Years ago when I was in seminary, a young lady in class shared that she prayed to God Our Mother in stead of God Our Father. She did this because her father was not very godly, but her mother embodied the love, grace, and faithfulness of God. She struggled in her relationship with God until she one day from her heart spoke to God as mother, referencing and feeling God’s love for her being even greater than that of her mothers. At the time it was a very challenging thought for me, but I saw in this young lady a wonderful love for God and people and a tremendous faith in Christ. So the fruit of that in her life seemed to be very good.
Of course as others have pointed out, God transends gender. Both male and female are created in God’s image. God is both strong and compassionate, fearsome and nurturing. I was/am fortunate to have a loving father and mother, both of which are gentle, kind, graceful people. Many of the people I’ve encountered though did/do not and I can see many of their struggles being rooted in missing nurture, care, acceptance, and love that they missed growing up.
thanks Dave, that post was very honest and i appreciate it. you’re right…we do project! God uses that i feel in the Bible to illustrate things in terms we could nearly understand…but “He” leads us beyond that, and as Dick says, that might be what Jesus meant about not calling people on earth “father”.
thanks too Dick for lending some more evidence to this issue. i guess we’ve gone a bit off topic though. for my money, it doesn’t matter if God is literally male or female…neither gender in God’s perfected form would create beings simply to destroy them.
if we talk about the plain reading of Scripture (dangers of which i have listed a few on a different thread and were acknowledged somewhat by Robert), then my own plain reading led me to much cognitive dissonance when trying to link the God who always restores after destroying and doesn’t will for any to perish with the hellfire i was taught about.
i briefly, as i said, embraced annihilationism/conditional mortality…but that view does absolutely nothing to deal with the problem of evil. evil, history shows us, is not extinguished by killing the evil doers. it is extinguished by extinguishing it in the hearts of those God works in. allowing the wicked to “choose oblivion” is really as illogical as allowing a child to “choose” to play in traffic or stick her hand into a fire.
God doesn’t have to be wishy washy, new age or feminine (again, it is offensive to associate a liassez faire attitude to evil as “feminine”…certainly i don’t know many women with that attitude at all! and if they do, they are criticised for it as much as a man would be) to want to take action against that sort of possibility. God simply has to be a good parent. even we “who are evil” know how to give good gifts to our children. how much more so does God the Father? so this line of reasoning doesn’t make sense to me at all.
God is a parent who will not tolerate evil in us, and works to grow us out of it (sometimes this takes harsh action). Universalism embraces this and ALSO embraces the fact that God is absolutely capable of rebuilding what He destroys.
Corpselight wrote: “God is a parent who will not tolerate evil in us, and works to grow us out of it (sometimes this takes harsh action). Universalism embraces this and ALSO embraces the fact that God is absolutely capable of rebuilding what He destroys.”
That’s it, the reason I joined this Forum - hearing this from you and from others on these pages.
Dave, your story makes me love you all the more, dear brother. Thank God our Father and our Elder Brother and the dear Holy Spirit, who never gives up on us, but prompts us to search for Him until He is found of us. I am so glad He found your way.
Steve, I never thought about a book on the LoF, so I’m afraid I can’t recommend one, but it would be a great topic to write about.
Robert, I’m going to quote your post here and comment on it as I go because otherwise I can’t keep it all in my head at once:
But I too am looking at the bible as a whole, Robert, and what I see is different. It would be tremendously helpful if you’d be willing to post the problematic lines, but if you prefer not to, of course that’s okay.
This is a reformation viewpoint, and isn’t much older than that. IMO the reformation’s exclamation of 'Sola Scriptura!" was one of those reactions John Wesley referred to in his remark that “the church is like a drunken horseman, always falling off the horse on one side or the other.” Because scripture had been kept from the “laity” because of our apparent inability to understand it (which was wrong, and power mongering at worst or condescending at best), the reformers wished to say that no learned interpretation was necessary as scripture spoke for itself – so simple a child could understand (with the guidance of the HS). But while everyone should have access to; everyone should study; everyone should seek God’s guidance regarding the scriptures, it is NOT true that we have nothing to gain from the scholars and their exposition of language, culture and idiom. A relaxed reading of scripture will and has gotten us slavery, treatment of women as chattel, and “witch” burning. It has gotten us the slaughter of the inquisitions and other debacles, the murder of the Anabaptists, the terrorism between RCs and Protestants, and so much more. I honestly have no time for a relaxed reading of scripture. Reading scripture deserves and requires our whole devotion and the use of all our faculties as well as the help and elucidation offered by our scholars.
