Ideas are located within networks of other ideas. It’s strange to not reference other ideas and thinkers if they’ve influenced your own.
Sure, Martin isn’t the easiest to follow and I think he’s wrong about most everything, but I wouldn’t say his use of names is the most difficult thing.
Ideas are located within networks of other ideas. It’s strange to not reference other ideas and thinkers if they’ve influenced your own.
Sure, Martin isn’t the easiest to follow and I think he’s wrong about most everything, but I wouldn’t say his use of names is the most difficult thing.
There are ways of doing this though. By all means use the names of people to reference their ideas but you have to explain the relevance of them rather than setting intellectual puzzles. I mean I now know who Carl Rogers is but to parse @Martin54 's reference would require me to digest the gist of a man's life work and IME I might still be stuck for working out what the term is being used to communicate. Or to fail to.
FWIW, I am regularly skipping off to Google to look up references from these boards, though I hope/prefer to be clear enough myself as not to cause the same for others.
Ideas are located within networks of other ideas. It’s strange to not reference other ideas and thinkers if they’ve influenced your own.
Sure, Martin isn’t the easiest to follow and I think he’s wrong about most everything, but I wouldn’t say his use of names is the most difficult thing.
There are ways of doing this though. By all means use the names of people to reference their ideas but you have to explain the relevance of them rather than setting intellectual puzzles. I mean I now know who Carl Rogers is but to parse @Martin54 's reference would require me to digest the gist of a man's life work and IME I might still be stuck for working out what the term is being used to communicate. Or to fail to.
Oh I agree, but Martin’s whole shtick has been a shifting net of references and allusions and dangling propositions, perhaps deliberately a rhetorical tactic or perhaps just because, in the 5 years I’ve been reading the boards I’ve never figured it out. But I think that means expecting him to nail down on one thing is like trying to nail down water.
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.
Thank you, Marvin - I knew that such literal interpretations existed, but I don't remember seeing one. Truly, a work of art.
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.
It's interesting looking at familiar verses after a long break - some, like these, still bring to mind thoughts that I remember, suggesting that we will be more radically remade than we can comprehend. If the slate is wiped clean, all record of sin expunged, then memories of sin too will be no more. And even human memory itself, as we experience and understand it, being unable to survive eternity, will also pass away and be transformed into something new.
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.
Thank you, Marvin - I knew that such literal interpretations existed, but I don't remember seeing one. Truly, a work of art.
I don't think it's necessarily literal or indeed literalistic; so much as the more literal reading being indicative/analogous of the type of radical transformation that would take place if suffering and pain were to be removed from the created order as it exists. Creation remains recognisable but is restored to some original state that is far removed from where it is.
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.
It's interesting looking at familiar verses after a long break - some, like these, still bring to mind thoughts that I remember, suggesting that we will be more radically remade than we can comprehend. If the slate is wiped clean, all record of sin expunged, then memories of sin too will be no more.
I think both this passage and the previous one are trying to describe something that language and human understanding strain to explain and comprehend; I'd assume we would still be recognisably the people we are, but clearly any memory that remains is completely separated from ongoing trauma - as it should be - can you imagine the converse?
Modern conservative Protestant Christians are faithful to Jesus and the Bible in being damnationist. Jesus said some horribly hard things, directed at horribly hard people. His NT apologists followed suit, and worse. Much older traditions are just as faithfully brutal in their own way. Liberal Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox are bound to be in the same minority ratio.
Damnationism is orthodox. Universalism is heterodox.
If Love were the ground of being, it's universal. Period.
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.
Thank you, Marvin - I knew that such literal interpretations existed, but I don't remember seeing one. Truly, a work of art.
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.
It's interesting looking at familiar verses after a long break - some, like these, still bring to mind thoughts that I remember, suggesting that we will be more radically remade than we can comprehend. If the slate is wiped clean, all record of sin expunged, then memories of sin too will be no more. And even human memory itself, as we experience and understand it, being unable to survive eternity, will also pass away and be transformed into something new.
The theologian Hans Boersma has commented that many people think of the afterlife as a good day supercharged, and that’s simply not in keeping with the Biblical witness. There we read something more like what you’ve described here, an incomprehensible change of all that is. That’s the line I’m more inclined to go with.
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.
Thank you, Marvin - I knew that such literal interpretations existed, but I don't remember seeing one. Truly, a work of art.
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.
It's interesting looking at familiar verses after a long break - some, like these, still bring to mind thoughts that I remember, suggesting that we will be more radically remade than we can comprehend. If the slate is wiped clean, all record of sin expunged, then memories of sin too will be no more. And even human memory itself, as we experience and understand it, being unable to survive eternity, will also pass away and be transformed into something new.
The theologian Hans Boersma has commented that many people think of the afterlife as a good day supercharged, and that’s simply not in keeping with the Biblical witness. There we read something more like what you’ve described here, an incomprehensible change of all that is. That’s the line I’m more inclined to go with.
Boersma isn’t a universalist, no, and I’m not sure how he deals with people who aren’t Christian.
The idea of “anonymous Christians” has been around for centuries. Thomas Aquinas systematizes it but it’s been around since the earliest days of the church, in one way or another.
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.
I don't think it's necessarily literal or indeed literalistic; so much as the more literal reading being indicative/analogous of the type of radical transformation that would take place if suffering and pain were to be removed from the created order as it exists. Creation remains recognisable but is restored to some original state that is far removed from where it is.
A radical transformation that leaves creation being recognisable sounds like a paradox. By analogy, predators are still recognisable as predators, but are transformed into something completely unlike predators. And that's apart from what happens to the ecosystems they inhabit if all acts causing suffering and pain no longer occur.
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.”
I think both this passage and the previous one are trying to describe something that language and human understanding strain to explain and comprehend; I'd assume we would still be recognisably the people we are...
Why? If all the former things pass away, why would anything still be recognisable? After all, if there's no state of being married in heaven, why should any of our earthly relationships persist? Why would people still need to recognise each other? This, and the human experience of being "in love" are further aspects of earthly existence that will pass away.
Why? If all the former things pass away, why would anything still be recognisable? After all, if there's no state of being married in heaven, why should any of our earthly relationships persist? Why would people still need to recognise each other?
I'm not necessarily saying that we should be able to recognise each other, so much as we should be able to recognise ourselves.
Why? If all the former things pass away, why would anything still be recognisable? After all, if there's no state of being married in heaven, why should any of our earthly relationships persist? Why would people still need to recognise each other?
I'm not necessarily saying that we should be able to recognise each other, so much as we should be able to recognise ourselves.
Why? If all the former things pass away, why would anything still be recognisable? After all, if there's no state of being married in heaven, why should any of our earthly relationships persist? Why would people still need to recognise each other?
I'm not necessarily saying that we should be able to recognise each other, so much as we should be able to recognise ourselves.
We exist in relation to others.
It's impossible to contemplate the Beautific Vision outside a relationship.
Why? If all the former things pass away, why would anything still be recognisable? After all, if there's no state of being married in heaven, why should any of our earthly relationships persist? Why would people still need to recognise each other?
I'm not necessarily saying that we should be able to recognise each other, so much as we should be able to recognise ourselves.
Ah - I see what you mean. Digging through my memories, I think I would conceive of some sense of self persisting into eternity, starting from the point when we are born again.
Why? If all the former things pass away, why would anything still be recognisable? After all, if there's no state of being married in heaven, why should any of our earthly relationships persist? Why would people still need to recognise each other?
I'm not necessarily saying that we should be able to recognise each other, so much as we should be able to recognise ourselves.
We exist in relation to others.
It's impossible to contemplate the Beautific Vision outside a relationship.
Including of each other. I will know my Nanny Ellis. And my Dad. Or start a war in heaven.
Uncerstand, my response about Hitler being evil, was not to condemn him to the lake of fire, but to say even with people as evil as Hitler, God can still show compassion. I mentioned Hitler as evil only in response to the challenge no one is pure evil. I think you might ask the Jewish community if that is true.
I vacillate over where the line of an instance of the fingerpost could be without there actually being a real one. For my genuine, inclusive hero Steve Chalke say, and all of you who are like him. Which now includes William Lane Craig of all people, at least with regard to having no apologetic but his feelings about a story. Feelings I long shared. Is it in the thriving, Spirit led Church whose intended bridegroom defeated Paul's state religious persecution, and turned him? Or is it in the much later gospels-Acts texts with their even greater claims? This thread has made me realise it's definitely not the latter.
The Love I imagine, encompasses infinite nature, immanently, from the ground of being on up. They encompass infinite transcendent creation above that. You can't get to Them from the Bible. You can only get to pathetically, primitively anthropically, infinitely, risibly less. Even in Christ, who is the moral pivot of the ages. You have to transcend the Bible with liberalism, which most here do.
