The Evangelical Universalist Forum

What Is Hell Like? Does It Even Exist? NT Wright on 100 Hunt

youtu.be/vggzqXzEvZ0

Discuss.

I would agree if I could believe that flawed humans can actually make decisions like that. We are screwed up beyond belief plus there’s the whole think of the multitudes who never heard the gospel and most of the others who have heard a flawed human’s version of the gospel. You know the one, God loves you but…

Up until the last sentence I’m largely in agreement with Wright and the Greek Orthodox. I do think our choices matter, however, I think God’s love & desire for all to be saved matters even more. Like a game of chess, we really make our moves but in the end God always wins. I also think God wouldn’t have started a game with anyone that would even turn into a stalemate. Neither us or the devil can twist something so much, that God can’t untwist it eventually :sunglasses:

I like that analogy Alex… I’m going to have to remember this one :smiley: And I agree with your post also

Beat me to it. :slight_smile:

So instead I’ll make a different observation:

Sooooo… you think they were right to do that eventually?

Okay, but do you think he’s right to be right about this, or wrong to be right about this?

Meaning… you think we should go back to the notion of hell being important but not as important as God’s salvation, and back to not having a polarization of heaven over here and hell over there and you have to go to one place or the other eventually?

And you don’t think God would collude with our own progressive dehumanization? Right? Yes? No? Maybe?

Sooooooo… in the end, you think our hellish choice to be in hell (i.e. you think hell) is more important than God’s salvation; and that we do have to go to one place or the other eventually; and that the Greek Orthodox are wrong to be right about not doing it that way; and that God will eventually collude with our own progressive dehumanization (which, when we do that, is a sin).


Haha; nice one, Jason.
I do think a state (not a place) of separation from God that we call “hell” exists, and that our choices do matter also. I don’t think “hell” is what we have traditionally been taught it is or have thought it is.

I’d even go so far as to say we are in the state called “hell” until we recognize that Jesus is our savior, and He then pulls us out of it.

:laughing: That was funny Jason. I read this thread just to see what the face palm was about. :laughing:

I think his point is that Hell is not a physical place God sends us to with literal fiery water and worms, etc, but a terrible state of existence which God allows us to descend into by our choices–in which we become less and less human (losing the image of God) and increasingly “dead” as we reject the life of God.

… and the implication is apparently that God either won’t or can’t do anything about it to save us.

I agree with the idea that there’s probably not a physical place somewhere called Hell, and agree that we can experience hell in this life, but I disagree with this idea that God passively lets us go to hell because we choose it. It seems clear in scripture that God does actively judge us, actively sending people away into “outer darkness,” throwing them into the lake of fire, ordering or carrying out their destruction, etc.

Sonia

I agree; I can’t say I have much patience with interpretative and/or theological schemes which don’t account for the hugely prevalent testimony of God’s active judgment. I hear people (mostly non-universalists!) talking about how “the Bible” supposedly shows all the way through that God doesn’t “judge” us–but while there are some passages from Jesus which suggest this, there a bunch of passages from Jesus which suggest otherwise, too. The concept that this non-judgmental attitude is found ‘all through the Bible’ is just alien to me. We’re apparently reading very different books.

But hey, I would have thought the same thing back when I was a non-universalist, too. :smiley:

(On the other hand, my belief about God’s active judgment hasn’t changed one iota between then, or even the goals. The meanings of the goals, yes.)

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