The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Salvation during "famines"/distortions of the Word

Evangelical Universalism Arguments for Evangelical Universalism
#41

Cindy:

I haven’t heard a theodicy for suffering in a determined universe b4 (most involve Free Will Defence); except the Calvinist justification that since God is just, holy, omniscient, God couldn’t in principle do anything wrong, no matter how we judge things. I think, to use your example of God as the artist slowly creating a work, we would have to know if this is a choice of God to create slowly, and indirectly inflicting pain on God’s “unwilling” (I see ur problem having only anthropomorphisms to describe this) raw material or if God is constrained. I understand you arguing for the latter and though we are not in an epistemic position to know the metaphysical necessity of that slow creating involving pain, it is at least conceivable that God could have avoided this, for the more we move away from freedom as being necessary or as the greatest good (or equally good compared to universal happiness), then the less likely the “unwillingness” of the raw material/nothingness (or that with the tendency to “chaos”) is due to any entity but God.

Jesus Christ, however, is an (the) answer: if suffering is unavoidable (or a method of creating that God prefers), then at least God is fair and inflicts it on Himself, though maybe if this creation method is just one of preference, it would be better of God to spare everybody including Godself as Jesus.

I got the .pdf copy of The Inescapable Love of God and will read it this weekend between rounds of shovelling out of the polar vortex :smiley: .

Johnny:

What do you think of Craig’s retort to Talbott that freedom being only a “fully informed decision” is question-begging, since that would make rejection under any kind of “normal” circumstances impossible (though Talbott is referring to having a fully-informed freedom in the afterlife, where presumably our illusions are shattered, and Craig thinks that afterlife conversions are unBiblical)? Similarly, if knowledge lessens the probability of rejecting the good or right thing, then how do we explain rejection on behalf of people who are by all accounts very knowledgeable (though not absolutely) and good (from a humanitarian standpoint) and reject God? Though this is perhaps a fanciful example, Lucifer (if you believe in his existence), is the most knowledgeable created being and he rejected God. Whether that is Biblical or more an idea of Milton I suppose is an open question. (Craig and Talbott also wrote about “Miltonic” rejection - I can’t remember their full comments).

I think you present a challenging question. “Freedom” certainly involves determinism at some level, or at least rational explicability (i.e. the reason most people don’t do heinous things is because they know they are evil, not b/c they choose to be good on a whim as true indeterminists might have to hold). Craig gave some examples of his notion of freedom, in a recent debate he had with Paul Helm, a Calvinist, and thinks that God’s knowledge of counterfactuals or what we would in any given situation doesn’t preclude our freedom to choose. Craig cites 1 Corinthians 10:13* No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it*.; Helm and Craig debated whether Romans 8:28-30 jived with Molinism or Calvinism, esp. Romans 8:29, how strongly to interpret “foreknew” or προγινώσκω (Strong’s g4267).

#42

Myshkin,

My “understanding” is always evolving. I pretty much agree with what Johnny has said about free will – what Dave would call “free will enough.” :laughing: Only I’m not sure if I understand what Johnny means by his explanation of the form of free will in the age to come. I think that then, freedom having been made complete, we will always do the good things we want to do and never find ourselves having done the evil things we hate. We will have learned to reject the bitter and choose the sweet.

I do think that free will has an essential part in our development and in the development of others. “Soul-building,” I’m told, is the label for what I describe as my beliefs.

Can truly free and truly noble souls be built without suffering? I’m not sure how that could happen – whether the suffering results from sin or (if we had chosen the ToL instead of the TOKOGE) perhaps from voluntary self-sacrifice. Honestly I can’t see any way possible to develop moral strength without suffering playing some part. Of course we don’t want to impose suffering on one another and especially on those we love. If we can prevent suffering we do the best we can, even sometimes in situations where we shouldn’t attempt to prevent it. For example, it may be a good thing for our children to suffer from some things, but how HARD is it to allow them to do that, even for small things and even as a result of their own bad actions? We want to take it all on ourselves to spare them, but if we do that, we hurt them badly. Later they WILL suffer greater things from their poor decisions, and we won’t be able to prevent it. (Not that there’s any guarantee that won’t happen anyway.)

