I can think of nothing better than an eternal bike ride along the infinite canal tow path of the eternal
Just had a taster. North up the River Soar to the Grand Union Canal to Abbey Park, where Wolsey died. Not bad at all for urban. Norther it's wilder up to the statue of Lear and his daughters and beyond. Caer Lear is Welsh for Lear's castle - Leicester. Yeah, that Lear. South down the Soar to the Grand Union again is paradise, dye and gas works and all. Discovered the new, C15th pack horse bridge which replaced the C11th one on We'n'sd'y. Only bin 'ere a year... Zoom on this in satellite mode.
Two of Leicester's rivers finally got the point. Soar. Sence.
Sorry I can't join you. Currently walking a small part of this, in stages, towards Mont Saint Michel (though quite a lot at the minute is on a towpath).
Barnabas62Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
I think it was the Russian philosopher Berdyaev who exploded the rationalisations about free will but left the principle intact. We become less than human if choice is removed. The journey from free will to depraved choices to the doctrines of Hell is distinctly uncomfortable of course. Would heaven be heaven if vicious “dogs in the manger” were free to wander around? It would hardly be a place of no more suffering and no more pain since not all of the former things would have passed away.
My favorite Russian philosopher! The Orthodox believe (as do all Christians) that we are made in the image and likeness of God. We also believe those are two separatable things -- the image is still there but the likeness is darkened due to sin. We are less like God than Adam and Eve were, but we are still icons of the immaterial God. As such we retain the ability to choose, that being something intrinsic to God, and part of the image that we inherited at our creation.
The centre of my faith. Made in the image, conformed to the likeness. Berdyaev's writings were also important to another Russian Orthodox hero Alexander Men. Though not all found him to be Orthodox!
Berdyaev was a believer in universal salvation. IIRC it is the way he connected freedom to choose with image of God. In the end we must all become conformed to the likeness and none of us will lose the birthright image in eternity. Nothing of the divine image can end up eternally damned, even if all that is left is a flickering spark. All shall be well (pace Martin, I did eventually get that).
I'm just not quite that optimistic though I would like to be! Maybe I will get there? There's probably a wee bit of unresolved Calvinism somewhere in my understanding and I just haven't quite found it yet!
Not of the TULIP variety! (L stands for Limited Atonement). I was exposed to that thinking in my early years and reckon to have escaped it. But Calvin was pessimistic about the survival of the image of God in human beings post-fall, using terms like “all but obliterated”.
Plus Protestantism in general has not been very good in seeing the connection between bearers of image of God as a creation ordinance and eternal damnation. Nor has Catholicism.
Interestingly, this thread and its reminders has probably pushed me away from my previous caution. There is something rather fine in taking restoration to its eventual conclusion, that God will be all in all.
Barnabas62Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
edited October 2020
Sure. But I refer you to Calvins Institutes Book 3 Chapter 25 section 9 concerning the general resurrection of the dead in which Calvin proclaims that the wicked are raised for judgment and will suffer vengeance which they have provoked, without measure and without end.
It’s sheep and goats time and the goats go into eternal punishment.
I don’t think we can escape the fact that these aspects of our different traditions are there and have been accepted as truth by many. I think it is possible to look at them differently now and hope for complete restoration in the final judgment. A refined hermeneutic is required for that. Hence the OP to this thread.
But it is hardly surprising if many of us, including me, find it challenging to overcome the weight of our different traditions. I don’t know if Jengie Jon is around but I’d like to hear from her, and also from any Calvinist on board who is a universalist.
So far as Catholicism is concerned a review of the article on Hell in the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia makes it clear that traditional Catholic belief is the same. Hell is a place of eternal punishment and the destiny of the wicked. I haven’t checked the Magisterium but it would surprise me if it offers Catholics much wriggle room on that.
Why bless your heart, like Francis Schaeffer you've come to save us from ourselves in your humility!
I'm not here to save anyone. I had something I knew about, I thought it was kinda cool and relevant, I shared it.
I think it's fascinating that there once was a denomination which formally and overtly believed in Universal salvation. I find it interesting and relevant to the topic at hand.
They weren't just incarnations of some abstract Enlightenment. They were real people with differing, specific viewpoints. I think you would have liked them - they loved arguing (and often, it must be said, winding people up).
New England Calvinism + Enlightenment + Second Great Awakening = People in 1830s who don't believe in hell and who have overlapping theology with KarlLB.
More or less.
What's your point?
What's yours?
Well if nothing else my point might be that cultures that don’t know their history become pop cultures, trapped in a shallow and eternal Now.
Even ships of fools need deep water to sail on, and will run aground in the shallows.
This culture of fools knows its history and sails on all deeps. I'm just a gull following in the bilge wake.
The post apostolic Church in the East arguably had universalist tendencies. It isn't clear. As it isn't by far in the sayings of Jesus. Where penal substitutionary atonement is clear.
So what?
The trajectory of rational faith, at last, takes us beyond these ancient limitations. But rationality is a genetic, minority, subservient pursuit in most even great rhetorical human minds and ever more will be so. The elephant is in control, the mahout clings on for dear life. My mahout has a C21st (late, too late acquired) wifi remote that makes faith subservient to rationality by reversing that natural, essential imbalanced polarity in the elephant's brain.
@Telford;
Because for the time being H/She is OK with the world having, in no particular order: weather, physical laws, flawed human nature, neural pathways that are experienced as pain or fear, etc etc.