I actually don’t believe the bible has been corrupted at all. History and scholarship mitigates against this. Whatever the Bible/Torah/TANACH was, it still is. There is no other ancient document so reliably true to the original (notwithstanding there are a few, mostly less than vital, discrepancies between our extant source manuscripts.) That said I do have what I believe to be a realistic view of the difficulties and pitfalls of the translation process, and of the limitations of our ability to understand documents written to and by cultures far, far different from ours, and of our lack of understanding of some of the symbolism that would have been obvious to the original readers. We are hampered, not helped, if we insist that the scriptures should be such that we moderns should be instantly competent to understand precisely what the writers meant to communicate (or God meant to communicate through them) to a culture different from ours. The hard fact is that the bible is a very, very challenging collection of ancient literature and that one can’t expect to reach a reasonable understanding of it without a great deal of work (and/or help).
Just as an example, when the various words translated “hell” were so translated, the meaning of the word “hel” was more in line with “grave” (which would accord with your CI beliefs. You could have, for instance, a hel of root crops – that is, hidden in a “hel” – what we’d call a root cellar. So here is a word which, even when translated into English, meant something far different at the time than most of us read it to mean today.
This is a big statement. I hope you will be patient. First, yes. Evil will die – absolutely; it MUST die if all things are to be gathered together into Christ. Evil must die in you and in me and in all God’s creatures. They are HIS and He will not be denied. No one will pluck them out of His hand.
Second, Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father. This is worship, but He does not accept false/feigned worship. For God is spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. What is required to be saved? According to Romans 10:9-10, If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord (or the Lord Jesus) and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved, for with the heart people believe unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. These people of whom Isaiah speaks in this scripture are confessing and believing – no word of reluctance is given here, though even if it were, they are still confessing and believing.
Third, Why do we need to believe in Jesus? I do sympathize with your question, so I won’t pretend to be affronted by it. Still, though I had this question myself at one time, now I wonder how I could have wondered at such a thing. A close study of Romans will show you that it was only through Jesus and His representative death that the race of the old Adam could be annihilated and reborn/recreated as the offspring of the Last Adam and the Second Adam. Jesus, in His own body, put the entire race of Adam to death on the cross, along with the writing of the accusation that was against us. Jesus, in His own body raised up the new race of the Second Adam in His resurrection from and triumph over the grave. As in Adam all die, so in Christ all are made alive. It makes precisely no sense to say (as the Calvinists do, and a fair number of Arminians as well) that the “all” who died in Adam are not the same “all” who are raised in Christ. We NEED Jesus because He and He alone could save us from our SIN – (not just sins) and make us holy (not just get us into heaven). And we need Him because He is the amazing, wonderful, glorious, beautiful, spectacular, fairest of ten-thousand to our souls – our bright morning star, lily of the valley, rose of Sharon, the desire of the nations, and all things holy – no one is like Him. How could we live without Him? How could anyone? No one could, because it is HE who is our LIFE. (Can you tell I’m a fan? )
I do agree with you that Jesus’ death was and is a beacon to all humanity (though the great majority of humanity have never had the opportunity to know, or to know truly, of His sacrificial love. We could make a caveat for those who haven’t heard. And then for those physically or psychologically incapable of understanding, for children, for the righteous pagan. But none of these (save the last) is in any way scriptural, and the last exceedingly rare if indeed existent at all. The thing is, Jesus came to save the world, and Jesus did succeed in what He came to do. The Father is not willing that ANY should perish. Does the Father’s will have to be sacrificed because of our stubbornness? Then we have a God who is not all powerful.) God so loved the world that He gave . . . and yes I know the rest of the chapter; I memorized it once upon a time . . . does God love the world or not? Those who do not believe are condemned already – by their own condemnation inherent in not believing. But what is the condemnation? What is the sentence? People are condemned to all sorts of things. We read “condemned to ect” (or in your case, anni) because we are reading the thing that we already “know” back into the text. In actually, Jesus leaves the specifics of the condemnation unstated here.
Jesus warned that if anyone didn’t make peace with his neighbor along the way, he would be in prison until he paid the uttermost farthing. Now we know that no one can atone for his own sin, so what is this uttermost farthing? I think the rational answer to that is that the thing owed is forgiveness, reconciliation, brotherly love toward the offended party. Jesus has already paid for the sins of the world, so there’s nothing left there to pay.
I understand your hesitancy. I felt the same until one day the HS spoke to me (not in words, but in a strong compunction to act) with the impression: “What if the universalists were right? What if they have scriptural answers for your objections? Wouldn’t you want to know if you were mistaken about this?” These ideas had question marks and huge exclamation points. I felt I MUST find out as soon as possible. I do not want to be SEEN to be right. I want to BE right (though I know that I’m still wrong in many things – but Father will show me these when I’m ready.)
First, sinners cannot “go to heaven.” That is an impossibility, for “this is eternal life; that they may know You and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” Eternal life is NOT “pie in the sky by and by,” but rather a genuine living relationship with our Heavenly Abba and our ever so mighty Elder Brother through the ministrations of His indescribably beautiful Holy Spirit. (There are not enough words . . . ) The sinner cannot, EVER, experience such a thing. S/he would experience only the fire. Only the fire – until all the evil, being burned away, leaves behind the gold and the silver and precious stones put there by the Father in the beginning. (“And He saw that it was good.”) The old is destroyed; the sinner is unmade and undone; the new rises as a tender plant from the good seed sown by the Son, who does not fail in that which He puts forth His hand to accomplish.
