As for universalism, I like the idea that as we are all a mix of good and evil, the good will prevail in the afterlife with the bad being somehow blocked, but what about people who ‘sell their souls to the devil’?
I kind of like this idea too. It’s sanctification, isn’t it? Whatever is not compatible with a new creation is burned away. It makes me think of some words from the Exsultet about the transformation inaugurated by Christ’s passion and resurrection:
[…] The sanctifying power of this night
dispels wickedness, washes faults away,
restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to mourners,
drives out hatred, fosters concord, and brings down the mighty.
[…]
If a whole life is given over to wickedness, hate and so on, then surely nothing is left after the sanctification. The ‘sanctifying fire’ is eternal purely in the sense of being final and absolute. What is burned away is burned away for ever.
I'm sure you all know this but in case anyone doesn't: there's the example of Eastern State Penitentiary.
In brief, the Quakers thought that solitary confinement was a novel and forward thinking reform of prisons. The offender could avoid torture and pain and bad treatment and instead be given space with their own minds to reflect on where their lives had gone wrong and hopefully experience the workings of the Inner Light to affect change within themselves.
Of course this is fatally flawed thinking and solitary confinement today is considered one of the worst kinds of punishment.
I'm sure you all know this but in case anyone doesn't: there's the example of Eastern State Penitentiary.
In brief, the Quakers thought that solitary confinement was a novel and forward thinking reform of prisons. The offender could avoid torture and pain and bad treatment and instead be given space with their own minds to reflect on where their lives had gone wrong and hopefully experience the workings of the Inner Light to affect change within themselves.
Of course this is fatally flawed thinking and solitary confinement today is considered one of the worst kinds of punishment.
As for universalism, I like the idea that as we are all a mix of good and evil, the good will prevail in the afterlife with the bad being somehow blocked, but what about people who ‘sell their souls to the devil’?
I kind of like this idea too. It’s sanctification, isn’t it? Whatever is not compatible with a new creation is burned away. It makes me think of some words from the Exsultet about the transformation inaugurated by Christ’s passion and resurrection:
[…] The sanctifying power of this night
dispels wickedness, washes faults away,
restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to mourners,
drives out hatred, fosters concord, and brings down the mighty.
[…]
If a whole life is given over to wickedness, hate and so on, then surely nothing is left after the sanctification. The ‘sanctifying fire’ is eternal purely in the sense of being final and absolute. What is burned away is burned away for ever.
You need to write better, more Rogerian religious fiction.
I'm sure you all know this but in case anyone doesn't: there's the example of Eastern State Penitentiary.
In brief, the Quakers thought that solitary confinement was a novel and forward thinking reform of prisons. The offender could avoid torture and pain and bad treatment and instead be given space with their own minds to reflect on where their lives had gone wrong and hopefully experience the workings of the Inner Light to affect change within themselves.
Of course this is fatally flawed thinking and solitary confinement today is considered one of the worst kinds of punishment.
Oh dear! How misguided we can be, even with the very best of intentions.
Indeed - but while the article debates some misguided spiritual ideas, I note that it also argues against the ideas being inspired by Quaker principles:
“…While some have argued that the Pennsylvania system was Quaker-inspired, there is little evidence to support this; the organization that promoted Eastern State's creation, the Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons (today's Pennsylvania Prison Society) was less than half Quaker, and was led for nearly fifty years by Philadelphia's Anglican bishop, William White…”
Just to add to the point on prisons - Quakers actually have a long tradition of humane prison / punishment reform as you can read in this summary article.
I am not a Quaker, in case you were wondering (but I see much to admire).
Getting back to the main point, I also wondered whether since Quakers see ‘that of God in everyone’ that might be a (reason for) a kind of de facto universalism. If God is already here with every person, then surely something of that person endures (even if just the memories…?)
Well, that is a line of speculation that is properly for Quakers to comment on, I guess.
Because it's there but for fortune isn't it? Time and chance. Go you or I. No one's fault is it? That makes a person humanly irredeemable. No one's to blame. Unless there's a failed Father figure? Who can't fix it.
Maybe we are looking at this wrong. Universalism is not about good over evil, but more about Love Wins (a short book by Rob Bell, btw).
I got the tat for my 60th. Blew him away. He took its picture. We are looking at it constipated. As in full of. Text bound. Worse than eggs. Would Love be as incompetent. as evil, as God? In literal Christ?
I'm sure you all know this but in case anyone doesn't: there's the example of Eastern State Penitentiary.
In brief, the Quakers thought that solitary confinement was a novel and forward thinking reform of prisons. The offender could avoid torture and pain and bad treatment and instead be given space with their own minds to reflect on where their lives had gone wrong and hopefully experience the workings of the Inner Light to affect change within themselves.