People we admire and praise have often suffered great things and persevered in the face of huge difficulties – say Martin Luther King Jr. for example, or Gandhi, or Nelson Mandela, Alexandre Solzhenitsyn, the apostle Paul and the other apostles as well, Perpetua & Felicity, Stephen, Jeremiah, and so many more. What sort of character does one develop in a life of ease and prosperity? I’m not sure it would be possible to bring sons and daughters worthy of the House of YHWH out of a world with no sorrows and no suffering. Maybe I’m wrong about that and I kind of hope I am because it creates problems for me – for my theodicy – but as of now, that’s what I see.

About the weather – yes, I hear you! We’re supposed to get a couple more inches of snow tonight; it was -22 when we got up around 6:00 am day before yesterday (no idea what it got down to through the night) but it’s s-l-o-w-l-y been warming since then. :frowning: Our average this time of year is in the low to mid 40s according to the radio weather man. What’s with that!? I have to stay home just to keep pushing wood into the firebox so the pipes don’t freeze. The electric co-op has instituted a peak demand charge that’s just way more than we want to pay – but with temps far south of zero, we can’t have the house unheated during the peak periods, so someone literally has to be here. It’s been a notable winter to say the least. I’m beginning to think somewhat agnostically about the possibility of the existence of spring. :laughing:

Love, Cindy

#43

Hi Prince

I think you’ve kind of answered your own - or Craig’s - question already. The way I see it, many - most? - people reject God in this life because they don’t have all the facts, either about God or about the world he has made. They find the ‘evidence’ for God unpersuasive, or at least not persuasive enough for them to commit to belief in him. Or they find the ‘evidence’ against God - the problem of evil, pluralism etc - negatively persuasive.

Now of course, it may well be that some people find the existence of God plausible - or at least possible - on a prima facie level, but deliberately choose not to investigate whether he really exists or not because they don’t want to believe in him. American philosopher Thomas Nagel is one famous example: “I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers.”

But surely these people are in the same boat as those who find the evidence insufficient? They have an inadequate picture of God, who - as I mentioned in my earlier post, and according to Talbott - at bottom wants for them precisely what they really want for themselves.

At some point in their lives, in some future, non-earthly - purgatorial? - existence, God will, I believe, somehow bring all these people to a full enough understanding of the truth that they will all freely come to embrace that truth, and hence be ‘saved’. (By which I mean enter into a full enjoyment of the salvation they already had in Christ.) And perhaps these people will, as the Bible implies, ‘miss out’ on certain blessings, certain privileges afforded to those who believe this side of the veil - and it is this latter group (“blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed”) who are what the Bible calls ‘elect’.

I would argue that all humans who don’t yet believe - including those who are very knowledgeable and very good, as you suggest - fall into one of the above categories. I would say that Craig’s problem is that because he rejects the possibility of post mortem conversion, he cannot deal with such people justly. And presumptuous as it sounds, I think he is quite simply wrong about that :smiley: .

I don’t know about Lucifer. I am very strongly agnostic on the existence of ‘personal’ demons. But even if the devil, as commonly thought of in orthodoxy, really does exist, my supposition would be that he too was not in possession of the full facts about creation when he rebelled against God. (Does anyone really want to claim omniscience for Mephistopheles :smiley: ?)

Great to debate with you, sir.

All the best

Johnny

PS Tell me more about ‘Miltonic rejection’; I know zilch about Milton, having ducked reading him at University :smiley:

#44

Cindy

Do you have Robin Parry’s book All Shall Be Well: Explorations in Universal Salvation and Christian Theology, from Origen to Moltmann? The final essay in that excellent volume, Nik Ansell’s ‘The Annihilation of Hell and the Perfection of Freedom: Universal Salvation in the Theology of Jürgen Moltmann’ goes into some detail about Moltmann’s Reformed theology of freedom. There is a section on the concept of our eschatological freedom to no longer have to choose between good and evil. If you don’t, you can download it from Amazon for Kindle. It’s quite pricey, but well worth it. All the essays are good, and some (eg Tom Talbott’s on George MacDonald’s Universalism) are brilliant.