As for Allah and Yahweh being the same, I have read the quran. They are not the same, though I think it is possible that some Muslims of good heart unknowingly worship the True God. Our Father is not concerned about noises (whether we have His name right, I mean). That said, I want to make it clear that I believe Jesus when He said, “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”
“You will not die.” But they DID die. They died that day, to the life that Father offered them – and we died in them. Please don’t misunderstand me. There are “ultra-universalists” who believe that at some point after death (usually the GWT judgment) God burns all the sin away instantly and brings the erring into the Kingdom. I respect my brothers and sisters who believe this – we are not saved by knowing the right doctrine, but the right Person – but I disagree with them. It is impossible to enter the Kingdom of God with sin, whether the applicant is a “born again believer” or a “reprobate sinner.” Sin CANNOT come in. It will be destroyed in its coming. No one who cherishes sin can come into His presence, because to come is to relinquish sin to the fires of purification. You must let go your sin or remain in the outer darkness.
Some say that there will be those who forever choose to fondle their sin and remain outside the camp. I don’t think this can be reconciled with the statement that all things will be summed up in Christ (including those “under the earth,” which is code for those who are dead – particularly the “wicked dead,” as Paul did not consider believers who had died (imo) to be truly dead; rather, he described them as sleeping. Jesus indicated this too; “The little girl is not dead but asleep.” “Our friend Lazarus sleeps and I go to him that I may awaken him.” I believe that the most reasonable reading for “those that are under the earth” is that it refers to the unsaved dead. Yet they will be reconciled. One is not reconciled by being annihilated. Peace may be made that way, but not reconciliation. Reconciliation requires a reunion and a restoration to relationship.
Richard, you’ve expressed yourself respectfully and honestly. I couldn’t possibly be upset with you for that. You’re sensitive in your choice of words and thoughtful in your objections. Everyone has to weigh the evidence of the scriptures for him/herself with the guidance of God to lead him. If you never agree with me in this life, you are still my brother and we will rejoice together in the presence of the Lamb.
I thought universalism was new age too. (Though new age isn’t really new age. It’s really old pantheism, but that’s another topic.) I was mistaken. I believe, from my studies of the scriptures (and I’ve been at my studies for hmm . . . well, quite a few decades You all don’t need to know how many!) that universalism is not only supported by an unbiased though informed reading of scripture, but that it ties scripture together into a cohesive whole far better than either Calvinism or Arminianism. As some of the others have mentioned, seeing our Father as a mother-figure is not without precedent. He is portrayed in a number of feminine ways in scripture though I can’t quote any of them at the moment – I’d have to search. Dick has pointed out Jesus’ hen analogy. I agree with the previous comments that our all-transcendent Father God is also Mother God. It is He who has created us and also He who has nurtured and continues to nurture us tenderly. He is our sustenance, and there can be no other. (As a mother nurses her infant.) I always refer to Him as He because that’s the pronoun used in scripture – however He doesn’t always refer to Himself so. He does use feminine metaphors (through His prophets) to describe Himself to us on occasion. In the image of God – male and female. It needs all of us, unmade and remade, to portray His infinite image – and it will take all of forever and ever to know Him well enough to approach an accurate portrayal – but then He has all of forever and ever.
Yes. We physically die in our sins, and spiritually we were already dead. However this passage doesn’t describe what happens next. Dying in ones sins was a scary thing to the Pharisees (to whom Jesus was speaking in this passage). They would miss the Messianic kingdom they so looked forward to (and if they didn’t believe, they WILL miss it, too – the very thing He warned them against.)
Now you expose my Calvinist leanings (I have both). There IS an elect, but as Israel was elected to be a blessing to all nations, so we who are blessed to believe in this life, are elected to the ministry of reconciliation – now and later.
It is really loving to save everybody. Father doesn’t do nice. But you have to remember – I (with Paul) believe that the thing we need saving FROM is our SIN (not hell or annihilation – sin is the cause of hell/annihilation). If you could, wouldn’t you save ALL your children? Does our heavenly Father love them less? CAN He save them if they don’t want saved? I believe He can do all things, including persuading the most reluctant sinner to finally and freely let go of the sin he clings to. (We say, “I don’t have all day,” but He says, “I have forever.”)
And all will repent. You’re not going to find the “death deadline” (as I like to call it) in scripture. I looked and looked and looked. It is not there. It absolutely is not. I don’t mind telling you that I was genuinely shocked to NOT discover wide-standing support of this long-standing doctrine of the church. I repeat in wonder; It Is Not There. Go and find it. I tried my best with all the search tools of modern computer savvy Christendom.