Of course this is fatally flawed thinking and solitary confinement today is considered one of the worst kinds of punishment.
Oh dear! How misguided we can be, even with the very best of intentions.
Indeed - but while the article debates some misguided spiritual ideas, I note that it also argues against the ideas being inspired by Quaker principles:
“…While some have argued that the Pennsylvania system was Quaker-inspired, there is little evidence to support this; the organization that promoted Eastern State's creation, the Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons (today's Pennsylvania Prison Society) was less than half Quaker, and was led for nearly fifty years by Philadelphia's Anglican bishop, William White…”
I saw that. But then modern Quakers have owned their own history, which is good enough for me.
I'm sure you all know this but in case anyone doesn't: there's the example of Eastern State Penitentiary.
In brief, the Quakers thought that solitary confinement was a novel and forward thinking reform of prisons. The offender could avoid torture and pain and bad treatment and instead be given space with their own minds to reflect on where their lives had gone wrong and hopefully experience the workings of the Inner Light to affect change within themselves.
Of course this is fatally flawed thinking and solitary confinement today is considered one of the worst kinds of punishment.
Oh dear! How misguided we can be, even with the very best of intentions.
Indeed - but while the article debates some misguided spiritual ideas, I note that it also argues against the ideas being inspired by Quaker principles:
“…While some have argued that the Pennsylvania system was Quaker-inspired, there is little evidence to support this; the organization that promoted Eastern State's creation, the Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons (today's Pennsylvania Prison Society) was less than half Quaker, and was led for nearly fifty years by Philadelphia's Anglican bishop, William White…”
I saw that. But then modern Quakers have owned their own history, which is good enough for me.
“Quakers are often credited with inventing solitary confinement. Actually, we borrowed the idea from other faith leaders in the 18th century, who promoted it as an alternative to the widespread use of the death penalty and an improvement over other punishments which maimed, debased and otherwise utterly humiliated accused criminals.”
[…]
“Quakers moved away from solitary confinement within a few years of the opening of the Eastern Pennsylvania Penitentiary. By 1838, leading Quaker Elizabeth Fry was already speaking out against solitary confinement. She lobbied the British House of Commons and she traveled in England and Scotland to meet with policy makers and public audiences, to call out the dangers of this practice. Even before the fields of psychology and neurology developed, she pointed to the deprivations inherent in being completely alone for so long a time, and called specific attention to suicides that she learned of in her visits to women’s prisons.”
So, as with the other article: solitary confinement was not invented by the Quakers, and their adoption of it fits in with a wider ranging and progressive humanitarian approach that saw the dangers of solitary confinement earlier than others.
(Hosts: sorry for the tangent - I’ll leave it there)
I'm sorry, I didn't say they invented it. I use the example of Eastern Pen because that was that something once seen as progressive and is now correctly seen as deeply damaging. I mentioned Quakers for the very reason that they have a long history of prison reform. A history which they own in totality.
This is relevant because the discussion was about punishment and hurt; in this case there was something which was supposed to be uplifting that turned out to be deeply damaging.
You see you can never get rid of loss, pain, guilt, shame, repression, (self) punishment, hate which start universally before we can possibly remember, but under Rogerian care they become the grit in the oyster. Of created love. Transcendence in uncreated Love would build on that, no matter how torn and stunted and maladapted the oyster to start.
This is all getting away from seeing things from the perspective of the victims of traumatic crimes, and understanding punishment as justice - perpetrators getting their just deserts.
Even without considering crimes against humanity: Just looking at the Post Office "scandal" here in the UK (for example), what I see is that what victims want is fair (and prompt) compensation for their financial loss and, because nothing can compensate for those who have lost everything, for those whose lives cannot be made whole, justice. That the people who caused the pain, the misery, the trauma should "pay" a penalty. And this is the case with many such "scandals".
I'm not saying that this is equivalent to torture, mass killing and other horrors that for many of us are distant events that we read about and watch but, that if we can't get a handle on injustices that we stand some chance of being able to comprehend, we are unlikely to be able to make the leap to those injustices that seem way beyond our experience or understanding.
(I'm also not trying to minimise the trauma of the victims of abuse, but trying to work out the kind of discussion that it's possible to have here.)
Why do we extrapolate from the entirely human story of crime and punishment to the transcendent? Although we appear to be looping back here. Why does Love have to continue with our monkey morality in the afterlife? Unless They are incompetent? To say the least. If not downright evil.
This is all getting away from seeing things from the perspective of the victims of traumatic crimes, and understanding punishment as justice - perpetrators getting their just deserts.
But the main "crime" is not believing in Jesus (or not accepting him, or however one's particular flavor of Christianity puts it) - nothing on a par with committing atrocities.
