Dondi
Well-Known Member
Wil, Janz, I will give response to your queries momentarily, but this may answer some:
Ok, where do I begin...Pull up a chair and some popcorn, this will take a while.
I suppose for me, this shift has happened primarily because I cannot reconcile an eternal hell (a misnomer in itself) with a Loving, Merciful, but Just, Righteous, and Holy God. No matter how evil a person is, I cannot see how the punishment of eternal torment could possibly fit the crime. Now granted, there are those who deserve a tremendous amount of punishment to serve out the awful atrocities they’ve committed, but I won’t mention names at the risk of turning this into an internet meme involving Godwin’s Law. Suffice to say, that even the most horrid monster has a chance at redemption.
If we take Scripture to heart (and I know some of you don’t), we emerge with a claim of the nature of God as described in my opening paragraph. And if we believe that God created the universe, the world, and man, and proclaimed it good, then it’s fair to give God the benefit of the doubt. The uniqueness of man stems from the fact that God has given him the ability to think, reason, and choose (what some may claim is free will, and it is, to a certain extent. The sky’s are cloudy on this one). This free will (as I’ll call it) is what enables man to love, but it also enables man to hate. It enables man to do good, but also do evil. It is the one quality that separates us from the rest of creation and sets us in the image of God.
Man exercised the choice of freewill in the proverbial Garden of Eden in his first disobedience to God. It was a separation from God’s perfect will, which up to that moment our first couple seemed content. The perfect communion in perfect love was broken by that disobedience, and that separation meant death, or the cutting off from the communion with the Giver of Life. So the story goes…
To make a long story short, because you’ve heard all this before, God sent His Son to redeem us from that separation. Yada, yada, yada….
Now we will get to the meat of my point:
Reconciliation means a return to the perfect communion with God. Universal reconciliation means a return to a perfect communion to God for all of Creation.
And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. – Colossians 1:20
And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began. – Acts 3:20-21
For this to happen, there has to be cooperation with all of Creation. I cannot see God satisfied with a partial reconciliation. God has to enact the process, but in doing so, free will must be preserved.
But how to accomplish this without violating free will? The only way is for God to convince a person that His way is best.
Did you ever watch 12 Angry Men? (If you haven’t, skip over this section for spoilers). The story is about a jury who has to deliberate a murder case for the fate of a young man who conviction will surely bring the death penalty. The case seems pretty open and shut in favor of guilty. So they take a vote and everyone casts “Guilty”, except for Juror #8, played by Henry Fonda. Juror #8 doesn’t seem to have much reason to stall the vote, only that he feels they ought to talk about it rather than rushing to justice. To make a long story short, the case begins to unravel some doubt over the other jurors, and one by one, they begin to change their vote to ‘Not Guilty”. The last holdout is Juror #3, played brilliantly by Lee. J. Cobb, who seems all through the movie to have a vendetta toward giving a guilty plea. And he stubbornly refuses to change his plea as Juror #8 continually digs at him. Eventually, he relents, after it is found out that he harbored ill feeling toward the accused because it reminded of the fallout between him and his son, not because he believed the accursed to be guilty.
Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. – Isaiah 1:18
I see God much like Juror #8 and the sinner as Juror #3, even to the last holdout. God must convince us that His way is better than ours. And while He is a Just God (He cannot arbitrarily dismiss sin, more on this later), He is Merciful as well.
The paradox, of course, is how Justice and Mercy can be accomplished. Justice demands that one gets what one deserves. So the punishment of sin is death (separation from God). But punishment must also be fair. If hell is a place of punishment, then when the punishment is completed, then the sinner must be set free. That is why I don’t believe hell is permanent. Now some say that hell is the grave, so that the literal punishment for sin would be annihilation. But it seems to me, that is too inequitable in scope. Does this mean that a serial killer receives the same punishment as say a habitual liar? Or what if one serial killer killed 20 people and another only killed 4? And what of the average everyday Joe who hasn’t committed such grievous sin? So annihilation doesn’t square with justice and seems almost a copout anyway since atheists and some agnostics don’t seem bothered by this fate.
So let’s talk about this business of hell. As I’ve mentioned, I don’t believe Hell is permanent, nor necessarily literal. Space prevents me from getting into the technicalities of the words used in scriptures to describe hell and a place of eternal torment. To get the gist of it, I refer you to this very brief article by William Barclay:
http://www.savior-of-all.com/barclay.html
And actually this article kind of sums up what I’ve been trying to say all along. But suffice to say that I haven’t come across anything that has made more sense than this. God’s Justice and God’s Mercy remain intact.
OK, that takes care of the Universal Reconciliation part. The Evangelistical part means that I feel no less burdened to reach the ‘lost’ than when I believed in an eternal hell. In fact, considering it’s all Good News (that’s what ‘Gospel means after all), I am even more motivated to share the Grace of God.
