Barclay was convinced (UR)

[steve7150]

God creates a world in which there is a universal curse and on top of that a powerful being who blinds all men. He rewards those who defy the odds and come to believe in him despite these obstacles. Everyone else is given another chance but this time God makes it easy by removing the obstacles. Presumably, those who pass this second dumbed-down test will receive a lesser position in God's kingdom.

It's possible, but based on what I've read in the Bible, it doesn't seem probable.

BTW, I also believe the outcome from God's judgment will be good, but we have to be careful that we don't try to define good as an outcome that I find agreeable.




You do realize that in this age very few people have been brought up in a God fearing Christian home when you think about the entire world population and history and that for a 1500 years after Christ there were virtually no bibles and most people were illiterate up until very recently.
So most people have never had a first chance much less a second chance. Therefore this "dumbed down" second chance for the great majority will be their first encounter with Christ and whatever is entailed, "dumbed down" is probably not the way God will design the lake of fire. If it were dumbed down, it might be called the lake of milk and honey.

[steve]

If the traditional view is true, you have judged God as being evil.

Which may be the best reason for me to challenge the traditional view. How can we imagine that the God who revealed Himself in Christ could be guilty of such evil? I know your response will be, “But, Steve, this is only your own human judgment of right and wrong!" This strikes me as a very strange thing to say. Whose standards of judgment are we capable of employing, if not those accessible to us? I get my information about right and wrong from scripture itself. Is there any better source? How can this be my own private judgment?

If the scriptures are not clear about everything, they are at least clear about justice—the primary theme of the Old Testament, and a very significant emphasis in the New. If we cannot trust God’s own revelation of what justice is, how can we obey Christ’s injunction to “Judge righteous judgment” (John 7:24)?

If there were a significant number of scriptures, properly exegeted, to support the traditional view, then I would be in the position of having to decide which scriptures to believe—the ones about the justice of God or the ones about eternal torment. Thankfully, the contents of the Bible do not force us into such a position. This becomes more clear to me the more I study and meditate on the scriptures. It certainly does not seem reasonable to judge God to be contrary to His own revealed nature on the basis of three or four ambiguous verses.

I have always recommended that Christians should use the most charitable standards that the evidence will allow in judging anyone—especially God. If anyone can show me that eternal torment is taught unambiguously in any biblical passages, and that this is more clear than the multitude of passages that would deny it, then it will require a higher degree of blind loyalty to avoid thinking worse things of God. However, I am not afraid of this occurring. I think I have considered all the available evidence for the traditional view (almost non-existent as it is), and it is far from impressive. I have no fear that God will turn out to be monstrous. My judgments of Him have always been, and will always be charitable.

And of course those in hell will have no incentive for a pretend conversion. Incredible.

What has this to do with this discussion? Has anyone suggested that God will be fooled by, or will accept, “pretend repentance”? That idea certainly has never been brought up by anyone here, nor does it factor into any part of my thinking. God only accepts genuine repentance. The person who pretends to repent, whether in this life or any other, will not fool God. God awaits true repentance.

Again, if universalism is not true, you have just insulted Him. Your idea of what He must be to be is the measuring stick by which God will come up short in your eyes.

This is not the case. God would be equally vindicated against the libel contained in the traditional view if it were to turn out that conditional immortality is true. In order not to be evil, God would not have to save everyone. He would simply have to not be an eternal torturer. Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that God has no right to torture or do other monstrous things. He even has the right to be a monster, if He wished. My position is that God has revealed what kind of God He is—and He is not the monster that tradition makes Him. Thankfully, we have the option of believing His own revelation, rather than simply following unscriptural church traditions.

You assumed He said what your opinion has lead you to believe, which is contrary to the belief of the majority of Christians throughout church history.

I think, if we would examine all of our individual beliefs, one by one, we would find that both you and I hold a number of convictions that are not the majority view of all Christians who have lived. We may both take comfort in the fact that truth has never been determined by a majority vote. Neither Martin Luther nor Alexander Campbell could have done much for the church by merely parroting what the majority of Christians were saying. In any case, there is no evidence that the traditional view has always been the majority opinion among Christians.

The Medieval Christianity? Have you not read Justin Martyr, circa 150AD? Even when it was pointed out right here on this forum? Did He believe in a monstrous God? Poor ignorant Justin, and Irenaeus. Where did they get those ideas! And so soon after the apostles.

I didn’t say that no one before Medieval times believed in eternal torment. Tertullian certainly did. Justin and others might also have (depending upon how they understood the Greek words that are so frequently disputed here). They may have also believed in transubstantiation and infant baptism, which neither you nor I accept as scriptural teaching. There are a number of things that these men believed, which I do not consider agreeable with scripture. There seem to have been some advocates of eternal torment from very early times, in tension with others who held other views. However, there is very good reason to believe that the church as a whole did not accept the idea of eternal torment until about the sixth century. Thus, it is the Medieval Church to whom this doctrine (as a standard belief) can be attributed.