Maybe we are looking at this wrong. Universalism is not about good over evil, but more about Love Wins (a short book by Rob Bell, btw).
Well, there is something to be said for that. Alongside an inaugurated eschatology maybe… heaven is already here (with us) now?
I would say there is an now/not yet dichotomy to realized eschatology. The kingdom is indeed present through the lives of the believers (and can I say non believers?), but it is not completely here. It is still in the process of coming. Once slavery was legal. Now, it is mostly underground. Human trafficking still exists, We need to keep continue to eliminate it.
According to Lutheran theology, there is no such thing as free choice when it comes to salvation, or belief. As Luther writes in his explanation of the Third Article of the Apostle's Creed:
I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength (ie free will) believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.
You might also want to read this short article on Luther's Bondage of the Will.. Its point is while we might choose to eat something like a Big Mac, it is not the same as choosing God.
I should have picked this up earlier, I'm sorry.
In point of fact, the Lutheran position is the utterly illogical (but true, I think!) viewpoint that we have free will, but it is warped. An analogy would be the shopping cart/trolley that has a wheel bent so it's always heading off in the wrong direction, and you have to drag it by main force back in the direction you want to go.
When it comes to God, this means that we are not free to choose him (in the sense of choosing our salvation or what have you; we are certainly free to do any number of smaller single actions like taking out the trash, etc. that = good deeds, humanly speaking). We are free to reject God, and we do. We are not able to rise to the heights of choosing him (and staying that way).
But "I accepted Jesus, so I'm making a choice there!" Um, no, we would call that the Holy Spirit's work and his credit, too.
This of course means that everybody yells, "So that means it's God fault I'm not a believer!" Um, no. See "free to reject."
"But that's not logical!" Right you are. It's still the best match to observable human behavior and psychology I've found. Others will of course disagree with me.
According to Lutheran theology, there is no such thing as free choice when it comes to salvation, or belief. As Luther writes in his explanation of the Third Article of the Apostle's Creed:
I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength (ie free will) believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.
You might also want to read this short article on Luther's Bondage of the Will.. Its point is while we might choose to eat something like a Big Mac, it is not the same as choosing God.
I should have picked this up earlier, I'm sorry.
In point of fact, the Lutheran position is the utterly illogical (but true, I think!) viewpoint that we have free will, but it is warped. An analogy would be the shopping cart/trolley that has a wheel bent so it's always heading off in the wrong direction, and you have to drag it by main force back in the direction you want to go.
When it comes to God, this means that we are not free to choose him (in the sense of choosing our salvation or what have you; we are certainly free to do any number of smaller single actions like taking out the trash, etc. that = good deeds, humanly speaking). We are free to reject God, and we do. We are not able to rise to the heights of choosing him (and staying that way).
But "I accepted Jesus, so I'm making a choice there!" Um, no, we would call that the Holy Spirit's work and his credit, too.
This of course means that everybody yells, "So that means it's God fault I'm not a believer!" Um, no. See "free to reject."
"But that's not logical!" Right you are. It's still the best match to observable human behavior and psychology I've found. Others will of course disagree with me.
Can you clarify this a bit more, please. On first reading I thought you were talking about 'salvation' which fits the topic of Universalism (in the sense of 'all being saved'). So this appears to be saying that one can't choose the deity (the deity chooses you? I'm not sure if the correct wording) but one can reject the deity (and presumably salvation).
But reading again, maybe I'm misunderstanding the language: I've heard people saying things which sound as if they believe that there's a 'choice to follow God' or not at any given moment. Which might fit with you saying that a choice to eat a particular burger isn't a for/against God thing.
I'm not explaining this well because I don't really understand the point you are making.
This is all getting away from seeing things from the perspective of the victims of traumatic crimes, and understanding punishment as justice - perpetrators getting their just deserts.
But the main "crime" is not believing in Jesus (or not accepting him, or however one's particular flavor of Christianity puts it) - nothing on a par with committing atrocities.
Oh I believe and accept Him all right, as the greatest flowering, confluence, of human consciousness up to that time, the giant on whose shoulders two millennia of civilization stands. Well He's in there somewhere. But I can neither believe nor accept that He was divine, especially as civilization did go with the literal loveless interpretation of what He said wherever it could. So I'm damned with
those who went up the five chimneys of Auschwitz. Whilst those who sent them there and crossed themselves are fine.
This is all getting away from seeing things from the perspective of the victims of traumatic crimes, and understanding punishment as justice - perpetrators getting their just deserts.
But the main "crime" is not believing in Jesus (or not accepting him, or however one's particular flavor of Christianity puts it) - nothing on a par with committing atrocities.
I'd say crime № 1, in that sense, is believing in God but choosing to put oneself first. Which in turn leads to perpetrating acts against His will. I don't think this makes much difference to your argument, though.
