The point, to my mind, is that this is entirely in God's hands. God, as far as we know, is entirely and totally love. If anything we learn about love over our lifetime is true, then love is all-encompassing and potentially extremely painful. And look at the butterfly from the perspective of the caterpillar. Total dissolving of that form of life, and remaking into something else totally different in every structure lies between the two. The caterpillar no longer exists, though there is no death. So I actually see nothing incompatible in the simultaneous existence of universal eternal life, proper account of suffering caused, and of course the healing of trauma etc. After all, if we are all remade in the fire of God's love, trauma burns off like sin.
If we are all God's creatures, we remain such and we get zero say in what we are or become at any point. Free will is a useful way of supporting the idea of individual salvation, since the latter is meaningless without the former. But then individual salvation is a pointless idea, born of the individualism of capitalism, which is the foundation of both the Enlightenment and Protestantism. This is why I will never be a "proper" protestant. Free will and individual salvation are both utter nonsense, born of a desperate need to sell something we already have at an unconscionable price. That something is God's love.
ETA: I'm sorry, this is not my most coherent post ever - not by a very long way, unless I am even less use as a poster than I thought. I'm sorry about that - life is complicated at the moment and my thought processes are not in good shape. Nonetheless I felt I really needed to point out the nonsequiturs which I saw filling the discussion.
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.
It's unclear how you can imagine it if we can't. Also, what you're suggesting has no basis in church tradition, that I'm aware of, nor any basis in other religious traditions of the afterlife that I'm aware of.
We retain memories of trauma? Those are so essential to our being that we get to take them with us? Gosh, Freud was really right when he said the first problem with being treated is not wanting to be defined by your neurosis anymore.
The point, to my mind, is that this is entirely in God's hands. God, as far as we know, is entirely and totally love. If anything we learn about love over our lifetime is true, then love is all-encompassing and potentially extremely painful. And look at the butterfly from the perspective of the caterpillar. Total dissolving of that form of life, and remaking into something else totally different in every structure lies between the two. The caterpillar no longer exists, though there is no death. So I actually see nothing incompatible in the simultaneous existence of universal eternal life, proper account of suffering caused, and of course the healing of trauma etc. After all, if we are all remade in the fire of God's love, trauma burns off like sin.
If we are all God's creatures, we remain such and we get zero say in what we are or become at any point. Free will is a useful way of supporting the idea of individual salvation, since the latter is meaningless without the former. But then individual salvation is a pointless idea, born of the individualism of capitalism, which is the foundation of both the Enlightenment and Protestantism. This is why I will never be a "proper" protestant. Free will and individual salvation are both utter nonsense, born of a desperate need to sell something we already have at an unconscionable price. That something is God's love.
ETA: I'm sorry, this is not my most coherent post ever - not by a very long way, unless I am even less use as a poster than I thought. I'm sorry about that - life is complicated at the moment and my thought processes are not in good shape. Nonetheless I felt I really needed to point out the nonsequiturs which I saw filling the discussion.
I always appreciate your posts and insights, @ThunderBunk . A reminder how a careless 'shorthand' around terms and concepts can take one into non sequiturs and dead ends. Theodicy remains a problem for most faith traditions but not something to be introduced in this context as I belatedly realised.
It seems to me that in this discussion there are two options:
First Universalism. Where Hitler experiences a long reeducation before the afterlife
Second salvation (or whatever you want to call it) where Hitler experiences the afterlife if he says the right form of words. Because nobody is all bad.
To me it seems like the second option is far worse than the first in terms of justice for the victims. What am I missing?
As @Marvin the Martian perfectly explained and @ThunderBunk above, there are no victims in the transcendent, apart from everyone. First universalism applies to all. Or God is no Father. Justice is for monkeys and there isn't any.
Others who are considered the top ten evil people in history
I note that all but two of the people in that list were hostile to the United States in living memory.
There's nobody involved in the European scramble for Africa, for example, not even Leopold of Belgium.
(Not that I think nineteenth century European imperialism was on the whole more evil than most empires throughout history. Chinese Emperors, one way and another, racked up a lot of deaths between them. But then there have always been a lot more people in China than in Europe. Leopold, though, was egregious.)