Can I hear an ‘Amen’?
Ok, where do I begin...Pull up a chair and some popcorn, this will take a while.
I suppose for me, this shift has happened primarily because I cannot reconcile an eternal hell (a misnomer in itself) with a Loving, Merciful, but Just, Righteous, and Holy God. No matter how evil a person is, I cannot see how the punishment of eternal torment could possibly fit the crime. Now granted, there are those who deserve a tremendous amount of punishment to serve out the awful atrocities they’ve committed, but I won’t mention names at the risk of turning this into an internet meme involving Godwin’s Law. Suffice to say, that even the most horrid monster has a chance at redemption.
If we take Scripture to heart (and I know some of you don’t), we emerge with a claim of the nature of God as described in my opening paragraph. And if we believe that God created the universe, the world, and man, and proclaimed it good, then it’s fair to give God the benefit of the doubt. The uniqueness of man stems from the fact that God has given him the ability to think, reason, and choose (what some may claim is free will, and it is, to a certain extent. The sky’s are cloudy on this one). This free will (as I’ll call it) is what enables man to love, but it also enables man to hate. It enables man to do good, but also do evil. It is the one quality that separates us from the rest of creation and sets us in the image of God.
Man exercised the choice of freewill in the proverbial Garden of Eden in his first disobedience to God. It was a separation from God’s perfect will, which up to that moment our first couple seemed content. The perfect communion in perfect love was broken by that disobedience, and that separation meant death, or the cutting off from the communion with the Giver of Life. So the story goes…
To make a long story short, because you’ve heard all this before, God sent His Son to redeem us from that separation. Yada, yada, yada….
Now we will get to the meat of my point:
Reconciliation means a return to the perfect communion with God. Universal reconciliation means a return to a perfect communion to God for all of Creation.
And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. – Colossians 1:20
And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began. – Acts 3:20-21
For this to happen, there has to be cooperation with all of Creation. I cannot see God satisfied with a partial reconciliation. God has to enact the process, but in doing so, free will must be preserved.
But how to accomplish this without violating free will? The only way is for God to convince a person that His way is best.
Did you ever watch 12 Angry Men? (If you haven’t, skip over this section for spoilers). The story is about a jury who has to deliberate a murder case for the fate of a young man who conviction will surely bring the death penalty. The case seems pretty open and shut in favor of guilty. So they take a vote and everyone casts “Guilty”, except for Juror #8, played by Henry Fonda. Juror #8 doesn’t seem to have much reason to stall the vote, only that he feels they ought to talk about it rather than rushing to justice. To make a long story short, the case begins to unravel some doubt over the other jurors, and one by one, they begin to change their vote to ‘Not Guilty”. The last holdout is Juror #3, played brilliantly by Lee. J. Cobb, who seems all through the movie to have a vendetta toward giving a guilty plea. And he stubbornly refuses to change his plea as Juror #8 continually digs at him. Eventually, he relents, after it is found out that he harbored ill feeling toward the accused because it reminded of the fallout between him and his son, not because he believed the accursed to be guilty.
Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. – Isaiah 1:18
I see God much like Juror #8 and the sinner as Juror #3, even to the last holdout. God must convince us that His way is better than ours. And while He is a Just God (He cannot arbitrarily dismiss sin, more on this later), He is Merciful as well.
The paradox, of course, is how Justice and Mercy can be accomplished. Justice demands that one gets what one deserves. So the punishment of sin is death (separation from God). But punishment must also be fair. If hell is a place of punishment, then when the punishment is completed, then the sinner must be set free. That is why I don’t believe hell is permanent. Now some say that hell is the grave, so that the literal punishment for sin would be annihilation. But it seems to me, that is too inequitable in scope. Does this mean that a serial killer receives the same punishment as say a habitual liar? Or what if one serial killer killed 20 people and another only killed 4? And what of the average everyday Joe who hasn’t committed such grievous sin? So annihilation doesn’t square with justice and seems almost a copout anyway since atheists and some agnostics don’t seem bothered by this fate.
So let’s talk about this business of hell. As I’ve mentioned, I don’t believe Hell is permanent, nor necessarily literal. Space prevents me from getting into the technicalities of the words used in scriptures to describe hell and a place of eternal torment. To get the gist of it, I refer you to this very brief article by William Barclay:
http://www.savior-of-all.com/barclay.html
And actually this article kind of sums up what I’ve been trying to say all along. But suffice to say that I haven’t come across anything that has made more sense than this. God’s Justice and God’s Mercy remain intact.
OK, that takes care of the Universal Reconciliation part. The Evangelistical part means that I feel no less burdened to reach the ‘lost’ than when I believed in an eternal hell. In fact, considering it’s all Good News (that’s what ‘Gospel means after all), I am even more motivated to share the Grace of God.
Can I hear an ‘Amen’?
