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Originally posted by Joyfulsoul:
I see where you are coming from. Maybe that's why Jesus prayed, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" ?

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Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
Somebody can sail in here and correct me, but I thought according to Hebrew lore,they are two different trees of seperate symbolic significance, but related somehow or another.

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Yes, they are two different trees. One is God's presence with humanity, the other is the reliance on self and the world. The second tree distances you from God, and therefore it expelled them from the garden.

The point, though, is not about what you know but what you love. The purpose of true knowledge is to enable, develop, and guide true actions - and therefore nurture good loves.

My understanding is that obedience to God allows Him to form you into a person who loves Him. People's inner character is formed over time by their repeated thoughts, desires, and actions, or what they would do if given the opportunity.

In the next life all constraints are removed and people act as they truly wish to act, learn what they truly wish to learn, and think as they truly wish to think. Whoops, I guess we think as we wish right here in this world.

It's not like Santa Claus, though, with God making a list and then punishing or rewarding according to past behavior. The slate is wiped clean in the next life. But we ourselves act according to the inclinations that we have developed over the period of our worldly life. We therefore come into a happy or unhappy state according the exact nature of those inclinations and actions.

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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg

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Originally posted by Mousethief:
It's hard to see people who have been radically and utterly selfish and uncharitable all through their lives radically changing after death and all of a sudden becoming kind and giving and loving. Whether or not they CAN or CANNOT doesn't seem to be the issue at all, but whether it's at all likely they would choose to.

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Originally posted by professorkirke:
Also, for Freddy and anyone else who feels this way... is Hell enjoyable for those who stay there? It would seem like it'd be all the pleasure of sin with none of the physical consequences (sickness, poverty, etc.). We speculate that there would be a good deal of emotional emptiness, but for someone who has little to no experience with emotional fullness and therefore doesn't miss it, Hell may in fact end up being what they've always dreamed it would be, in which case they either a) enjoy it for eternity or b) come to a realization that it's not fulfilling, and thus desire heaven at which point they can cross the gap.

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Now that sounds like the sort of afterlife I could enjoy. All the pleasures life has to offer at first, and then 'Heaven' when it finally gets boring

The thing I don't really understand is that you'd call the first part 'Hell'. But that's just me...

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Hail Gallaxhar

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Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
(Here is where I trot out my tedious theory that the garden of Eden story was meant to imply that none of really have the knowledge of Good and Evil, because in my totally speculative opinion, the tree was not allowed to ripen properly. Which is why God warned us away from it.IMHO, the Garden story reflects a human tendancy to want stuff before we are ready for it.)

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Originally posted by Freddy:
...they are two different trees. One is God's presence with humanity, the other is the reliance on self and the world. The second tree distances you from God, and therefore it expelled them from the garden.

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Originally posted by professorkirke:
Also, for Freddy and anyone else who feels this way... is Hell enjoyable for those who stay there? It would seem like it'd be all the pleasure of sin with none of the physical consequences (sickness, poverty, etc.). We speculate that there would be a good deal of emotional emptiness, but for someone who has little to no experience with emotional fullness and therefore doesn't miss it, Hell may in fact end up being what they've always dreamed it would be, in which case they either a) enjoy it for eternity or b) come to a realization that it's not fulfilling, and thus desire heaven at which point they can cross the gap.

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As to whether hell is enjoyable or not, this is debatable.

How can any existence among self-centered jerks be enjoyable? Enjoyment generally only comes at the expense of others, so it can't be very enjoyable. There is quite a bit of hostility.

And who said anything about there being no disease, poverty or other consequences. These consequences are inherent in evil. So most people in hell are in pretty dire straits. They also live in fear, since the crime rate is quite high.

I don't know why anyone would choose hell. However, everything in heaven revolves around the love of God and the neighbor. To the extent that we are self-centered and worldly we will struggle with the repression of our true feelings. In hell, on the other hand, you can do what you want, although you do need to put up with certain consequences.

So I don't think it is enjoyable in hell.

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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg

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Originally posted by Joyfulsoul:
Digory, I'm not how proof-texting bible verses is helpful in the discussion of hell? Its not that your verses are not good or something...but rather I'm not really sure what we would accomplish if you say, "these verses demonstrate X" and I say, "no, I don't see it that. I think they demonstrate Y." ? What say you?

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Originally posted by professorkirke:
You can't prove universalism with Bible verses. The point, however, is that you can't prove hell and "Damnationism" (as I've grown to call it) from Bible verses either. Most people who believe in Hell, I think, believe that their position is supported in Scripture while the universalist position is kind of concocted out of thin air and fanciful dreams. So I set out to show that this is not the case.

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Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:
I apologise for joining this discussion when it's well underway; I have some thoughts on this subject that I'd be interested in having feedback on, and which don't seem to be dealt with in the previous nine pages or so

It seems to me that the whole notion of salvation is one that Christians don't think all that much about.

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Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:
It seems to me that if you accept justification by faith, and the usual Christian teaching that judgement is heaven-or-hell, once-and-for-all, then it becomes very difficult to answer questions like ``what is the hope for salvation for people who have never heard the Gospel'', and ``what happens to children who die before they are capable of understanding the Christian message''.