But there will be a new heaven and a new earth and every tear will be wiped away. And I expect even the memory of pain will be erased. And there won't be room for anything we might call hell.
But I suspect that any contemporary view of Hell must be eschatological not transient. Hell is about final outcomes.
I think there is a school of liberal Christian thought that says this life is all there is for all of us. Which probably goes hand in hand with a belief that the resurrection of Christ was not an actual bodily one.
And I'd say this is a logical outworking of @Martin54's position that Scripture is so enculturated and so human as to provide no reliable guide to anything beyond the human authors' primitive and personal perception of events.
I can't rule this 'universal annihilation' position out, but then I'm quite strongly attached to a belief in the bodily resurrection of Christ.
At what point do these alleged "liberals" admit that they've liberalised themselves out of Christianity altogether?
It's not your call.
I know, and I understand the practical and theological reasons why it's not, but sometimes struggle to understand what folk can see in Christianity without the risen Christ. It's not like the Church is an attractive organisation in its own right.
Risen Christ =/= physically resurrected Christ. You can believe he's alive without believing in resuscitated corpses.
How? Why?
How? Same way people into sceances and wotnot think their deceased relatives are alive.
Why? Same reasons generally given for believing the resurrection occurred - transformation of the apostles from scared minor cultists to founders of a world religion.
Nothing else would work. Nothing else would transform a bunch of guys like their compelling leader being tortured to death in front of their eyes - those that hid in the crowd apart from John - and being fine three days later. So if He wasn't, what worked? His body unnaturally disappeared and a vision replaced it? If you say so.
Three days? More like 36 hours
Riiiigggghhht. Yeah we ALLLLL know about inclusive and exclusive and what Jesus Himself said re Jonah, you know, the only sign we'll ever get, and whether He was being literal or not and a lot more besides and how to factor three days from Friday night to Sunday morning. I'm a Wednesday man myself.
We know hat he died about 6pm on the Friday just before it got dark and rose about 6am on the Sunday when it got light. That's 36 hours. I have no idea where you get 'Wednesday' from.
This culture of fools knows its history and sails on all deeps. I'm just a gull following in the bilge wake.
The post apostolic Church in the East arguably had universalist tendencies. It isn't clear. As it isn't by far in the sayings of Jesus. Where penal substitutionary atonement is clear.
So what?
The trajectory of rational faith, at last, takes us beyond these ancient limitations. But rationality is a genetic, minority, subservient pursuit in most even great rhetorical human minds and ever more will be so. The elephant is in control, the mahout clings on for dear life. My mahout has a C21st (late, too late acquired) wifi remote that makes faith subservient to rationality by reversing that natural, essential imbalanced polarity in the elephant's brain.
I think I get that(!)
But it is probably more accurate to say that we wrestle with these things. A good mahout can control to some extent the speed and direction of the elephant rather than just hang on.
Plus there is a closer connection between rationality and self serving rationalisations than we are prepared to admit. The lumbering pace of the elephant may be a guard against the pull of fashionable directions. Long standing traditions are not always the repository of outmoded thought. Though of course they can be.
New England Calvinism + Enlightenment + Second Great Awakening = People in 1830s who don't believe in hell and who have overlapping theology with KarlLB.
More or less.
What's your point?
What's yours?
Well if nothing else my point might be that cultures that don’t know their history become pop cultures, trapped in a shallow and eternal Now.
Even ships of fools need deep water to sail on, and will run aground in the shallows.
This culture of fools knows its history and sails on all deeps. I'm just a gull following in the bilge wake.
Maybe I wrote too poetically and so was unclear. I had no intention to insult.
Sharing history doesn't have to have a point and I don't really have a point in my conversation here - I'm not pushing a theology or viewpoint. If I have a preference it would be to push the conversation out of what looks to me a lot like a rut. We've seen these conversations before.
The post apostolic Church in the East arguably had universalist tendencies. It isn't clear. As it isn't by far in the sayings of Jesus. Where penal substitutionary atonement is clear.
So what?
I don't know what you're looking for here.
The trajectory of rational faith, at last, takes us beyond these ancient limitations. But rationality is a genetic, minority, subservient pursuit in most even great rhetorical human minds and ever more will be so. The elephant is in control, the mahout clings on for dear life. My mahout has a C21st (late, too late acquired) wifi remote that makes faith subservient to rationality by reversing that natural, essential imbalanced polarity in the elephant's brain.
Sure, so maybe you might find it fun to learn about previous Christians who also valued rationality, and consider how they approached the problems they faced.
On the interplay between Universalism and Calvinism, people might find this Unitarian Universalist lecture on the 200th anniversary of a historically important but mostly forgotten Universalist book, Hosea Ballou's "Treatise on Atonement" (1805) interesting.
(Modern UU is of course generally quite hostile to 'Calvinism', however that term is defined.)
Early [American] Universalism as it was born from its Calvinist roots affirmed the interconnectedness of humanity rather than the disconnected individualism of competition and the striving for perfectionism, and it affirmed a religious faith based on personal and direct experience of feeling and passion rather than the more rational, structured order of the establishment.
Early American Universalism was both a reaction and rejection of self-described "Calvinists", and also deeply 'Calvinist' itself.
New England Calvinism + Enlightenment + Second Great Awakening = People in 1830s who don't believe in hell and who have overlapping theology with KarlLB.
More or less.
What's your point?
What's yours?
Well if nothing else my point might be that cultures that don’t know their history become pop cultures, trapped in a shallow and eternal Now.
Even ships of fools need deep water to sail on, and will run aground in the shallows.