This is all getting away from seeing things from the perspective of the victims of traumatic crimes, and understanding punishment as justice - perpetrators getting their just deserts.
But the main "crime" is not believing in Jesus (or not accepting him, or however one's particular flavor of Christianity puts it) - nothing on a par with committing atrocities.
I'd say crime № 1, in that sense, is believing in God but choosing to put oneself first. Which in turn leads to perpetrating acts against His will. I don't think this makes much difference to your argument, though.
This I don't understand.
From the outside I would think the worse crime would be - for example - murdering in the name of your deity.
Are you seriously saying that being selfish is worse than doing a really bad thing?
This is all getting away from seeing things from the perspective of the victims of traumatic crimes, and understanding punishment as justice - perpetrators getting their just deserts.
But the main "crime" is not believing in Jesus (or not accepting him, or however one's particular flavor of Christianity puts it) - nothing on a par with committing atrocities.
I'd say crime № 1, in that sense, is believing in God but choosing to put oneself first. Which in turn leads to perpetrating acts against His will. I don't think this makes much difference to your argument, though.
If salvation is through Jesus, lots of people who *don't* put themselves first are damned. God is a multifarious asshole.
This is all getting away from seeing things from the perspective of the victims of traumatic crimes, and understanding punishment as justice - perpetrators getting their just deserts.
But the main "crime" is not believing in Jesus (or not accepting him, or however one's particular flavor of Christianity puts it) - nothing on a par with committing atrocities.
I'd say crime № 1, in that sense, is believing in God but choosing to put oneself first. Which in turn leads to perpetrating acts against His will. I don't think this makes much difference to your argument, though.
If salvation is through Jesus, lots of people who *don't* put themselves first are damned. God is a multifarious asshole.
I think a lot depends there on what exactly is meant by “if salvation is through Jesus.” I think the (Evangelical?) assumption is that it means “if salvation comes through acceptance of Jesus as one’s savior,” or maybe “salavation comes through belief in Jesus as the Son of God.” But I think “if salvation is through Jesus” can have other meanings as well, particularly if read through the lens of passages like “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.”
This is all getting away from seeing things from the perspective of the victims of traumatic crimes, and understanding punishment as justice - perpetrators getting their just deserts.
But the main "crime" is not believing in Jesus (or not accepting him, or however one's particular flavor of Christianity puts it) - nothing on a par with committing atrocities.
I'd say crime № 1, in that sense, is believing in God but choosing to put oneself first. Which in turn leads to perpetrating acts against His will. I don't think this makes much difference to your argument, though.
If salvation is through Jesus, lots of people who *don't* put themselves first are damned. God is a multifarious asshole.
This is the thing.
The problem with a narrow view of salvation (and a quick survey of religious belief will confirm this) is that if salvation really does only come through explicit faith in Christ, nearly everyone we know will be in Hell. Nearly everyone we love. Now, I suspect this is less obvious to people who live in a religious bubble where all or nearly all family and friends are are Christian but for many of us it's not like that and the absurdity of it is painfully obvious.
Once the "all Hell bound unless you explicitly convert" wall falls down, all the walls between it and Universalism are frankly made of paper.
No one says faith is logical. No one says Christian doctrine is logical. There are many contradictions to our teachings.
In Martin's case, the issue of the Holocaust challenges universalism, true, especially when it comes to those who were the executioners. That's where I just have to say, I will let God be God. Revelations does say all evil will be quenched in a lake of fire. I take that to mean as in smelting, all impurities will be destroyed. But I am not the smelter.
No one says faith is logical. No one says Christian doctrine is logical. There are many contradictions to our teachings.
Speak for yourself.
It may or may not be reasonable or a rational deduction from the evidence.
I note that Lutherans have historically been more willing to say that Christianity is nonsensical or not logical than Catholics have.
I agree. I’m not even sure what it would mean for it to be illogical. It may have a different logic or a different understanding of reason, but declaring it illogical is too far for me.
Missed my point entirely. There is a lot of unexplained mystery to the faith. We often see paradoxes. How can we be saint and sinner at the same time? How can we say the Kingdom of God is now/not yet? How can we be free and bound at the same time?
Yes, Lutherans can see a lot of paradoxes. We live in a lot of grey,
But the real point I was getting at had to do with Martin's question dealing with the Holocaust. How about people who are pure evil? There seems to be no logic to that.
None of those are genuine, logical paradoxes. They are, if anything, expressions of complexity and necessary ambiguity. And, following Augustine, I’d say people can’t be pure evil because something’s very existence is a good, but that’s a different question.
I agree. I’m not even sure what it would mean for it to be illogical. It may have a different logic or a different understanding of reason, but declaring it illogical is too far for me.
