Depends on the definition. Damnatinon is (only) condemnation, and we are all condemned for the sins we intentionally do (setting aside the question of being condemned for sins we didnât do!) Yet God saves us from our sins, and so save us from the condemnation of our sinsâthough not our sins from condemnation!âand not us from being condemned, exactly. Even if we donât go into punishment we still are condemned for our sins.
Again, no it doesnât and it does our witness great harm to create strawmen. It is disingenuous to portray those who disagree with us in such a light. The existence of ECT does not necessitate either the failure of Godâs persistence or his scope.
And this is bordering on plain nasty. I regard most opposers as having integrity and sincerity in coming to the conclusion they do, even if I believe them to be mistaken. There motive is not to âtry and avoid universalismâ.
Please donât speak for all universalists. I am one, and I certainly donât accept your âdiagnosisâ.
Jason:
I would be grateful if you would reply to my last conversation with you.
What about bad news of the sort you just quoted me asking about? Assuming you consider that to not (somehow) be a case of God at some point in time stops doing all He can to save all sinners and lets some sinners roast instead.
I will have to refer to you current and former Assembly of God members here on the forum. My impression from my own exposure to AoG members is that AoG is dogmatically anni (I guess here in the States?), and I recall this impression being strengthened by hearing from AoG members here on the forum. But maybe Iâm mis-remembering.
or actively annihilating him out of existence, would that be a truth to rejoice over and praise God about for His mighty saving victories and the righteousness of His ultimate fair-togetherness between persons?
Irrelevant.
I am a little fuzzy on how this could possibly be an irrelevant question, since I included the option of eternal conscious torment; and there arenât any options other than (variants of) ECT, anni or UR.
Iâm not sure why you have taken offence or why you are bad-mouthing my late father. I have told you already that my father believed that God never stops loving ALL sinners - this is the âBeautiful truthâ.
I havenât taken offense. At the time of when I wrote what you quoted, you had not indicated whether your father was a proponent of ECT or of annihilation of sinners; but you had indicated he was an Arminian, so I was going through various options. I quite agree that an Arminian can (as Lewis for example did) coherently claim that God continues loving all sinners even the ones who are hopelessly lostâalthough Lewis was somewhat inconsistent about whether God annihilated sinners or not. But his ingenious way of trying to affirm both anni and ECT would still allow God to love the hopelessly lost sinner because the sinner would still exist in relation to God, although not any longer in relation to any other created reality.
If your father was not an annihilationist, he could still believe God continues to love the hopelessly lost sinner as Lewis did, and so of course that paragraph you quoted would not apply to him (although I was in no position to know that at the time I wrote it.) But no Arminian nor anyone else, technically speaking, can coherently claim that God continues to act toward saving the hopelessly lost sinner from sin. A universalist can technically claim God continues to act toward saving sinners from sin in a stalemate, but there is a crucial difference between an ongoing stalemate and a hopelessly lost sinner.
Any other paragraph I wrote which was only about annihilationists would similarly not apply. But I did write some which included eternal conscious torment options of various types.
But Arminians as such do not believe that God continues to always act to save sinners from sin!
This is what I was claiming in your first post, not that Arminians as such necessarily believe God stops loving some sinners (although some do believe that, too.)
Consequently, when you say, âYour supposed âarminianâ position is a strawman,â and that sort of thing, and present your father as a counter-example, then it is incumbent on you to show how an Arminian (your father being the example if you wish) can believe that God always persists in acting to save all sinners from sin and not be a universalist. Otherwise you might as well classify him as a universalist according to my initial post, since that was how I distinguished universalistic soteriology (at minimum) from Arm or Calv soteriologies.
Which leads us toâŚ
to act to save all sinners from sin, then there is still hope in God for the sinner
That does not follow. You are making assumptions about the nature of eternal reality of which you and I know next to nothing.
No, I am drawing inferences about what it means for God to keep acting toward the accomplishment of something. It would be self-contradictive for God (especially if omniscient, but even setting that aside) to keep acting toward the accomplishment of X if God knows X is truly impossible for God to accomplish. That would be like saying it makes sense for God to keep on acting to accomplish the creation of a boulder that is hopelessly impossible for Him to create. Either the proposer of the condition knows something God does not know about the task He is attempting (perhaps because the deity being discussed is not actually God after all but only a natural god of some kind); or God is contradicting Himself by acting against the final reality of the situation (which must in some sense be rooted in the final reality of God Himself).
When I used the term âstalemateâ, I was referring to the sparring arguments envisioned by other posters as a âcheckmateâ for UR. I was not reffering to God involving Himself in a stalemate.