Mothers do not always accept their murderous children no matter whether they repent of their crimes. Some do. Some fathers do. If we are like our Heavenly Father, we all continue to love our children (and our enemies). This according to Jesus as He spoke the Sermon on the Mount.
Well, death is technically already here – but I understand you mean the second death. (Incidentally the first death can’t really be the last enemy if the last enemy is simply “death” as scripture teaches – and when death is destroyed, it doesn’t get to keep its victory or its prisoners.) In all honesty, Robert, your words sound kind of misogynistic – the woman symbolizes evil? Really? What about Mary? Ruth? Esther? Anna? Elizabeth? Dorcas? Saphira? Junia? the very Bride of Christ? The church is characterized as feminine, and I might venture to add that the Holy Spirit has also in places been so characterized (Sophia). The feminine is not analogous to evil.
Now, goddess worship is characterized as evil, and it IS evil. But the goddess was a historic fertility-rite worship of the feminine power to bring life through gestation and birth. It was attributing the power of life (which is God’s alone) to female fertility. This is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (TOKOGE), not the TRUE Tree of Life. It was worshiping the human ability to procreate and to husband animals and raise crops, etc., rather than God, who alone can give life.
Your last statement – repent and believe or death follows – is true. Death follows, but death does not ultimately triumph. Only God can ultimately triumph and He is not willing that any should perish. Jesus really did take the keys to death and hades. He really does have the power of life. He really did defeat the prince of this world. He really did bind the strong man and ravage his house and set the captives free. We may be sitting in that house, in a corner in the dark, and we will NOT be free until we come out of that house – nevertheless freedom has been bought. The door stands awkwardly hanging from its frame and we are free whether we know it yet or not. He paid the price. There is no price left to pay for sin. We DO need to choose to leave the old behind in order to enter the new, but the Good Shepherd will seek out and find the least of His lost sheep, wherever they are. The woman will sweep until she finds her lost coin. The Father will scan the horizon until the prodigal returns and He will cajole His elder son until the elder son surrenders to love and returns to the house. (His character – and Paul’s statement that all Israel will be saved testify to this) All of scripture attests to this, when we don’t unconsciously and unintentionally (or for some, intentionally) practice eisegesis.
Precisely.
I’ll get you a list together later – I’ve spent quite a lot of time on this and I don’t know the references off the top of my head. (But if anyone else wants to jump in and save me the work . . .
Meanwhile, if you would like to judge for yourself some of the many scriptures pointing to UR, I urge you to visit hopebeyondhell.net/ and download the free book you find there. Look up the scriptures and read them in context (I did – all of them) and decide for yourself whether you think they point to universal reconciliation. For me, some of them seemed stretched, but the vast majority did point, at least to some degree, toward UR. The author, Gerry Beaucheman (I misspelled that badly, but it’s hard to find his name on the site), agrees that some of the scriptures he points out will not say UR to some people. I agree; some of them don’t. That said, there is a HUGE oeuvre of scriptures that clearly do point in that direction. Again, I was shocked at the sheer volume of them. Some I had noticed before and simply written them off as aberrations, since they didn’t agree with my theology, but when I saw the bulk . . . well it was staggering.
I think I’ve probably answered most of these points already, and as this is already long, I won’t try to answer them again from another angle but obviously I disagree that UR is satanic. I’m curious though – what are the “two bad doctrines battling it out” and what is, in your eyes, the good doctrine that we should believe?
Holy Mackerel, Cindy - that was an Opus!! I loved every word. Thanks for taking the time for such an extensive and thoughtful response.
As they say in Texas - God bless ya real good.
one quick point. Universalism is NOT new. Universalism was believed by several of the ancient church fathers. throughout church history, there has ALWAYS been a thread of convinced Universalists. Check the thread on those who deny traditional Hellism for a HUGE list. we also have martyrs who have died rather than renounce the Greater Hope.
Sola Scriptura is new. Fundamentalism is new. Scriptural Inerrancy as currently taught is new. Even Calvin and Augustine for all their horrendous faults didn’t believe in some of the rot we’ve come out with since.
If we are going to judge doctrine by its age, which has flaws, then Universalism is one of the oldest and purist that we know about.
I think I figured out how to multiquote without quoting the whole post.
That was one Texas sized post and I do truly appreciate the time and effort I know it took.
The problematic lines are about Hell which I already know are the Grave and Death.
It’s not an afterlife so we can skip that and get to what I don’t know that you do.
The heart of the post for me was just a relaxed reading of the Bible.
I’m trying not to intellectualize this as that would be unrelaxed in my mind.
Imagine my amazement when as an adult atheist (whose parents weren’t religious and never having been to church) I read the Bible for the first time only expecting to find a burning Hell.
Hell was my only preconceived notion of the Bible and the major stumbling stone for me to even read the Bible.