Apart from these lists being rather subjective, evil is enabled. If a conqueror has his armies kill thousands of people does that make them more evil than a serial killer who only kills ten?
I read a description of Hitler a few years back by a German senior civil servant who'd had to work with him. He hated Hitler's regime enough to spy for Stalin after the UK turned him down. But he didn't make out Hitler to be hateful, so much as shallow and manipulative. (His management style was to give vague orders, let his subordinates compete over how to interpret them, and then take credit for the results he liked.) To be honest, his description reminded me of Trump. If Hitler committed more evil than Trump it was I think only because the institutions of Weimar Germany were that much weaker.
Some people seem to just not have a discernable conscience. Whether that's part of who they are, in a way that they can be redeemed, I don't know.
It seems to me that in this discussion there are two options:
First Universalism. Where Hitler experiences a long reeducation before the afterlife
Second salvation (or whatever you want to call it) where Hitler experiences the afterlife if he says the right form of words. Because nobody is all bad.
Why isn’t universalism, in whatever form or understanding, also salvation? I mean, “universalism” is simply a one-word way of saying “universal salvation.” And how does “because nobody is all bad” relate to “if he says the right words”?
In any case, I’d say that these two options as presented are pretty simplistic and aren’t the only options.
God, as far as we know, is entirely and totally love.
I think if anything here makes use of imagination, it's this statement.
St John and St Paul exercised their imagination in that direction first, and many mystics have followed.
ETA: In any case, the exercise of the imagination comes somewhere within loving God with the whole of one's being - heart, soul, mind and strength. Of course, if you see faith as being a contractual relationship, it makes no sense at all, but to me that is pure idolatry.
Forgive the double posting. Of course, this doesn't entirely take the issue of theodicy, suffering and so on out of the equation But I try, at least, to hold to the idea that God is drawing everything inexorably towards life in love, even if sometimes the rope feels more like a piece of very stretchy elastic.
Well, that's rather the point, isn't it? Hope is lost at two points, to my mind - when the elastic snaps, and when it becomes so stretchy that the connection feels utterly degraded.
God, as far as we know, is entirely and totally love.
I think if anything here makes use of imagination, it's this statement.
St John and St Paul exercised their imagination in that direction first, and many mystics have followed.
ETA: In any case, the exercise of the imagination comes somewhere within loving God with the whole of one's being - heart, soul, mind and strength. Of course, if you see faith as being a contractual relationship, it makes no sense at all, but to me that is pure idolatry.
To me it just confirms the uneasy reality that imagination is required. One cannot simply know. One has to hope and imagine instead. Pity it wasn't otherwise.
What can one "simply know"? What can be discovered without the exercise of imagination and indeed hope? Scientific experiment encodes a certain hope in the hypothesis they are testing: otherwise, why go to the effort of the test/experiment?
God, as far as we know, is entirely and totally love.
I think if anything here makes use of imagination, it's this statement.
St John and St Paul exercised their imagination in that direction first, and many mystics have followed.
ETA: In any case, the exercise of the imagination comes somewhere within loving God with the whole of one's being - heart, soul, mind and strength. Of course, if you see faith as being a contractual relationship, it makes no sense at all, but to me that is pure idolatry.
To me it just confirms the uneasy reality that imagination is required. One cannot simply know. One has to hope and imagine instead. Pity it wasn't otherwise.
Why is the imagination contrary to knowledge? You use your imagination for plenty of things. The most obvious instance of its use is in aesthetic knowledge, but it’s used plenty in ordinary knowledge as well.
One can simply know that the earth is round, or that viruses and bacteria cause disease.
I think you're describing curiosity. But a hope in the hypothesis? You may be projecting a bit there. One outcome of testing may be preferable to another, but I think hope in a hypothesis misses the mark. In any event, I think the breakdown is somewhere in the fog of imagining a quality in something that is itself imaginary.
Well, that's rather the point, isn't it? Hope is lost at two points, to my mind - when the elastic snaps, and when it becomes so stretchy that the connection feels utterly degraded.
Well yes, which is what I was trying to get at.
If we stretch things too tightly the elastic snaps.