If you don’t have the book, and you’re not planning on getting it anytime soon, let me know and I’ll try and summarise Moltmann’s thinking on this subject here. Although I have to say it’s an element of his thinking that probably only makes proper sense within the context of his theology as a whole - hence I’m not sure how easily it will ‘precis’, if you get my drift - especially with a dummy like me doing it :smiley: .

Cheers

Johnny

#45

Hi Cole

I like what you say here. I think Universalism is, like reality itself, as you say, a paradoxical, a both/and belief system. Universalism holds the Calvinist view of God’s sovereignty in tension with the Arminian view of human freedom, gives due weight to both.

While I agree that those in the Lake of Fire may well undergo some form of punishment during their purification - if God deems it necessary for their ultimate salvation - I don’t agree that God both loves and hates. God is love, and he only loves. Every other attribute or action of his is an expression of his love - including his wrath, and his punishment of sin. He punishes us because he loves us, and he wants to set us free from sin - and in my opinion his punishments are usually ‘passive’, inasumuch as all he does is allow us to experience the painful consequences of our sinful actions, sin being its own punishment, as the saying goes.

And also, I respect what you’re saying here, but I don’t think you’re a Calvinist at heart, not a real, hardcore, five point Calvinist at least. If you were, you’d be parcelling the reprobate off to eternal damnation, and you’re not doing that, are you? :smiley:

All the best

Johnny

#46

I do have it, Johnny – but I don’t think I ever got to the last couple of essays. At first I wasn’t all that impressed (it was quite a while back that I read most of it), but I think it was kind of like eating vegetables. Kids like sweets and fruits (well most of them) and don’t particularly care for veggies. But if they eat their veggies I presume it will still do them good. I think I absorbed more than I could have imagined from the parts I did read. I’ll try to get back in there and read the parts I missed. :slight_smile:

#47

Johnny,

“Miltonic” rejection is a reference to Paradise Lost, where Satan rages against God. I know the Bible is sketchy about Satan/Lucifer, so most of our ideas about Satan probably come from works like Paradise Lost and The Inferno, though there must enough of the Bible in Milton for Craig and Talbott to use a few quotes from Paradise Lost (I think) as an example in their exchange.

I think Craig and Talbott were debating what it would take for God to convince a person who was rejecting Him to want to be reconciled. Talbott argued, as you detailed, that a person, clear of all illusions, would be utterly, spiritually insane to deny God, who wills the best for them. However, Craig retorted that such insane rejections have precedents in literature (e.g. Paradise Lost) and in real life. Maybe this is up on the thread, or on another one, but Kierkegaard argued in The Sickness Unto The Death (I think) that some despair is simply willful, just b/c a person can, no matter what the consequences. Then, Cindy and I were debating whether sin is primarily willful or due to ignorance, a pt on which I think the whole Craig/Talbott debate turns.

Do you think God could convert somebody’s heart if it wasn’t a matter of ignorance but just, as we sight say, “demonic” or “Miltonic” despair, that they were rejecting God just b/c they could (or just b/c God is God)? I don’t think Craig thought that God could freely do this, but Talbott had argued that, at that point, freedom is becomes less valuable and God would be obliged to determine the person’s choice (I think this pt is also being argued on the “Cals, Arms and Univs Need a Robot” post under Biblical Theology).

Pax

#48

Hi Prince

I think your point about Satan / Lucifer and Milton is very well made. The Biblical ‘evidence’ really is so very sketchy, when you come to examine it. And given that Satan means “accuser” or “adversary” in Hebrew, I wonder whether he was ever intended to be the huge, looming, personal figure he has become in orthodox Christian thought.

I understand what you’re saying about Miltonic despair and rejection of God. I guess my answer would be that such a response to God’s offer of complete, eternal and perfect happiness falls into the ‘totally irrational’ category - hence the need for further revelation, further application of God’s grace. But if someone should use their freedom to continue to resist to the utmost, in the teeth of God’s best efforts to ‘turn them’ to him, then along with Eric Reitan (who I think has written some brilliant stuff on this subject) I would say that I’d rather not possess that kind of freedom, and would be glad if God would take it away from me. But personally I don’t think this situation very likely. I reckon we’ll all come around, in the end.

Cheers

Johnny

PS Cindy - yes, you *should *eat your veggies :laughing: