In fact, I would argue that I cannot have full knowledge of myself, whether guilty or not. Of course, a theological view of the person has different premises.
Are you sure? Try 1 Corinthians 4:3-5, a passage I often refer to:
I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. 4 My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. 5 Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God.
Yes, I was also thinking of the famous lines, I do not do the thing that I want, but the thing that I hate, etc., (Romans). I also think that a clear conscience can be a self-deception. This suggests that I cannot deny (or indeed accept), God with full self-knowledge, but maybe this is by the by.
The question that bothers me is what moral or other benefit there might be to maintaining the environment and awareness of the consequences of that refusal indefinitely if there is, by design, no prospect at all of the refusal altering.
And here we hit one of those "we don't know" things. Can God in fact consign part of his creation to nothingness (that is, annihilation)? We know of no examples of this happening before. What if creation in all its parts is permanent? What if awareness is permanent? What if it is simply self-contradictory in God's nature to annihilate stuff--a logical nonsense--a thing like Escher's staircases?
I don't think we have the data to say, "Oh, sure, God can annihilate."
Some interesting psychological themes crop up, I was struck by LC's phrase "full guilty knowledge". In depth psychology, I think that would be considered impossible, although this may be incorrect. In fact, I would argue that I cannot have full knowledge of myself, whether guilty or not. Of course, a theological view of the person has different premises.
As for "full guilty knowledge," I was contrasting this to both "those who had no opportunity to know or learn what they were really choosing," and "those who made their choices while mentally ill, intoxicated, demented, in a snit, or otherwise possessing an excuse most human justice would take into account." I was not intending to go into depth psychology, being untrained in that.
I am certain that if God's mercy can find a way out for people, he will do so. His past behavior says so. But I do think there can be a state where a person knowingly, willingly, and compos mentis chooses to enter the state the Bible refers to as "perishing." With malice aforethought, even. Because it can be argued that such a choice is a sin not only against the self but against God and one's neighbors, who love that person and do not want to see him/her perish.
The question that bothers me is what moral or other benefit there might be to maintaining the environment and awareness of the consequences of that refusal indefinitely if there is, by design, no prospect at all of the refusal altering.
And here we hit one of those "we don't know" things. Can God in fact consign part of his creation to nothingness (that is, annihilation)?
My question wasn't "whether or not he can" but why he wouldn't, or in other words, what would be the point of permanence.
I don't think we have the data to say, "Oh, sure, God can annihilate."
Err, (emphasis mine)...
But I do think there can be a state where a person knowingly, willingly, and compos mentis chooses to enter the state the Bible refers to as "perishing." With malice aforethought, even. Because it can be argued that such a choice is a sin not only against the self but against God and one's neighbors, who love that person and do not want to see him/her perish.
How, why do we imagine that our random states of mind are eternally decisive? Why, how are we so absurdly grandiose? In believing that maggot thoughts and rights are so precious? That the wind turns and the maggot mental mask is set forever and ever and must not be unset, set free? God respects our maggot right to be petrified, turned to stone in our thinking, all bitter and twisted and refusing His grace, whatever that uselessly could be.
If there is transcendence, all will be well for all. Atheist Ian M. Banks believed that. But you theist guys can't?
The question that bothers me is what moral or other benefit there might be to maintaining the environment and awareness of the consequences of that refusal indefinitely if there is, by design, no prospect at all of the refusal altering.
And here we hit one of those "we don't know" things. Can God in fact consign part of his creation to nothingness (that is, annihilation)?
My question wasn't "whether or not he can" but why he wouldn't, or in other words, what would be the point of permanence.
I don't think we have the data to say, "Oh, sure, God can annihilate."
Err, (emphasis mine)...
But I do think there can be a state where a person knowingly, willingly, and compos mentis chooses to enter the state the Bible refers to as "perishing." With malice aforethought, even. Because it can be argued that such a choice is a sin not only against the self but against God and one's neighbors, who love that person and do not want to see him/her perish.
[bangs head on wall] "perish" is NOT equivalent to "be annihilated."
Even in the most ordinary use of the word, "Coronavirus hits US hard; over 200,000 perish" does not mean they simply winked out of existence. It means that their souls and bodies were severed, the souls going (you fill in the blank according to your faith) and the bodies being left for burial, cremation, or other disposal. And even those methods of disposal are not annihilation--something is always "left." That's my point. One could make a case that hell is a state of being "left-over" from the destructive process--a state of having-perished. Which would be horrible.
@Lamb Chopped wrote:
I am certain that if God's mercy can find a way out for people, he will do so. His past behavior says so. But I do think there can be a state where a person knowingly, willingly, and compos mentis chooses to enter the state the Bible refers to as "perishing." With malice aforethought, even. Because it can be argued that such a choice is a sin not only against the self but against God and one's neighbors, who love that person and do not want to see him/her perish.
I agree with @Martin54 that we are overrating our will, our 'free will'.
And we certainly musn't underrate the ability of God's mercy to find a way!
I believe I was saved regardless of my 'will' in the matter. (a sheep that didn't even realise it was lost)
And I don't agree with @mousethief who, upthread, suggested that God will absolutely not save anyone against their will.
Because I believe we are saved not for privilege but for the sake of the 'not-yet-saved'.
The question that bothers me is what moral or other benefit there might be to maintaining the environment and awareness of the consequences of that refusal indefinitely if there is, by design, no prospect at all of the refusal altering.
And here we hit one of those "we don't know" things. Can God in fact consign part of his creation to nothingness (that is, annihilation)?
My question wasn't "whether or not he can" but why he wouldn't, or in other words, what would be the point of permanence.
I don't think we have the data to say, "Oh, sure, God can annihilate."
Err, (emphasis mine)...
But I do think there can be a state where a person knowingly, willingly, and compos mentis chooses to enter the state the Bible refers to as "perishing." With malice aforethought, even. Because it can be argued that such a choice is a sin not only against the self but against God and one's neighbors, who love that person and do not want to see him/her perish.
[bangs head on wall] "perish" is NOT equivalent to "be annihilated."
Even in the most ordinary use of the word, "Coronavirus hits US hard; over 200,000 perish" does not mean they simply winked out of existence. It means that their souls and bodies were severed, the souls going (you fill in the blank according to your faith) and the bodies being left for burial, cremation, or other disposal. And even those methods of disposal are not annihilation--something is always "left." That's my point. One could make a case that hell is a state of being "left-over" from the destructive process--a state of having-perished. Which would be horrible.
If you're annihilated, in battle for example, have you only perished? What's this soul thing? The end of all natural processes is more entropy. The end of thinking isn't meta-thinking.
