Re: Why not Universal Reconciliation?
Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2016 10:59 am
Robby wrote:
Burney had no axe to grind about universalism in this book . He listed Matthew 25:46 as one of the numerous uses of Jesus of the poetic antithesis. In this form the words "eternal" bear the same meaning in both instances and "life" and "punishment" are in opposition. We have an antithetical parallelism, otherwise the poetry is destroyed. And this is why the great logomachy waged by the universalist over this one verse. The very words of our Lord destroy their speculative system, while the traditional and annihilationist views can both easily accommodate the verse into their systems.
The Oxford scholar, C. F. Burney, d.1924, wrote his book "The Poetry of Our Lord", as a work intended to prove the sayings of Jesus recorded in the Gospels are authentic. To show this Burney translated Jesus' words from Greek back into Aramaic and demonstrated that they are spoken in Palestinian poetry. The poetic form was commonly utilized to enable the hearers to easily remember what was said. Burney wrote that this technique was widely employed by the Old Testament prophets, which is obvious when we look at many modern translations.The Bible contends that unredeemed men will dwell forever in hell. Jesus’ own words confirm that the time spent in heaven for the redeemed will last as long as that of the unredeemed in hell. Matthew 25:46 says, “Then they [the unsaved] will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” According to this verse, the punishment of the unsaved is just as eternal as the life of the righteous.
Burney had no axe to grind about universalism in this book . He listed Matthew 25:46 as one of the numerous uses of Jesus of the poetic antithesis. In this form the words "eternal" bear the same meaning in both instances and "life" and "punishment" are in opposition. We have an antithetical parallelism, otherwise the poetry is destroyed. And this is why the great logomachy waged by the universalist over this one verse. The very words of our Lord destroy their speculative system, while the traditional and annihilationist views can both easily accommodate the verse into their systems.