God, the transcendent can not be derived, extrapolated from nature, which lacks nothing.
OK, so we need God to reveal himself to us somehow if we are to know anything about him.
And there is no justification whatsoever for believing that He [exists]. But for Jesus.
OK, so Jesus is God's self-revelation.
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.
Jesus saves what? Who? How?
But more to the point, you accused me of useless biblicism for quoting parables from the Gospel. And yet your entire knowledge of God is predicated on Jesus, and the only knowledge of Jesus we have is in the Bible, and the most direct reporting of Jesus' views is in those very parables. You even quote one of his sayings above about sparrows.
God, the transcendent can not be derived, extrapolated from nature, which lacks nothing.
OK, so we need God to reveal himself to us somehow if we are to know anything about him.
And there is no justification whatsoever for believing that He [exists]. But for Jesus.
OK, so Jesus is God's self-revelation.
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.
Jesus saves what? Who? How?
But more to the point, you accused me of useless biblicism for quoting parables from the Gospel. And yet your entire knowledge of God is predicated on Jesus, and the only knowledge of Jesus we have is in the Bible, and the most direct reporting of Jesus' views is in those very parables. You even quote one of his sayings above about sparrows.
Guilty. And?
Jesus does what He says on the tin. Saves all of humanity from death and brings them on from having been only physically human in the transcendent. He's capable that way. He'll walk and talk with us in paradise where we can socialize and engage with those who've gone before and come after. All the kinks will be talked out. All the lacks, the losses. Nobody stays all shrivelled and bitter and twisted and angry and raving and demented or whatever state they ended up in as just meat. Lots of lemonade will be made from those lemons. In lone and group therapy. In paradise. In our infinitesimal corner of heaven. Then we get to meet the neighbours and their Incarnations.
And again, the knowledge we have of Jesus is not only proposed in the Bible, fossilized for all time like the damned, but in our subsequent rational discussion of that.
This link takes you to a BBC story about a predatory sex offender who abused lots of vulnerable children in a residential school he ran, and who was never convicted despite three attempts. (That was a trigger warning, in case you were wondering).
For all sorts of reasons, if there is an afterlife I sincerely hope that man has to confront the injustices which he instigated on earth which, from our perspective, have yet to catch up with him.
If there is no God and no afterlife, well, that's the big Shit Happens.
This link takes you to a BBC story about a predatory sex offender who abused lots of vulnerable children in a residential school he ran, and who was never convicted despite three attempts. (That was a trigger warning, in case you were wondering).
For all sorts of reasons, if there is an afterlife I sincerely hope that man has to confront the injustices which he instigated on earth which, from our perspective, have yet to catch up with him.
But why is eternal conscious torment required for that?
This link takes you to a BBC story about a predatory sex offender who abused lots of vulnerable children in a residential school he ran, and who was never convicted despite three attempts. (That was a trigger warning, in case you were wondering).
For all sorts of reasons, if there is an afterlife I sincerely hope that man has to confront the injustices which he instigated on earth which, from our perspective, have yet to catch up with him.
But why is eternal conscious torment required for that?
It's not, of course. The form of universalism being advocated on this thread however does meet that requirement.
Fair question. Many have talked of Purgatory (or even Hell) as remedial, not punitive. But being stripped of one's prejudices and hates can feel a lot like punishment, I think.
Having been involved in ex-offender rehab for a long time, I should have more of a view on these questions than I do! How about
a) To discourage future potential offenders directly, in view of the punishment they can expect.
b) To provide a venue for the reflective contemplation of crimes and, hopefully, penitence on the part of the offender.
c) To assuage outrage on the part of the offended-against (victim, and society) and to curtail the 'f*ck it, if he can get away with it, so will I' factor.
So far as I know a) is discounted by most criminals being too thick, impulsive or desperate for it to work (that's broadly true of those I meet, who were caught) or too clever to expect to get caught. b) might work if prisons were run more effectively with that in mind. And c) is probably the main point of the current criminal justice system.
Oh - there's d) - giving the offended a break from the pain-in-the-arse behaviour of the offender. This is a real thing in some bits of some inner-cities I've lived in.
This link takes you to a BBC story about a predatory sex offender who abused lots of vulnerable children in a residential school he ran, and who was never convicted despite three attempts. (That was a trigger warning, in case you were wondering).
For all sorts of reasons, if there is an afterlife I sincerely hope that man has to confront the injustices which he instigated on earth which, from our perspective, have yet to catch up with him.
If there is no God and no afterlife, well, that's the big Shit Happens.
Every idle word, of a hundred years. Wicked old bastard.