This culture of fools knows its history and sails on all deeps. I'm just a gull following in the bilge wake.
Maybe I wrote too poetically and so was unclear. I had no intention to insult.
Sharing history doesn't have to have a point and I don't really have a point in my conversation here - I'm not pushing a theology or viewpoint. If I have a preference it would be to push the conversation out of what looks to me a lot like a rut. We've seen these conversations before.
The post apostolic Church in the East arguably had universalist tendencies. It isn't clear. As it isn't by far in the sayings of Jesus. Where penal substitutionary atonement is clear.
So what?
I don't know what you're looking for here.
The trajectory of rational faith, at last, takes us beyond these ancient limitations. But rationality is a genetic, minority, subservient pursuit in most even great rhetorical human minds and ever more will be so. The elephant is in control, the mahout clings on for dear life. My mahout has a C21st (late, too late acquired) wifi remote that makes faith subservient to rationality by reversing that natural, essential imbalanced polarity in the elephant's brain.
Sure, so maybe you might find it fun to learn about previous Christians who also valued rationality, and consider how they approached the problems they faced.
The rut is deeper backwards. We stand on the shoulders of these giants and therefore have greater rationality going forward. That's what I'm looking for. I'm having so much fun doing it my bladder can't take it.
After 66 years another aspect of eternity occurred to me up the ascent to Jumpin' Jack Galvin of the 82nd's bivi.
God has been doing this forever and ever, yeah? I mean, we all know this, right? So creation is eternal, yeah? There have always been creatures transcending. So who awaits us? And who will we await? And wait on? That's our part. That's what we'll be doing forever and ever. Serving the newbies. After being served. You don't think our Jesus will be doing it all by Himself even in our infinitesimal corner of heaven do you? Let alone all the Son's other incarnations in their bailiwicks.
But it is hardly surprising if many of us, including me, find it challenging to overcome the weight of our different traditions. I don’t know if Jengie Jon is around but I’d like to hear from her, and also from any Calvinist on board who is a universalist.
Apologies in advance for a long post.
I think first you maybe have to nail down exactly what is meant by “Calvinist.” It’s not exactly straightforward. “Calvinist” doesn’t necessarily have as clear a meaning as, say, “Lutheran” in my experience. It can mean someone who adheres closely to the teachings of Calvin, but it can also mean someone in the broad tradition that traces back to Calvin’s reforms in Geneva, though maybe not adhering to every jot and tittle of what he wrote.
Like many if not most Presbyterians (at least those who think about such things), I’m more likely to describe myself as Reformed than as Calvinist, but I don’t generally eschew the descriptor “Calvinist.” (And shoot, if you enter “Reformed” in the search field on Wikipedia, you’ll be redirected to “Calvinism.”) Part and parcel of “Reformed” is the presupposition that nobody, including Calvin, is likely to have gotten it all right, because (as @Lamb Chopped might say) sin. Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei—the church reformed, always being reformed according to the Word of God.
For purposes of this discussion, it seems to me that “Calvinists” can perhaps be broken into two groups. The first group comprises those in the Reformed tradition who operate in a broadly Calvinist framework, but do so contextually and open to how the tradition has developed in the centuries since Calvin. To all but the most conservative in this group, it’s perfectly acceptable to question whether Calvin was right about this or that while still maintaining a recognizably Calvinist/Reformed approach.
The other group is mainly composed of those outside the Reformed tradition who have, for various reasons, adopted a TULIP-centric soteriology, but who separate that soteriology from other aspects of Calvinism, such as ecclesiology, the sacraments, etc. It strikes me as a simultaneously strict and selective or incomplete Calvinism, though my sense is that it’s what most people outside the Reformed tradition think of when they think of Calvinism—strict views on (double) predestination and TULIP, but not much else.
With regard to universalism, the easiest Calvinistic approach is that all are predestined to salvation, and theories about the reprobate are just academic exercises built on an assumption otherwise. There are other approaches as well. Perhaps because of my age and of influences in my formative years, I tend to align with Karl Barth on the subject of universalism—an approach I have sometimes heard referred to as “hopeful universalism.”
Barth said “I do not believe in universalism, but I do believe in Jesus Christ, reconciler of all." (Though as I’ve noted before, simply saying “Barth said” can be a dangerous thing. His writing is dense and complex dialectic theology that regularly holds in tension seemingly paradoxical truths and claims.) Barth, as I understand him, drew a line at saying there must be universal reconciliation, because in his view that conflicted with salvation being the free gift of God, and for us to say that there must be universal salvation amounted to us saying what God must do with God's free gift, as though we could make some claim on it. So he held in tension two ideas—salvation is a free gift of God to which we have no claim of right, and "theological consistency might seem to lead our thoughts and utterances most clearly in [the] direction" of universalism. (Church Dogmatics, IV.3.2) Just prior to this portion of Church Dogmatics, he wrote:
If we are certainly forbidden to count on this [universal reconciliation] as though we had a claim to it, as though it were not supremely the work of God to which man can have no possible claim, we are surely commanded the more definitely to hope and pray for it as we may do already on this side of this final possibility, i.e., to hope and pray cautiously and yet distinctly that, in spite of everything which may seem quite conclusively to proclaim the opposite, His compassion should not fail, and that in accordance with His mercy which is "new every morning" He "will not cast off for ever." (Lam 3:22f,31)
This approach seems to me very consistent with the over-arching witness of Scripture.