If we let it go all saggy it looses its elasticity and is neither use nor ornament.
One can simply know that the earth is round, or that viruses and bacteria cause disease.
I think you're describing curiosity. But a hope in the hypothesis? You may be projecting a bit there. One outcome of testing may be preferable to another, but I think hope in a hypothesis misses the mark. In any event, I think the breakdown is somewhere in the fog of imagining a quality in something that is itself imaginary.
I am understanding imagination to be the mental faculty that enables one to “see” something that isn’t there, mentally. So I’d say you can’t simply know that the earth is round because you have to use your imagination to “see” its roundness from an observation of the horizon’s curvature.
We imagine qualities in imaginary things all the time. A unicorn, by its very definition, is a horselike entity possessed of one horn. Surely if you know anything about a unicorn it’s that. I’d say that you’re using your imagination here.
I used to imagine universalism beyond the Bible and then feed it back in to it and see it plainly. Now I know that if there were transcendence, in Love, it would operate universally on all that can transcend, that can be transcended. That can be Loved. I cannot imagine Love being unable to metamorphose any maggot. Love is transcendence personified, intentional transcendence. Free will be damned.
The trouble is Jesus-Christianity doesn't fit that at all. And without an instance of the fingerpost it is pure imagination.
At this point in my journey, I believe that God is love AND truth.
It’s intriguing to me how much resistance & lack of understanding there is to adding in that second point. Of course, I’m old and don’t really swim in the zeitgeist.
I joined the Unitarian Universalist church several decades ago, as an unchurched person with a belief in God. That decision was made purely for the sake of exposing my young child to religious ideas — for her to accept or reject in time.
I was blessed to accept Christ as my savior over a period of many years after that time. I loved the UUs, and the experience & friendships I had there so it is with love that I pass on this joke:
“ Universalists believe in searching, but not in finding”
...None of us can sensibly process what we can't imagine.
What is it you can't imagine? The competence of Love?
All-encompassing love is a more distant prospect. I don't think anyone's lifetime of learning or experience can get close to preparing us for the reality of all-encompassing love or enable us to comprehend it. Maybe our imagination can get us closer, but whether it gets us closer to truth is another question.
As @Marvin the Martian perfectly explained and @ThunderBunk above, there are no victims in the transcendent, apart from everyone. First universalism applies to all. Or God is no Father. Justice is for monkeys and there isn't any.
That being the case, it sounds as though the way to this transcendent, eternal afterlife is through the elimination all our evolutionary, organic, mammalian and, above all, mortal nature, and that whatever is left is the aspect of us that is capable of surviving eternity.
...None of us can sensibly process what we can't imagine.
What is it you can't imagine? The competence of Love?
1) All-encompassing love is a more distant prospect. I don't think anyone's lifetime of learning or experience can get close to preparing us for the reality of all-encompassing love or enable us to comprehend it. Maybe our imagination can get us closer, but whether it gets us closer to truth is another question.
As @Marvin the Martian perfectly explained and @ThunderBunk above, there are no victims in the transcendent, apart from everyone. First universalism applies to all. Or God is no Father. Justice is for monkeys and there isn't any.
2) That being the case, it sounds as though the way to this transcendent, eternal afterlife is through the elimination all our evolutionary, organic, mammalian and, above all, mortal nature, and that whatever is left is the aspect of us that is capable of surviving eternity.
1) 'Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?' Browning. This gets us closer to the truth of the quality of imagined Love.
2) I can imagine that we're not resurrected as maggot or imago, but as pupa and undergo full Rogerian therapy+ for all that we all naturally lack, for every disordered passion, for all maladaptation; full psychological deconstruction and reconstruction to answer the question of what happened to us, starting (or ending) with the second 'novester' of gestation. That we are Parented to the point of being able to parent and pilot ourselves on in to eternal flight.
A fantasy, in the total absence of any indication whatsoever (including any form of Christianity, whether conservative, textually faithful damnationism or liberal universalism) in our maggot existence, I realise.
Does anyone understand any of that post? Or am I just stupid? Or possibly both?
"{I} am rash enough to believe that at those points where, despite the trouble taken, I cannot understand {Hegel's work}, the reason is that Hegel himself hasn't been altogether clear."
Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, Preamble from the Heart.
There are, in fact, many indications of this, but I don't have the time or energy to go through my understanding of this right now. The headline is that Jesus is a type, not a ritual sacrifice - "the firstfruits of them that sleep". The rest of us sleep: some of us are struggling towards consciousness in the light of God's love, others are concussing themselves against concrete walls of their own construction, others are indulging in the fantasies which go with their current state and position, and most of us at various points do all three of these and many other things aside. We are all in the middle of our own incarnation.
Does anyone understand any of that post? Or am I just stupid? Or possibly both?
"{I} am rash enough to believe that at those points where, despite the trouble taken, I cannot understand {Hegel's work}, the reason is that Hegel himself hasn't been altogether clear."
Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, Preamble from the Heart.
Does anyone understand any of that post? Or am I just stupid? Or possibly both?
"{I} am rash enough to believe that at those points where, despite the trouble taken, I cannot understand {Hegel's work}, the reason is that Hegel himself hasn't been altogether clear."
Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, Preamble from the Heart.
Pot, black.
You mean that's the black straight into the pocket and @Dafyd is correct?
Hitler, I believe, loved his dog. Perhaps no-one else.
I think God speaks to us through our imaginattions. I can imagine that Hitler might have to find and seek forgiveness from all his victims before finding redemption. The same for other historical monsters mentioned. I can think of more.
That being the case, it sounds as though the way to this transcendent, eternal afterlife is through the elimination all our evolutionary, organic, mammalian and, above all, mortal nature, and that whatever is left is the aspect of us that is capable of surviving eternity.
Pretty much, yes.
Isaiah 11:6-8
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.
All of those lines suggest a fairly fundamental change to the evolutionary, organic, mammalian and mortal natures of wolves, leopards, lions, bears, cobras and adders (well, for the last two it’s a change to their reptilian natures, but you get the gist).
But they also suggest a change to the natures of lambs, calves, cows etc in that they will no longer fear or run from their predators. This newness of life, this heavenly existence, is not made possible by the absence (much less the eternal punishment) of those who previously oppressed and killed them, but by the remaking of their relationship therewith.
There’s certainly no suggestion that the wolves etc need to be punished or excluded from this new existence in order to properly validate the grievances of the lambs etc.
Revelation 21:1 and 4-5
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. … He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”
Again, this is a vision of fundamental change. Verse 4, with its promise of no more mourning, crying or pain (not even remembered pain?), is central to my view that there will be no victims any more. And if there are no victims, it follows that there can be no victimisers, from which it further follows that there can be none who deserve exclusion or punishment.
Hitler, I believe, loved his dog. Perhaps no-one else.
I think God speaks to us through our imaginattions. I can imagine that Hitler might have to find and seek forgiveness from all his victims before finding redemption. The same for other historical monsters mentioned. I can think of more.
He loved his mother and Eva Braun. And like his father before him he loved his niece.
Does anyone understand any of that post? Or am I just stupid? Or possibly both?
"{I} am rash enough to believe that at those points where, despite the trouble taken, I cannot understand {Hegel's work}, the reason is that Hegel himself hasn't been altogether clear."
Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, Preamble from the Heart.
Pot, black.
You mean that's the black straight into the pocket and @Dafyd is correct?
I took it as "The pot calling the kettle black", ie. Kierkegaard himself is as unclear as he accuses Hegel of being.
Does anyone understand any of that post? Or am I just stupid? Or possibly both?
I confess both that it made sense to me, and that I found the style apt.
But a prosaic summary of my reading would be that, with the idea of heaven to inspire him, Martin can imagine God as the perfect therapist, while recognising that this is a complete fantasy.
Does anyone understand any of that post? Or am I just stupid? Or possibly both?
I confess both that it made sense to me, and that I found the style apt.
But a prosaic summary of my reading would be that, with the idea of heaven to inspire him, Martin can imagine God as the perfect therapist, while recognising that this is a complete fantasy.
Do you have a link to the dictionary you used to understand it?