It is surprising, and grimly gratifying as misery loves company, to see how many here have deconstructed once to often and are no longer able to construct faith. I see that I'm far from alone. I spent a long time hanging on by my fingernails, and see familiar names doing that too.
The God of the Bible (and faith in it only), is not (all the omnis) Love. Because He's not universalist.
The God of the Bible (and faith in it only), is not (all the omnis) Love. Because He's not universalist.
Love would be.
I do not practice idology of the Bible (faith in it only) but it does the Word, which is love. However, even Paul says this side of eternity we can only see through a glass but dimly. At best, the Bible gives us a reflection on how we have grown to understand God through folk lore and history. It did not stop at the conclusion of the book of Revelation or at the Reformation, or at the Great Awakenings. It is not complete even now.
God is love, therefore, to me, God is a universalist.
Uncerstand, my response about Hitler being evil, was not to condemn him to the lake of fire, but to say even with people as evil as Hitler, God can still show compassion.
I agree.
I mentioned Hitler as evil only in response to the challenge no one is pure evil. I think you might ask the Jewish community if that is true.
Human evil isn’t some binary thing where if a person has done enough really bad things then they count as 100% evil. Everyone has good and evil in them, to varying degrees. No amount of evil can or should erase the good.
Of course, that also means no amount of good can erase the evil. But putting it that way round is far less controversial within Christian circles for some reason. Why is it that we’re far more comfortable saying that even the greatest saint has done some bad things in their life than we are saying that even the greatest sinner has done some good things in their life?
Why is it that we’re far more comfortable saying that even the greatest saint has done some bad things in their life than we are saying that even the greatest sinner has done some good things in their life?
I think it's because we are instinctively Pelagian and so see good works as - in some sense - salvific.
I think it is because we want see ourselves as fundamentally different from those who do evil things - if they are monsters we could never be like that, and we don’t have to think about how they got like that. It is more comfortable for us.
Of course it is not true: as said above no one is wholly evil and there is usually a reason why they have ended up behaving in the way they did.
Just as an example - this is how people cast the life of Jo Dennehy or this.
But read that again, and you see someone who was groomed by men from her early teenage years, and sexually abused by at least her her mid teens - displaying distress through self-harm and self medicating via drugs and alcohol. Her parents apparently seeing her as wilful and rebellious rather than vulnerable.
Of course many people are abused and drawn into petty crime without becoming serial killers - but you will almost never find people that disturbed who have had a perfectly safe early life.
Love can't not fix Hitler. Hitler's 'good' 'choices' doesn't show that he's redeemable despite all the world scale impact 'evil' ones, having intentionality means he can be Parented on in the transcendent as easily as each of his 40m+ victims. Parents owe their children.
This American Life this weekend is running a show about Bishop Carlton Pearson, a former rising evangelical who realized he could not "save" everyone which caused him to rethink his theology. Very interesting story. Will be downloaded later today. There is also a link to a movie about him called Come Sunday.
I do not think Hitler can have started life as an evil monster. It might be instructive, if one were omniscient, to compare his and Donald Trump's upbtinging. One is the other writ small.
I vividly remember Bamber Gascoigne, a Magdalene man, on B&W (well, our telly was) University Challenge in the late '60s early '70s making a stupid remark, after awarding points to Keble or whoever for getting the who's the baby picture right, with 'Yes, Hitler, as a particularly unpleasant baby'.
Most Christians believe in a God of eternity. Much as it's used in Christian liturgy, that doesn't mean everlasting in time. It means outside of time,where past, present, and future are all simultaneously available to God. Strangely, the great physicist Albert Einstein, based on his theory of relativity, said that time is an illusion and all things exist at once.
Mind blowing as this is, it means that our human perception of reality is seriously skewed. So our omniscient Creator knows already who of His creatures will attain salvation and who will be eternally damned. This goes for everyone He ever made or will make. So in spite of being a God of eternal love, He creates sentient beings knowing that they will spend eternity in conscious torment. So we may as well say that He creates such beings for the purpose of seeing them tortured for eternity. Please forgive me if I should refuse to worship such an evil God should it exist.
