Precisely. God is Beauty.
The Calvinist God (who can save us all, but chooses not to) is ugly. Therefore, the Calvinist God cannot exist.
The Arminian God (who longs to save us all, but is eternally frustrated by human wilfulness) is beautiful, but eternally sorrowful. Sorrow is less beautiful than joy. Therefore, the Arminian God cannot exist.
If you feel the Bible teaches otherwise, either the Bible is false, or your interpretation is false. I’m betting on the latter.
Dave,
I didn’t start this thread. I’m just responding to what I believe the scriptures most likely teach. I held to limited atonement a long time and still believed God would save all.
Ok Michael. I’m glad you’re around.
Michael said in a previous public thread, not more than a month ago, that he’s trying to keep from committing suicide, and that if he believed UR was true he’d just kill himself, so he’s going to do everything he can to remain agnostic about it.
That doesn’t mean his replies have no value, but he did say in effect he has chosen for pragmatic reasons to be prejudiced against UR regardless of its actual truth or falsity.
He’s going to refuse arguments in favor of UR regardless of how good they may be, in other words, so don’t be upset or confused if that happens. It’s reasonable to discuss his arguments among ourselves against UR interpretations, since after all they come from other people who really are trying to figure out the truth, but there isn’t any good reason to actually discuss the topic with him personally, and he might even be damaged by it.
Of course, even if we banned him from discussing things for his own good (to reduce the risk he would come to believe UR and then kill himself, due to his medical mental problem), we couldn’t stop him from reading things on the forum, which vastly outnumber the things he might talk about, and then coming to believe UR is true after all despite his resolution not to believe it to protect himself from his mental illness. (I have to point this out for legal reasons, I guess. Come to think of it, I should probably draft a public statement somewhere to cover board liability… 
Will talk with the other ad/mods and the owners about that.)
Michael, if that’s really your situation, I have to recommend you avoid even reading the forum for your own safety, or reading (or talking about, or even thinking about) the topic anywhere else. I also recommend avoiding any strenuous mental activity, and any mental activity that can result in you having strong emotions, because that’s only going to make your mental illness worse in various ways, and in this case “worse” means a pain that leads you to want to kill yourself. Just like if someone has chronic arthritis that even with current medical treatments available won’t go away, they shouldn’t be trying to play football or climbing mountains. Or, since arthritis won’t kill someone (just make them wish they’re dead), advanced heart disease. If you know you have a dangerous medical problem, you shouldn’t put yourself in situations where that problem could trigger in even more damaging ways.
If the problem wasn’t also emotional, you could say, well, I enjoy doing it, and if I die doing it that’s okay, I won’t blame anyone else. In college we had a husband and wife on our fencing team, and the husband had an unusual form of diabetes, which meant if he ever got cut we’d literally be in a race to get him to the hospital before he died. He was a great fencer, and we were glad to have him (both for sparring and for competition with other school teams), but he was also very emotionally stable about the situation, and was neither upset about the risks nor going to be upset about them. (After all, we were sticking one another with potentially sharp three foot steel spikes, so all of us knew we had some risk of fatal or permanently crippling injury, and we accepted that without regret.) Otherwise we would have had a responsibility to refuse to fence with him, for his own protection; and as president of the team I would even have had authoritative responsibility to refuse official activities on the team.
But depression isn’t like that. It hurts emotionally, too. A lot. The emotional problem is practically the danger in itself. Even just talking about your situation like this is likely to trigger horrible emotional storms, leading you to misunderstand why I’m talking about it. But someone in your condition should be staying away, for your own protection, from any kind of activity like this. Of course, by the same token, emotionally you’re going to care about doing this a lot (or you wouldn’t be here trying to do it despite your medical condition), which is going to lead to strong emotional conflict, which is going to aggravate your medical problem in itself. It’s a vicious circle, and I’m as sorry as I can be about that, but you’re the only person (unless you’re committed to the care of a medical ward, where other people will take responsibility for controlling your exposure to various things) who can take steps to keep yourself from being in situations you recognize to be dangerous to you.
You’re already taking a step or two in that direction by resolving never to believe UR in order to protect yourself. But logically it would be better to find a hobby or interest less inherently dangerous to you at all, and stay away from places you’re specially vulnerable to being hurt. As I have said before (including to you if I recall correctly), if you have bungie cords sunk into your bones and anchored in the ground, you shouldn’t go climbing up to do parkour on the Empire State Building. That’s only going to make things worse, maybe fatally worse.
As to Lothar’s post, I’ll get back to it later. Under the circumstances I thought I should address the far more potentially dangerous (or even fatal) problem first. I’m sorry if you’re upset about it Michael, but then that’s kind of the point: you’re engaging in an activity that’s very likely to be emotionally dangerous to you. For your own safety please consider finding something else to do with your time and energy. (And not something else just as stressful mentally and/or emotionally.)