If we are certainly forbidden to count on this [universal reconciliation] as though we had a claim to it, as though it were not supremely the work of God to which man can have no possible claim, we are surely commanded the more definitely to hope and pray for it as we may do already on this side of this final possibility, i.e., to hope and pray cautiously and yet distinctly that, in spite of everything which may seem quite conclusively to proclaim the opposite, His compassion should not fail, and that in accordance with His mercy which is "new every morning" He "will not cast off for ever." (Lam 3:22f,31)
This approach seems to me very consistent with the over-arching witness of Scripture.
Except, of course, what Scripture has to say about Jesus, the Incarnation and the Resurrection. Somehow apparently, it’s rational to accept that and yet reject everything else in Scripture as irrational Bronze Age storytelling.
Except, of course, what Scripture has to say about Jesus, the Incarnation and the Resurrection. Somehow apparently, it’s rational to accept that and yet reject everything else in Scripture as irrational Bronze Age storytelling.
You got it Nick. He's the only thing we possibly didn't make up. Including all takes on His meaning.
This thread is helping me greatly to move confidently away from a 'doctrinal position' I never accepted.
Looking back to the OP where there is the question 'How is my view reflected in Scripture?' I offer my thoughts (I am not a theologian) on 2 passages:
Sheep and goats (Mt 25); the sheep get the kingdom, their inheritance, (deserved? or not? - but that is not the point of the story), eternal life (what does eternal mean? -but that's not the point of the story)
The goats get eternal fire (how can anyone survive long in fire? Does fire have some sort of symbolic purifying function? -but that's not the point of the story/i])and eternal punishment (what does eternal mean? is the punishment retribution? rehabilitative? restorative? -but that's not the point of the story)
The point of the story is that we must minister to the poor, the outcast and the disadvantaged as though we are ministering to God Him/Herself and not as though we live with a Darwinian ethic where the fittest survive. And this is radical enough to eclipse any doctrinal points from the rest of the story.
Lazarus, the rich man and Father Abraham (Lk 16)
A vivid story that would probably have grabbed the attention of original listeners who may have been familar with imagary of Hades.
The rich man is in a 'place of torment' (eternal? -but that's not the point of the story)Is the torment physical or mental? He does not show any signs of contrition for the way he has ignored Lazarus' plight -but that is not the point of the story.There is fire -what is the function of the fire? Will it consume him? purify him? -but that is not the point of the story.
The point of the story seems to be the question of whether someone rising from the dead will or won't convince people to believe and repent. This is the 'take home message'.
We know hat he died about 6pm on the Friday just before it got dark
Oh, and, where do you royally know this from?
I was wrong about the 'We' I should not have included everyone.
Happy for you alone to know it, but from what source?
I have already quoted the best sources. Next year when you celebrate Good Wednesday, all other Christians will be celebrating Good Friday
You quoted, cited nothing at all that demonstrates that Jesus was crucified on a Friday. Nothing. And I'll be celebrating His birth on December 25th when it quite possibly happened three months prior. And yeah, Wednesday 25th April 31 AD is where I put my money.
Nick Tamen - Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei—the church reformed, always being reformed according to the Word of God. I think that translation works better if instead of reformed, you use re-formed.
You quoted, cited nothing at all that demonstrates that Jesus was crucified on a Friday.
Luke 23:50–56: “Now there was a good and righteous man named Joseph, who, though a member of the council, had not agreed to their plan and action. He came from the Jewish town of Arimathea, and he was waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid it in a rock-hewn tomb where no one had ever been laid. It was the day of Preparation, and the sabbath was beginning. The women who had come with him from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments.
On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment.”
Nick Tamen - Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei—the church reformed, always being reformed according to the Word of God. I think that translation works better if instead of reformed, you use re-formed.
The translation I gave is the standard one. The idea is that the church, being made up of fallible humans, will regularly be in need of reformation in some way or another.
Nick Tamen - Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei—the church reformed, always being reformed according to the Word of God. I think that translation works better if instead of reformed, you use re-formed.
The translation I gave is the standard one. The idea is that the church, being made up of fallible humans, will regularly be in need of reformation in some way or another.
I was trying to emphasise the concept of formed anew. Although that is part of reformed, it's often overlooked in favour of the idea of changed.
Except, of course, what Scripture has to say about Jesus, the Incarnation and the Resurrection. Somehow apparently, it’s rational to accept that and yet reject everything else in Scripture as irrational Bronze Age storytelling.
You got it Nick. He's the only thing we possibly didn't make up. Including all takes on His meaning.
I'm glad I'm not the only person to perceive this as a rather inconsistent @Martin54 hermeneutic.
@Merry Vole as I mentioned upthread, a recent insight for me on the story of the rich man and Lazarus is that the rich man has no intention of moving, he simply wants to continue to exercise his sense of entitlement right where he is. He wants Lazarus to be dispatched to provide him with water, a menial task which he appears to believe might be feasible - but shows no sign of wanting to make the journey in the opposite direction himself.
Firstly, the distinction between the "selective Calvinists" and the historic Reformed tradition and the corresponding differences in approach is spot on (I was recently at a funeral led by a "selective Calvinist" and found his barely suppressed glee at the prospect of non-Christians finally getting what was coming to them at the Last Judgement revolting). The suggestion that the Calvinist emphasis is on salvation, and the exploration of reprobation more of a thought experiment than a settled doctrine, is helpful, too.