I have no idea what it would mean for faith to be logical, reasonable. By logic and reason. There again I used to have no idea what free will could look like.
This is all getting away from seeing things from the perspective of the victims of traumatic crimes, and understanding punishment as justice - perpetrators getting their just deserts.
But the main "crime" is not believing in Jesus (or not accepting him, or however one's particular flavor of Christianity puts it) - nothing on a par with committing atrocities.
I'd say crime № 1, in that sense, is believing in God but choosing to put oneself first. Which in turn leads to perpetrating acts against His will. I don't think this makes much difference to your argument, though.
This I don't understand.
From the outside I would think the worse crime would be - for example - murdering in the name of your deity.
Are you seriously saying that being selfish is worse than doing a really bad thing?
No. I see two issues here relating to punishment. And two perspectives.
From one Christian perspective (somewhat protestant evangelical): The "crime" that precedes all other crimes is rebellion against God, putting oneself before God. Also known as sin. All other "crimes" are a consequence of this. All have sinned (and fallen short...), all deserve "punishment" - eternal separation from God. The only way back to God is through faith in Jesus.
As to which of these is the main "crime", we're just as punished for not accepting Jesus as we are for sin. (But the issue of what happens to those who have not heard about Jesus is less well defined.)
From a human perspective, the nature and severity of the "crime" matters - any punishment should be proportionate. Christianity's approach appears to eliminate this, and replace it with a system in which we are punished for something we don't believe in (sin) and for something we didn't do (accepting Jesus). In which everyone is either punished equally, or forgiven equally, regardless of severity of the "crimes" we have committed, or the consequences for the victims.
I don't find it surprising that some people find this objectionable.
This is all getting away from seeing things from the perspective of the victims of traumatic crimes, and understanding punishment as justice - perpetrators getting their just deserts.
“Just deserts” is right out of the “eye for an eye” school of thought. And in earthly human terms, that’s defensible. If I’ve lost an eye, it’s lost forever and therefore cannot ever be made right - and it will therefore never cease crying out for justice and vengeance.
But we’re talking here in heavenly terms - in the context of the afterlife in which all shall be made well, every tear shall be dried and every wrong will be made right. I read that as meaning the eye will be restored - and if it has been restored, then it no longer cries out for justice and vengeance. There is no longer any cause to demand an eye from the offender in equal payment for their crime. There is no longer any wrong. There is no longer a victim.
I would really like to think that in such a situation I would no longer desire punishment for anyone who had wronged me, because all the wrongs would have been put right, fully and completely.
In fact, I think that in such a situation the only victims left with any cause to cry for justice would be those who are still being punished for a wrong they did long ago which has since been made completely and perfectly right. Because even in “an eye for an eye”, if the first person gets their eye back then so should the second.
Worth bearing in mind. They may appear to be pure evil, but we cannot know for certain.
What happened to them?
Well, we don't really know, I suspect, except that they will all eventually join the silent majority, if they haven't already done so.
FWIW, I was thinking of historically-recent evildoers, such as Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Putin, Trump, and the like, but there are many others, of course.
Worth bearing in mind. They may appear to be pure evil, but we cannot know for certain.
What happened to them?
Well, we don't really know, I suspect, except that they will all eventually join the silent majority, if they haven't already done so.
FWIW, I was thinking of historically-recent evildoers, such as Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Putin, Trump, and the like, but there are many others, of course.
Aye. If God can't fix them, develop them, then what use is He? And Trump isn't in their league by... millions. And we do know that their moral development lacked. And that isn't their fault. Or anyone else's. Not even God's.
This is all getting away from seeing things from the perspective of the victims of traumatic crimes, and understanding punishment as justice - perpetrators getting their just deserts.
“Just deserts” is right out of the “eye for an eye” school of thought. And in earthly human terms, that’s defensible. If I’ve lost an eye, it’s lost forever and therefore cannot ever be made right - and it will therefore never cease crying out for justice and vengeance.
But we’re talking here in heavenly terms - in the context of the afterlife in which all shall be made well, every tear shall be dried and every wrong will be made right. I read that as meaning the eye will be restored - and if it has been restored, then it no longer cries out for justice and vengeance. There is no longer any cause to demand an eye from the offender in equal payment for their crime. There is no longer any wrong. There is no longer a victim.
I would really like to think that in such a situation I would no longer desire punishment for anyone who had wronged me, because all the wrongs would have been put right, fully and completely.
In fact, I think that in such a situation the only victims left with any cause to cry for justice would be those who are still being punished for a wrong they did long ago which has since been made completely and perfectly right. Because even in “an eye for an eye”, if the first person gets their eye back then so should the second.
As I said in an earlier post, when it comes to the afterlife, I think imagination is the biggest challenge we have, and I'm afraid this conception looks like something from the Disney or Dreamworks school of thought, in which someone waves a magic wand or gets kissed and everything is put right.