So the one thing I thought was there wasn’t so the entire Bible was fresh and being read without preconceived notions.
The words transformed me and I KNEW who my Father was.
I study the Bible in great detail but that is not the scope of my argument on the relaxed reading.
I see a trend in the world where Christian intellectuals are bypassing the Spirit (oil) of the Bible and are teaching from the intellect which is earthly. I also see that people from history intellectualized the Bible which can not be figured out with the earthly mind.
I believe we come to no closer understanding the Bible when we come from earthly intellectualizing and rather end up with flowery doctrines that sound good but miss the mark.
That’s not to say we can’t use our God given mind when reading scripture, we must!
But the Spirit comes first.
I am very suspicious of Christian intellectuals and see this intellectualism as yet another attack on the Church.
I don’t either. I think there are lots of translation errors but the Spirit and the Doctrine of the Word is intact.
No question about that in my eyes. All knees will bend. I question the timing of when that happens and whose knees are bending.
It kinda looks like it happens after Judgement which kinda looks like all who are remaining are believers and if it does mean that then we can remove the torture of heretics until they repent which in my mind goes against the nature of God expressed in the relaxed reading of scripture.
When Christ returns his enemies are destroyed in the instant of his coming.
I think the timing of this event(s) and who it’s for are important questions and worthy of it’s own thread.
My main problem with Universalism is this point.
I also think I see where the problem stems from.
It seems to be the same problem that Calvinists have although in Calvinism the problem is more pronounced.
There seems to be a mental disconnect between a loving God and one that’s going to burn people alive in Hell for eternity.
In Universalism God is only going to burn people till they repent.
The same cognitive dissonance is present.
The mind must reel from one of the two contradictory beliefs.
Either the loving God goes or we stop thinking about the punishment and pain.
Once we stop thinking about the torture of Hitler until he repents and believes then we can no longer address the real issue because it’s missing.
I’m using strong words (Hitler/torture) to illuminate my point.
Is this your belief?
Is God doing to throw people into the refining fire to save them or to purify them?
What scriptural support is there saying God will save men this way?
It’s missing in the relaxed reading of scripture.
On the contrary, the relaxed reading of scripture has God’s enemies being killed quickly in the lake of fire and without fanfare.
The lake of fire seems to be an actual place (created for Satan and his fallen) while the refining fire of God is God and is not a place to be thrown into.
Romans 10:9-10 expresses the dignity of God’s love for us in the fullest sense of the word love.
I contrast that against hurting unbelievers until they repent and believe.
There is no precedent in the Bible for that kind of hurtful God.
Again, this is my plain reading of scripture.
That’s an interpretation of Romans I don’t share with you.
The relaxed reading of Romans tells me (basically) that Adam brought death into the world by introducing sin and that Christ brings life to the world with the forgiveness of sin. In Christ (the second Adam) we are born again but without Christ we are “the old Adam” and dead in sin. Both these states of man coexist on the earth at the present time.
I can tell you’re a fan!
I am in terrified awe of our Glorious God.
Without him there is no life.
The relaxed reading of text has some who are and will be without his life as there are many in the grave right now without God’s life.
This is going to have to be part 1 of my response to your wonderful post to me as I am jammed up with work this week.
I look forward to addressing the rest of your post asap.
Please don’t feel the need to wait for part 2 in order to respond to part 1.
Talk to you soon.
There are evidently different interpretations within universalism. I don’t believe that God is going to burn anyone - or at least not in the sense that you are implying. Fire, in the bible, can have a different meaning to the literal that you are here suggesting; otherwise there are worms especially designed for this fire, and worms especially designed for immortality. The worm is figurative, the fire is figurative, the punishment is figurative. That seems (to me) to be the only disconnect - when you try to read literal into the figurative.
We are spoken of as going through a fire now (baptism of fire), and yet there are no literal flames, and there is no literal place. This fire baptism is figurative of the purging process that we go through, if we allow God, and this process is spoken of for the unbelievers too. There is a distinct advantage between choosing God as a repentant sinner now, and denying God and needing to be purged through the reality of God. They do not receive the same kind of reward (body).
“So also is the resurrection”. There are different bodies and different glories. These unrepentant ones will receive a resurrection body. Why give them a body if they are just going to be annihilated? There is “weeping and gnashing of teeth” in these bodies - figurative language of repentance. This weeping and repentance is not a response to the gift of immortality; this gnashing of teeth is a response to a lessor glory. Annihilation, although convenient, is still somewhat unmerciful. It still creates a disconnect. It does not represent true justice (in my mind), and it does not represent full victory (in my mind). It is a secondary prize for Ooops winner. It implies also that there was something internally wrong with the life God had given man. It failed! It wasn’t enough! Instead; we are here now in a contest to determine our future glory - which will be different from person to person, just as each star differs from each star in glory. Those who follow Christ now, faithfully, will receive the greater glory. Those who don’t follow Christ now will receive a resurrection to a lessor glory - and this cannot be changed. That is why it is pertinent to follow Christ now while we have time. Our entire future - all eternity - depends on our choices now. We are allowed to participate in our own glory. This honor is not available to those who reject Christ. They will differ as each star differs. There are billions of stars and there are billions of glories. God has promised the best for those who are faithful.