Secondly, thanks for the explanation of Barth's position. I quite like hermeneutics that revolve around unresolved tension (I find they mesh well with the eschatalogical hope of that tension being resolved on that Day, too), and "hopeful universalism" seems to do just that.
his barely suppressed glee at the prospect of non-Christians finally getting what was coming to them at the Last Judgement revolting
Can I reinforce a suggestion I made earlier about Hell being an easier doctrine in times gone by when belief was more universal.
I can imagine how someone who doesn't have any non-Christian relatives or friends convincing themselves that eternal torment is "what's coming to" people who are not acrually known to the person holding the view, and so who are to a degree almost hypothetical. To see it that way when the non-Christians are ones spouse, mother, son, daughter, seems to me to require a level of empathy so low as to suggest psychopathy.
I couldn't even keep up believing in the justice of it for long, let alone taking pleasure in it.
You quoted, cited nothing at all that demonstrates that Jesus was crucified on a Friday.
Luke 23:50–56: “Now there was a good and righteous man named Joseph, who, though a member of the council, had not agreed to their plan and action. He came from the Jewish town of Arimathea, and he was waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid it in a rock-hewn tomb where no one had ever been laid. It was the day of Preparation, and the sabbath was beginning. The women who had come with him from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments.
On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment.”
The day of Preparation is Friday.
At last!
And any other day of the week preceding a high day sabbath.
Except, of course, what Scripture has to say about Jesus, the Incarnation and the Resurrection. Somehow apparently, it’s rational to accept that and yet reject everything else in Scripture as irrational Bronze Age storytelling.
You got it Nick. He's the only thing we possibly didn't make up. Including all takes on His meaning.
I'm glad I'm not the only person to perceive this as a rather inconsistent @Martin54 hermeneutic.
I'd say I try and be consistent. I strive for a Grand Universal Working Theory of Meaning to underpin my functional belief.
Meanwhile, what I perceive as your internal mechanism for believing in the Resurrection appears totally different to your reasoning about the rest of Scripture. I can't see why your latter reasoning doesn't consign the former mechanism (and with it, the Resurrection) to the dustibin of primitive superstition.
I hesitate to say that, because I wouldn't want to talk you out of a foundational belief in the Resurrection which I happen to share, but while those parallel tracks of conviction might be innocuous enough independently, the prospect of what might happen if they were to touch alarms me.
[and can the tangent on what day of the week Jesus might have been crucified on please be left alone?]
I'd say I try and be consistent. I strive for a Grand Universal Working Theory of Meaning to underpin my functional belief.
Meanwhile, what I perceive as your internal mechanism for believing in the Resurrection appears totally different to your reasoning about the rest of Scripture. I can't see why your latter reasoning doesn't consign the former mechanism (and with it, the Resurrection) to the dustibin of primitive superstition.
I hesitate to say that, because I wouldn't want to talk you out of a foundational belief in the Resurrection which I happen to share, but while those parallel tracks of conviction might be innocuous enough independently, the prospect of what might happen if they were to touch alarms me.
[and can the tangent on what day of the week Jesus might have been crucified on please be left alone?]
Happy to leave it left. I want to be a believer. I otherwise have a rational epistemology. I believe in the Resurrection because I believe in the Incarnation. I don't believe the irrational rationalizations of anyone then, before or since.
In what way do you believe the Incarnation to be any better attested to than anything else in Scripture? I mean, if you think that much of the rest consists in irrational rationalisations, why don't you think the Incarnation is one of them?
In what way do you believe the Incarnation to be any better attested to than anything else in Scripture? I mean, if you think that much of the rest consists in irrational rationalisations, why don't you think the Incarnation is one of them?
How would you distinguish this line of argument from the thin end of the wedge arguments put forward by Creationists?
@KarlLB I said upthread that ways of reinterpreting the creation accounts have emerged that are not Creationist but do (at least to my mind) respect the text and a belief that God uses it to speak to us.
As also said upthread, I think few Christians actually believe the traditional and/or more caricatural depictions of Hell, probably no more than believe in a literal six-day creation, but it seems to me that there's not been such a satisfactory accompanying reinterpretation of the text. With the exception of @Merry Vole and one or two others, most of the comments here (including my own) focus on our ethical/philosophical musings and lack much linkage with the text. I think there's plenty of room for such reinterpretation, it just hasn't happened much yet.
I sort of agree with @Martin54 inasmuch as I personally believe in the historicity of the Christ Event (incarnation, death, bodily resurrection, ascension) a central to my faith: I can't make Christianity work unless it is (although I know others apparently can). Where I can't follow @Martin54 is that I can't reconcile that central belief with his apparent summary dismissal of Scripture as a whole as nothing more than enculturated Bronze Age speculation.
Does that answer your question?
Barnabas62Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
Well, I now define myself as a hopeful universalist. And that's helpful. Father Duddleswell (played by Arthur Lowe in the comedy series Bless Me Father) gave this opinion and it resonated with me all those years ago. "I hope Hell is empty".
It seems memorably nasty to be gleeful at the thought of even your worst enemy subject to eternal torment.
I agree with Eutychus re reinterpretation. In my brain that is a work in progress and I'm grateful to contributors. Thanks in particular to Nick Tamen for his fascinating post. I still aim to learn something new every day.
In what way do you believe the Incarnation to be any better attested to than anything else in Scripture? I mean, if you think that much of the rest consists in irrational rationalisations, why don't you think the Incarnation is one of them?
