, Dickson & Clarke"]God will judge the world on the basis of human behaviour, in other words, ‘according to deeds’. … God’s judgment is not one-size-fits-all
Does this make sense??
Alex, I have heard this argument before and I am not sure it is valid. I am no mathematician but something doesn’t sound quite right.
If time is the same in the coming age/s as it is now, and I receive a dollar every day and you receive a cent every day:
after one day I have received 100 times what you have,
after 2 days I have received 100 times what you have,
after 1000 days I have received 100 times what you have,
after 1,000,000 years I have received 100 times what you have,
etc etc.
There is never an amount of time that will pass that you will catch up to me. Infinity never actually arrives.
An argument that does seem valid to me is to say that in Anselm’s system, infinity never arrives and so God’s justice will never be satisfied. The appropriate punishment will never be achieved.
But I could be totally wrong… 
, so feel free to correct me if you think so.
Hmm, I’ve posted it on a Mathematicians FaceBook page so hopefully soon we’ll find out 
I didn’t think of that, that’s a good point 
He says I was right about ∞ (I didn’t give him the rest of the argument as he’s also a passionate Augustinian 
He said this would help clear it up en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27 … rand_Hotel
You could well be correct mathematically Alex, but it still doesn’t make sense to me.
I am sure that even after a googolplexian of years, I would still have 100 times more money than you, and no matter how long we live you would never catch up to me, so I know which I would choose.
The reverse of course would apply to punishment. I am sure that if someone was going to be in hell forever, then they would much rather receive a tiny bit of punishment each day than a terribly big amount every day, no matter how many mathematicians say that they end up the same!
I’m going to have a bob both ways. Alex, your mathematician friend is correct, anything times infinity (except 0) equals infinity. But I think Craig is right that in reality if time progresses as we know it infinity is theoretical and never really reached.
I think perhaps infinity is better thought of as the state of things outside of time ( though this is problematic) bit like being stuck in a black hole’s event horizon ( another theoretical conundrum!)
Either way I’m just glad I don’t believe in hell, at least not in the conventional sense!
It is clear to me that ECT invalidates Jesus’ words in Luke 12:47-48.
The distinction Jesus draws is between ‘many stripes’ and ‘few stripes’. If punishment in hell continues forever, then the number of stripes is infinite in both cases. That is a mathematical fact. Hence Jesus’ distinction is meaningless.
This puts the fundamentalist in a right old pickle. Take Jesus at his word and give up the cherished belief of ECT, or don’t take Jesus at his word. Heaven forfend!
This does not, of course, negate the possibility of there being varying degrees of punishment in hell, although there is scant scriptural support for this view; after all, a lake of fire is a lake of fire is a lake of fire …
Indeed, this whole debate only serves to ram home the futile absurdity of trying to interpret metaphors, and the Bible as a whole, literally.
I’m with Sturmy on this one - thank God (literally) there is no hell (well, not that sort of hell anyway …)
Cheers
Johnny
Well put Johnny. Thanks
Alex, in your OP you asked
I think this is a good question for those who believe in Anselm"s system.
Along the same lines, some try and say all sin is infinitely bad because it is against an infinite God, and yet they still try and say some sin is worse than others and deserves greater punishment. How can all sin be infinitely bad and yet some sin be worse than other sin?
If it is then admitted that all sin is not infinitely bad, then why does all sin deserve infinite punishment?
If sin deserves an infinite punishment, and Christ died to pay the penalty for sin, then why isn’t Christ still in hell?
If Christ’s punishment ended, how could it have been infinite punishment?
There is a logically coherent notion of a paradox of all sins being equally bad in one way and differently bad in another way, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the human culture notion of a sin against greater authority being worse than against lesser authority.
On one hand, some sins cause more damage to ourselves and/or to other people than other sins; so in that sense there can be greater and lesser sins.
On the other hand, even the smallest sin involves acting against the continuing source of our own existence, which if ortho-trin is true is a foundationally coherent mutually supporting interpersonal unity. (A version of this would apply in unitarian theologies, too, just not as centrally to the ontology of God.) If any of the Persons of God behaved that way toward other persons, God would cease to exist (as would every created thing past present and future – so we can be sure that isn’t ever going to happen or we wouldn’t be here now to discuss it.) When we behave that way toward other persons (whether toward other created persons or toward God specifically), we are doing that which would result in annihilation if God did it; but the difference is that God acts to keep us in existence anyway. (There would be nothing to save God if any of the Persons acted that way instead, since the Persons don’t exist as distinct entities but as one substantial unity: the one and only single foundation of all reality cannot act against its own eternal self-existence and be saved by something else, since it doesn’t depend on anything else for existence but itself.)
God wouldn’t act to keep us in existence having acted unrighteously, though, unless God’s intention was to bring us back to righteousness; otherwise God would be the author of ultimate unrighteousness, with the same consequences as if God had Himself acted unrighteously.
So by principle we would expect God not to annihilate sinners nor to ECT them (nor allow them to do that to themselves), whatever else He does to sinners; but looking at it from the other direction, the existence of sinners (rather than their annihilation as persons acting against their source of existence) is evidence that God intends to save those sinners from sin and expects to succeed at it.
Anyway, that’s how in one sense sins can really be greater or lesser based on the scope of their effects and damage; but in another sense all sins would be equally fatal except for the grace of God. But the topic turns out to have important principle connections to what kind of soteriology is true – very strongly and even decisively in favor of some kind of universal salvation!
(I talk about this in much greater detail in Section Four of Sword to the Heart, btw. That’s just a quick summary.)
As the Facebook thread continued it became apparent that even though technically I was right, practically Craig & Sturmy are also right
fortunately
Phew 
I found this short video clarified things (as well as making it clear that it’s complicated!):
I agree. Just noticed there’s quite a range of translations of those verses!
Thanks Jason, that’s a helpful clarification.
Incidentally, ECT only voids that scripture when ECT proponents claim maximally equal punishment for everyone. Roman Catholics have long insisted (though not quite dogmatically) on a version of ECT where many righteous non-Christians end up in limbo, which is not purgatory but is equivalent to heaven in all regards except for fellowship with God.
The flip side of this is that they also (quite rightly) insist that fellowship with God in the Beatific vision is the one good without which all other goods are not only meaningless but even perverted and despairing; so (along with some RCs) I don’t see how such a notion of limbo could possibly fit with that. But at least they’re trying to provide a reasonable reconciliation between that scripture and ECT – such proponents of limbo think they’re allowing for the reality of the very mildest possible eternal conscious torment.
(Of course the purpose to being whipped in the original parable, culturally speaking, wasn’t hopeless, but was intended to be remedial. But one could argue that sometimes the culture was in favor of apparently hopeless punishment, too, so that ends up being a push/shove observation overall. )