I have to apologize. It’s not at all unusual for a person to take the fire as literal, but I have thought of it as metaphorical for so long that it’s easy to forget how that will sound to literal ears. Jesus also describes the unrepentant as inhabiting the “outer darkness” where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” So if we’re going to take these things literally, which is it? Fire or outer darkness? I know there have been well-known universalists who have taken the LoF as a literal molten earth, but among present day universalists I have neither read nor met any who consider the LoF to be literal flames (except for the “ultra-u’s,” some of whom believe the fire instantly cleanses). Some of us see the “fire” as punitive, some as punitive/therapeutic, and others as purely therapeutic.
I like to keep in mind the difficulties and pains and anguish most of us have (or will have) experienced in this life. Personally I would not like to be forced to live this life again at all. If this thought horrifies you, well then I am glad – because that means you’ve had a relatively pleasant life and I’m happy for that. BUT, if the “flames” of restoration (whether punitive or therapeutic or both) are even as bad as this life often is, I want no more of them than is absolutely necessary. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, but then I wouldn’t wish life-saving chemotherapy and radiation on anyone either. Yet people who are suffering from cancer literally clamor to be tormented by doctors – for their health.
The doctors saved my mother’s life through surgery, chemo & radiation and it was hell. Nevertheless, the cancer had to go, and that was the only way known to man to defeat and destroy it. Sinners must be healed of their sin. What if, barring repentance, the only way to cure them is to allow them to experience, blow for blow and anguish for anguish precisely the torment they heaped on others during their earthly lives? Or perhaps ten-fold, as the prophet said Israel had received for her sins. That is my picture of hell – not torturing the sinner until he cries “Uncle!” but rather allowing him to experience the just recompense of his deeds until his heart breaks in true repentance.
Please don’t mistake me. The sinner is not paying the penalty for his sins. Jesus died to set us free from sin, which leads to death. He took care of the sins – He died for the sins of the world; the sins of the world have been atoned for. BUT He also died to set us free from SIN. We may have all our sins cast away as far as the east is from the west; as high as the heavens are above the earth, but if we are still sinners, and refusing to relinquish that, we cannot stand in the presence of God. I don’t say we MAY not, but that we CAN not. We cannot be cleansed and made whole from our love of sin until we relinquish that love willingly (imo – the calv-u’s would disagree with me though). It is only through Christ that we are set free from this slavery to sin. The atonement is absolutely essential.
I could say other things here, particularly regarding your dismissal of Paul’s assertion that “as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all are made alive,” but you have enough to do, when you have time, finishing your reply, so I’ll save that for another time.
You did mention a specific problem you have with universalism. I could expound on the question of whether anyone comes OUT of the LoF, but Robin Parry does it so well. I think you’d find his video interview here: gci.org/YI083 to be helpful in answering this question, as well as enjoyable to watch.
Thanks for the reply Stefcui. I’m soooooo busy with work this week that I can’t get to all the posts until after the weekend which is driving me nuts because there is so much good stuff to talk about.
My original post was about the simple, relaxed reading of the Bible. Nowhere in scripture did I sense any salvation of the wicked except with Christ’s sacrifice saving the world.
I saw no sliding scale of salvation for the wicked but I do see a sliding scale for the righteous.
Could you be confusing the gifts being given the righteous according to their works (after being saved) with everyone being gifted or punished for their works?
The simple reading of Bible text left me with the notion that the righteous would be refined in the fire of God and gifted but the unrighteous would perish in their sins and not to be thought of again.
As Universalism gets less torturous in concept I see less of a need for Jesus to be sacrificed.
Can you get that?
The need for Christ is erased completely if we are all just going to be judged by our works and eventually saved.
However!
The sacrifice of the righteous always paid the price for the unrighteous.
The concept is a Hebrew concept and even Moses asked God to take his life in replacement for destroying Israel.
So the concept of Christ saving the world is already an established Biblical concept but what of all the talk of destruction of the unrighteous in the plain reading of scripture?
God did open the earth a swallow up 3000 from a tribe of Israel during the Exodus.
God did destroy the unrighteous elect. How much more so the unelect?
There is only one root and brance of unrighteous elect are cut out and righteous Gentiles grafted in.
What happenes to those who are cut out or never grafted in?
There is something really wrong with all interpretations as I see it.
Yes a righteous sacrifice can replace the sins of others but why all the hard talk in the Bible about the death of the wicked?
I won’t just except a concept that ignores the death of the wicked.
The concept is wrong.