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Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:
It seems to me that there are only three logically coherent ways to resolve the problem. Either we:

1. grit our teeth, and 'fess us that unbaptised babies are burning in hell along with Socrates, the Old Testament saints, and people who had the bad fortune to be born outside the Christian sphere of influence,

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Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:
or we:

2. drop the notion of salvation by faith altogether, which leads in the end to some variant of universal salvationism.

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You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. (Romans 5:6)

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For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit (1 Peter 3:18)

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Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:
Unless we are prepared to do one of these three things, it seems to me that, as Christians, we are living in a world of logical contradictions.

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In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again." (John 3:3)

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"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. (John 3:16-19)

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Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:
I favour the doctrine of universal salvation.

...

Comments welcome

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Originally posted by professorkirke:
That's my best "Freddy answer." I wonder what he will say of my rendition!

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Digory, you are brilliant!

Crooked Cucumber, I'm not sure that your alternatives are complete. I'm not sure I buy your opening idea that salvation is a difficult doctrine. I especially don't accept the idea that justification by faith is logically coherent.

What is wrong with the basic idea that good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell - recognizing, of course, that all goodness comes from God?

Put another way, what is wrong with the idea that happiness is inherent in goodness, and unhappiness is inherent in evil?

These ideas seem more logically consistent to me than universal salvation.

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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg

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Originally posted by Freddy:

What is wrong with the basic idea that good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell - recognizing, of course, that all goodness comes from God?

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Well, nothing, as such My gut feeling is that most observant Christians feel this way -- in some form or another -- and in spite of the `official' positions of the denominations to which they belong. It's what I was taught in Sunday School forty years ago, blithely unaware of the fact that it would have been considered a heresy by the (Wesleyan) leadership. Such a view is not incompatible with universal salvationism, as I understand it, so long as `Hell' (whatever it is) is not eternal.

However, my understanding is that the Protestant Churches all take their lead from Luther in this area, and he wrote:

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Originally posted by Martin Luther:

"Whoever departs from the article of justification [by faith] does not know God and is an idolater. For when this article has been taken away, nothing remains but error, hypocrisy, godlessness, and idolatry, although it may seem to be the height of truth, worship of God, holiness, etc."

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In other words, outwards expressions of goodness and badness are merely reflections of the faith that we have in Jesus. No human work, without this faith, amounts to anything.

As a doctrine, it doesn't leave a lot of room for righteous non-Christians.

I suppose this might not have been a problem for Luther, Calvin, et al., since for these people the Christian world was the world -- they would never have met a person had never heard the Gospel.

However, even the Protestant reformers must have thought about the fate of people who died before Jesus' saving work. If they did, they did not pronounce on the matter (so far as I know).

I think that, in the end, the corporate position of all the mainstream Protestant churches -- and most of the Catholic ones -- is that people who have the misfortune never to have heard the Gospel are damned, and we just have to live with that.

For the Calvinist this doesn't present a (logical) problem, because the decision who to save and who to condemn has been made in advance anyway. It is perfectly coherent (although chilling, in my view) to say that the people who live out of the reach of the Christian message are just those whom God has elected not to save.

I have a certain respect for people who take the doctrine of justification by faith to its logical conclusion, and then say ``well, I don't like the results any more than you do, but you can't argue with logic''. I think William Lane Craig is a good example of this. He argues that the problem is analagous in salvational terms to that old chestnut the `Problem of Evil' in earthly terms. His argument is that God not have created a world that was logically impossible, and that a world where there is free will and nobody is damned (`lost' is the word he prefers) is logically impossible.

My problem with this is that I find it difficult enough to defend the idea that an omnipotent, benevolent God can tolerate the amount of earthly suffering that exists; and I'm damned sure I'm not going to try to defend the idea that a benevolent God can tolerate eternal condemnation (in any form), whether logical or not. It is simply a monstrous idea. As I said, I find atheism more compelling than this.

However, my contention is that no observant Christian -- with the possible excecption of Protestant theologians -- really believes in justification by faith as Luther (and Augustine) originally described it. They always have get-out clauses for some classes of worthy unbeliever. It might just be for Children, it might be for those who are spiritually `like children' (i.e., the mentally handicapped, the unchurched `heathen'),it might be others as well. Where these get-out clauses come form (apart from an inner sense of the dignity of man) I really don't know -- they don't come from their own Church leadership, that's for sure.

I can see why the leaders of the early Christian Church, suddenly finding themselves a force in world affairs, would propound a theology that posits eternal damnation for those who do not believe what they believe. However, in the modern age, people can choose whether to ally themeselves with any faith, or no faith at all. In my view, people should accept Christianity because it reflects the wonder they feel in the natural world, and the love and mercy of God. We don't want to make converts of people who are too busy sh*tting a brick to think straight

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Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:
Where these get-out clauses come form (apart from an inner sense of the dignity of man) I really don't know --

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God "will give to each person according to what he has done." To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.

All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.) This will take place on the day when God will judge men's secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.

