of you think?
YES.
If by “new souls” you mean “new persons”, then YES. New persons will be born.
Here’s the tricky question. The possession of free will implies that they have the ability to choose to do what is morally wrong. Now I ask you. Does God have free will? If so, does HE have the ability to do what is morally wrong? I say, theoretically “Yes” but practically “No”. Because of God’s character, He will always choose to do the right. This is analagous to Allan’s statement about eating dog droppings. To do wrong would be repulsive to God because of His character, and so He will never do wrong.
We read in the scriptures that “He who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” So when we ARE complete in the day of Christ, we may have such a changed character that we will also find all wrongdoing repulsive, and will never do it for that reason.
Christians have been regenerated, that is true. But the regenerated individual is not yet complete; his character has not ENTIRELY changed. In the day of Jesus Christ, it will have been ENTIRELY changed. Thus, because he will have become ENTIRELY changed in character — conformed to the image of Christ — he will never sin, even as Christ, who was truly human, never sinned, though He had a free will. Christ COULD have sinned. It is written that He was tempted in ALL points as we are, yet without sin. He was also tempted by the devil in the desert. If Christ COULD NOT have sinned, the temptations would have been a farce.
It is possible that these new persons who will be born in the age to come, being the offspring of perfected parents, will themselves be born perfect, and though they COULD in theory sin, they will always choose not to do so.
Consider the angels. Supposedly, one third of them sinned and chose to follow Lucifer. The other two thirds didn’t sin, and chose to stay with God. Is it possible for the latter angels to sin now? They, like God, have free wills. Yet, it is possible, but because they made their choice to stay with God, they have characters such that they will not sin.
If my reasoning is valid, they will never sin.
I just don’t see this being the case, since we know from 1 Cor. 15 that all must be subjected to Christ, before Christ will be subjected to God.
If we turn to Philippians 2 we read “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Here it is clear that all finite created beings will eventually subject themselves to Christ, bowing the knee and acclaiming that Jesus Christ is Lord. It seems obvious this must happen before Christ can subject Himself to God.
In Colossians we read that “in all He shall be becoming first” This is all creation (of all time) We see him becoming first, before He also subjects himself to God. So I think scripture is probably clear on the matter.
I can see that.
This is where you lost me.
If there are new persons born in the ages beyond the consummation Paul had in view in 1 Cor. 15, I don’t see how they could be “offspring of perfected parents” if this is true:
But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. (Luke 20:35-36.)
I was thinking about new worlds with new races (started by their own literal or figurative Adams and Eves), and given what Prof. Talbott says, it certainly seems likely that these new, unperfected persons would sin (and even if their parents had been perfected, I don’t really see how that acquired character could be passed down to their children.)
I understand what you’re saying, and I agree.
But I don’t see how this acquired character could be given to creatures that didn’t have their experiences, or make their choices.
I don’t see how your reasoning can be valid.
Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?
Michael, you quoted Jesus’ words:
That is true, the children of the resurrection will not marry, and can no longer die, and they are like the angels. However, according to the interpretation of many (including the Jewish intepretation), some of the angels (who are called “sons of God”) had relations with “the daughters of men”, and their offspring were the Nephilim. So why might not the children of the resurrection have offspring? The minds and hearts of the totally sinless resurrection people will doubtless be quite different from the minds and hearts of us yet-to-be-perfected people. In that day, all will love God completely as well as each other. There will be no anger or hate or jealousy, or any of the impediments by which we are now basically self-serving people, as well as occasionally other-serving. So marriage as we know it now, essentially an exclusive arrangement, would no longer be necessary.
The resurrected Jesus ate food in front of his disciples. So it appears that bodily functions can continue in the resurrection.
Having said all of this, let me affirm that this is not a doctrine or in any sense a statement of belief on my part. It is conjecture in order to that all of these Biblical affirmations can fit together consistently. I may be totally wrong, and there may be another way to make the Biblical statements consistent. If anyone has such an explanation, I would be happy to learn of it.
Thank you.
I think your conjecture is interesting, but here’s another one I read.
And when all things shall be subdued unto him, “even then shall the Son,” etc.; implying, that he had been all along subject to God; had acted under his authority; and that this subjection would continue even then in a sense similar to that in which it had existed; and that Christ would then continue to exercise a delegated authority over his people and kingdom.
It might be to prevent the supposition, from what Paul had said of the extent of the Son’s dominion, that he was in any respect superior to the Father.
The conjecture which you read depends entirely upon translating that little Greek word “και” as “even” instead of “and”. Although we see in some lexicons the translation “even” as one of the meanings of the word, I believe that in every context, “και” should be translated as either “and” or “also”. I have found NO passage in the New Testament which REQUIRES the word to be translated as “even”, though in some passages it also makes sense to do so.
I recall visiting in the home of a United Pentecostal pastor. The United Pentecostal Church stresses “Oneness”, that is, the view that God is ONE person who expresses Himself in three ways, or wears three different “masks”, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—yet there is but a single divine Person.
My friend had the following verse displayed on a big sign in his living room:
[size=140]And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God,
and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. (John 17:3)[/size]
I asked him how he could display such a sign in view of the fact that He believed that Jesus was the only true God, and that He and the Father were the same Person. His reply, "The Greek word ‘και’ can also mean ‘even’. So the passage SHOULD read:
[size=140]And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God,
even Jesus Christ whom you have sent. (John 17:3)[/size]"
thank you Don.