You appear to be staking all your hopes on a universalist afterlife. One that includes all victims of atrocities, all perpetrators of atrocities, as well as all those who are both victims and perpetrators of atrocities.
And what is this restoration after which there are no longer any victims? What happens to memories of years of abuse, horror, trauma? Will their memories be wiped clean and replaced with memories of lives never actually lived?
I regret to say that you continue to trivialise that which you cannot imagine.
My God, who wants to hold on their trauma in this world, let alone the next? Make sure it can never happen again, and then you can take it all away. Please, please, please.
This is all getting away from seeing things from the perspective of the victims of traumatic crimes, and understanding punishment as justice - perpetrators getting their just deserts.
“Just deserts” is right out of the “eye for an eye” school of thought. And in earthly human terms, that’s defensible. If I’ve lost an eye, it’s lost forever and therefore cannot ever be made right - and it will therefore never cease crying out for justice and vengeance.
But we’re talking here in heavenly terms - in the context of the afterlife in which all shall be made well, every tear shall be dried and every wrong will be made right. I read that as meaning the eye will be restored - and if it has been restored, then it no longer cries out for justice and vengeance. There is no longer any cause to demand an eye from the offender in equal payment for their crime. There is no longer any wrong. There is no longer a victim.
I would really like to think that in such a situation I would no longer desire punishment for anyone who had wronged me, because all the wrongs would have been put right, fully and completely.
In fact, I think that in such a situation the only victims left with any cause to cry for justice would be those who are still being punished for a wrong they did long ago which has since been made completely and perfectly right. Because even in “an eye for an eye”, if the first person gets their eye back then so should the second.
As I said in an earlier post, when it comes to the afterlife, I think imagination is the biggest challenge we have, and I'm afraid this conception looks like something from the Disney or Dreamworks school of thought, in which someone waves a magic wand or gets kissed and everything is put right.
You appear to be staking all your hopes on a universalist afterlife. One that includes all victims of atrocities, all perpetrators of atrocities, as well as all those who are both victims and perpetrators of atrocities.
And what is this restoration after which there are no longer any victims? What happens to memories of years of abuse, horror, trauma? Will their memories be wiped clean and replaced with memories of lives never actually lived?
I regret to say that you continue to trivialise that which you cannot imagine.
And what is this restoration after which there are no longer any victims? What happens to memories of years of abuse, horror, trauma? Will their memories be wiped clean and replaced with memories of lives never actually lived?
I regret to say that you continue to trivialise that which you cannot imagine.
Wait. I thought the whole point was that 'salvation' was in believing in Christ. And yet here you seem to be saying that only victims will be saved.
Comments
I kind of like this idea too. It’s sanctification, isn’t it? Whatever is not compatible with a new creation is burned away. It makes me think of some words from the Exsultet about the transformation inaugurated by Christ’s passion and resurrection:
[…]
The sanctifying power of this night
dispels wickedness, washes faults away,
restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to mourners,
drives out hatred, fosters concord, and brings down the mighty.
[…]
If a whole life is given over to wickedness, hate and so on, then surely nothing is left after the sanctification. The ‘sanctifying fire’ is eternal purely in the sense of being final and absolute. What is burned away is burned away for ever.
In brief, the Quakers thought that solitary confinement was a novel and forward thinking reform of prisons. The offender could avoid torture and pain and bad treatment and instead be given space with their own minds to reflect on where their lives had gone wrong and hopefully experience the workings of the Inner Light to affect change within themselves.
Of course this is fatally flawed thinking and solitary confinement today is considered one of the worst kinds of punishment.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_State_Penitentiary
Oh dear! How misguided we can be, even with the very best of intentions.
You need to write better, more Rogerian religious fiction.
It's not selling.
Indeed - but while the article debates some misguided spiritual ideas, I note that it also argues against the ideas being inspired by Quaker principles:
“…While some have argued that the Pennsylvania system was Quaker-inspired, there is little evidence to support this; the organization that promoted Eastern State's creation, the Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons (today's Pennsylvania Prison Society) was less than half Quaker, and was led for nearly fifty years by Philadelphia's Anglican bishop, William White…”
I am not a Quaker, in case you were wondering (but I see much to admire).
Getting back to the main point, I also wondered whether since Quakers see ‘that of God in everyone’ that might be a (reason for) a kind of de facto universalism. If God is already here with every person, then surely something of that person endures (even if just the memories…?)
Well, that is a line of speculation that is properly for Quakers to comment on, I guess.
I got the tat for my 60th. Blew him away. He took its picture. We are looking at it constipated. As in full of. Text bound. Worse than eggs. Would Love be as incompetent. as evil, as God? In literal Christ?
