jeremiah wrote:Matt,
Yes I understand what you're saying about tough love. But I am still baffled at this kind of equivocation. The tough love I might administer upon my children could never be poetically likened to a winepress that is trodden down expressing blood to the top of my own head.
I think what you mean is that YOU wouldn't use a winepress metaphor for tough love. That is not the same thing as saying that the bible doesn't.
The author of Hebrews speaks of divine chastisement that all of and only God's children receive. That is the tough love of God. Which would be sharply contrasted with wrath that is treasured up for the day of his wrath. It is also said that we are not appointed to wrath, but to obtain salvation by Jesus Christ. Isn't it sensible to conclude that while wrath can be nuanced to include God's children as the object at times, when compared to the wrath against the wicked, a separate category emerges? A category in which love can not be found to abide at all?
Is it sensible? Sure. But so is my concept.
I'd rather think of God as a being with a unified core than a being playing dueling banjos.
You are mostly a conditionalist, are you not(I understand you remain uncertain)? Will the annihilation (if it be such) of the wicked be an act that follows forth from the love of God?
I believe in the eventual extinction of the wicked, but remain hopeful that some/all might come to repentance before they cease to be. If some refuse God's grace, the most loving thing for God to do is to allow them to fade from their own existence (the natural result of not being connected to the source of life).