Well if you are a purgatorial universalist, the clock never strikes midnight. If you are a different kind of universalist, midnight brings instead of darkness the blinding light of the road to Damascus and the knowledge of the truth of God. For some people, midnight is just the end of the last day.
For many Christians, there is a midnight, a point beyond which Faust can no longer turn round on the road he has been walking. And your question then becomes Eutychus' OP: Can we conceive of a point beyond forgiveness and salvation, where God, perfectly just, does not extend his grace? And if we can conceive of it, how do we talk about it, when we believe in our heart of hearts that we are good people, our own judges and masters of our own fates?
I think you've got hold of the wrong end of the stick. It isn't that God refuses to extend his grace--grace is what he is, basically--but I do believe that there comes a point (please God, for as few people as possible) where they have hardened their own hearts of their own self-will in full guilty knowledge and thus refuse to respond to grace. No need to have God change his usual behavior. You can starve sitting at a banquet just as easily as you can in a desert, provided you refuse to eat.
I remember hearing a preacher doing one of those guilt-trip sessions and asking “is there anything in your life right now, which is blocking the unconditional love of god?” and thinking “well, if there is, then said love isn’t very fucking unconditional, is it, now?”.
If I could channel my inner Brennan Manning, I'd poetically espouse the true fierce depths of that love, but I’m not the evangelist he was.
Well if you are a purgatorial universalist, the clock never strikes midnight. If you are a different kind of universalist, midnight brings instead of darkness the blinding light of the road to Damascus and the knowledge of the truth of God. For some people, midnight is just the end of the last day.
For many Christians, there is a midnight, a point beyond which Faust can no longer turn round on the road he has been walking. And your question then becomes Eutychus' OP: Can we conceive of a point beyond forgiveness and salvation, where God, perfectly just, does not extend his grace? And if we can conceive of it, how do we talk about it, when we believe in our heart of hearts that we are good people, our own judges and masters of our own fates?
I think you've got hold of the wrong end of the stick. It isn't that God refuses to extend his grace--grace is what he is, basically--but I do believe that there comes a point (please God, for as few people as possible) where they have hardened their own hearts of their own self-will in full guilty knowledge and thus refuse to respond to grace. No need to have God change his usual behavior. You can starve sitting at a banquet just as easily as you can in a desert, provided you refuse to eat.
I'm not putting forward any of those options as a personal belief, I'm just saying those are commonly believed options. You've added another.
That said, if we're talking about eschatological judgment then where do we find it? Not in the Hebrew Bible so much, though we find plenty of temporal judgements, expressed always in an active sense - I, the LORD and Judge will do this. Not so much in Paul's letters either. Some discussion in Revelation, but what it means isn't exactly a matter of general consensus (to put it mildly).
If we're looking for discussion of final judgment, of the point where the clock has struct midnight and chance has slipped through our fingers, then we're mostly looking at the Gospels, especially the parables. And I don't see there the passive God who won't change his usual behaviour, sadly watching as his children reject him, hardening their own hearts.
I see an active God: the landowner who returns to view his land, the shepherd looking for his sheep, the widow looking for her coin. I see the rich man summoning his servants to account for the money he has left them - and actively choosing to tailor his behaviour to his judgment, praising some, condemning and punishing others.
I read of a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son, but the guests wouldn't come and some seized and killed his messengers. "The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city."
And here we hit one of those "we don't know" things. Can God in fact consign part of his creation to nothingness (that is, annihilation)? We know of no examples of this happening before.
Jonathan Edwards would argue the opposite - that we only have existence to the extent that God, the sum and source of all being, graciously gives it to us. He need not destroy us, only cease supporting us (or indeed creation as a whole) from moment to moment. We have no reality other than in him.
Well if you are a purgatorial universalist, the clock never strikes midnight. If you are a different kind of universalist, midnight brings instead of darkness the blinding light of the road to Damascus and the knowledge of the truth of God. For some people, midnight is just the end of the last day.
For many Christians, there is a midnight, a point beyond which Faust can no longer turn round on the road he has been walking. And your question then becomes Eutychus' OP: Can we conceive of a point beyond forgiveness and salvation, where God, perfectly just, does not extend his grace? And if we can conceive of it, how do we talk about it, when we believe in our heart of hearts that we are good people, our own judges and masters of our own fates?
I think you've got hold of the wrong end of the stick. It isn't that God refuses to extend his grace--grace is what he is, basically--but I do believe that there comes a point (please God, for as few people as possible) where they have hardened their own hearts of their own self-will in full guilty knowledge and thus refuse to respond to grace. No need to have God change his usual behavior. You can starve sitting at a banquet just as easily as you can in a desert, provided you refuse to eat.
I'm not putting forward any of those options as a personal belief, I'm just saying those are commonly believed options. You've added another.
That said, if we're talking about eschatological judgment then where do we find it? Not in the Hebrew Bible so much, though we find plenty of temporal judgements, expressed always in an active sense - I, the LORD and Judge will do this. Not so much in Paul's letters either. Some discussion in Revelation, but what it means isn't exactly a matter of general consensus (to put it mildly).
If we're looking for discussion of final judgment, of the point where the clock has struct midnight and chance has slipped through our fingers, then we're mostly looking at the Gospels, especially the parables. And I don't see there the passive God who won't change his usual behaviour, sadly watching as his children reject him, hardening their own hearts.
I see an active God: the landowner who returns to view his land, the shepherd looking for his sheep, the widow looking for her coin. I see the rich man summoning his servants to account for the money he has left them - and actively choosing to tailor his behaviour to his judgment, praising some, condemning and punishing others.
I read of a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son, but the guests wouldn't come and some seized and killed his messengers. "The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city."
So you're putting those forward as a personal belief. Starting with final judgement. Do you know anybody who can give a good account? Or anyone who's martyred anyone?
No I'm not putting those forward as a personal belief. I'm putting them forward as something which needs to be taken into account when discussing the topic at hand.
I can see where the 'final judgment' view comes from. I'm a little less sure where the 'God as passive source of universal grace who we can choose to reject' view comes from, and how that view is harmonised with the Gospel parables.
I believe I was saved regardless of my 'will' in the matter. (a sheep that didn't even realise it was lost)
And I don't agree with @mousethief who, upthread, suggested that God will absolutely not save anyone against their will.
Because I believe we are saved not for privilege but for the sake of the 'not-yet-saved'.
Help me understand how your third statement here has anything to do with your second (or first). I have never said we were saved for privilege -- indeed I have no idea what that means.