I donât recall you using the term âstalemateâ at all, and was speaking instead about something I often mention when discussing options within universalism, namely an ongoing stalemate that happens never to end. (I suspect such a permanently ongoing stalemate is actually impossible, but I acknowledge it as an option under minimal universalism just in case it isnât. The salient point being that success is still not finally impossible beyond Godâs action to achieve salvation. The acknowledgment of final hopelessness in the result would move it over to being an Arm category variant.)
Again, not necessarily true. I can put my dog down as an act of love believing that I will send him to oblivion rather than let him endure immense suffering.
Your example still fits within what I said: you would cease being able to act to fulfill fair-togetherness with your dog after putting him into non-existence, thus paralleling (as I continued) âa final action, by God (assuming God is the one doing the annihilation instead of only allowing itâbut if He allows it Heâs still authoritatively responsible), for fulfilling non-fair-togetherness between persons.â
That wouldnât necessarily be your fault, since you arenât the omnipotent ground of all existence. But that calls into question why the omnipotent ground of all existence would be outright overpowered in its attempts at doing anything (so that God would not in the final analysis be authoritatively responsible for the loss.)
the ânon-fair-togetherness between personsâ is already fulfilled if they are suffering hellishly. (Not that I or my Dad believe in annihilationism)
The non-fair-togetherness between persons is already fulfilled in one way if they are hopelessly in hell. If the persons are annihilated out of existence, the non-fair-togetherness between persons is fulfilled in a different way. No one can possibly claim, without self-contradiction, that God will be able to fulfill fair-togetherness with person X after (or by) annihilating X out of existence!âthey either donât understand âfulfillâ or think togetherness doesnât require togetherness or arenât really meaning that X is annihilated out of existence.
Did you READ my previous post? Or didnât I make myself clear?
Well frankly, no, you didnât make yourself clear. 
You claimed he was an Arminian, which implies he is not a universalist, but also claimed (or seemed to claim) that he believed (as I said a universalist specifically would) that God will persistently act to save all sinners from sin. But then you didnât bother to distinguish between a universalist and an Arminian in any other way as an alternate to my classification.
Based on what you have now replied, I would suppose you (and/or your father) would think that the specific difference is that some Arminians as such would believe God will keep on acting persistently to save all sinners from sin even though God is completely hopeless to save some sinners from sin, while any universalist would affirm God will keep on acting persistently in hope, instead of in complete hopelessness, to save all sinners from sin.
If so, I will point out that you still havenât clarified this distinction of hope or hopelessness in comparing any universalist to any Arminian (of whatever variety) much less in comparing any Kath or Arm to any variety of Calvinist.
(And also that my broad classification of Arminians was more self-consistent in their belief as such. )
So God would succeed in His persistence to save all sinners from sin even if some sinners are hopelessly lost beyond Godâs power (and ongoing persistence?) to save those sinners from sin???
I think maybe you donât really understand what weâre talking about yet.
[/quote]
As a related topic, did your father consider the final failure of God to save some sinners from sin to be a beautiful truth worth glorying in? Or did he consider that a sad or ugly truth that we had to face no matter how we felt about it?
This is aside from whether your father believed God keeps on acting to save sinners from sin after it is finally impossible for even God to ever succeed in saving those sinners from sin.
(If your father didnât believe in that final hopelessness, then there is even less reason why he would be accurately classed as an Arminian instead of a minimal universalistâno distinction at all would remain between your father and a minimal universalist. If your father was agnostic about whether God was finally hopeless in His persistence, there would be no reason to classify him as either an Arminian or as a universalist but rather as an agnostic between the two positions.)
Hi Jason
There are a lot of quotes to deal with so perhaps it may be better to deal with a couple at a time, so lets start with the first two:
1.
Note âGod at some point in time stops doing all He can to save all sinnersâ - this seems to be a phrase that we might both agree would describe a god who âdoes not act persistentlyâ.
Now, for both my former self (as an arminianist) and my father, there was never a point in time where God stopped doing all He could do to save all sinners. This does not mean that He is successful. It just means that at the end of time (and please note YOUR use of the word âtimeâ which is very appropriate) and at the start of eternity, there is nothing more that God can do. This does not mean that God has not been persistent to the very end! God has not failed in His persistence. He may have failed in accomplishing ALL He desires and that may be a SAD truth, but there are many sad truths in anyoneâs belief system including yours.
Does God then become insane and engage in trying to do the impossible? of course not. Does this mean He has not been persistent? Definitely not - and not by your own words above.
This is why I reject your definition in post one of the arminian position:
âArminianistic == God acts to save all sinners from sin, but does not act persistently to save some sinners from sin.â
- not true.
For most arminians (and all in my considerable experience) No-one roasts for eternity due to a lack of persistence on Godâs part
You are are most definitely wrong. Mainstream Pentecostals are Arminian and believe in ECT not annihilation.