An evangelical friend of mine had told me that he doesn't believe in eternal conscious torment but is instead an anihilationist, or believer in conditional immortality. So in this scenario, God creates numerous sentient beings who turn out to be a failed experiment. Again, no worship from me! If anyone is appealing to free will, it's a bogus concept. If all of God's realm is already known to Him, nothing I or you do can influence what already is. So for me unless God saves everything He creates, He isn't worthy of the name.
Most Christians believe in a God of eternity. Much as it's used in Christian liturgy, that doesn't mean everlasting in time. It means outside of time,where past, present, and future are all simultaneously available to God. Strangely, the great physicist Albert Einstein, based on his theory of relativity, said that time is an illusion and all things exist at once.
Mind blowing as this is, it means that our human perception of reality is seriously skewed. So our omniscient Creator knows already who of His creatures will attain salvation and who will be eternally damned. This goes for everyone He ever made or will make. So in spite of being a God of eternal love, He creates sentient beings knowing that they will spend eternity in conscious torment. So we may as well say that He creates such beings for the purpose of seeing them tortured for eternity. Please forgive me if I should refuse to worship such an evil God should it exist.
An evangelical friend of mine had told me that he doesn't believe in eternal conscious torment but is instead an anihilationist, or believer in conditional immortality. So in this scenario, God creates numerous sentient beings who turn out to be a failed experiment. Again, no worship from me! If anyone is appealing to free will, it's a bogus concept. If all of God's realm is already known to Him, nothing I or you do can influence what already is. So for me unless God saves everything He creates, He isn't worthy of the name.
I'd go with that. Except the bit about Einstein saying time is an illusion. There are some modern theoretical physicists suggesting that but I don’t see it in Einstein.
Einstein does suggest that distance in time is more like distance in space than we usually think. He also states that concepts like simultaneity do not work the way we think they do.
So we'd assume that if event A happens at the same time as both event B and event C, then event B and event C happen at the same time as each other; and according to Einstein that is often not true.
Time is an illusion is a crude way of saying time doesn't work how it intuitively seems to work.
@KarlLB Einstein wrote to the wife of a recently deceased friend "People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
Calling it an illusion doesn't mean it's false, just that our perception of it is distorted. Only a God who doesn't know the future could create a being bound for eternal hell, and I don't believe that's what God is.
(a) Most Christians believe in a God of eternity. Much as it's used in Christian liturgy, that doesn't mean everlasting in time. It means outside of time,where past, present, and future are all simultaneously available to God.
(b) Strangely, the great physicist Albert Einstein, based on his theory of relativity, said that time is an illusion and all things exist at once.
(c) Mind blowing as this is, it means that our human perception of reality is seriously skewed.
(d) So our omniscient Creator knows already who of His creatures will attain salvation and who will be eternally damned. This goes for everyone He ever made or will make. So in spite of being a God of eternal love, He creates sentient beings knowing that they will spend eternity in conscious torment. So we may as well say that He creates such beings for the purpose of seeing them tortured for eternity. Please forgive me if I should refuse to worship such an evil God should it exist.
(e) An evangelical friend of mine had told me that he doesn't believe in eternal conscious torment but is instead an anihilationist, or believer in conditional immortality. So in this scenario, God creates numerous sentient beings who turn out to be a failed experiment. Again, no worship from me! If anyone is appealing to free will, it's a bogus concept. If all of God's realm is already known to Him, nothing I or you do can influence what already is. So for me unless God saves everything He creates, He isn't worthy of the name.
(a) A chain of unconnected belief predicated on eternalism since Parmenides.
(b) In his philosophical musing "The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.", he does not mean (a). And where does he say he was an eternalist? He was bemused by the relativity of simultaneity, as are we all, and will have had to entertain eternalism. As in the B-theory of time. B for Block and Bollocks.
(c) So true. Especially trapped inside belief.
(d) Hate = love. So far, so bad. But wait! Superb! Good man! Transcendent, trans-infinite, Love is competent! Yes! Regardless of Jesus' struggle to emerge.
Sorry! Manners. Welcome indeed, although, to be honest, to my own hurt, I'd seen you around and hadn't got that you believe in unconditional Love. My apologies.
Most Christians believe in a God of eternity. Much as it's used in Christian liturgy, that doesn't mean everlasting in time. It means outside of time,where past, present, and future are all simultaneously available to God. Strangely, the great physicist Albert Einstein, based on his theory of relativity, said that time is an illusion and all things exist at once.