What, Revelation? Because it's in the text. And because posters like @demas will help my thinking in that respect by putting that in the broader context of Scripture rather than just tearing that page out.
@goperryrevs re: "unconditional love", another of Roger Forster's lines that has stuck with me is "unreasonable love".
If we're looking for discussion of final judgment, of the point where the clock has struct midnight and chance has slipped through our fingers, then we're mostly looking at the Gospels, especially the parables. And I don't see there the passive God who won't change his usual behaviour, sadly watching as his children reject him, hardening their own hearts.
I'm sure the story of the rich man and Lazarus is just that - a story (some claim it's not a parable because Jesus doesn't explicitly say so, and thus that it's the literal truth).
It's ironic that the main point of a story that's generated so much speculation about the afterlife is, paraphrasing Jesus, to say that we don't need any information about the afterlife to make informed choices in the here and now, and that even if someone were to return from the dead with a full report it would make no difference to those choices anyway.
That said, one thing that strikes me about it with respect to finality that echoes Revelation is that the rich man has no thought of trying to rejoin Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham; rather, miserable as his station is, his request to Abraham, whom he addresses rather than Lazarus (still beneath his consideration, obviously) is that Abraham should send Lazarus on an errand in the other direction. Instead of a plea for mercy comes an insistence on carrying on just as before; "better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven".
If we're looking for discussion of final judgment, of the point where the clock has struct midnight and chance has slipped through our fingers, then we're mostly looking at the Gospels, especially the parables. And I don't see there the passive God who won't change his usual behaviour, sadly watching as his children reject him, hardening their own hearts.
I'm sure the story of the rich man and Lazarus is just that - a story (some claim it's not a parable because Jesus doesn't explicitly say so, and thus that it's the literal truth).
In fairness, some people claim that fiction is a form of lying and Jesus wouldn't lie so all the parables are literally true.
No I'm not putting those forward as a personal belief. I'm putting them forward as something which needs to be taken into account when discussing the topic at hand.
I can see where the 'final judgment' view comes from. I'm a little less sure where the 'God as passive source of universal grace who we can choose to reject' view comes from, and how that view is harmonised with the Gospel parables.
If we're looking for discussion of final judgment, of the point where the clock has struct midnight and chance has slipped through our fingers, then we're mostly looking at the Gospels, especially the parables. And I don't see there the passive God who won't change his usual behaviour, sadly watching as his children reject him, hardening their own hearts.
...
It's ironic that the main point of a story that's generated so much speculation about the afterlife is, paraphrasing Jesus, to say that we don't need any information about the afterlife to make informed choices in the here and now, and that even if someone were to return from the dead with a full report it would make no difference to those choices anyway.
...
What, Revelation? Because it's in the text. And because posters like @demas will help my thinking in that respect by putting that in the broader context of Scripture rather than just tearing that page out.
@goperryrevs re: "unconditional love", another of Roger Forster's lines that has stuck with me is "unreasonable love".
How the liberal mind struggles to be free! From the barely enlightened minds of those even who DID have one come back from the dead. It made little enough difference for sure, as Revelation shows.
And God's love is not unreasonable. It's not unreasonable to not condemn any for being autonomously, naturally, randomly born and raised, especially if you can transcendently restitute, rectify, reparate to paraphrase Melanie Klein, all wiring and recording in the media.
No I'm not putting those forward as a personal belief. I'm putting them forward as something which needs to be taken into account when discussing the topic at hand.
I can see where the 'final judgment' view comes from. I'm a little less sure where the 'God as passive source of universal grace who we can choose to reject' view comes from, and how that view is harmonised with the Gospel parables.
Biblicism can't help the discussion at all.
All these views must be grounded in something. If not in the Bible then what? If it is grounded in the Bible, why doesn't it help the discussion to talk about it?
The question that bothers me is what moral or other benefit there might be to maintaining the environment and awareness of the consequences of that refusal indefinitely if there is, by design, no prospect at all of the refusal altering.
And here we hit one of those "we don't know" things. Can God in fact consign part of his creation to nothingness (that is, annihilation)? We know of no examples of this happening before. What if creation in all its parts is permanent? What if awareness is permanent? What if it is simply self-contradictory in God's nature to annihilate stuff--a logical nonsense--a thing like Escher's staircases?
I don't think we have the data to say, "Oh, sure, God can annihilate."
Some interesting psychological themes crop up, I was struck by LC's phrase "full guilty knowledge". In depth psychology, I think that would be considered impossible, although this may be incorrect. In fact, I would argue that I cannot have full knowledge of myself, whether guilty or not. Of course, a theological view of the person has different premises.
As for "full guilty knowledge," I was contrasting this to both "those who had no opportunity to know or learn what they were really choosing," and "those who made their choices while mentally ill, intoxicated, demented, in a snit, or otherwise possessing an excuse most human justice would take into account." I was not intending to go into depth psychology, being untrained in that.
I am certain that if God's mercy can find a way out for people, he will do so. His past behavior says so. But I do think there can be a state where a person knowingly, willingly, and compos mentis chooses to enter the state the Bible refers to as "perishing." With malice aforethought, even. Because it can be argued that such a choice is a sin not only against the self but against God and one's neighbors, who love that person and do not want to see him/her perish.
I guess it's your "knowingly" that I dispute. Well, people know themselves to an extent, but I would say poorly. Of course, this applies to many issues, and on the other hand, it's significant that the law does not accept the argument "I didn't knòw what I was doing". Presumably, God does.
No I'm not putting those forward as a personal belief. I'm putting them forward as something which needs to be taken into account when discussing the topic at hand.
I can see where the 'final judgment' view comes from. I'm a little less sure where the 'God as passive source of universal grace who we can choose to reject' view comes from, and how that view is harmonised with the Gospel parables.
Biblicism can't help the discussion at all.
All these views must be grounded in something. If not in the Bible then what? If it is grounded in the Bible, why doesn't it help the discussion to talk about it?
I think our views should be grounded in a bunch of different things, and scripture is just one of them. Wesley had his four of scripture, tradition, reason, experience. That's not a bad start.
To make scripture (or to be precise, only the Protestant canonical 66 books) the only grounding is, as @Martin54 says, biblicism, and skews things. It also often ignores that our 'take' on those scriptures are full of presumption, filtered through whatever paradigm and culture we have. That's normal, but it needs to be recognised, and "the Bible says..." method is naïve in it's approach. Not saying that's what you're promoting, but it happens a lot.
I know they're covered somewhat by Wesley's four, but to his list, I'd add scripture from other faiths, other religious & philosophical writings, contemplation & meditation, and action* as helpful in coming to balanced views.