Robert, there is a lot of discussion on many of those points. Recently, there was a post about a really poor criticism of universalism that among other things brought up the “why did Jesus have to die if we’re all saved” argument.
the point is…without Christ’s death, none of us would be saved. that is in fact the mechanism for the salvation of the wicked. and we are all wicked.
that particular argument against universal reconciliation is (i’m sorry to say) incredibly basic and easy to refute. Jesus Himself said that if He is raised up ALL men would be drawn to Him. it is through His death that ALL are saved.
let’s not also bring “the elect” into this. that gets into Calvinism, which is not actually salient: you can be a Calvinist Universalist or an Arminian one. Calvinism was NEVER the plain reading of Scripture, unless you throw out bucket loads of OTHER Scriptures.
the elect are merely the first fruits, just as Israel was.
as for a sliding scale…there is a verse (i forget where, but i’m sure someone with a better memory than mine can help) that says that some are punished with more stripes than others. there absolutely IS a sliding scale of punishment for the wicked. Paul talks about sin that is and isn’t “to death” as well.
let us not forget that NONE of us are righteous (though i stop firmly before going down the Total Depravity route…which is one of the most unhelpful doctrines before Limited Atonement that Calvin came up with).
i really think you need to give up on this “relaxed/simple/plain reading” kick. i do not at all agree with your sweeping judgement that the church is becoming “too intellectual” and ignoring the Spirit. this plain reading thing is exactly that, in a different guise. we must wrestle with Scripture. there is no relaxed state. it doesn’t allow that. i read it from a variety of angles from as early an age as i could. i memorised passages in school and church. i prayed through it. i thought about it. i studied it. i heard the explanations that evangelical Christianity had to offer, and it wasn’t enough. all that plain reading led me to cognitive dissonance. how could the God i knew, the God who all through the Bible was angry for a moment but then granted favour for life. that was NOT angry forever…that restored the fortunes of even the slain…how could THAT God that was capable of doing that before Christ came suddenly damn people to eternal hell because they didn’t get a few facts right, or didn’t trust in Him because He was misrepresented, or simply didn’t KNOW…and then call it a better covenant? why replace a perfectly workable situation where being righteous was enough…but even if you screwed up, God could raise you up and restore your fortunes with one where suddenly…you have this life to repent in, and if you don’t eternal hell awaits! that is what’s wrong here…God is the same yesterday, today and forever. if God could punish notorious evil today and then promise a full resurrection tomorrow (many of those resurrections and restorations haven’t happened yet, either, so many formerly wicked nations are going to come back one day and worship God for granting them post mortem salvation)…how could He ever damn FOREVER AND EVER.
it makes no sense.
what makes sense is if Christ’s death did something more than just “pay for sin” in a legal transaction way (which, i’m sorry to say, was NOT acceptable before Christ. people might’ve offered themselves for the sake of others…but did God ever exact that? NO. it’s a nice gesture, but it does not destroy sin…it only adds another good person to the death toll). i just read a quote from Spurgeon that 1824 posted on another thread…that atoning was PART of it, but there was infinitely more to it then that. penal substitutionary atonement is NOT the length and breadth of Christ’s death. God sacrificing Himself to Himself to pay for the fact that His creatures failed to follow rules He arbitrarily set in the first place doesn’t really work logically, and despite having the appearance of being supported by the “plain reading”, it is FAR deeper than that. there are other atonement models to research if you’ll put the time in. in my short time here, most of your statements and questions have actually been discussed in depth many times. you should try the search function.
if we must return to a plain reading of scripture this is what i see “plainly”
God made us. We sinned. God gives us law as a stop gap. We still sin. God gets upset, mostly when we neglect the poor and outcasts among us.
God destroys many nations (often using other nations). He promises most of them that their fortunes will be restored…and this MUST include resurrection as they are all dead
then the dogma of the church since Constantine kicks in with Christ’s arrival
suddenly, through bad exegesis we are taught to forget that God is not angry forever, nor does He cast aside forever. (Lam 3:30+, Psalm 35)
bad translations happen which support this view…this view that is an imported Pagan idea that gods must punish sins FOREVER, something which you at least agree is not Biblical.
plain reading of some very key scriptures is ignored in favour of “seeming” plain reading of others. ie anything revolving around death and punishment is literal and eternal…but anytime Jesus or Paul or anyone else says ALL shall be saved, that God WANTS all to be saved and God purposes and wills it and will not have His word return void, the verses are castrated…God is said to be either a monster that punishes eternally and doesn’t pity our weak state (which is blasphemy and part of Calvinism), or that God is so weak and unpersuasive that He “must” bow to our “free will” (again, there are great examples in the Bible of God over-riding free will, and i find it hard to imagine Him being anything less than the most persuasive wooer of all time…one Who does not give up EVER and will eventually persuade the hardest heart (indeed God can change a heart of stone to one of flesh) so this is blasphemy too).
furthermore, the idea that God could lose…totally wrong. God CANNOT lose. God gets to win every time because God is God. Furthermore, God is LOVE. if God is love…re-read 1 Corinthians 13 and replace every instance of Love with God. Paul was onto something here. THAT to me is plain reading.
if God destroyed lives in the Old Testament (and even in the New), we know that God is able to resurrect. We don’t see any denial of Him resurrecting…in fact, we see that there IS a resurrection, even of the wicked…to judgement. and judgement isn’t what the church has taught. judgement is restoration of fair-togetherness between persons.
here’s another nail in the coffin of any form of permanent punishment: God chastises those He loves. If God loves them, He will chastise (and the word here means prune…a concept of punishment that leads to growth) them. hell or permanent death causes no growth at all. it’s pointless.