Edit
Jason,
I’ve talked to my psychiatrist about it and she thinks it’s okay for me to discuss these things. As long as I don’t get too wrapped up in them. It’s fine. Thanks.
Here’s what I actually said:
Notice that you said “explained away”. The “clear”, evident, prima facie understanding of this and other such passages is that Jesus saves all, brings all to life. They must be “explained away” in order to not understand them as affirming UR.
Calvinists “explains away” this passage by arbitrarily choosing to interpret the first “all” as meaning “all” but the second “all” as only really meaning “some”. This is not established in or from the literary context but is imposed upon the context.
Arminianist’s “explain away” this verse by affirming that salvation is conditional “upon their free decision for Christ”; but this in no way nullifies or limits the previous “all”. Just because all “must” make a free decision for Christ does not imply that “some will never” make a free decision for Christ. In fact, scripture affirms that we are born slaves of unrighteousness, dead in our sins; it is impossible for slaves or the dead to make a “free decision”. One must be made alive and set free before one can make a free decision!
I believed in Hell, Infernalism for 40 years until I studied what scripture actually warned concerning the punishment of sin. Note that not once is Hell even specifically named in scripture, not once! It seems to me that if there was a Hell that it would have at least been specifically warned of for us at least once in scripture. But it is not. Instead people read into or even worse, misinterpret into scripture the doctrine of Hell. Have you noticed that English translations are progressively correcting the ERRORS propogated in the Protestant 1611 KJV and and Catholic 1610 Douay-Reihms. The KJV had the word Hell in it 64 times, the Douay-Reihms 110 times. The 1970 Catholic NAB correctly does not have the word Hell in it even once. And if other modern Protestant translations would correctly translate gehenna as “Hinnom Valley”, they too would not have the word Hell in them even once! It sure seems to me that if there was a Hell as bad as or worse than the one the Egyptians believed in that Moses would have at least once warned of such in the Law; but he doesn’t! And if Moses had missed it, surely Jesus would have corrected this and warned of such and at least named Hell once; but He doesn’t. And surely if Paul believed there was a Hell, he would have at least once named it and warned of it; but he doesn’t, not even once.
Cole, many of us universalists are purgatorial, and I’m one of them – because I think that’s the correct view. I understand your need to keep the idea of a hell close in order to protect yourself. The thing is, I do believe there IS a hell and that it is a horrible thing, much, much, much to be avoided. It doesn’t need a monster god such as Calvin’s or Augustine’s for there to be a hell. The hell is within us and from us and if we don’t escape from our fear and into Father’s perfect love (which most of us won’t completely) in this life, I suspect it will not get easier in the ages to come. We have to go through the fire to get home. I mean the metaphorical (but still real) fire that burns away all the wood hay and stubble.
Instead of reading the Calvinist greats (though they have many good things to say – they aren’t/weren’t ALL bad), maybe you could make time to read George MacDonald, who also took hell very, very seriously. You’ve read a lot of Reformed work. Maybe it would be good to round out your knowledge base with someone who lived in the midst of Calvinism but felt there was more to God than Calvin had discovered. MacDonald is not always an easy read, and always deeper than he seems on the surface. I think you’d find him challenging and satisfying. Since you seem to enjoy the more academic stuff, you might like to start with his “Unspoken Sermons” here: gutenberg.org/catalog/world/ … es=1472800
Hey! If you decide to do this, we could discuss them together, here. Have a look if you’re willing, and if you want to discuss them with me and maybe others, you can post the first sermon as a topic and tag me so I’m sure to see it. You tag someone by hitting the tag tab (at the top of the reply window) and typing in their screen name between the two codes. It looks like this, only with square brackets ] instead of pointy ones <>.
Cindy Skillman
The screen name will be at the right side of anyone’s post. Let me know what you think. I’d be very excited about doing this discussion with you and anyone else interested in joining us. 
Blessings, Cindy
Cindy,
I also said this later in the same post:
Another reason I’m going to remain agnostic about hell is because the scriptures aren’t that clear about it. There also seems to have been disagreement about it early on:
The Universalists here spoken of by Augustine are referred to as Christians. In fact, he never condemns them as being outside of Christianity. He thought they needed correction but their views were never condemned by him.
Okay, so are you interested? I may do it anyhow, but I think you’d be blessed by it.
Cindy,
If he’s a hard read I’m not sure. I do like the ancient Christian Mystics. The ones I’ve read are Catholic. Reformed isn’t all I read. I just see that their interpretation of the scriptures is just as plausible as a universalist reading. I don’t believe that because I feel I need to commit suicide like Jason says. He completely took what I said out of context. I haven’t had those feelings in years. Notice what I said in the quote was that was the way I felt in the past. I don’t feel that way now. I’m doing better now than I have my entire life.
