Would God be a monster if ECT were true?

[Origen]

there’s the issue, love is always free, so it is never forced.

If God knew that without His forcing them to be saved, they would reject Him for all eternity & be tormented, then He would be a monster if He didn’t force them to be saved. Similarly, many believe He will force aborted babies into heaven without their having chosen it of their own free will. Likewise, many believe He will force others in heaven to remain there forever without having a free choice to reject God as many angels of heaven once did. So forcing would not appear to be an issue with Love Omnipotent. At least not in the after life (i.e. after death, the hereafter).

God’s love does not expire like a carton of milk, so Love Omnipotent will pursue the salvation of sinners for as long as it takes into eternity to save them. Eternity allows an infinite number of chances to receive salvation & be delivered from hell’s torments. If every free will choice has a 50% chance of going either way, it would be mathematically impossible for one to reject God forever.

love does not annihilate.

It saves all. Though given only the choice between annihilation and a being getting endless torments, it would choose the more loving & merciful of the two. Therefore endless hell is a myth.

If God created human beings such that they are (1) “eternally existing (as He Himself is)”, so that it would be impossible to annihilate them even if Love Omnipotent wanted to, and (2) if He knew in advance that some of them would spend eternity rejecting Him, then (3) He is a monster for having created them that way.

so He is a loving Father. the problem is you are judging God’s love by fallen man’s standards.

It’s a logical argument. Is all logic fallen?

Lk.12:57
New American Standard Bible
"And why do you not even on your own initiative judge what is right?
King James Bible
Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?
Douay-Rheims Bible
And why even of yourselves, do you not judge that which is just?

If God doesn’t save all, is it because He can’t or doesn’t want to?
“…it doesn’t say what most evangelizers of hopelessness want it to say in that regard either.”
“It is false, he maintained, to translate that phrase as “everlasting punishment,” introducing into the New Testament the concept found in the Islamic Quran that God is going to torture the wicked forever.”
"…non-Christians are punished forever for not recieving grace, which doesn’t seem very graceful to me.

According to the Scriptures, God is Love Omnipotent, not a mythical deception infinitely worse than Hitler, Bin Laden & Satan combined.

“But there are those who find this an intolerable state of affairs, sometimes because of an earnest if misguided devotion to what they believe Scripture or tradition demands, sometimes because the idea of the eternal torment of the derelict appeals to some unpleasantly obvious emotional pathologies on their parts.” (EO scholar David Bentley Hart) firstthings.com/article/201 … int-origen

1 Jn.2:27 But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.

Talbott—Does God allow irreparable harm?
reforminghell.com/2017/12/02/ta … able-harm/

[St_Michael]

Next, the fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and it was given power to scorch the people with fire. And the people were scorched by intense heat, and they blasphemed the name of God, who had authority over these plagues; yet they did not repent and give Him glory.
And the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and its kingdom was plunged into darkness, and men began to gnaw their tongues in anguish and blaspheme the God of heaven for their pains and sores; yet they did not repent of their deeds. ~~ Revelation 16:8-11

God is holy. Holiness when applied to God refers to everything that separates Him from His creation and His creatures. It includes moral purity but it’s not limited to that. God is self-sufficient, infinite in wisdom, all-powerful, all knowing, omnipresent. He sees the beginning from the end. We are none of these things. We are finite and limited and imitate God in certain ways but cannot be like Him in every way. He’s holy and in a category all by Himself. He cannot be compared to anything or anybody. To do so is to make a categorical error. Universalists compare God to Hitler because of His fiery hell and therefore blaspheme His holiness. If God has morally sufficient and justifiable reasons for hell then hell isn’t unjust. His holiness remains intact. Because of God’s holiness He’s in a privileged position. As finite and limited creatures we are to depend on Him in humbled trust as we walk in mercy and love. God is holy. He’s no evil monster.