It's not better attested, that's not the point. It's that it's attested at all. I find it very strange that a real phenomenon can actually occur in a cultural context and one has to accept anyone else's take on that, any one and every one's interpretation, even the Phenomenon Himself's. What works paradoxically is the incidental detail, the confusion, the cognitive bias all round. That's credible. That's how third person first hand and predominantly third person, second hand accounts work. As I've been saying for oooooh a couple of years now, I want it to be true. I don't want all the inadequate nonsense we make up around it to be true.
I find it very strange that a real phenomenon can actually occur in a cultural context and one has to accept anyone else's take on that, any one and every one's interpretation, even the Phenomenon Himself's.
Has it occurred to you that this might be a feature and not a bug?
We know hat he died about 6pm on the Friday just before it got dark
Oh, and, where do you royally know this from?
I was wrong about the 'We' I should not have included everyone.
Happy for you alone to know it, but from what source?
I have already quoted the best sources. Next year when you celebrate Good Wednesday, all other Christians will be celebrating Good Friday
You quoted, cited nothing at all that demonstrates that Jesus was crucified on a Friday. Nothing. And I'll be celebrating His birth on December 25th when it quite possibly happened three months prior. And yeah, Wednesday 25th April 31 AD is where I put my money.
You need to tell the Christian world that they have got it all wrong.
@Telford can you tell me in what way the day on which Jesus was crucified is relevant to this discussion? If not, please take this irrelevant tangent to another thread if you wish to pursue it, or expect your Hell* thread to be resurrected.
*For the avoidance of doubt, that refers to the forum, not the place we're discussing here.
I find it very strange that a real phenomenon can actually occur in a cultural context and one has to accept anyone else's take on that, any one and every one's interpretation, even the Phenomenon Himself's.
Has it occurred to you that this might be a feature and not a bug?
Comments
Just had a taster. North up the River Soar to the Grand Union Canal to Abbey Park, where Wolsey died. Not bad at all for urban. Norther it's wilder up to the statue of Lear and his daughters and beyond. Caer Lear is Welsh for Lear's castle - Leicester. Yeah, that Lear. South down the Soar to the Grand Union again is paradise, dye and gas works and all. Discovered the new, C15th pack horse bridge which replaced the C11th one on We'n'sd'y. Only bin 'ere a year... Zoom on this in satellite mode.
Two of Leicester's rivers finally got the point. Soar. Sence.
The centre of my faith. Made in the image, conformed to the likeness. Berdyaev's writings were also important to another Russian Orthodox hero Alexander Men. Though not all found him to be Orthodox!
Berdyaev was a believer in universal salvation. IIRC it is the way he connected freedom to choose with image of God. In the end we must all become conformed to the likeness and none of us will lose the birthright image in eternity. Nothing of the divine image can end up eternally damned, even if all that is left is a flickering spark. All shall be well (pace Martin, I did eventually get that).
I'm just not quite that optimistic though I would like to be! Maybe I will get there? There's probably a wee bit of unresolved Calvinism somewhere in my understanding and I just haven't quite found it yet!
There are universalist Calvinists!
Not of the TULIP variety! (L stands for Limited Atonement). I was exposed to that thinking in my early years and reckon to have escaped it. But Calvin was pessimistic about the survival of the image of God in human beings post-fall, using terms like “all but obliterated”.
Plus Protestantism in general has not been very good in seeing the connection between bearers of image of God as a creation ordinance and eternal damnation. Nor has Catholicism.
Interestingly, this thread and its reminders has probably pushed me away from my previous caution. There is something rather fine in taking restoration to its eventual conclusion, that God will be all in all.
It’s sheep and goats time and the goats go into eternal punishment.
I don’t think we can escape the fact that these aspects of our different traditions are there and have been accepted as truth by many. I think it is possible to look at them differently now and hope for complete restoration in the final judgment. A refined hermeneutic is required for that. Hence the OP to this thread.
But it is hardly surprising if many of us, including me, find it challenging to overcome the weight of our different traditions. I don’t know if Jengie Jon is around but I’d like to hear from her, and also from any Calvinist on board who is a universalist.
So far as Catholicism is concerned a review of the article on Hell in the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia makes it clear that traditional Catholic belief is the same. Hell is a place of eternal punishment and the destiny of the wicked. I haven’t checked the Magisterium but it would surprise me if it offers Catholics much wriggle room on that.
You shared this:
This culture of fools knows its history and sails on all deeps. I'm just a gull following in the bilge wake.
The post apostolic Church in the East arguably had universalist tendencies. It isn't clear. As it isn't by far in the sayings of Jesus. Where penal substitutionary atonement is clear.
So what?
The trajectory of rational faith, at last, takes us beyond these ancient limitations. But rationality is a genetic, minority, subservient pursuit in most even great rhetorical human minds and ever more will be so. The elephant is in control, the mahout clings on for dear life. My mahout has a C21st (late, too late acquired) wifi remote that makes faith subservient to rationality by reversing that natural, essential imbalanced polarity in the elephant's brain.
Does that link just say that? That's the end of the 'scholarship'? Yeah, very basic.
Oh, and, where do you royally know this from?
But it is probably more accurate to say that we wrestle with these things. A good mahout can control to some extent the speed and direction of the elephant rather than just hang on.
Plus there is a closer connection between rationality and self serving rationalisations than we are prepared to admit. The lumbering pace of the elephant may be a guard against the pull of fashionable directions. Long standing traditions are not always the repository of outmoded thought. Though of course they can be.
Maybe I wrote too poetically and so was unclear. I had no intention to insult.