(romans 2:6-8,12-16)

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Originally posted by JoyfulSoul
romans 2:6-8,12-16

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As I said, this is my understanding of the Message too. Unsurprisingly, those who plug the idea of justification by faith seem to miss this passage out. However, my gut feeling is that Luther spent as much time poring over Romans than anybody; he can't have been unaware of it. I wonder how he reconciled it with his views? I wonder even more how Calvin did.

In any case, I don't think that Romans 2:12-16 represents the `official' line taken by any Protestant denomination, even though I think many actual Protestant Christians would support it.

What an odd state of affairs

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Originally posted by Demas:
What healthy horse has ever deliberatly killed itself by refusing to drink?

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Originally posted by Joyfulsoul:
Basically, it comes down to that the no-hell people believe that a) rebellion is just one huge misunderstanding and b) anyone who rejects the reject "good" is merely ignorant and/or not held responsible for his/her delusion so, c)when God *finally* reveals All Truth - it is just not possible that anyone could chose anything but the good.

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Originally posted by Demas:
[...] Where is the good news in your view that we choose our destiny? I can't even choose not to be grumpy around my family at Christmas - and you tell me I should rejoice because my eternal fate is in my hands?

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Originally posted by Joyfulsoul:
just to clarify:
You mean that some refuse to accept the reality of a situation and prefer to remain in a delusion and you can't make them believe?

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Originally posted by Joyfulsoul:
Believe or not, but your last sentence's meaning has escaped me.

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Originally posted by Demas:
Where is the good news in your view that we choose our destiny? I can't even choose not to be grumpy around my family at Christmas - and you tell me I should rejoice because my eternal fate is in my hands?

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Originally posted by Mousethief:

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Originally posted by Demas:
Where is the good news in your view that we choose our destiny? I can't even choose not to be grumpy around my family at Christmas - and you tell me I should rejoice because my eternal fate is in my hands?

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You wish to remain eternally infantile?

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Perhaps we don't have a choice about whether or not we do, and so must make a decision about how to handle the fact that we are?

Unless you are like a child you cannot enter the Kingdom of God. If you believe the Kingdom of God is actually here on earth, and is the state of being that people enter into once they realize their true inheritance/potential, then you could say that until someone recognizes that they ARE child-like for eternity, they will never realize their true inheritance/potential.

Demas, PaulTH, Mousethief--where have ya'll been? Good to see you back around.

-Digory

[ 22. December 2005, 04:04: Message edited by: professorkirke ]

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Originally posted by Gort:
I suppose some would see no difference between struggling towards a life-preserver and being helped into it while unconscious.

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The end result is the same.

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Originally posted by PaulTH:
That can only mean predestination in which God creates people for the purpose of sending them to eternal hell. Otherwise He would draw them. The Holy Spirit would give them the gift of faith. But Jesus does promise to draw all men

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Calvinism says that God is wholly responsible for salvation. God forgives us, engrafts us into Christ, regenerates us, and moves us through the power of the Holy Spirit.[...] With those who are saved, God operates in a personal way, through the presence of the Holy Spirit and our union with Christ. [...] There is no equivalent for those who reject God. While their rejection is part of an overall history for which God is responsible, God does not take specific actions to make them reject him, as he takes actions to redeem his children [my emphasis]

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Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:
I think it's straightforward -- justification by faith, taken to its logical conclusion, leads to the concept of a monster God, an evil-minded tyrant.

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Basically, it comes down to that the no-hell people believe that a) rebellion is just one huge misunderstanding and b) anyone who rejects the reject "good" is merely ignorant and/or not held responsible for his/her delusion so, c)when God *finally* reveals All Truth - it is just not possible that anyone could chose anything but the good.

Again, I don't know if anything can be resolved if some of us argue from completely different understandings regarding knowledge/rebellion.

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian

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Originally posted by me
I think it's straightforward -- justification by faith, taken to its logical conclusion, leads to the concept of a monster God, an evil-minded tyrant.

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I disagree. That is only the logical conclusion if we assume that faith is only possible if God grants it to us.
If, on the other hand, having faith is something we can achieve by ourselves then the conclusions are very different...

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Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:
My understanding is that the notion that a person can, of his own initiative and free will, come to find faith, is considered a heresy (pelagianism, or semi-pelagianism) by both Catholic and Protestant denominations.

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A stance which is doing as much to keep me away from church as the rest of the religion put together. Because I don't feel any Call From God, so for me to go along anyway out of some grudging sense of duty or desire for Salvation is of no more spiritual benefit to me than waiting at home (or in the pub ) for that Call to come...

Oh how I wish a person could "of his own initiative and free will, come to find faith "...

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Hail Gallaxhar

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A stance which is doing as much to keep me away from church as the rest of the religion put together.

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Oh how I wish a person could "of his own initiative and free will, come to find faith "...

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According to Augustine, and taken up by Luther and Calvin, not only can a person not find salvation by embracing faith of his own free will, he cannot take even the tiniest step towards his own salvation unless elected by God. This is logical -- if you utterly reject the notion of `salvation by works', as Augustine did, this conclusion follows, because even a hestitant and trivial step towards faith, if made of one's own free will, is `works' (or a work, at least).

I would be very interested in any Calvinist responses to any of this