[Origen]

From georgemacdonaldquotes.com

“What kind of God would call billions of people into being, knowing that was the unimaginably horrible outcome? The words callous, selfish, and unloving came to mind for me. Speaking of love…”

georgemacdonaldquotes.com/ge … d-my-life/

[St_Michael]

God has middle knowledge. Some worlds are no feasible to Him. As long as God has morally sufficient and justifiable reasons for creating a world that now contains evil and suffering He does nothing wrong in creating. Those in hell have their hearts eternally separated from God’s mercy. As a result their hearts harden. They hate the true God like George MacDonald did. What God is mainly doing by keeping evil God haters out of the new creation is protecting His children from the harm and contamination of evil. In this He is glorified. Far from selfish this is love. God is the most glorious being in existence. Therefore, He deserves our worship because He is holy. He gives the grace and He gets the glory. In bringing justice down on blasphemers like MacDonald He shows His tender love for His children and is glorified. These are just a few morally sufficient and justifiable reasons for hell. Seeing that God is infinite in wisdom and knowledge and logical explanations are infinite He has infinitely many more justifiable reasons. It’s also important to keep in mind that God is love and love protects. The severity of God’s torment on those in hell therefore restrains them from harming each other. The torment is calibrated just right to restrain. It’s different for each individual.

[Origen]

So how is this different from all the atheists who refuse to believe in God because He is a monster for allowing millennia of untold human suffering up till now?

Anastasia,

Thank you for your question.

As i see it, all those sufferings combined are as a single drop of water in a universe full of nothing but water compared to the endless ages of eternity. The torments of a never ending hell are like the universe full of water. There’s really no comparison between the two. They are like day and night, good & evil, kind & monster.

All of those relatively momentary light sufferings God is able to (and will) work together for good. Nothing good comes of beings who are tormented for trillions X trillions X trillions of millenniums, when in light of eternity their sufferings will have only just begun.

Does that make any sense to you?

[JasonPratt]

Out of curiosity, Origen, who are you talking to? They don’t seem to be in this thread, or even on this forum.

[JamesAH81072]

Out of curiosity, Origen, who are you talking to? They don’t seem to be in this thread, or even on this forum.

He’s copying his dialogs over at christianforums.

[Origen]

Out of curiosity, Origen, who are you talking to? They don’t seem to be in this thread, or even on this forum.

He’s copying his dialogs over at christianforums.

Yes, here’s one of the threads:

christianforums.com/threads … r.8042349/

[Origen]

"An ideal starting point for the OP’s question is Job 4:17:
“Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a man be more pure than his maker?”
Ethically sensitive humans recognize that reformative justice is more loving and hopeful than purely retributive justice. Divine perfection is of course far more loving and praiseworthy than our inadequate strides towards perfection. So of course, God is morally monstrous if all who, for whatever reason, have not embraced Christ as their Lord and Savior suffer eternal conscious torment. Common sense dictates that humans are created with innate character flaws that require the right environment and the right support network to make spiritual progress. It is obvious
that most humans can’t make enough mistakes in their 3 score years and 10 to merit eternal torment.

"But the New Testament in fact teaches that God’s essence is love, and that applies to deceased humans as well. So what does not mean for God to love Hellbound humanity? Evangelical apologist C. S. Lewis pithily sums up the thrilling answer: “The gates of Hell are locked from the inside.” In other words, souls remain trapped in Hell only because of their continued refusal to open to redemptive choices. Thus the NT teaches that Hell is a debtor’s prison from which ultimate release is possible, that the damned are exposed to Gospel preaching, and that proxy baptism for the unsaved dead can be effective. In short, the NT image of Hell is compatible with the image of a reform school or place of postmortem purgation.

"Good evangelism asks the unsaved to be honest with themselves. Consistency requires Christians to be honest in their assessment of the Bible, so that they can display the honesty they demand of the unsaved. That means that the credibility of the biblical God depends on that God satisfying our best and purest intuition. A sadistic God is simply not compatibility with the biblical model of a God of pure unconditional love. I am a Christian because my lifelong study of the Bible demonstrates that God is no sadist. I am willing to stake my eternal destiny on this holy perception and want to avoid the company of those who embrace a sadistic God.

“In her study of the Holocaust, Hannah Arendt laments the banality of evil. Death camp guards and their support team were often otherwise decent loving people who served their communities, coached youth soccer teams, and helped out fellow Germans in need. In that sense, their evil oppression of Jews was blended into a life that was otherwise very decent. Still, we rightly regard them as ghastly criminals. We should lifewise disparage the moral sensibilities of a Christian spirituality that cheerfully condemans all unbelievers to eternal conscious torment.”

Deadworm

Der Alter said:
The problem with this starting point is who decides what is just for God? Seems to me that most arguments against “eternal punishment” etc. begin with “I think,”"I believe,"in my opinion"etc.