*It's all very well debating, reading, thinking and talking about this stuff, but doing stuff hones our views as much as reflection does.
No I'm not putting those forward as a personal belief. I'm putting them forward as something which needs to be taken into account when discussing the topic at hand.
I can see where the 'final judgment' view comes from. I'm a little less sure where the 'God as passive source of universal grace who we can choose to reject' view comes from, and how that view is harmonised with the Gospel parables.
Biblicism can't help the discussion at all.
All these views must be grounded in something. If not in the Bible then what? If it is grounded in the Bible, why doesn't it help the discussion to talk about it?
If we're looking for discussion of final judgment, of the point where the clock has struct midnight and chance has slipped through our fingers, then we're mostly looking at the Gospels, especially the parables. And I don't see there the passive God who won't change his usual behaviour, sadly watching as his children reject him, hardening their own hearts.
I'm sure the story of the rich man and Lazarus is just that - a story (some claim it's not a parable because Jesus doesn't explicitly say so, and thus that it's the literal truth).
It's ironic that the main point of a story that's generated so much speculation about the afterlife is, paraphrasing Jesus, to say that we don't need any information about the afterlife to make informed choices in the here and now, and that even if someone were to return from the dead with a full report it would make no difference to those choices anyway.
That said, one thing that strikes me about it with respect to finality that echoes Revelation is that the rich man has no thought of trying to rejoin Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham; rather, miserable as his station is, his request to Abraham, whom he addresses rather than Lazarus (still beneath his consideration, obviously) is that Abraham should send Lazarus on an errand in the other direction. Instead of a plea for mercy comes an insistence on carrying on just as before; "better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven".
Thank you for this; I've made a long note of it in my big notebook of important things and there found something I noted from a previous thread (possibly from the old Ship) by @goperryrevs which says a similar thing: "I don't think we can get a theology out of Lazarus and the rich man parable. It's not there to make a point about the afterlife, but how we treat each other in this life."
No I'm not putting those forward as a personal belief. I'm putting them forward as something which needs to be taken into account when discussing the topic at hand.
I can see where the 'final judgment' view comes from. I'm a little less sure where the 'God as passive source of universal grace who we can choose to reject' view comes from, and how that view is harmonised with the Gospel parables.
Biblicism can't help the discussion at all.
All these views must be grounded in something. If not in the Bible then what? If it is grounded in the Bible, why doesn't it help the discussion to talk about it?
I think our views should be grounded in a bunch of different things, and scripture is just one of them. Wesley had his four of scripture, tradition, reason, experience. That's not a bad start.
To make scripture (or to be precise, only the Protestant canonical 66 books) the only grounding is, as @Martin54 says, biblicism, and skews things. It also often ignores that our 'take' on those scriptures are full of presumption, filtered through whatever paradigm and culture we have. That's normal, but it needs to be recognised, and "the Bible says..." method is naïve in it's approach. Not saying that's what you're promoting, but it happens a lot.
I know they're covered somewhat by Wesley's four, but to his list, I'd add scripture from other faiths, other religious & philosophical writings, contemplation & meditation, and action* as helpful in coming to balanced views.
*It's all very well debating, reading, thinking and talking about this stuff, but doing stuff hones our views as much as reflection does.
I think @Martin45's meaning of 'Biblicism' maybe goes a bit beyond your meaning! I don't think I've said anything on this thread that would qualify as biblicism as you define it.
All I'm really saying is, if @Lamb Chopped's view that:
It isn't that God refuses to extend his grace--grace is what he is, basically--but I do believe that there comes a point (please God, for as few people as possible) where they have hardened their own hearts of their own self-will in full guilty knowledge and thus refuse to respond to grace. No need to have God change his usual behavior
comes from her reading of the Bible (in the light of reason, experience etc), let's have a discussion about that. If it comes from elsewhere, then let's discuss that.
No I'm not putting those forward as a personal belief. I'm putting them forward as something which needs to be taken into account when discussing the topic at hand.
I can see where the 'final judgment' view comes from. I'm a little less sure where the 'God as passive source of universal grace who we can choose to reject' view comes from, and how that view is harmonised with the Gospel parables.
Biblicism can't help the discussion at all.
All these views must be grounded in something. If not in the Bible then what? If it is grounded in the Bible, why doesn't it help the discussion to talk about it?
No I'm not putting those forward as a personal belief. I'm putting them forward as something which needs to be taken into account when discussing the topic at hand.
I can see where the 'final judgment' view comes from. I'm a little less sure where the 'God as passive source of universal grace who we can choose to reject' view comes from, and how that view is harmonised with the Gospel parables.
Biblicism can't help the discussion at all.
All these views must be grounded in something. If not in the Bible then what? If it is grounded in the Bible, why doesn't it help the discussion to talk about it?
No I'm not putting those forward as a personal belief. I'm putting them forward as something which needs to be taken into account when discussing the topic at hand.
I can see where the 'final judgment' view comes from. I'm a little less sure where the 'God as passive source of universal grace who we can choose to reject' view comes from, and how that view is harmonised with the Gospel parables.
Biblicism can't help the discussion at all.
All these views must be grounded in something. If not in the Bible then what? If it is grounded in the Bible, why doesn't it help the discussion to talk about it?
I think our views should be grounded in a bunch of different things, and scripture is just one of them. Wesley had his four of scripture, tradition, reason, experience. That's not a bad start.
To make scripture (or to be precise, only the Protestant canonical 66 books) the only grounding is, as @Martin54 says, biblicism, and skews things. It also often ignores that our 'take' on those scriptures are full of presumption, filtered through whatever paradigm and culture we have. That's normal, but it needs to be recognised, and "the Bible says..." method is naïve in it's approach. Not saying that's what you're promoting, but it happens a lot.
I know they're covered somewhat by Wesley's four, but to his list, I'd add scripture from other faiths, other religious & philosophical writings, contemplation & meditation, and action* as helpful in coming to balanced views.
*It's all very well debating, reading, thinking and talking about this stuff, but doing stuff hones our views as much as reflection does.
I think @Martin45's meaning of 'Biblicism' maybe goes a bit beyond your meaning! I don't think I've said anything on this thread that would qualify as biblicism as you define it.
All I'm really saying is, if @Lamb Chopped's view that:
It isn't that God refuses to extend his grace--grace is what he is, basically--but I do believe that there comes a point (please God, for as few people as possible) where they have hardened their own hearts of their own self-will in full guilty knowledge and thus refuse to respond to grace. No need to have God change his usual behavior
comes from her reading of the Bible (in the light of reason, experience etc), let's have a discussion about that. If it comes from elsewhere, then let's discuss that.