I saw that. But then modern Quakers have owned their own history, which is good enough for me.
https://www.fcnl.org/updates/2016-09/solitary-confinement-and-quakers
Indeed. From the article you now cite:
“Quakers are often credited with inventing solitary confinement. Actually, we borrowed the idea from other faith leaders in the 18th century, who promoted it as an alternative to the widespread use of the death penalty and an improvement over other punishments which maimed, debased and otherwise utterly humiliated accused criminals.”
[…]
“Quakers moved away from solitary confinement within a few years of the opening of the Eastern Pennsylvania Penitentiary. By 1838, leading Quaker Elizabeth Fry was already speaking out against solitary confinement. She lobbied the British House of Commons and she traveled in England and Scotland to meet with policy makers and public audiences, to call out the dangers of this practice. Even before the fields of psychology and neurology developed, she pointed to the deprivations inherent in being completely alone for so long a time, and called specific attention to suicides that she learned of in her visits to women’s prisons.”
So, as with the other article: solitary confinement was not invented by the Quakers, and their adoption of it fits in with a wider ranging and progressive humanitarian approach that saw the dangers of solitary confinement earlier than others.
(Hosts: sorry for the tangent - I’ll leave it there)
This is relevant because the discussion was about punishment and hurt; in this case there was something which was supposed to be uplifting that turned out to be deeply damaging.
Well, there is something to be said for that. Alongside an inaugurated eschatology maybe… heaven is already here (with us) now?
Even without considering crimes against humanity: Just looking at the Post Office "scandal" here in the UK (for example), what I see is that what victims want is fair (and prompt) compensation for their financial loss and, because nothing can compensate for those who have lost everything, for those whose lives cannot be made whole, justice. That the people who caused the pain, the misery, the trauma should "pay" a penalty. And this is the case with many such "scandals".
I'm not saying that this is equivalent to torture, mass killing and other horrors that for many of us are distant events that we read about and watch but, that if we can't get a handle on injustices that we stand some chance of being able to comprehend, we are unlikely to be able to make the leap to those injustices that seem way beyond our experience or understanding.
(I'm also not trying to minimise the trauma of the victims of abuse, but trying to work out the kind of discussion that it's possible to have here.)
What if the kingdom of heaven, the essence of which is love, is built on earth as it is in heaven when we love one another?
But the main "crime" is not believing in Jesus (or not accepting him, or however one's particular flavor of Christianity puts it) - nothing on a par with committing atrocities.
I would say there is an now/not yet dichotomy to realized eschatology. The kingdom is indeed present through the lives of the believers (and can I say non believers?), but it is not completely here. It is still in the process of coming. Once slavery was legal. Now, it is mostly underground. Human trafficking still exists, We need to keep continue to eliminate it.
I should have picked this up earlier, I'm sorry.
In point of fact, the Lutheran position is the utterly illogical (but true, I think!) viewpoint that we have free will, but it is warped. An analogy would be the shopping cart/trolley that has a wheel bent so it's always heading off in the wrong direction, and you have to drag it by main force back in the direction you want to go.
When it comes to God, this means that we are not free to choose him (in the sense of choosing our salvation or what have you; we are certainly free to do any number of smaller single actions like taking out the trash, etc. that = good deeds, humanly speaking). We are free to reject God, and we do. We are not able to rise to the heights of choosing him (and staying that way).
But "I accepted Jesus, so I'm making a choice there!" Um, no, we would call that the Holy Spirit's work and his credit, too.
This of course means that everybody yells, "So that means it's God fault I'm not a believer!" Um, no. See "free to reject."
"But that's not logical!" Right you are. It's still the best match to observable human behavior and psychology I've found. Others will of course disagree with me.
To me the best argument for universalism is that everything else makes God out to be an asshole.
Can you clarify this a bit more, please. On first reading I thought you were talking about 'salvation' which fits the topic of Universalism (in the sense of 'all being saved'). So this appears to be saying that one can't choose the deity (the deity chooses you? I'm not sure if the correct wording) but one can reject the deity (and presumably salvation).
But reading again, maybe I'm misunderstanding the language: I've heard people saying things which sound as if they believe that there's a 'choice to follow God' or not at any given moment. Which might fit with you saying that a choice to eat a particular burger isn't a for/against God thing.
I'm not explaining this well because I don't really understand the point you are making.
Now there's an idea!
Oh I believe and accept Him all right, as the greatest flowering, confluence, of human consciousness up to that time, the giant on whose shoulders two millennia of civilization stands. Well He's in there somewhere. But I can neither believe nor accept that He was divine, especially as civilization did go with the literal loveless interpretation of what He said wherever it could. So I'm damned with
Hidden text - reference to the Holocaust
Talk about the banality of evil.