God does not lose. He has not created a Universe where He can lose…and even if He did, He is too great to lose. the wicked will suffer (us too), but only enough to chastise us and bring us back into fellowship with our Father.
Arrg! another great post I don’t have time to answer for real yet.
After the weekend I will but I want to say there was something you said that solidly hit the nail on the head and then I have to sleep and get up early.
“all that plain reading led me to cognitive dissonance”.
Brilliant!!!
Again, brilliant!
Brilliant, brilliant brilliant!
Thank you again and again.
I want to come back to your post (as well as others) after the weekend but I do want to talk about this one thing you brought up.
The plain and simple reading of the Bible has all men being saved AND!!! people being thrown into outer darkness or the lake of fire.
That’s the cognitive dissonance.
In Calvinism the cognitive dissonance is “God is Love” (and he’s going to burn people in Hell forever for no fault of their own) LOL.
You are completely wrong about intellectualism in Christianity (very wrong in a very smart, handsome and nice way!).
Intellectualism avoids Biblical cognitive dissonance by inventing ways out of it.
The truth of the matter is the seeming dissonance is our misunderstanding of the Bible and intellectualized scripture is a road map to nowhere.
The plain and simple reading of the Bible exposes all the weaknesses of intellectualized interpretations of scripture.
I know that there are no contradictions in the Bible so how can it be possible for all men to be saved and some (if not most) to be thrown into outer darkness or the lake of fire?
When is God’s refinement process ever called “outer darkness”?
It never is.
Written out of the Book of life is probably nonexistence.
So “all men” could mean all existing men.
I don’t know and want to discuss it further.
i think the Book of Life is used not simply to point out those who are alive (as i had previously suggested), but has some further context about participating in the Life More Abundandtly that Jesus describes: Aionian life. i have a few reasons for that, partially (ironically) down to plain reading
to me, if it wanted to say that people were killed or ceased to be…it wouldn’t use a poetic metaphor of a book when it doesn’t shy away from using the other expressions elsewhere, where warranted.
now, there is support for being written into and out of the book of life.
the Outer Darkness:
Jesus uses this in a parable to reveal the fate of someone who refused to forgive a debt, despite being forgiven one himself. He is thrown into the “Outer Darkness” UNTIL the last farthing is paid.
Also, the Outer Darkness is at least alluded to in the tale of the Unwise Virgins that didn’t bring enough oil. That’s a cryptic one, anyway…but being shut out of the marriage feast doesn’t actually indicate eternal doom. It indicates being shut out for a period of time…missing out on something good because they were a bit stupid.
Also, the use of the words “weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth” sound to me like in that Outer Darkness (if it is the same Darkness He’s mentioned in other parables) like conscious response to being there…that would to me indicate they exist, still…they haven’t ceased to be.
“weeping and wailing and gnashing teeth” sounds to me a lot like Remorse…and the Bible is FULL of God rescuing people from their punishment when they are contrite and remorseful.
Not sure i’ve addressed everything, but that’s enough for a slightly less rambly post on this fine autumn morning
OK I’m starting to see some possibility here.
I have some questions but I’ll start with just one.
Whats the point of repenting and believing?
Talk with ya’ll after the weekend.
)
You all don’t need to know how many!) that universalism is not only supported by an unbiased though informed reading of scripture, but that it ties scripture together into a cohesive whole far better than either Calvinism or Arminianism. As some of the others have mentioned, seeing our Father as a mother-figure is not without precedent. He is portrayed in a number of feminine ways in scripture though I can’t quote any of them at the moment – I’d have to search. Dick has pointed out Jesus’ hen analogy. I agree with the previous comments that our all-transcendent Father God is also Mother God. It is He who has created us and also He who has nurtured and continues to nurture us tenderly. He is our sustenance, and there can be no other. (As a mother nurses her infant.) I always refer to Him as He because that’s the pronoun used in scripture – however He doesn’t always refer to Himself so. He does use feminine metaphors (through His prophets) to describe Himself to us on occasion. In the image of God – male and female. It needs all of us, unmade and remade, to portray His infinite image – and it will take all of forever and ever to know Him well enough to approach an accurate portrayal – but then He has all of forever and ever.