It comes from a Biblicism. It comes from using reason and explaining experience in the 'light' of the Bible. It puts the cart before the horse. All bad news evangelicals, as in all and every unreformed Reformed I have ever encountered, do that.
I have heard the term "biblicism" used as a pejorative for lo, these twenty years on the Ship, and have never understood precisely what is meant by it or why it is bad. Perhaps you would care to explain it.
Using the Bible to explain itself and as a starting point in explaining anything that needs a rational context first.
Yes - for me it's putting a weight on the shoulders of the Bible that it was never intended to bear. That and assuming that there's a self-consistent single right answer available to any question we ask of the Bible, when in reality it's silent about a lot of things, and contradictory on others.
Er, it don't. But it feels like the vast majority here agree with you. I'm the... disagreeable one. One of the very, very few who is deist but for Jesus and the ineffable workings of the Holy Ghost.
Guilty. But of what? Not being rational? Or wanting a Gideon's Fleece? An Instance of the Fingerpost? An(other) Excession? Of course I want my feeble, dim, flickering faith to be bolstered, just as it was for the early Church. They couldn't not believe.
And again, category. Making up Hell for whatever reason is one thing. Making up transcendentally unfixable people to populate it included. But a no holds barred, full on, detailed prophecy that was written centuries before it was fulfilled, fulfilled despite being publically available, in plain sight, yet impossible to engineer, that would be... proof. But the only candidate goes fuzzy at one point. And even if it didn't, even if it were proof, it wouldn't validate the stuff we make up.
You have to admit that the biblical text suddenly took on priority, or at least major importance, for you though.
Yes. Even though, if true, it raises enormous questions about the nature of God and reality within Him. And no, I don't want to distract from that I want it to be true. That is not irrational. To pure rationalists it's absurd, pathetic I'm sure. There can be no historical fingerpost for them, no matter that the fingerprint has a 20 point match. My mind should not be open to the proposition of a miracle. So yeah, I'm not a true rationalist. Except I must subject my absurd desires to nothing but rationality. Which is why the print is only a 19 point match. Within 3 sigmas. Which is absurdly close. I need to see what the Dawkinsistas say. It fascinates me that no one here will see even that either.
So no, I'm not putting anything Biblical above, prior to, as an exception to, rationality, weak as I am in my desire; I want to be away with the fairies, but there are no confirmed sightings at the bottom of my garden.
I don't understand how one has a debate/argument/discussion when the primary source for that topic is considered somehow out of bounds.
Might as well discuss the US government without mentioning the Constitution.
The primary source for all topics is rationality. Hell, the transcendentally unfixable, are not out of bounds as propositions, but they have to be in play by rationality and rational faith: God as He is, must be, as a proposition built on rationality: rationality, then God, then lesser stories.
I believe I was saved regardless of my 'will' in the matter. (a sheep that didn't even realise it was lost)
And I don't agree with @mousethief who, upthread, suggested that God will absolutely not save anyone against their will.
Because I believe we are saved not for privilege but for the sake of the 'not-yet-saved'.
Help me understand how your third statement here has anything to do with your second (or first). I have never said we were saved for privilege -- indeed I have no idea what that means.
No, you didn't. Privilege is perhaps not the best word (and is mainly used perjoratively now eg 'White privilege').
What I was trying to say was that being saved (and I know that is multifaceted to say the least) can sometimes appear like having made the best decision with eternal life now assured etc etc.
But (and I have been impressed by Lesslie Newbiggin in this) being saved should be seen as 'gift-bearing', set aside for a purpose - the purpose being to bestow the Blessing of Salvation on all.
And this comes primarly not by 'getting one's theology right' but by the witness (fallible, we know) of the community of believers to God's Shalom through Jesus.
This means that those who will be saved will not in any way being limited to those whom it might seem are the 'true believers'.
This means that we can accept that God can, and will, save people even against their will according to His will. (Saul on the road to Damascus is an example?)
No I'm not putting those forward as a personal belief. I'm putting them forward as something which needs to be taken into account when discussing the topic at hand.
I can see where the 'final judgment' view comes from. I'm a little less sure where the 'God as passive source of universal grace who we can choose to reject' view comes from, and how that view is harmonised with the Gospel parables.
Biblicism can't help the discussion at all.
All these views must be grounded in something. If not in the Bible then what? If it is grounded in the Bible, why doesn't it help the discussion to talk about it?
They're grounded in rationality. The way God is.
How do you know the way God is?
It's obvious. Don't you?
Nope.
It was common in the past to argue that we could see some of God in the natural world. The pagan philosophers were praised for their insight as a base on which God's self-revelation can be approached. Paul at Lystra and Athens for example: in modern terms, "Observation and reason have got you a long way. But let me give you some more data to work with".
I don't know if I'm that optimistic. I'm more Barth than Calvin in that respect. My rational, reasoned observations of the natural world don't lead me to hell. But they don't lead me to heaven either, or God. They certainly don't lead me within a million miles of the Trinity which you criticised the old American Universalists for not believing in a couple of pages back. They basically lead me to agnosticism in the formal sense - if a god exists we can know nothing about him, her, them.
But I could be wrong. If God can be grounded in rationality that would be great news, because you should be able to rationally set out the reasoning for your views so I can follow the steps you've taken. And if that shows that there is no hell, then even better.
I don't understand how one has a debate/argument/discussion when the primary source for that topic is considered somehow out of bounds.
Might as well discuss the US government without mentioning the Constitution.
The primary source for all topics is rationality. Hell, the transcendentally unfixable, are not out of bounds as propositions, but they have to be in play by rationality and rational faith: God as He is, must be, as a proposition built on rationality: rationality, then God, then lesser stories.
Rationality is a quality, an adjective ("rational") turned into a noun. It is not a thing-in-itself which can serve as a source for all discussions--How would that even work? "Hi, Joe, let's discuss rationality today." "Oh, sounds very ... rational... to me, yes." "Is there anything else to say about it?" "Well, rationally... not really." "Thanks for the rational discussion."
In terms of discussion, you can get a helluva lot more mileage out of football, or coffee, or the ridiculous thing your cousin-in-law did last weekend. All of those things are objects in the real world about which propositions can be made (truly or falsely) and on which there can differences of opinion. You can even have a rational or irrational discussion of any of these topics. Or a discussion that partakes of both qualities.