Please refer me to those members - as you have said you will.
Furthermore, just do a google search.
agchurches.org/Sitefiles/Default ⌠T_2011.pdf
It is not that difficult to establish that I know what Iâm talking about having been deeply committed to Pentecostalism (AoG) for more than 30 years!
Letâs see if weâve made progress on those two points before we progress further.
Over to you.
Jason:
Still finding this post very interesting but have a question/need clarification etc.
I am very curious what you mean when you add the word âoriginalâ to persistence? Are you meaning persistence from the beginning? or persistence having no other cause (but God)? Is persistence âimproved uponâ by being âoriginalâ?
While I donât generally mind qualifying words, they actually might end up qualifying a word out of what it means in the first place! Thus âLoveâ can end up meaning something less than love (for me, for example, that line is crossed when love encompasses ECT). Words which can mean too much, can end up meaning not much at allâŚ
So, wondering what your thinking is hereâŚ
Bobx3
Just bumping this up so that Jason can respond to my post
Hi pilgrim,
While youâre waiting for Jason to respond, I was wondering if I could get some clarification on something you wrote earlier on this thread.
You wrote:
To which I responded (The Fourth Soteriology and "The Ugly Truth"):
Hi Aaron
I said:
you said:
No. Not necessarily.
Thatâs an entirely different issue - a good question but âhow and whyâ does not affect the âifâ and so is irrelevant.
One example, if this is helpful, is whether you believe that the laws of logic can be broken by God? Many people would say ânoâ (Particularly given the title âLogosâ attributed to God in flesh). Does God determine that, for abstract integers under the rule of addition, 1+1=2? or could He choose 1+1 to equal 5 if He wishes? âThis statement is falseâ - can God make that statement to be logically coherent?
What you and I believe is irrelevant. The point is that some/most arminianists may believe that the nature of reality post-mortem is such that it is impossible for God to continue to save. I know my father did.
Therefore, it is wrong to say that they believe the unsaved are eternally lost due to Godâs lack of persistance.
Meanwhile, I patiently await Jasonâs corrections of his errors or at least some explanation. I see he has been posting these last few days. I hate to think that he is deliberately avoiding the points made as, I believe, his stance is not a good witness.
God bless
Hi pilgrim,
Thanks for the response; point taken. So would you say that those Arminians of whom your father is representative conclude that the nature of reality post-mortem must be such that it is logically impossible for God to save those not already saved because they understand Scripture to teach that those not saved in this life will never be saved?
Yes. Thatâs it! Sorry I missed responding earlier.
The Pentecostals and Salvationists I was familiar with were Arminians who, like universalists, believed God does absolutely everything in His power to save all sinners. His Love was foremost and universal.
It means that, for me, (now I am a universalist) my understanding of Godâs nature and character has not changed at all. What has changed, is my understanding of His success! His total victory!
Can you see how the proposed definition:
may not do justice to those many thousands of Arminianists who, like my father, have the sort of faith I have described?
Jason made some accusations but has, so far, still not supported them. Iâm bumping this post up so that it gains attention and I hope that Jason will respond:
"Hi Jason
There are a lot of quotes to deal with so perhaps it may be better to deal with a couple at a time, so lets start with the first two:
1.
Note âGod at some point in time stops doing all He can to save all sinnersâ - this seems to be a phrase that we might both agree would describe a god who âdoes not act persistentlyâ.
Now, for both my former self (as an arminianist) and my father, there was never a point in time where God stopped doing all He could do to save all sinners. This does not mean that He is successful. It just means that at the end of time (and please note YOUR use of the word âtimeâ which is very appropriate) and at the start of eternity, there is nothing more that God can do. This does not mean that God has not been persistent to the very end! God has not failed in His persistence. He may have failed in accomplishing ALL He desires and that may be a SAD truth, but there are many sad truths in anyoneâs belief system including yours.
Does God then become insane and engage in trying to do the impossible? of course not. Does this mean He has not been persistent? Definitely not - and not by your own words above.
This is why I reject your definition in post one of the arminian position:
âArminianistic == God acts to save all sinners from sin, but does not act persistently to save some sinners from sin.â
- not true.
For most arminians (and all in my considerable experience) No-one roasts for eternity due to a lack of persistence on Godâs part
You are are most definitely wrong. Mainstream Pentecostals are Arminian and believe in ECT not annihilation.
Please refer me to those members - as you have said you will.
Furthermore, just do a google search.
agchurches.org/Sitefiles/Default ⌠T_2011.pdf
ag.org/top/beliefs/statement_of_ ⌠_short.cfm
It is not that difficult to establish that I know what Iâm talking about having been deeply committed to Pentecostalism (AoG) for more than 30 years!
Letâs see if weâve made progress on those two points before we progress further.
Over to you."