Deadworm replied:

A major reason why moderns have rejected the Greek pantheon is the petty and cruel soap opera that is generated by stories of Zeus, Apollo, and the other gods. It is disingenuous to accept the Bible on the strength of mindless claims to its infallibility and divine authority. True, there are apologetic arguments for biblical inspiration, but these are only as good as their underlying assumptions and those assumption derive from our experience. So when we assess Bible truth claims, we must consult our presumptive intuitions at their best and most noble to determine if the Biblical God is credible; we have no other choice. The contradictory concept of a God of pure unconditional love consigning the vast majority of humanity to eternal conscious torment is so ethically counter-intuitive that it must join the Greek pantheon in its consignment to the dustbin of parochial concepts of peevish and mean-spirited tribal gods. But the God of the Bible, rightly understood, really is beauty and unconditional love personified, and as such, is worth defending against the ghastly punitive god of evangelical tribalism and its brutish disregard of the guiding inner light of the loving Holy Spirit. The pursuit of the truth in this crucial matter inspired me to obtain an MDiv from Princeton and a doctorate from Harvard, just so I could learn as much as possible about the Bible in its original languages and cultural background to empower me to make as confident as possible a determination of the truth about this crucial matter. That was my way of trying to obey God’s commandment to love God with all my mind as well as my heart.

christianforums.com/threads … 349/page-8

[JamesAH81072]

I’m telling you I’m glad I don’t go to CF anymore. It’s not wholesome for me. The back and forthing is enough to give you a headache. You must have an iron stomach Origen to even deal with those folks over there. Traditions seem to blind a lot of people hence the lack of searching the Scriptures like Bereans and studying them(especially in their original language format).

What grinds my gears is that some of these people who say EU is heresy and damnable are probably the same type that will tell you that you’re not saved by correct doctrine. Well hell is a doctrine but I guess there is no room for an all saving God. Only those who believe in either ECT or CI.

[Origen]

Origen, your friend “Deadworm” sounds like a smart man. What do you think?

Yes, after reading the first post there is that impression. No less after reading his second remark & the bit about “an MDiv from Princeton and a doctorate from Harvard”. His profile lists him as a “Male, 70, from Colville, WA”.

I’m telling you I’m glad I don’t go to CF anymore. It’s not wholesome for me. The back and forthing is enough to give you a headache. You must have an iron stomach Origen to even deal with those folks over there. Traditions seem to blind a lot of people hence the lack of searching the Scriptures like Bereans and studying them(especially in their original language format).

What grinds my gears is that some of these people who say EU is heresy and damnable are probably the same type that will tell you that you’re not saved by correct doctrine. Well hell is a doctrine but I guess there is no room for an all saving God. Only those who believe in either ECT or CI.

The Controversial Forum seems rather hostile compared to the other forums there. Certain members can get on the nerves from time to time. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

[Origen]

Who are we to question God’s motives, that is if we truly have faith in His wisdom and mercy and love? Do we not trust Him? Or do we trust in the works of man instead?

God is love, so His motive is always love. Endless punishment denies that. Please stop “questioning God’s motives.”

[Origen]

Matthew 11:25 At that time Jesus said, "I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants.

Jesus didn’t have a very high opinion of earthly wisdom either.

Paul quoted from unbelievers:

carm.org/did-paul-quote-pagan-philosophers

Jesus said:

Lk.12:57
New American Standard Bible
"And why do you not even on your own initiative judge what is right?
King James Bible
Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?
Douay-Rheims Bible
And why even of yourselves, do you not judge that which is just?

Mt 11:25 refers to revelation from God, not Scripture.

Has God revealed to you the truth of universalism:

1 Jn.2:27 But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.

Or is it “hidden” from you:

Matthew 11:25 At that time Jesus said, "I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants.

[Origen]

One million years or two years in the fire would be a finite number of years. But they would not be nothing.

That would be like a drop of water compared to trillions X trillions X trillions of universes full of nothing but water. So, yeah, practically speaking it’s nothing. Like Paul said of his sufferings, momentary & light. But for a moment. Nothing.

So there is an infinite difference between a God who will torment His creatures for eternity, & a God Who won’t.

They are infinitely different in their love & in how they treat & love others.

In my view no one will be complaining for all eternity about how God mistreated them. ALL will enjoy an eternity of bliss without tears or pain. In your view how many billions will be suffering & cursing God forever?