Look, to change the analogy, it's as if you insisted that math consisted purely of the signs +, -, x and /. You glorify these signs and their operations, but you absolutely refuse to admit the use of numbers. What is the point of mathematical operations if there are no numbers to perform them on? You cannot add addition to division. You cannot multiply subtraction by addition. If you are going to do any of these things, you need raw material to work with. If we are discussing Christianity and/or Christian ideas, the Bible is part of that raw material.
No I'm not putting those forward as a personal belief. I'm putting them forward as something which needs to be taken into account when discussing the topic at hand.
I can see where the 'final judgment' view comes from. I'm a little less sure where the 'God as passive source of universal grace who we can choose to reject' view comes from, and how that view is harmonised with the Gospel parables.
Biblicism can't help the discussion at all.
All these views must be grounded in something. If not in the Bible then what? If it is grounded in the Bible, why doesn't it help the discussion to talk about it?
They're grounded in rationality. The way God is.
How do you know the way God is?
It's obvious. Don't you?
Nope.
It was common in the past to argue that we could see some of God in the natural world. The pagan philosophers were praised for their insight as a base on which God's self-revelation can be approached. Paul at Lystra and Athens for example: in modern terms, "Observation and reason have got you a long way. But let me give you some more data to work with".
I don't know if I'm that optimistic. I'm more Barth than Calvin in that respect. My rational, reasoned observations of the natural world don't lead me to hell. But they don't lead me to heaven either, or God. They certainly don't lead me within a million miles of the Trinity which you criticised the old American Universalists for not believing in a couple of pages back. They basically lead me to agnosticism in the formal sense - if a god exists we can know nothing about him, her, them.
But I could be wrong. If God can be grounded in rationality that would be great news, because you should be able to rationally set out the reasoning for your views so I can follow the steps you've taken. And if that shows that there is no hell, then even better.
God, the transcendent can not be derived, extrapolated from nature, which lacks nothing. All other attempts to fit God to nature end up reversing the polarity, putting the Cart before the horse; procrusteanly distort, diminish reality without even realising it: they say 'In the beginning'. There was none. That is a non-negotiable rational fact derived from the scientific observation of uniformitarianism.
Nature - including the prevenient laws (including the dimensionless fundamental constants) of physics - must be accepted with head bowed. Just as God does. He can be posited on it, the only warrant being Christ. The only change God brings to nature is that if He exists, it wouldn't exist without Him. And there is no justification whatsoever for believing that He does. But for Jesus.
So if He exists, He's pretty capable. He has grounded infinite being for eternity. Now just grounding nature is mere doodling: art. It's dead. A transient, fractal screen saver. Even if He keeps every frame, every pixel (Why? To keep us 'alive' in a museum?). May be that's the limit of His capability. But Jesus says no. There is transcendence. Nature levels up. To supernature. Of the increase of His capability there will be no end. Because the Ground is responsible. Cares. Empathizes. Actively, not passively. That would be amoral.
Nature autonomously, regardless of ground, comes up with consciousness. The image of God. It comes up with brief meaningless grief, loss, suffering, injustice, death. God in His capability will, MUST, address that in the transcendent. He can't not. For every sparrow.
So whatever and regardless of what He said when He was a human normal bloke is predicated on that. And it shows. That there is no Hell beyond this one.
I don't understand how one has a debate/argument/discussion when the primary source for that topic is considered somehow out of bounds.
Might as well discuss the US government without mentioning the Constitution.
The primary source for all topics is rationality. Hell, the transcendentally unfixable, are not out of bounds as propositions, but they have to be in play by rationality and rational faith: God as He is, must be, as a proposition built on rationality: rationality, then God, then lesser stories.
Rationality is a quality, an adjective ("rational") turned into a noun. It is not a thing-in-itself which can serve as a source for all discussions--How would that even work? "Hi, Joe, let's discuss rationality today." "Oh, sounds very ... rational... to me, yes." "Is there anything else to say about it?" "Well, rationally... not really." "Thanks for the rational discussion."
In terms of discussion, you can get a helluva lot more mileage out of football, or coffee, or the ridiculous thing your cousin-in-law did last weekend. All of those things are objects in the real world about which propositions can be made (truly or falsely) and on which there can differences of opinion. You can even have a rational or irrational discussion of any of these topics. Or a discussion that partakes of both qualities.
Look, to change the analogy, it's as if you insisted that math consisted purely of the signs +, -, x and /. You glorify these signs and their operations, but you absolutely refuse to admit the use of numbers. What is the point of mathematical operations if there are no numbers to perform them on? You cannot add addition to division. You cannot multiply subtraction by addition. If you are going to do any of these things, you need raw material to work with. If we are discussing Christianity and/or Christian ideas, the Bible is part of that raw material.
It is grist for the mill of rationality. Hence my apparent overreach. Rationality is inextricable, perichoretic with the grist for topics, for discourse. Being whimsical, funny, emotional, rhetorical, raw serve our natures in other regards. We can talk about Hell and the other stuff Jesus and His followers made up that way, excluding rationality or making it a subservient sideshow, but, well, I can't. So you can. Sure. I can't. It's one thing.
Comments
Yes, I was also thinking of the famous lines, I do not do the thing that I want, but the thing that I hate, etc., (Romans). I also think that a clear conscience can be a self-deception. This suggests that I cannot deny (or indeed accept), God with full self-knowledge, but maybe this is by the by.
And here we hit one of those "we don't know" things. Can God in fact consign part of his creation to nothingness (that is, annihilation)? We know of no examples of this happening before. What if creation in all its parts is permanent? What if awareness is permanent? What if it is simply self-contradictory in God's nature to annihilate stuff--a logical nonsense--a thing like Escher's staircases?
I don't think we have the data to say, "Oh, sure, God can annihilate."
As for "full guilty knowledge," I was contrasting this to both "those who had no opportunity to know or learn what they were really choosing," and "those who made their choices while mentally ill, intoxicated, demented, in a snit, or otherwise possessing an excuse most human justice would take into account." I was not intending to go into depth psychology, being untrained in that.
I am certain that if God's mercy can find a way out for people, he will do so. His past behavior says so. But I do think there can be a state where a person knowingly, willingly, and compos mentis chooses to enter the state the Bible refers to as "perishing." With malice aforethought, even. Because it can be argued that such a choice is a sin not only against the self but against God and one's neighbors, who love that person and do not want to see him/her perish.
Err, (emphasis mine)...
If there is transcendence, all will be well for all. Atheist Ian M. Banks believed that. But you theist guys can't?
[bangs head on wall] "perish" is NOT equivalent to "be annihilated."