Comments
If we are all God's creatures, we remain such and we get zero say in what we are or become at any point. Free will is a useful way of supporting the idea of individual salvation, since the latter is meaningless without the former. But then individual salvation is a pointless idea, born of the individualism of capitalism, which is the foundation of both the Enlightenment and Protestantism. This is why I will never be a "proper" protestant. Free will and individual salvation are both utter nonsense, born of a desperate need to sell something we already have at an unconscionable price. That something is God's love.
ETA: I'm sorry, this is not my most coherent post ever - not by a very long way, unless I am even less use as a poster than I thought. I'm sorry about that - life is complicated at the moment and my thought processes are not in good shape. Nonetheless I felt I really needed to point out the nonsequiturs which I saw filling the discussion.
It's unclear how you can imagine it if we can't. Also, what you're suggesting has no basis in church tradition, that I'm aware of, nor any basis in other religious traditions of the afterlife that I'm aware of.
We retain memories of trauma? Those are so essential to our being that we get to take them with us? Gosh, Freud was really right when he said the first problem with being treated is not wanting to be defined by your neurosis anymore.
This!
What is it you can't imagine? The competence of Love?
Hitler?
Hitler
Joseph Stalin
Vlad Tepes
Osama Bin Laden
Mao Zedong
Pol Pot
Genghis Khan
Heinrich Himmler
Kim Jong-il
Saddam Hussein
Almost happened to me in Brugge. Fortunately, it was not Hitler. Long story.
I always appreciate your posts and insights, @ThunderBunk . A reminder how a careless 'shorthand' around terms and concepts can take one into non sequiturs and dead ends. Theodicy remains a problem for most faith traditions but not something to be introduced in this context as I belatedly realised.
It seems to me that in this discussion there are two options:
First Universalism. Where Hitler experiences a long reeducation before the afterlife
Second salvation (or whatever you want to call it) where Hitler experiences the afterlife if he says the right form of words. Because nobody is all bad.
To me it seems like the second option is far worse than the first in terms of justice for the victims. What am I missing?
There's nobody involved in the European scramble for Africa, for example, not even Leopold of Belgium.
(Not that I think nineteenth century European imperialism was on the whole more evil than most empires throughout history. Chinese Emperors, one way and another, racked up a lot of deaths between them. But then there have always been a lot more people in China than in Europe. Leopold, though, was egregious.)
Apart from these lists being rather subjective, evil is enabled. If a conqueror has his armies kill thousands of people does that make them more evil than a serial killer who only kills ten?
I read a description of Hitler a few years back by a German senior civil servant who'd had to work with him. He hated Hitler's regime enough to spy for Stalin after the UK turned him down. But he didn't make out Hitler to be hateful, so much as shallow and manipulative. (His management style was to give vague orders, let his subordinates compete over how to interpret them, and then take credit for the results he liked.) To be honest, his description reminded me of Trump. If Hitler committed more evil than Trump it was I think only because the institutions of Weimar Germany were that much weaker.
Some people seem to just not have a discernable conscience. Whether that's part of who they are, in a way that they can be redeemed, I don't know.
In any case, I’d say that these two options as presented are pretty simplistic and aren’t the only options.
I think if anything here makes use of imagination, it's this statement.
St John and St Paul exercised their imagination in that direction first, and many mystics have followed.
ETA: In any case, the exercise of the imagination comes somewhere within loving God with the whole of one's being - heart, soul, mind and strength. Of course, if you see faith as being a contractual relationship, it makes no sense at all, but to me that is pure idolatry.
A stretchy piece of elastic doesn't snap as easily as a taut one.
True, but if the ends never get closer to each other, and in fact only ever separate, there is no increasing closeness.
I'm not sure how far I can stretch this analogy before it snaps.
To me it just confirms the uneasy reality that imagination is required. One cannot simply know. One has to hope and imagine instead. Pity it wasn't otherwise.
Why is the imagination contrary to knowledge? You use your imagination for plenty of things. The most obvious instance of its use is in aesthetic knowledge, but it’s used plenty in ordinary knowledge as well.
I think you're describing curiosity. But a hope in the hypothesis? You may be projecting a bit there. One outcome of testing may be preferable to another, but I think hope in a hypothesis misses the mark. In any event, I think the breakdown is somewhere in the fog of imagining a quality in something that is itself imaginary.