Having been involved in ex-offender rehab for a long time, I should have more of a view on these questions than I do! How about
a) To discourage future potential offenders directly, in view of the punishment they can expect.
b) To provide a venue for the reflective contemplation of crimes and, hopefully, penitence on the part of the offender.
c) To assuage outrage on the part of the offended-against (victim, and society) and to curtail the 'f*ck it, if he can get away with it, so will I' factor.
So far as I know a) is discounted by most criminals being too thick, impulsive or desperate for it to work (that's broadly true of those I meet, who were caught) or too clever to expect to get caught. b) might work if prisons were run more effectively with that in mind. And c) is probably the main point of the current criminal justice system.
Oh - there's d) - giving the offended a break from the pain-in-the-arse behaviour of the offender. This is a real thing in some bits of some inner-cities I've lived in.
The problem with (c) is that for justice to work, you don't have to punish the actual wrongdoer, just someone who seems vaguely like what the wrongdoer might be like. This has resulted in a lot of black men being killed by the state.
Yes, I can see that. I guess, since that bothers you and me, we must believe that justice goes deeper than that kind of utilitarianism. That's not snark.
Good question. Retributive justice is basically all about making offenders suffer as much as possible. Restorative justice includes the need for a sense of shame on the part of offenders, but is ultimately about healing the community.
In my experience, one frequent problem with retributive criminal justice is that offenders, especially delinquents, accept the system. They accept that doing the time is a normal risk of doing the crime, may well eschew conditional release in favour of being free of all obligations at the end of their sentence, and pick up right where they left off on release. They feel they have 'paid their debt to society' and can start racking up another one straight away (in the hope that it may not be called in).
Similarly, while the need to convince judges of the benefits of restorative justice is a major hurdle, the need to convince offenders is equally great, because they often have no headspace for the idea of being 'restored' (i.e. being any different from how they've been) and no enthusiasm for the idea beyond vague fantasies.
I think there's a lot of social collusion in retributive justice. Perhaps there's a lot of social collusion in maintaining the popular concept of Hell.
Isn't this a tangent? None of our retributive concepts apply to the transcendent, As was said upstream, the closest it will get is the torment of having ones life and mind deconstructed, regardless of the fact that it will be done as gently as possible. Whatever is therapeutically necessary, will be done. With epicyclic orbits of reconstruction. Start small, end big I suppose. Unless it's all magicked. Nah. Sanctification is post mortem, in glorification. For all. Including for the wicked old centenarian bastard above. And Hitler. And me. And you.
Isn't this a tangent? None of our retributive concepts apply to the transcendent
Perhaps not, but I think our sense of the transcendant informs our retributive concepts a lot more than one might think. When you think about it, there's not much rationality in the idea that x days' deprivation of liberty somehow atones for offence y, and yet that is almost universally assumed as a given. It took me years to notice it wasn't rational.
When you start really getting into the world of criminal justice, there is a lot of myth and archetype attached.
Religious symbolism looms large in penitentiary administration (as it is still known here), and prison is closely tied to the idea of the scapegoat: it's an attempt to put all the evil in one place in the hope that society will be purified as a result, and to tell ourselves that since the evil is in there, it isn't in each of us.
And for those who've never been there, prison itself is the subject of almost as much, and similar, collective fantasy as Hell.
Isn't this a tangent? None of our retributive concepts apply to the transcendent
Perhaps not, but I think our sense of the transcendant informs our retributive concepts a lot more than one might think. When you think about it, there's not much rationality in the idea that x days' deprivation of liberty somehow atones for offence y, and yet that is almost universally assumed as a given. It took me years to notice it wasn't rational.
When you start really getting into the world of criminal justice, there is a lot of myth and archetype attached.
Religious symbolism looms large in penitentiary administration (as it is still known here), and prison is closely tied to the idea of the scapegoat: it's an attempt to put all the evil in one place in the hope that society will be purified as a result, and to tell ourselves that since the evil is in there, it isn't in each of us.
And for those who've never been there, prison itself is the subject of almost as much, and similar, collective fantasy as Hell.
Excellent. I know the intent of penitentiary. And yeah, I've been inside a couple. Fucking awful places. Hellishly purgatorial at best. I can see how we all - and that means All - project all our inadequate humanity on to the afterlife, but the actual afterlife doesn't project on us to evoke that.
And isn't the idea of divine justice a projection from the human?
Hopefully, for "people of the Book" it will include a healthy dollop of insight from whatever passages in the Bible pertain. But yes there's a heck of a lot of extrapolation. Which is why a person's vision of God's justice is so very similar to their vision of human justice, and whether that's retributive and punitive, or restorative. You will also see this in their child-raising philosophy, and even their attitude toward abortion (she must be punished for getting pregnant by being forced to carry it to term -- that is NOT something I made up).