It is hard for us to understand how a good God could create a man, place him in a garden with a tree the fruit of which would kill him, place a beautiful talking creature in the garden to tempt him to eat the fruit, punish the man for giving in, provide salvation for the man’s offspring which must be accessed by faith

What’s hard to understand? Volumes have been written through the past 3000 years explaining and justifying this stuff.

• then provide a Damascus road experience only for a chosen few while leaving others to flounder in their lack of faith until they die and find themselves in the fires of judgment.

But now you would have us believe that God not only passed some by with those kinds of special visits He was capable of giving them. But He now tortures the ones He failed to convince of the truth (as He did Paul for instance).

That is your make-believe story. Also it sounds like you need to do an internet search on subjects like “why doesn’t God reveal himself?” and “what would happen if God showed himself” & likewise. There’s a ton that has been written on that also with perfectly satisfactory explanations any normal person can understand.

The truth is that people who willfully rejected Him after receiving His light will be judged & punished for their own good. Similarly, God chastens people in this mortal life. God as the Creator of all & their Savior will miraculously raise all who died from their graves. The judgement will be for their own benefit and used in leading the unsaved to repentance and salvation.

God loving wrath’s will be on those who willfully (of their own free wills) were disobedient to the light He gave them. They have no excuse. And His chastening wrath is for their own benefit, to correct them as a father disciplines his wayward child.

Having refused to write the gospel on the ceiling of those people with His finger when they reached the age of understanding - He now tortures them for a few years in the fire, preaches the gospel to them every now and then and asks if they are ready to submit to it.

See above. That again is your make-believe scenario. God has already given mankind the witnesses of creation, their consciences, the Scriptures & Christians. Then men choose to believe it or rebel.

When they will not - He leaves them in the fire for a few more years and visits them again. He does this over and over again, knowing full well that there is a “50%” chance they will submit each time He gives them the gospel.

He knows that there is no real mathematical chance that they will not believe in Christ given enough time in the fires.

This is His method of convincing billions of people that the gospel is true when He could well have appeared in a bright light and given them the gospel every year or so while they lived their lives here on earth for 70 or 80 years???:scratch:

More of the same. See above. They had the “bright light” of Jesus performing countless miracles. How did that work out? Did everyone fall down & worship Him? How about with Israel in Moses’ time & all the wonders they saw? Satan, in the book of Job, appears before God. Does that “bright light” experience convert him?

Evidently people don’t need such an appearance for them to believe, since today there are millions, or billions, of believers already. So what is your point? The “bright light” of the sun & stars as well as God’s multifariously varied magnificent & awesome creation already appears to His created beings constantly. They already have evidence of God. And He said those who seek Him will find Him. So sinful rebellious enlightened men are without excuse.

Clean up the picture above a little if you must. I’m still not buying your version.

I’ll take the one where God requires faith in His Word while living this physical life in order to be saved because it was a lack of faith in His Word which caused our horrible fall to judgment in the first place.

I’ll take the one where each and everything that happens in creation (bar none) is an example of some facet of God’s nature to be displayed for eternity to creatures only God knows about.

The corrective purpose He wishes to visit on those who may be tempted to rebel in the ages to come perhaps?

We haven’t been told enough to know for sure how He will use it. We only know that whatever He does (by and for and in His Word) will accomplish exactly what He sent the Word forth to accomplish.

It’s not an enjoyable truth to contemplate. But it is indeed scriptural.

You understand incorrectly IMO. But then we’ve been over that before.

You are just whistling through a graveyard. Your God is as much a monster as mine would be if I chose to judge Him while only seeing Him through a foggy glass. I don’t choose to do that and neither should you.

There is an infinite difference between a God who will torment His creatures for eternity, & a God Who won’t.

To illustrate the difference, it would be like a drop of water compared to trillions X trillions X trillions of universes full of nothing but water.

“What kind of God would call billions of people into being, knowing that was the unimaginably horrible outcome? The words callous, selfish, and unloving came to mind for me. Speaking of love…”

georgemacdonaldquotes.com/ge … d-my-life/

“If God doesn’t save all, is it because He can’t or doesn’t want to?”
“I don’t believe in the good news of endless torments.”
“…it doesn’t say what most evangelizers of hopelessness want it to say in that regard either.”
“It is false, he maintained, to translate that phrase as “everlasting punishment,” introducing into the New Testament the concept found in the Islamic Quran that God is going to torture the wicked forever.”
“…non-Christians are punished forever for not receiving grace, which doesn’t seem very graceful to me.”

tentmaker.org/books/hope_beyond_hell.pdf

[Origen]

The difference is His infinite holiness as compared to our offense against it. What God requires of us for our offense is His call to make since we cannot begin to understand the offense to such a God.