At least you think (maybe you do, you keep a disclaimer handy) that traditional Christians will have a chance to repent in the hell you imagine. At least those of us who believe there is a final judgement but are unsure of annihilation or the traditional view may have a chance.

True. But this is no reason to opt for wrong thinking. You seem to frequently argue as if having a second chance after death would render disobedience in this life a desirable option. I hardly believe that this is the case, but you sound as if the only reason you see for obeying God and living for His glory is the avoidance of hell. This is an attitude that I do not understand.

By the way, is there someone here who can not be counted among "those of us who believe there is a final judgement"?

Brother, I pray you will be a little more cautious in what you say. I certainly would not want to say some of what you have written.

Thank you for the prayers. I apologize for any offense I may cause by what may appear to be incautious statements. It is possible that I post too hastily. However, I do proofread and re-edit my posts before (and after) posting them. In other words, I don’t know if “incautious” is quite the word for any of my statements that may offend. They may be mistaken statements, but I do not print them without caution.

[jriccitelli]

What I am saying is;
Just because tradition has taught ‘eternal’ hell, you cannot throw out Hell and punishment with the bathwater also. Tradition has taught of Jesus’ Deity, the singularity of the Godhead, the Virgin birth, Faith, Repentance, Baptism, Heaven, etc. etc.
So we don’t throw everything out because the meaning of ‘Aeons’ is open for eternal debate.

I think people will be judged on the knowledge they had, and if believing ‘in Him crucified and raised again’ is good enough to save millions of Catholics I am happy with that, its practically biblical.
(And yet, still hold false teachers and catholic leadership accountable for their deceit. Ezekiel 13:8-10)
So if God wants to save people with faith as small as a grain, and whether God saves some based on the knowledge they had, or saves some who showed a degree of righteousness like Enoch, ok, but...
I still cannot ‘teach’ a second chance, otherwise I would be held accountable for not warning them.

"Son of man, speak to the sons of your people and say to them, 'If I bring a sword upon a land, and the people of the land take one man from among them and make him their watchman,3 and he sees the sword coming upon the land and blows on the trumpet and warns the people,4 then he who hears the sound of the trumpet and does not take warning, and a sword comes and takes him away, his blood will be on his own head.5 'He heard the sound of the trumpet but did not take warning; his blood will be on himself. But had he taken warning, he would have delivered his life.6 'But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet and the people are not warned, and a sword comes and takes a person from them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood I will require from the watchman's hand.' (Ezekiel 33:2-6)

[mattrose]

When you are debating/discussing theological topics, it is necessary (in the interest of getting to the core issues) to state one's positions rather boldly and bring all positions to their seemingly logical conclusions. I believe that is what is going on here.

In no way is anyone saying (I don't think) that EVERYONE that holds to the Eternal Torment view thinks God is a monster. Quite the contrary. Those who hold to that view have found ways to reconcile a loving God with the doctrine of Eternal Torment. Steve, I believe, is questioning not the faith of ET adherents, nor even their theology primarily... but the consistency of their theology in its attachment to this specific doctrine.

[Michelle]

What lesson would that be to those who really loved me, and believed me, and denied themselves to keep my laws?

Hi there, jriccitelli.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this question, which I believe is rhetorical and probably should be obvious. To me it comes across as: "but he answered his father, 'Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!'" - Luk 15:29-30 ESV

I'm NOT claiming that the parable of the prodigal son teaches (or even is a strong argument for) universal reconciliation, I'm just really concerned that the reaction against the view comes off as the grumbling of angry older brothers.

What lesson are you afraid that UR would teach those of us who really love God?

[steve]

I've read your post several times and it sure seems you are saying that the traditional view--which says that those who reject Christ will spend eternity in a place of suffering--makes God out to be evil or monstrous, a God who only pretends to love everyone. Is this really what you believe?

This does indeed seem to be the unavoidable result of taking this doctrine to its logical conclusion. I think that taking an idea to its logical conclusion is an important method of testing its sanity.

You've said that for at least 30 years of your adult ministry you were committed to the traditional view. Did you believe then that God was just pretending to love everyone, that He was evil, or that He tormented deceased sinners needlessly and purposelessly for eternity because He hated them?

I had not taken my ideas on this to their logical conclusion, at that time. The reason was that I was then under the false impression that the traditional view had strong scriptural support. Since I knew God is not a monster, but believed that He did what would be monstrous for any other moral being to do, I had to live with a logical disconnect. I resorted to the old Calvinist-style dodge, "Who are we to question God—even when He exhibits attitudes that He would call sin in anyone else?" Release from this trap came from studying the relevant scriptures more intensively. Others may reach different conclusions from their studies, but mine have led me to believe in a God who resembles Jesus Christ.

I hope I've misunderstood your reply and that you weren't saying these things about the traditional view that is accepted by millions of Bible-believing Christians.

Yes, I am saying this about that view. I am prepared to critique biblically a great number of views held by millions of Christians. They are welcome to respond scripturally and to correct me, if they think the Bible will support them.