But then you have the problem of people who do NOT see all those things as mirror images of each other. What will you do with me, a person who does NOT see pregnancy (under any circumstances) as a thing to be punished, and who would in fact take the pregnant person into the home and all that stuff, and yet I do think it possible for a person to go to hell? Who does NOT chant "lock him/her/it up!" and wants prison reform, and is nevertheless not entirely ready to say no prison ought to exist? There can be different stances on all these things.
But then you have the problem of people who do NOT see all those things as mirror images of each other. What will you do with me, a person who does NOT see pregnancy (under any circumstances) as a thing to be punished, and who would in fact take the pregnant person into the home and all that stuff, and yet I do think it possible for a person to go to hell? Who does NOT chant "lock him/her/it up!" and wants prison reform, and is nevertheless not entirely ready to say no prison ought to exist? There can be different stances on all these things.
I understood you to be placing people into different boxes--the ones who believe in the traditional hell, prefer retributive justice, treat children harshly, and behave like scum to pregnant women who don't want to be pregnant, for whatever reason--and their opposites. I cannot see myself in either of the two camps, and was trying to say so.
I understood you to be placing people into different boxes--the ones who believe in the traditional hell, prefer retributive justice, treat children harshly, and behave like scum to pregnant women who don't want to be pregnant, for whatever reason--and their opposites. I cannot see myself in either of the two camps, and was trying to say so.
I think it's more of a circular process. My understanding of Scripture informs my worldview, but my ongoing experience of the world also informs my understanding of Scripture.
My views on hell have been affected by my experience of what retributive justice is actually like, and by being confronted with the some of the realities involved in the ethical issues. And my main difficulty is not with the concept of hell so much as with the question of whether it's a permanent experience - a question that all but the most hardline fundamentalist confessions of faith seem to leave unanswered.
I think it's more of a circular process. My understanding of Scripture informs my worldview, but my ongoing experience of the world also informs my understanding of Scripture.
My views on hell have been affected by my experience of what retributive justice is actually like, and by being confronted with the some of the realities involved in the ethical issues. And my main difficulty is not with the concept of hell so much as with the question of whether it's a permanent experience - a question that all but the most hardline fundamentalist confessions of faith seem to leave unanswered.
Surely they all answer it? 99% of my 15 year experience in Anglicanism and other 'Reformed' is of the damnationism that dare not speak its name and cannot be spoken about, cannot be questioned.
I don't understand most of that, I'm sorry. Paul on the road to Damascus could have told Jesus to fuck off. He didn't. He made a choice.
I'm not sure he was in a position to make a rational choice. He had just been blinded by a thunderbolt or something. If he'd been in a position to read the small print (ie 'you will be in a persecuted Jewish sect and likely get killed') he might well have said FO. But he might have been convinced that it was all worth it to be a mega missionary. But the scenario clearly wasn't like that. So I think he was just overwhelmed by God and had to go with it.
So if God can save whom H/She will, then who's to say any will be lost?
So, 43 years late, I finally catch up with New Perspective on Paul, as revived by Sander's Paul and Palestinian Judaism, re-revived by Steve Chalk's Lost Message of Paul 18 months ago. I've seen passing mention of NPoP here, Tom Wright is prolific on it I understand. Maybe I should give him a look after all. I had him down as a looking down the wrong end of the telescope with a desperate liberal eye sort of guy. As I did Steve until I flipped. Not on this, but on - non-existent - Pauline homophobia.
Anyway, that's the proof that none can be lost. Pistis Christou.
Comments
OK, so we need God to reveal himself to us somehow if we are to know anything about him.
OK, so Jesus is God's self-revelation.
Jesus saves what? Who? How?
But more to the point, you accused me of useless biblicism for quoting parables from the Gospel. And yet your entire knowledge of God is predicated on Jesus, and the only knowledge of Jesus we have is in the Bible, and the most direct reporting of Jesus' views is in those very parables. You even quote one of his sayings above about sparrows.
Guilty. And?
Jesus does what He says on the tin. Saves all of humanity from death and brings them on from having been only physically human in the transcendent. He's capable that way. He'll walk and talk with us in paradise where we can socialize and engage with those who've gone before and come after. All the kinks will be talked out. All the lacks, the losses. Nobody stays all shrivelled and bitter and twisted and angry and raving and demented or whatever state they ended up in as just meat. Lots of lemonade will be made from those lemons. In lone and group therapy. In paradise. In our infinitesimal corner of heaven. Then we get to meet the neighbours and their Incarnations.
And again, the knowledge we have of Jesus is not only proposed in the Bible, fossilized for all time like the damned, but in our subsequent rational discussion of that.
For all sorts of reasons, if there is an afterlife I sincerely hope that man has to confront the injustices which he instigated on earth which, from our perspective, have yet to catch up with him.