Even in the most ordinary use of the word, "Coronavirus hits US hard; over 200,000 perish" does not mean they simply winked out of existence. It means that their souls and bodies were severed, the souls going (you fill in the blank according to your faith) and the bodies being left for burial, cremation, or other disposal. And even those methods of disposal are not annihilation--something is always "left." That's my point. One could make a case that hell is a state of being "left-over" from the destructive process--a state of having-perished. Which would be horrible.
I am certain that if God's mercy can find a way out for people, he will do so. His past behavior says so. But I do think there can be a state where a person knowingly, willingly, and compos mentis chooses to enter the state the Bible refers to as "perishing." With malice aforethought, even. Because it can be argued that such a choice is a sin not only against the self but against God and one's neighbors, who love that person and do not want to see him/her perish.
I agree with @Martin54 that we are overrating our will, our 'free will'.
And we certainly musn't underrate the ability of God's mercy to find a way!
I believe I was saved regardless of my 'will' in the matter. (a sheep that didn't even realise it was lost)
And I don't agree with @mousethief who, upthread, suggested that God will absolutely not save anyone against their will.
Because I believe we are saved not for privilege but for the sake of the 'not-yet-saved'.
If you're annihilated, in battle for example, have you only perished? What's this soul thing? The end of all natural processes is more entropy. The end of thinking isn't meta-thinking.
I remember hearing a preacher doing one of those guilt-trip sessions and asking “is there anything in your life right now, which is blocking the unconditional love of god?” and thinking “well, if there is, then said love isn’t very fucking unconditional, is it, now?”.
If I could channel my inner Brennan Manning, I'd poetically espouse the true fierce depths of that love, but I’m not the evangelist he was.
That said, if we're talking about eschatological judgment then where do we find it? Not in the Hebrew Bible so much, though we find plenty of temporal judgements, expressed always in an active sense - I, the LORD and Judge will do this. Not so much in Paul's letters either. Some discussion in Revelation, but what it means isn't exactly a matter of general consensus (to put it mildly).
If we're looking for discussion of final judgment, of the point where the clock has struct midnight and chance has slipped through our fingers, then we're mostly looking at the Gospels, especially the parables. And I don't see there the passive God who won't change his usual behaviour, sadly watching as his children reject him, hardening their own hearts.
I see an active God: the landowner who returns to view his land, the shepherd looking for his sheep, the widow looking for her coin. I see the rich man summoning his servants to account for the money he has left them - and actively choosing to tailor his behaviour to his judgment, praising some, condemning and punishing others.
I read of a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son, but the guests wouldn't come and some seized and killed his messengers. "The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city."
So you're putting those forward as a personal belief. Starting with final judgement. Do you know anybody who can give a good account? Or anyone who's martyred anyone?
I can see where the 'final judgment' view comes from. I'm a little less sure where the 'God as passive source of universal grace who we can choose to reject' view comes from, and how that view is harmonised with the Gospel parables.
Help me understand how your third statement here has anything to do with your second (or first). I have never said we were saved for privilege -- indeed I have no idea what that means.
What, Revelation? Because it's in the text. And because posters like @demas will help my thinking in that respect by putting that in the broader context of Scripture rather than just tearing that page out.
@goperryrevs re: "unconditional love", another of Roger Forster's lines that has stuck with me is "unreasonable love".
I'm sure the story of the rich man and Lazarus is just that - a story (some claim it's not a parable because Jesus doesn't explicitly say so, and thus that it's the literal truth).
It's ironic that the main point of a story that's generated so much speculation about the afterlife is, paraphrasing Jesus, to say that we don't need any information about the afterlife to make informed choices in the here and now, and that even if someone were to return from the dead with a full report it would make no difference to those choices anyway.
That said, one thing that strikes me about it with respect to finality that echoes Revelation is that the rich man has no thought of trying to rejoin Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham; rather, miserable as his station is, his request to Abraham, whom he addresses rather than Lazarus (still beneath his consideration, obviously) is that Abraham should send Lazarus on an errand in the other direction. Instead of a plea for mercy comes an insistence on carrying on just as before; "better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven".
In fairness, some people claim that fiction is a form of lying and Jesus wouldn't lie so all the parables are literally true.
Biblicism can't help the discussion at all.
Now that is thinking outside the box!
How the liberal mind struggles to be free! From the barely enlightened minds of those even who DID have one come back from the dead. It made little enough difference for sure, as Revelation shows.
And God's love is not unreasonable. It's not unreasonable to not condemn any for being autonomously, naturally, randomly born and raised, especially if you can transcendently restitute, rectify, reparate to paraphrase Melanie Klein, all wiring and recording in the media.
Or believed them and reacted poorly to their dreams of being/marrying a princess being dashed.
Or came from a family that believed fiction was a form of lying so didn't tell any stories.
I knew someone who believed that exaggeration was lying. I must have told them a million times to stop being so silly.
All these views must be grounded in something. If not in the Bible then what? If it is grounded in the Bible, why doesn't it help the discussion to talk about it?
I guess it's your "knowingly" that I dispute. Well, people know themselves to an extent, but I would say poorly. Of course, this applies to many issues, and on the other hand, it's significant that the law does not accept the argument "I didn't knòw what I was doing". Presumably, God does.
I think our views should be grounded in a bunch of different things, and scripture is just one of them. Wesley had his four of scripture, tradition, reason, experience. That's not a bad start.
To make scripture (or to be precise, only the Protestant canonical 66 books) the only grounding is, as @Martin54 says, biblicism, and skews things. It also often ignores that our 'take' on those scriptures are full of presumption, filtered through whatever paradigm and culture we have. That's normal, but it needs to be recognised, and "the Bible says..." method is naïve in it's approach. Not saying that's what you're promoting, but it happens a lot.
I know they're covered somewhat by Wesley's four, but to his list, I'd add scripture from other faiths, other religious & philosophical writings, contemplation & meditation, and action* as helpful in coming to balanced views.
*It's all very well debating, reading, thinking and talking about this stuff, but doing stuff hones our views as much as reflection does.
They're grounded in rationality. The way God is.
All I'm really saying is, if @Lamb Chopped's view that:
comes from her reading of the Bible (in the light of reason, experience etc), let's have a discussion about that. If it comes from elsewhere, then let's discuss that.
How do you know the way God is?
True - I was more reflecting on your question, "If not grounded in the Bible, then what?"
It's obvious. Don't you?
It comes from a Biblicism. It comes from using reason and explaining experience in the 'light' of the Bible. It puts the cart before the horse. All bad news evangelicals, as in all and every unreformed Reformed I have ever encountered, do that.
Or does it?