Well yes, which is what I was trying to get at.
If we stretch things too tightly the elastic snaps.
If we let it go all saggy it looses its elasticity and is neither use nor ornament.
Somehow we have to get the 'tension' right.
I am understanding imagination to be the mental faculty that enables one to “see” something that isn’t there, mentally. So I’d say you can’t simply know that the earth is round because you have to use your imagination to “see” its roundness from an observation of the horizon’s curvature.
We imagine qualities in imaginary things all the time. A unicorn, by its very definition, is a horselike entity possessed of one horn. Surely if you know anything about a unicorn it’s that. I’d say that you’re using your imagination here.
How are you understanding imagination?
Nope, not even him.
The trouble is Jesus-Christianity doesn't fit that at all. And without an instance of the fingerpost it is pure imagination.
It’s intriguing to me how much resistance & lack of understanding there is to adding in that second point. Of course, I’m old and don’t really swim in the zeitgeist.
I joined the Unitarian Universalist church several decades ago, as an unchurched person with a belief in God. That decision was made purely for the sake of exposing my young child to religious ideas — for her to accept or reject in time.
I was blessed to accept Christ as my savior over a period of many years after that time. I loved the UUs, and the experience & friendships I had there so it is with love that I pass on this joke:
“ Universalists believe in searching, but not in finding”
That being the case, it sounds as though the way to this transcendent, eternal afterlife is through the elimination all our evolutionary, organic, mammalian and, above all, mortal nature, and that whatever is left is the aspect of us that is capable of surviving eternity.
1) 'Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?' Browning. This gets us closer to the truth of the quality of imagined Love.
2) I can imagine that we're not resurrected as maggot or imago, but as pupa and undergo full Rogerian therapy+ for all that we all naturally lack, for every disordered passion, for all maladaptation; full psychological deconstruction and reconstruction to answer the question of what happened to us, starting (or ending) with the second 'novester' of gestation. That we are Parented to the point of being able to parent and pilot ourselves on in to eternal flight.
A fantasy, in the total absence of any indication whatsoever (including any form of Christianity, whether conservative, textually faithful damnationism or liberal universalism) in our maggot existence, I realise.
Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, Preamble from the Heart.
Pot, black.
You mean that's the black straight into the pocket and @Dafyd is correct?
I think God speaks to us through our imaginattions. I can imagine that Hitler might have to find and seek forgiveness from all his victims before finding redemption. The same for other historical monsters mentioned. I can think of more.
Pretty much, yes.
All of those lines suggest a fairly fundamental change to the evolutionary, organic, mammalian and mortal natures of wolves, leopards, lions, bears, cobras and adders (well, for the last two it’s a change to their reptilian natures, but you get the gist).
But they also suggest a change to the natures of lambs, calves, cows etc in that they will no longer fear or run from their predators. This newness of life, this heavenly existence, is not made possible by the absence (much less the eternal punishment) of those who previously oppressed and killed them, but by the remaking of their relationship therewith.
There’s certainly no suggestion that the wolves etc need to be punished or excluded from this new existence in order to properly validate the grievances of the lambs etc.
Again, this is a vision of fundamental change. Verse 4, with its promise of no more mourning, crying or pain (not even remembered pain?), is central to my view that there will be no victims any more. And if there are no victims, it follows that there can be no victimisers, from which it further follows that there can be none who deserve exclusion or punishment.
He loved his mother and Eva Braun. And like his father before him he loved his niece.
Bravo! @Marvin the Martian. Bravo!
I took it as "The pot calling the kettle black", ie. Kierkegaard himself is as unclear as he accuses Hegel of being.
But a prosaic summary of my reading would be that, with the idea of heaven to inspire him, Martin can imagine God as the perfect therapist, while recognising that this is a complete fantasy.
Do you have a link to the dictionary you used to understand it?
Who is Roger?
And why would we all be expected to know that?
If I highlight my use of 'Rogerian therapy', and right click on it, and click on 'Search in sidebar for...' that's nearly exactly what comes up.
And what's the relevance of that? Are we supposed to guess or something?
Is it a game where we all say random things and see if anyone else can guess what's going on in our heads?