I admit I haven’t come across this argument before…
Hi Alex
First simple thought that occurs to me on this is that dead people can’t do anything. But that’s not a problem for God, or for EU, for “as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Cor 15:22).
I don’t see that dying in an unrepentant state has anything to do with it! Sure some better exegetes than I will come up with a chapter and verse refutation - for *nothing *is impossible with God!
Shalom
Johnny
Premise 1: “Doers” of the Law are justified.
Premise 2: Death frees a person from obligations to the Law.
Therefore: There can be no doing of the Law after death, and, thus, no postmortem justification.
That is the basic argument. The conclusion is not entailed by the premises, however, without the inclusion of a third, understood premise:
Premise 3: Doing of the Law is the only way a person can become justified.
I think Paul would take significant issue with Premise 3, but it’s absolutely necessary that Premise 3 be true for the argument to hold. In fact, there’s a fourth premise as well that is equally necessary and unstated here:
Premise 4: Freedom from obligation to the Law precludes the ability to “do” the Law.
Premise 4 isn’t on QUITE as shaky grounds, theologically, as Premise 3, but it’s pretty close.
The issue is that if Premise 3 isn’t true (and it isn’t), then even if people are unable to fulfill the Law in a postmortem state (which does not necessarily follow from the fact that they are free from obligation to the Law), that’s hardly an obstacle to salvation.
very well put ^^
i don’t see a significant problem for EU, as the mechanics of EU are anyone’s guess. the fact is that we are given a promise of the end result. what happens between now and then comes under the heading of mechanics. only God knows the full details.
also, if doers of the law have to be alive…God has the power to resurrect.
No one is justified by the law.
God was reconciling the world to Himself not counting their trespasses against them.
Sin was condemned in the flesh.
And you who were formerly dead in your trespasses.
He’s going on the assumption that we do anything of our own volition. The dead know nothing. Let the dead bury the dead. Until the light dawns in your heart you have no chance to do anything… because you’re dead, whether on this side of the veil or the other.
I don’t think the afterlife follows the same rules as the Earth-life does… at all… being thrown into the Lake of Fire is something fundamentally different. Besides, how on Earth are you going to follow the Law there?
The thing is, no one is justified by doing the works of the law because no one (save Jesus) has ever kept the law perfectly. In fact, in order to be saved, we must die (spiritually) to this world and therefore die to the law. So by the works of the law, no one is saved. It is only by grace, through faith, that we can enter the kingdom of God, and it is the Father who enables us to do this, who has transferred us from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood. (That last bit is from Colossians 1.)
I believe, Alec, that you’ll find most of this in the first eight chapters of Romans, but if you aren’t able to dig it out, let me know and I’ll help you. I have all these things in my heart, but I often don’t know where they are in the bible or how I’ve come to my conclusions – so it would probably be good for me to put it all together. Only I can’t do it today. So let me know if you need more help.
Blessings, Cindy
Alex, chapters 13 and 15 in my book Conditional Futurism include a biblical defense for the possibility of postmortem conversions.
Awesome, James!
Yeah, after reading the OP I just laughed and shook my head. Talk about a desperate defense. They have to revert back to trying to be justified by the law to escape the implications of universalism!? Good grief, Charlie Brown! 
of course not all of us believe in hell at all…
and even so, if it’s a place of being cleaned/refined, well that’s mainly God doing the work, as He scrubs and smelts us!
or to add even more analogy, what about Aslan stripping Eustace of the dragon skin? Eustace could not do it himself.
well, that’s a great picture of sin nature (whatever that is, as per original sin thread), that we can’t change it, but God can.
why would it matter to Him if it’s pre or post mortem?
so no, i don’t think “obeying the law” as a condition for exiting hell is a necessary thing. i think that’s a pretty lame argument.
To me, limiting God’s power at death seems to be doing the very thing Jesus came to save us from: giving death power.
BirdOfTheEgg, Excellent, I like that 
perhaps ask him if he keeps the law perfectly ? if he doesn’t then he too is condemned , that verse as well as the others that state in no uncertain terms that we are justified by grace through faith can only logically cohere with the framework of u.r. 
Thank you everyone, especially snitzelhoff, that does help.
There are deeper exegetical matters that need to be explored, such as whether Christians are bound to Torah (Acts 15 says they aren’t, and that settles it to my satisfaction, but probably not his). Nevertheless, leaving those matters to one side for a moment (I will return to them because they’re rather inevitable), he still has yet to substantiate Premises 3 and 4, and those are both requirements for his basic argument here to hold. These are not self-evident premises. Premise 3, for example, is strongly challenged by Jesus’ acceptance of the penitent thief (if he had to be justified by his adherence to Torah, he would not have been justified) and by Paul’s statement in Romans 3 about God’s righteousness toward those who believe apart from the Law, God’s character as one that does not despise the contrite heart (Psalm 51:17), and so on. These Scriptures suggest very strongly that God is not only able, but willing, to justify a non-doer of the Law if he is repentant (and since he fails to establish the impossibility of repentance in the postmortem state, the argument fails).
Now, the very argument he is propounding comes out of Romans 7, so let’s take a good look at it:
Or do you not know, brethren (for I am speaking to those who know the law), that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives? For the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is living; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband. So then, if while her husband is living she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress though she is joined to another man. Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.
The argument he’s attempting to draw out is in direct conflict with the point Paul is using this passage to make. The point Paul is making is that Christians have been freed from the Law, which brings us back to the central exegetical issue of the place of the Law under the New Covenant. Two things are quickly and easily noted from this passage:
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It is directed “to those who know the Law.” Why would only a subset of the congregation have known the Law? Well, because only a subset of the congregation would’ve been Jewish, but that wouldn’t have stopped the rest from learning the Law upon their conversion if the Law were part and parcel with their Christianity. Clearly, it isn’t. If the Gentiles have not learned the Law as part of their Christianity, and Paul isn’t correcting that (but, as we shall see, actually reinforcing it!), then we have a problem for those that would insist that Gentile Christians are to be Torah-keepers.
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Even those to whom this passage is directed–namely, law-keeping Jews–have “died” to the Law. By Paul’s own argument, that means that it no longer has jurisdiction over them. That being the case, how much less does it have jurisdiction over those that were never Israelites by descent, whose heritage is Gentile?