I still cannot ‘teach’ a second chance, otherwise I would be held accountable for not warning them.

I think one difference in the assumptions you and I are making is in the audience we are addressing. At this forum, and in most discussions of theology, my intended audience is a Christian one. The idea of second chances is a moot one among those who have not squandered their first chance, who are now serving Christ, and who are speculating among themselves as to what God will do to others who have not been so fortunate as ourselves.

Some here seem to assume an unsaved audience. They seem to feel that entertaining a doctrine of the infinite love of God may encourage hearers to "take advantage" of God's grace and lose the one opportunity to be saved that, it is assumed, they have now. Therefore, I see a great deal of wringing of hands over whether we might give false hopes to unbelievers by proclaiming a doctrine of second chances.

To set the record straight, I have never dreamed of including discussions of second chances in my appeals to unbelievers. In fact, I try to omit, as much as possible, any discussion of afterlife issues with unbelievers. There is not enough information given in scripture to inform much confident discussion on these topics. I fear such subjects distract from the true issues of the Gospel. But regardless what we may include in our presentations to the lost, there is the separate concern of what we ourselves think of God, and what we encourage others to think of Him. That is what we discuss here among ourselves.

You may recall that Judaizers and Roman Catholics have historically expressed concern that preaching salvation by grace alone might similarly encourage unbelievers to continue in sin. Those who think that such doctrines, rightly understood, would encourage bad behavior should consider Paul's treatment of those misconceptions (Rom.6:off and 6:15ff).

[TK]

Steve wrote:

Which may be the best reason for me to challenge the traditional view. How can we imagine that the God who revealed Himself in Christ could be guilty of such evil? I know your response will be, “But, Steve, this is only your own human judgment of right and wrong!" This strikes me as a very strange thing to say. Whose standards of judgment are we capable of employing, if not those accessible to us?

This reminds me of a quote by John Stuart Mill I read recently- it may have even been on this forum somewhere:

"To say that God’s goodness may be different in kind from man’s goodness, what is it but saying, with a slight change of phraseology, that God may possibly not be good?"


TK

[steve]

In response to Homer's request, I posted a large number of scriptures (more than 70) that seem conducive to the views of the evangelical universalists.

While awaiting a response to them, I would like to enter my own request to those who believe in eternal torment. Please list all of the verses that tell us that God will consign the lost to a place where they will experience eternal torment. I will start the list for you, by listing the only ones I know that I once thought I found to affirm this. Please add to my list, if it is not exhaustive:

Matthew 25:46
2 Thessalonians 1:9
Revelation 14:11
Revelation 20:10

The above, in their contexts, certainly do not affirm the traditional doctrine in any compelling sense. But perhaps there are others?????

In addition to these, there are a number that speak of unquenchable fires, but these make no mention of anyone being perpetually alive and suffering in the flames. Thus, all of these verses can as easily be accommodated by both conditional immortality and universal reconciliation.

There are also several verses about "weeping and gnashing of teeth" and being cast "into outer darkness"—but none of these mention whether such unpleasantness is eternal or temporary. Thus, all of these verses can as easily be accommodated by the alternative positions, and provide no specific support for the traditional view.

Thus, any verses in support of the specific doctrine of eternal torment (as opposed to verses that could as easily be accommodated by the alternative views) would have to be somewhat specific. It would be treacherous of us to abandon God's unambiguously professed desire to save all that are lost upon the basis of less than a handful of ambiguous texts.

Please provide as complete a list as possible, so that we may clearly see together the cumulative strength of the biblical case for eternal torment. I am not looking for texts that fail to teach this doctrine specifically, since most texts can be accommodated by any of the three views.

[RICHinCHRIST]

I'm interested in hearing what other biblical support remains for the ET view of hell (in response to Steve's last post). Even if there were no verses that specifically taught eternal torment, is there any revelation of God's character that would lead us to conclude that He might be willing to torture finite sins by finite sinners for an endless, infinite duration? Would God take pleasure in that somehow? And how would we, in the resurrection, be transformed to find delight in that torture as well?

I've had to admit that, in the past, the main reasons I have been opposed to universal reconciliation (or even conditional immortality) have been due to misunderstandings of the actual teachings of the views (or their implications). The following article, written by Gregory MacDonald from the http://www.evangelicaluniversalist.com site has helped me to further understand what evangelical universalism DOES NOT teach, and also what it does teach. Perhaps some would be interested in this article, it is not very long.

http://www.evangelicaluniversalist.com/ ... php?id=144

[psimmond]

RICHinCHRIST, thanks for sharing that link.

This is the best article I've read defending the traditional view:
http://www.newchristian.org.uk/helldefended.html

Jesus himself said "“And they will go away into eternal (αιωνιον) punishment, but the righteous into eternal (αιωνιον) life.”

The parallel construction breaks down if αιωνιον in the first clause differs in meaning from αιωνιον in the attached contrasting phrase.