What about His infinite love, which is what He is, & what makes Him holy?

You are judging God by human standards. You cannot. His ways are not our ways.

What’s more you really are unwise to judge Him at all – something you seem eager to do.

His ways include “love your enemies”.

I judge first of all by the Scriptures which teach universalism. Secondly, logic, reason & common sense also supports this, which is what this thread is about. In connection with that the OP quoted Jesus saying:

Lk.12:57
New American Standard Bible
"And why do you not even on your own initiative judge what is right?
King James Bible
Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?
Douay-Rheims Bible
And why even of yourselves, do you not judge that which is just?

It is the same in my view and God’s view as well. Every knee will bow to Him and acknowledge that His ways are right.

I have no idea how many people will be saved and how many will be lost. But none will be cursing God forever. They will undoubtedly be lamenting their sins against Him but they will not be cursing Him. They will, in all likelihoods be observing His holy nature and wishing they could be with Him if they had not sinned against His infinite holiness and then compounded it by rejecting His grace…

So you think their torments for all the endless ages of eternity will just be a “lamenting”? Why would God wait till they are doomed to sufferings for eternity to reveal the truth to them that His ways are right, including endless torments. It seems that a loving God should have done that before so they could make an informed choice.

Those volumes have failed to adequately explain the reasons God does some of the things He does.

Really? I look forward to your 100 page essay on that topic.

The point is that some of them did “work out”. If there is a chance that they would work out for anyone – it is only fair (humanly speaking) that God give them that chance before resorting to periods of torture to bring them to repentance.

There will be no Dante’s Inferno “torture” chamber. Love Omnipotent isn’t a Medieval Inquisitionist . The afterlife & the resurrection will give people plenty of “chances” & evidences, in addition to all those they already received while alive. People will be judged & receive correction & or punishment in accord with the light they received & their responses to it, e.g. works.

Besides – do you really think that confession and supposed repentance won by torture would be from the heart?

Not torture. Compare:

In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. (1 Cor.5:4-5)

If you water board me enough I’ll say and do anything to escape more of it. How much more so the fires of Hell?

There’s no proof the fires are physical or that such could harm a disembodied soul, or a body that would not die immediately if thrown into a lake of fire. Do you suppose a Loving God arranges it so that their flesh immediately comes back after being burnt off so they can be tortured for all eternity? Again, that is Dante’s Inferno/Medieval Inquisitionist fantasy nonsense.

My “point” was and is that if Paul got a special visit on the road to Damascus it seems fair (again humanly speaking) that God give the same to Adolf Hitler before resorting to the fires of Hell to bring him around.

What makes you think Hitler won’t be granted a Damascus road type of experience & a chance for salvation before being thrown in the lake of fire? Or that he hasn’t already received such & is already saved? Or he was saved before he died, or at the moment of death?

Yes – one is infinity more holy than the other and therefore more offended by the sins of His creatures than the less holy one.

Maybe that one should get over his personal feelings & love His enemies as Jesus did & told His followers to do. After all, God is love.

Substitute the Holocaust or other earthly calamities such as the tower that fell on certain people that Jesus talked about for Hell and ask the same question.

It sounds like you need to do an internet search on subjects like “why does God allow suffering?” & “the problem of evil” & “is God able to work sufferings for good” & likewise. There’s a ton that has been written on such with perfectly satisfactory explanations any normal person can understand. OTOH no one can adequately explain this:

“What kind of God would call billions of people into being, knowing that was the unimaginably horrible outcome? The words callous, selfish, and unloving came to mind for me.
Speaking of love…”

georgemacdonaldquotes.com/ge … d-my-life/

---

“If God doesn’t save all, is it because He can’t or doesn’t want to?”
“I don’t believe in the good news of endless torments.”
“…it doesn’t say what most evangelizers of hopelessness want it to say in that regard either.”
“…non-Christians are punished forever for not receiving grace, which doesn’t seem very graceful to me.”

tentmaker.org/books/hope_beyond_hell.pdf

[Origen]

Good stuff origen. I don’t know how you have the stomach for dealing with so many infernalists. Do you feel like you ever make progress in convincing them of universalism?

It helps to think of it as my job under a difficult employer. Though rarely is there any evidence of anyone with any openness of mind.