If there is no God and no afterlife, well, that's the big Shit Happens.
But why is eternal conscious torment required for that?
It's not, of course. The form of universalism being advocated on this thread however does meet that requirement.
Fair question. Many have talked of Purgatory (or even Hell) as remedial, not punitive. But being stripped of one's prejudices and hates can feel a lot like punishment, I think.
Is justice a thing?
Does justice require punishment? If so, why?
a) To discourage future potential offenders directly, in view of the punishment they can expect.
b) To provide a venue for the reflective contemplation of crimes and, hopefully, penitence on the part of the offender.
c) To assuage outrage on the part of the offended-against (victim, and society) and to curtail the 'f*ck it, if he can get away with it, so will I' factor.
So far as I know a) is discounted by most criminals being too thick, impulsive or desperate for it to work (that's broadly true of those I meet, who were caught) or too clever to expect to get caught. b) might work if prisons were run more effectively with that in mind. And c) is probably the main point of the current criminal justice system.
Oh - there's d) - giving the offended a break from the pain-in-the-arse behaviour of the offender. This is a real thing in some bits of some inner-cities I've lived in.
Every idle word, of a hundred years. Wicked old bastard.
The problem with (c) is that for justice to work, you don't have to punish the actual wrongdoer, just someone who seems vaguely like what the wrongdoer might be like. This has resulted in a lot of black men being killed by the state.
Good question. Retributive justice is basically all about making offenders suffer as much as possible. Restorative justice includes the need for a sense of shame on the part of offenders, but is ultimately about healing the community.
In my experience, one frequent problem with retributive criminal justice is that offenders, especially delinquents, accept the system. They accept that doing the time is a normal risk of doing the crime, may well eschew conditional release in favour of being free of all obligations at the end of their sentence, and pick up right where they left off on release. They feel they have 'paid their debt to society' and can start racking up another one straight away (in the hope that it may not be called in).
Similarly, while the need to convince judges of the benefits of restorative justice is a major hurdle, the need to convince offenders is equally great, because they often have no headspace for the idea of being 'restored' (i.e. being any different from how they've been) and no enthusiasm for the idea beyond vague fantasies.
I think there's a lot of social collusion in retributive justice. Perhaps there's a lot of social collusion in maintaining the popular concept of Hell.
Perhaps not, but I think our sense of the transcendant informs our retributive concepts a lot more than one might think. When you think about it, there's not much rationality in the idea that x days' deprivation of liberty somehow atones for offence y, and yet that is almost universally assumed as a given. It took me years to notice it wasn't rational.
When you start really getting into the world of criminal justice, there is a lot of myth and archetype attached.
Religious symbolism looms large in penitentiary administration (as it is still known here), and prison is closely tied to the idea of the scapegoat: it's an attempt to put all the evil in one place in the hope that society will be purified as a result, and to tell ourselves that since the evil is in there, it isn't in each of us.
And for those who've never been there, prison itself is the subject of almost as much, and similar, collective fantasy as Hell.
Excellent. I know the intent of penitentiary. And yeah, I've been inside a couple. Fucking awful places. Hellishly purgatorial at best. I can see how we all - and that means All - project all our inadequate humanity on to the afterlife, but the actual afterlife doesn't project on us to evoke that.
Hopefully, for "people of the Book" it will include a healthy dollop of insight from whatever passages in the Bible pertain. But yes there's a heck of a lot of extrapolation. Which is why a person's vision of God's justice is so very similar to their vision of human justice, and whether that's retributive and punitive, or restorative. You will also see this in their child-raising philosophy, and even their attitude toward abortion (she must be punished for getting pregnant by being forced to carry it to term -- that is NOT something I made up).
Not sure what you're driving at here.
Oh, okay. I'm sure there are lots more boxes.
My views on hell have been affected by my experience of what retributive justice is actually like, and by being confronted with the some of the realities involved in the ethical issues. And my main difficulty is not with the concept of hell so much as with the question of whether it's a permanent experience - a question that all but the most hardline fundamentalist confessions of faith seem to leave unanswered.
Surely they all answer it? 99% of my 15 year experience in Anglicanism and other 'Reformed' is of the damnationism that dare not speak its name and cannot be spoken about, cannot be questioned.
Rationally we do.
I'm not sure he was in a position to make a rational choice. He had just been blinded by a thunderbolt or something. If he'd been in a position to read the small print (ie 'you will be in a persecuted Jewish sect and likely get killed') he might well have said FO. But he might have been convinced that it was all worth it to be a mega missionary. But the scenario clearly wasn't like that. So I think he was just overwhelmed by God and had to go with it.
So if God can save whom H/She will, then who's to say any will be lost?
Anyway, that's the proof that none can be lost. Pistis Christou.