Sharing history doesn't have to have a point and I don't really have a point in my conversation here - I'm not pushing a theology or viewpoint. If I have a preference it would be to push the conversation out of what looks to me a lot like a rut. We've seen these conversations before.
I don't know what you're looking for here.
Sure, so maybe you might find it fun to learn about previous Christians who also valued rationality, and consider how they approached the problems they faced.
(Modern UU is of course generally quite hostile to 'Calvinism', however that term is defined.)
Early American Universalism was both a reaction and rejection of self-described "Calvinists", and also deeply 'Calvinist' itself.
The rut is deeper backwards. We stand on the shoulders of these giants and therefore have greater rationality going forward. That's what I'm looking for. I'm having so much fun doing it my bladder can't take it.
God has been doing this forever and ever, yeah? I mean, we all know this, right? So creation is eternal, yeah? There have always been creatures transcending. So who awaits us? And who will we await? And wait on? That's our part. That's what we'll be doing forever and ever. Serving the newbies. After being served. You don't think our Jesus will be doing it all by Himself even in our infinitesimal corner of heaven do you? Let alone all the Son's other incarnations in their bailiwicks.
Yes, I've wondered about just how it all works...or doesn't, as the case may be.
I was wrong about the 'We' I should not have included everyone.
Happy for you alone to know it, but from what source?
Seriously, @Martin54 ? You're taking someone to task for unwarranted levels of certainty in their pronouncements?
I think first you maybe have to nail down exactly what is meant by “Calvinist.” It’s not exactly straightforward. “Calvinist” doesn’t necessarily have as clear a meaning as, say, “Lutheran” in my experience. It can mean someone who adheres closely to the teachings of Calvin, but it can also mean someone in the broad tradition that traces back to Calvin’s reforms in Geneva, though maybe not adhering to every jot and tittle of what he wrote.
Like many if not most Presbyterians (at least those who think about such things), I’m more likely to describe myself as Reformed than as Calvinist, but I don’t generally eschew the descriptor “Calvinist.” (And shoot, if you enter “Reformed” in the search field on Wikipedia, you’ll be redirected to “Calvinism.”) Part and parcel of “Reformed” is the presupposition that nobody, including Calvin, is likely to have gotten it all right, because (as @Lamb Chopped might say) sin. Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei—the church reformed, always being reformed according to the Word of God.
For purposes of this discussion, it seems to me that “Calvinists” can perhaps be broken into two groups. The first group comprises those in the Reformed tradition who operate in a broadly Calvinist framework, but do so contextually and open to how the tradition has developed in the centuries since Calvin. To all but the most conservative in this group, it’s perfectly acceptable to question whether Calvin was right about this or that while still maintaining a recognizably Calvinist/Reformed approach.
The other group is mainly composed of those outside the Reformed tradition who have, for various reasons, adopted a TULIP-centric soteriology, but who separate that soteriology from other aspects of Calvinism, such as ecclesiology, the sacraments, etc. It strikes me as a simultaneously strict and selective or incomplete Calvinism, though my sense is that it’s what most people outside the Reformed tradition think of when they think of Calvinism—strict views on (double) predestination and TULIP, but not much else.
With regard to universalism, the easiest Calvinistic approach is that all are predestined to salvation, and theories about the reprobate are just academic exercises built on an assumption otherwise. There are other approaches as well. Perhaps because of my age and of influences in my formative years, I tend to align with Karl Barth on the subject of universalism—an approach I have sometimes heard referred to as “hopeful universalism.”
Barth said “I do not believe in universalism, but I do believe in Jesus Christ, reconciler of all." (Though as I’ve noted before, simply saying “Barth said” can be a dangerous thing. His writing is dense and complex dialectic theology that regularly holds in tension seemingly paradoxical truths and claims.) Barth, as I understand him, drew a line at saying there must be universal reconciliation, because in his view that conflicted with salvation being the free gift of God, and for us to say that there must be universal salvation amounted to us saying what God must do with God's free gift, as though we could make some claim on it. So he held in tension two ideas—salvation is a free gift of God to which we have no claim of right, and "theological consistency might seem to lead our thoughts and utterances most clearly in [the] direction" of universalism. (Church Dogmatics, IV.3.2) Just prior to this portion of Church Dogmatics, he wrote: This approach seems to me very consistent with the over-arching witness of Scripture.
Seriously @Arethosemyfeet, you're taking me to task on the assumption that all pronouncements are in the same category?
You got it Nick. He's the only thing we possibly didn't make up. Including all takes on His meaning.
Looking back to the OP where there is the question 'How is my view reflected in Scripture?' I offer my thoughts (I am not a theologian) on 2 passages:
Sheep and goats (Mt 25); the sheep get the kingdom, their inheritance, (deserved? or not? - but that is not the point of the story), eternal life (what does eternal mean? -but that's not the point of the story)
The goats get eternal fire (how can anyone survive long in fire? Does fire have some sort of symbolic purifying function? -but that's not the point of the story/i])and eternal punishment (what does eternal mean? is the punishment retribution? rehabilitative? restorative? -but that's not the point of the story)
The point of the story is that we must minister to the poor, the outcast and the disadvantaged as though we are ministering to God Him/Herself and not as though we live with a Darwinian ethic where the fittest survive. And this is radical enough to eclipse any doctrinal points from the rest of the story.
Lazarus, the rich man and Father Abraham (Lk 16)
A vivid story that would probably have grabbed the attention of original listeners who may have been familar with imagary of Hades.