As you say!
I wouldn't choose God if He were on offer. An offer I don't want. An apology, fine.
@Martin54 I have hidden your reference to the Holocaust above. It is both offensive and unnecessarily inflammatory.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
This I don't understand.
From the outside I would think the worse crime would be - for example - murdering in the name of your deity.
Are you seriously saying that being selfish is worse than doing a really bad thing?
If salvation is through Jesus, lots of people who *don't* put themselves first are damned. God is a multifarious asshole.
This is the thing.
The problem with a narrow view of salvation (and a quick survey of religious belief will confirm this) is that if salvation really does only come through explicit faith in Christ, nearly everyone we know will be in Hell. Nearly everyone we love. Now, I suspect this is less obvious to people who live in a religious bubble where all or nearly all family and friends are are Christian but for many of us it's not like that and the absurdity of it is painfully obvious.
Once the "all Hell bound unless you explicitly convert" wall falls down, all the walls between it and Universalism are frankly made of paper.
In Martin's case, the issue of the Holocaust challenges universalism, true, especially when it comes to those who were the executioners. That's where I just have to say, I will let God be God. Revelations does say all evil will be quenched in a lake of fire. I take that to mean as in smelting, all impurities will be destroyed. But I am not the smelter.
It may or may not be reasonable or a rational deduction from the evidence.
I note that Lutherans have historically been more willing to say that Christianity is nonsensical or not logical than Catholics have.
Yes, Lutherans can see a lot of paradoxes. We live in a lot of grey,
But the real point I was getting at had to do with Martin's question dealing with the Holocaust. How about people who are pure evil? There seems to be no logic to that.
I have no idea what it would mean for faith to be logical, reasonable. By logic and reason. There again I used to have no idea what free will could look like.
From one Christian perspective (somewhat protestant evangelical): The "crime" that precedes all other crimes is rebellion against God, putting oneself before God. Also known as sin. All other "crimes" are a consequence of this. All have sinned (and fallen short...), all deserve "punishment" - eternal separation from God. The only way back to God is through faith in Jesus.
As to which of these is the main "crime", we're just as punished for not accepting Jesus as we are for sin. (But the issue of what happens to those who have not heard about Jesus is less well defined.)
From a human perspective, the nature and severity of the "crime" matters - any punishment should be proportionate. Christianity's approach appears to eliminate this, and replace it with a system in which we are punished for something we don't believe in (sin) and for something we didn't do (accepting Jesus). In which everyone is either punished equally, or forgiven equally, regardless of severity of the "crimes" we have committed, or the consequences for the victims.
I don't find it surprising that some people find this objectionable.
Nobody is pure evil.
Nobody.
“Just deserts” is right out of the “eye for an eye” school of thought. And in earthly human terms, that’s defensible. If I’ve lost an eye, it’s lost forever and therefore cannot ever be made right - and it will therefore never cease crying out for justice and vengeance.
But we’re talking here in heavenly terms - in the context of the afterlife in which all shall be made well, every tear shall be dried and every wrong will be made right. I read that as meaning the eye will be restored - and if it has been restored, then it no longer cries out for justice and vengeance. There is no longer any cause to demand an eye from the offender in equal payment for their crime. There is no longer any wrong. There is no longer a victim.
I would really like to think that in such a situation I would no longer desire punishment for anyone who had wronged me, because all the wrongs would have been put right, fully and completely.
In fact, I think that in such a situation the only victims left with any cause to cry for justice would be those who are still being punished for a wrong they did long ago which has since been made completely and perfectly right. Because even in “an eye for an eye”, if the first person gets their eye back then so should the second.
Worth bearing in mind. They may appear to be pure evil, but we cannot know for certain.
What happened to them?
Well, we don't really know, I suspect, except that they will all eventually join the silent majority, if they haven't already done so.
FWIW, I was thinking of historically-recent evildoers, such as Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Putin, Trump, and the like, but there are many others, of course.
Aye. If God can't fix them, develop them, then what use is He? And Trump isn't in their league by... millions. And we do know that their moral development lacked. And that isn't their fault. Or anyone else's. Not even God's.
You appear to be staking all your hopes on a universalist afterlife. One that includes all victims of atrocities, all perpetrators of atrocities, as well as all those who are both victims and perpetrators of atrocities.
And what is this restoration after which there are no longer any victims? What happens to memories of years of abuse, horror, trauma? Will their memories be wiped clean and replaced with memories of lives never actually lived?
I regret to say that you continue to trivialise that which you cannot imagine.
Marvin may hang around for this kind of bullshit, but I'm out of this thread.
You lack good will. To God.
Wait. I thought the whole point was that 'salvation' was in believing in Christ. And yet here you seem to be saying that only victims will be saved.