“I’m doing better now than I have my entire life.”
I’m glad to hear that.
Thanks Dave.
Excellent, Cole! I’m glad to hear that. As for Jason, he’s just concerned about you. I read your post when you wrote it and I kind of got the same impression Jason did. I think people read the word “suicide” and it causes alarm bells to go off so it’s hard to take it in context. We don’t want anything bad to happen to you. I struggled with suicidal thoughts for most of my adolescent/adult life. I don’t know why. I had a great family and my young adulthood was hard, but no harder than it is for many others. I never have seen a doctor about it and the problem has gone now. The thing that always stopped me was not, ironically, hell (though I did believe in hell for suicides), but rather the pain I would cause people who love me, or even just people who knew me and might be depressed themselves – would I tip them over the edge by my example? Would I have done it without that deterrent? I don’t know. Maybe.
Reading your posts, I don’t think you’d have any trouble with Unspoken Sermons. It does make one think, but it isn’t dense philosophy like you’d find in, say, Barth. They were written for delivery to a congregation. Maybe you’d be willing to read the first one and then let me know? They’re not particularly long and I would so enjoy discussing them with you.
Thanks – whether you choose yes or no.
Cindy
Cindy,
Tell you what. You post them and I’ll discuss them with you. How’s that?
Sounds good, Cole. I won’t be posting the entire sermons, though. They’re shortish (public message length), but not THAT short. You can find them at the link in my earlier post, though. I’ll probably be tonight or tomorrow doing it, as I’m going out in a little bit, and I want to re-read the first one before I post.
Jason, thanks for your love and the time you took for Michael!
Thanks to Cindy too!
I have ADHD (do you know what it is?), which in my case goes hand in hand with a strong anxiety and depressive phases.
That’s why I can very well understand the “hell” (no pun intended) Michael might be in.
Michael: Jason is right, it’s probably better for you to stop reading and participating in the topics of this forum, for you don’t seem able to do that moderately as your psychiatrist advised you.
Christ has always been for the outcast and the loser. When speaking to the elect He tells them that all will be justified because all have died (spiritually) in Adam. Christ came to save those who are sick and in bondage to sin. Not those who have free will. He came for His chosen. The downtrodden and the outcast. In short His elect.
Maybe you shouldn’t have titled your thread “One Reason I’m Going To Remain Agnostic About Hell” if your first post wasn’t talking about one of the reasons you’re going to remain agnostic about hell being “I can see how someone would commit suicide if they could just ease the pain and live forever in eternal bliss. This is one of the reasons I remain agnostic about the issue of hell.” A reason that makes excellent pragmatic sense if, as you also said, “For those of you who don’t know I’ve been diagnosed with bipolar disorder with psychoses. I don’t hear voices or have hallucinations. Just strong delusions (sometimes paranoid) about myself and the world around me. If I’m not on my medications I can get really depressed at times. I have contemplated suicide in the past.” And that one of the things that helped you not commit suicide in the past was “the belief that if you kill yourself you go to hell (eternal suffering).”
If it was only a problem in the past, why did you say it’s still one of the reasons you’re going to (presently, at this time) remain agnostic about hell, after about a year of posts where you’ve gone back and forth between talking as if you’re certain universalism is true and having recently switched back to not certain? It looks like you’re explaining your recent switch back to not certain by appealing to an operative current reason: one reason you are (“I’m”) going to remain agnostic about hell.
When people talk like that, I become concerned in case they mean what they are saying.
However, you didn’t actually say you were going to do everything you can to remain agnostic about it, and I’m sorry I put it that way. But I put it that way because that’s the behavior I expect from someone who has currently chosen to remain agnostic about hell (in the sense of eternal conscious torment), after quite a lot of not remaining agnostic about eternal conscious torment, because he is currently at risk of depressive suicide and believing against UR has helped him avoid the risk of suicide before.
But if you didn’t really mean that you have now chosen to remain agnostic about hell (of that kind) to currently avoid that risk today, as a real risk today, at this present time, then of course you might not be doing anything to avoid triggering that fatal risk today either. (But then I don’t understand why you wrote your topic and titled it the way you did.)
Anyway, I’m only trying to help prevent a catastrophe that your post seemed to indicate (by how you said things in regard to choices you’re making right now and the reason for your choice for which you created the thread), and which might drag other people into it who didn’t realize what was happening. If you aren’t really using a real and current risk of suicide as a reason to currently be agnostic about UR, then I’m glad to hear it, and never mind. Back to Lotharson’s original post.