Yes - for me it's putting a weight on the shoulders of the Bible that it was never intended to bear. That and assuming that there's a self-consistent single right answer available to any question we ask of the Bible, when in reality it's silent about a lot of things, and contradictory on others.
Er, it don't. But it feels like the vast majority here agree with you. I'm the... disagreeable one. One of the very, very few who is deist but for Jesus and the ineffable workings of the Holy Ghost.
yeah
right
sure.
Guilty. But of what? Not being rational? Or wanting a Gideon's Fleece? An Instance of the Fingerpost? An(other) Excession? Of course I want my feeble, dim, flickering faith to be bolstered, just as it was for the early Church. They couldn't not believe.
And again, category. Making up Hell for whatever reason is one thing. Making up transcendentally unfixable people to populate it included. But a no holds barred, full on, detailed prophecy that was written centuries before it was fulfilled, fulfilled despite being publically available, in plain sight, yet impossible to engineer, that would be... proof. But the only candidate goes fuzzy at one point. And even if it didn't, even if it were proof, it wouldn't validate the stuff we make up.
Might as well discuss the US government without mentioning the Constitution.
Yes. Even though, if true, it raises enormous questions about the nature of God and reality within Him. And no, I don't want to distract from that I want it to be true. That is not irrational. To pure rationalists it's absurd, pathetic I'm sure. There can be no historical fingerpost for them, no matter that the fingerprint has a 20 point match. My mind should not be open to the proposition of a miracle. So yeah, I'm not a true rationalist. Except I must subject my absurd desires to nothing but rationality. Which is why the print is only a 19 point match. Within 3 sigmas. Which is absurdly close. I need to see what the Dawkinsistas say. It fascinates me that no one here will see even that either.
So no, I'm not putting anything Biblical above, prior to, as an exception to, rationality, weak as I am in my desire; I want to be away with the fairies, but there are no confirmed sightings at the bottom of my garden.
The primary source for all topics is rationality. Hell, the transcendentally unfixable, are not out of bounds as propositions, but they have to be in play by rationality and rational faith: God as He is, must be, as a proposition built on rationality: rationality, then God, then lesser stories.
No, you didn't. Privilege is perhaps not the best word (and is mainly used perjoratively now eg 'White privilege').
What I was trying to say was that being saved (and I know that is multifaceted to say the least) can sometimes appear like having made the best decision with eternal life now assured etc etc.
But (and I have been impressed by Lesslie Newbiggin in this) being saved should be seen as 'gift-bearing', set aside for a purpose - the purpose being to bestow the Blessing of Salvation on all.
And this comes primarly not by 'getting one's theology right' but by the witness (fallible, we know) of the community of believers to God's Shalom through Jesus.
This means that those who will be saved will not in any way being limited to those whom it might seem are the 'true believers'.
This means that we can accept that God can, and will, save people even against their will according to His will. (Saul on the road to Damascus is an example?)
Nope.
It was common in the past to argue that we could see some of God in the natural world. The pagan philosophers were praised for their insight as a base on which God's self-revelation can be approached. Paul at Lystra and Athens for example: in modern terms, "Observation and reason have got you a long way. But let me give you some more data to work with".
I don't know if I'm that optimistic. I'm more Barth than Calvin in that respect. My rational, reasoned observations of the natural world don't lead me to hell. But they don't lead me to heaven either, or God. They certainly don't lead me within a million miles of the Trinity which you criticised the old American Universalists for not believing in a couple of pages back. They basically lead me to agnosticism in the formal sense - if a god exists we can know nothing about him, her, them.
But I could be wrong. If God can be grounded in rationality that would be great news, because you should be able to rationally set out the reasoning for your views so I can follow the steps you've taken. And if that shows that there is no hell, then even better.
Rationality is a quality, an adjective ("rational") turned into a noun. It is not a thing-in-itself which can serve as a source for all discussions--How would that even work? "Hi, Joe, let's discuss rationality today." "Oh, sounds very ... rational... to me, yes." "Is there anything else to say about it?" "Well, rationally... not really." "Thanks for the rational discussion."
In terms of discussion, you can get a helluva lot more mileage out of football, or coffee, or the ridiculous thing your cousin-in-law did last weekend. All of those things are objects in the real world about which propositions can be made (truly or falsely) and on which there can differences of opinion. You can even have a rational or irrational discussion of any of these topics. Or a discussion that partakes of both qualities.
Look, to change the analogy, it's as if you insisted that math consisted purely of the signs +, -, x and /. You glorify these signs and their operations, but you absolutely refuse to admit the use of numbers. What is the point of mathematical operations if there are no numbers to perform them on? You cannot add addition to division. You cannot multiply subtraction by addition. If you are going to do any of these things, you need raw material to work with. If we are discussing Christianity and/or Christian ideas, the Bible is part of that raw material.
God, the transcendent can not be derived, extrapolated from nature, which lacks nothing. All other attempts to fit God to nature end up reversing the polarity, putting the Cart before the horse; procrusteanly distort, diminish reality without even realising it: they say 'In the beginning'. There was none. That is a non-negotiable rational fact derived from the scientific observation of uniformitarianism.
Nature - including the prevenient laws (including the dimensionless fundamental constants) of physics - must be accepted with head bowed. Just as God does. He can be posited on it, the only warrant being Christ. The only change God brings to nature is that if He exists, it wouldn't exist without Him. And there is no justification whatsoever for believing that He does. But for Jesus.
So if He exists, He's pretty capable. He has grounded infinite being for eternity. Now just grounding nature is mere doodling: art. It's dead. A transient, fractal screen saver. Even if He keeps every frame, every pixel (Why? To keep us 'alive' in a museum?). May be that's the limit of His capability. But Jesus says no. There is transcendence. Nature levels up. To supernature. Of the increase of His capability there will be no end. Because the Ground is responsible. Cares. Empathizes. Actively, not passively. That would be amoral.
Nature autonomously, regardless of ground, comes up with consciousness. The image of God. It comes up with brief meaningless grief, loss, suffering, injustice, death. God in His capability will, MUST, address that in the transcendent. He can't not. For every sparrow.
So whatever and regardless of what He said when He was a human normal bloke is predicated on that. And it shows. That there is no Hell beyond this one.
Jesus saves.
It is grist for the mill of rationality. Hence my apparent overreach. Rationality is inextricable, perichoretic with the grist for topics, for discourse. Being whimsical, funny, emotional, rhetorical, raw serve our natures in other regards. We can talk about Hell and the other stuff Jesus and His followers made up that way, excluding rationality or making it a subservient sideshow, but, well, I can't. So you can. Sure. I can't. It's one thing.