The rich man is in a 'place of torment' (eternal? -but that's not the point of the story)Is the torment physical or mental? He does not show any signs of contrition for the way he has ignored Lazarus' plight -but that is not the point of the story.There is fire -what is the function of the fire? Will it consume him? purify him? -but that is not the point of the story.
The point of the story seems to be the question of whether someone rising from the dead will or won't convince people to believe and repent. This is the 'take home message'.
I have already quoted the best sources. Next year when you celebrate Good Wednesday, all other Christians will be celebrating Good Friday
You quoted, cited nothing at all that demonstrates that Jesus was crucified on a Friday. Nothing. And I'll be celebrating His birth on December 25th when it quite possibly happened three months prior. And yeah, Wednesday 25th April 31 AD is where I put my money.
On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment.”
The day of Preparation is Friday.
The translation I gave is the standard one. The idea is that the church, being made up of fallible humans, will regularly be in need of reformation in some way or another.
I was trying to emphasise the concept of formed anew. Although that is part of reformed, it's often overlooked in favour of the idea of changed.
I'm glad I'm not the only person to perceive this as a rather inconsistent @Martin54 hermeneutic.
@Merry Vole as I mentioned upthread, a recent insight for me on the story of the rich man and Lazarus is that the rich man has no intention of moving, he simply wants to continue to exercise his sense of entitlement right where he is. He wants Lazarus to be dispatched to provide him with water, a menial task which he appears to believe might be feasible - but shows no sign of wanting to make the journey in the opposite direction himself.
Thanks for that; I found it really helpful.
Firstly, the distinction between the "selective Calvinists" and the historic Reformed tradition and the corresponding differences in approach is spot on (I was recently at a funeral led by a "selective Calvinist" and found his barely suppressed glee at the prospect of non-Christians finally getting what was coming to them at the Last Judgement revolting). The suggestion that the Calvinist emphasis is on salvation, and the exploration of reprobation more of a thought experiment than a settled doctrine, is helpful, too.
Secondly, thanks for the explanation of Barth's position. I quite like hermeneutics that revolve around unresolved tension (I find they mesh well with the eschatalogical hope of that tension being resolved on that Day, too), and "hopeful universalism" seems to do just that.
Can I reinforce a suggestion I made earlier about Hell being an easier doctrine in times gone by when belief was more universal.
I can imagine how someone who doesn't have any non-Christian relatives or friends convincing themselves that eternal torment is "what's coming to" people who are not acrually known to the person holding the view, and so who are to a degree almost hypothetical. To see it that way when the non-Christians are ones spouse, mother, son, daughter, seems to me to require a level of empathy so low as to suggest psychopathy.
I couldn't even keep up believing in the justice of it for long, let alone taking pleasure in it.
At last!
And any other day of the week preceding a high day sabbath.
Occam's razor is on your side of course.
But what sabbath was dawning or rather dusking?
You guys always have. You only have one category.
Meanwhile, what I perceive as your internal mechanism for believing in the Resurrection appears totally different to your reasoning about the rest of Scripture. I can't see why your latter reasoning doesn't consign the former mechanism (and with it, the Resurrection) to the dustibin of primitive superstition.
I hesitate to say that, because I wouldn't want to talk you out of a foundational belief in the Resurrection which I happen to share, but while those parallel tracks of conviction might be innocuous enough independently, the prospect of what might happen if they were to touch alarms me.
[and can the tangent on what day of the week Jesus might have been crucified on please be left alone?]
Happy to leave it left. I want to be a believer. I otherwise have a rational epistemology. I believe in the Resurrection because I believe in the Incarnation. I don't believe the irrational rationalizations of anyone then, before or since.
How would you distinguish this line of argument from the thin end of the wedge arguments put forward by Creationists?
As also said upthread, I think few Christians actually believe the traditional and/or more caricatural depictions of Hell, probably no more than believe in a literal six-day creation, but it seems to me that there's not been such a satisfactory accompanying reinterpretation of the text. With the exception of @Merry Vole and one or two others, most of the comments here (including my own) focus on our ethical/philosophical musings and lack much linkage with the text. I think there's plenty of room for such reinterpretation, it just hasn't happened much yet.
I sort of agree with @Martin54 inasmuch as I personally believe in the historicity of the Christ Event (incarnation, death, bodily resurrection, ascension) a central to my faith: I can't make Christianity work unless it is (although I know others apparently can). Where I can't follow @Martin54 is that I can't reconcile that central belief with his apparent summary dismissal of Scripture as a whole as nothing more than enculturated Bronze Age speculation.
Does that answer your question?
It seems memorably nasty to be gleeful at the thought of even your worst enemy subject to eternal torment.
I agree with Eutychus re reinterpretation. In my brain that is a work in progress and I'm grateful to contributors. Thanks in particular to Nick Tamen for his fascinating post. I still aim to learn something new every day.
It's not better attested, that's not the point. It's that it's attested at all. I find it very strange that a real phenomenon can actually occur in a cultural context and one has to accept anyone else's take on that, any one and every one's interpretation, even the Phenomenon Himself's. What works paradoxically is the incidental detail, the confusion, the cognitive bias all round. That's credible. That's how third person first hand and predominantly third person, second hand accounts work. As I've been saying for oooooh a couple of years now, I want it to be true. I don't want all the inadequate nonsense we make up around it to be true.
Has it occurred to you that this might be a feature and not a bug?
You need to tell the Christian world that they have got it all wrong.
*For the avoidance of doubt, that refers to the forum, not the place we're discussing here.
Yes! Nice.