Mind blowing as this is, it means that our human perception of reality is seriously skewed. So our omniscient Creator knows already who of His creatures will attain salvation and who will be eternally damned. This goes for everyone He ever made or will make. So in spite of being a God of eternal love, He creates sentient beings knowing that they will spend eternity in conscious torment. So we may as well say that He creates such beings for the purpose of seeing them tortured for eternity. Please forgive me if I should refuse to worship such an evil God should it exist.
An evangelical friend of mine had told me that he doesn't believe in eternal conscious torment but is instead an anihilationist, or believer in conditional immortality. So in this scenario, God creates numerous sentient beings who turn out to be a failed experiment. Again, no worship from me! If anyone is appealing to free will, it's a bogus concept. If all of God's realm is already known to Him, nothing I or you do can influence what already is. So for me unless God saves everything He creates, He isn't worthy of the name.
The problem I have with your conception of eternity is that you continue to apply time's arrow and other temporal concepts to it, and in so doing, create an atemporal paradox which you then blame God for not being able to resolve.
God cannot anticipate before creation what the outcome of that creation will be - which beings will spend eternity with him, and which beings will not - because, in a timeless eternity, there is no "before". In a timeless eternity, there is only existence or non-existence. There is no before or after, no past or future.
...Only a God who doesn't know the future could create a being bound for eternal hell, and I don't believe that's what God is.
Assuming, in your conception of eternity, that God's act of creation also applies at an individual level (which seems more tenuous), God can't know any being's future, because in a timeless eternity, there is no "future", there is only existence or non-existence. There is no "before" during which "time" He can pre-consider the outcome, because that requires the existence of the thing that He is considering. Everything about that individual comes into being in the act of creation itself.
Comments
Sure, Martin isn’t the easiest to follow and I think he’s wrong about most everything, but I wouldn’t say his use of names is the most difficult thing.
There are ways of doing this though. By all means use the names of people to reference their ideas but you have to explain the relevance of them rather than setting intellectual puzzles. I mean I now know who Carl Rogers is but to parse @Martin54 's reference would require me to digest the gist of a man's life work and IME I might still be stuck for working out what the term is being used to communicate. Or to fail to.
Oh I agree, but Martin’s whole shtick has been a shifting net of references and allusions and dangling propositions, perhaps deliberately a rhetorical tactic or perhaps just because, in the 5 years I’ve been reading the boards I’ve never figured it out. But I think that means expecting him to nail down on one thing is like trying to nail down water.
If you want to discuss Martin's posting style, please do so elsewhere.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
It's interesting looking at familiar verses after a long break - some, like these, still bring to mind thoughts that I remember, suggesting that we will be more radically remade than we can comprehend. If the slate is wiped clean, all record of sin expunged, then memories of sin too will be no more. And even human memory itself, as we experience and understand it, being unable to survive eternity, will also pass away and be transformed into something new.
I don't think it's necessarily literal or indeed literalistic; so much as the more literal reading being indicative/analogous of the type of radical transformation that would take place if suffering and pain were to be removed from the created order as it exists. Creation remains recognisable but is restored to some original state that is far removed from where it is.
I think both this passage and the previous one are trying to describe something that language and human understanding strain to explain and comprehend; I'd assume we would still be recognisably the people we are, but clearly any memory that remains is completely separated from ongoing trauma - as it should be - can you imagine the converse?
Damnationism is orthodox. Universalism is heterodox.
If Love were the ground of being, it's universal. Period.
The theologian Hans Boersma has commented that many people think of the afterlife as a good day supercharged, and that’s simply not in keeping with the Biblical witness. There we read something more like what you’ve described here, an incomprehensible change of all that is. That’s the line I’m more inclined to go with.
Glad we agree.
The idea of “anonymous Christians” has been around for centuries. Thomas Aquinas systematizes it but it’s been around since the earliest days of the church, in one way or another.
Yep.
Dunno.
Dunno.
Why? If all the former things pass away, why would anything still be recognisable? After all, if there's no state of being married in heaven, why should any of our earthly relationships persist? Why would people still need to recognise each other? This, and the human experience of being "in love" are further aspects of earthly existence that will pass away.
I'm not necessarily saying that we should be able to recognise each other, so much as we should be able to recognise ourselves.
We exist in relation to others.
It's impossible to contemplate the Beautific Vision outside a relationship.
Isn't at least some aspect of that an earthly consequence of being evolved social animals, presumably starting all the way back in the womb?
Including of each other. I will know my Nanny Ellis. And my Dad. Or start a war in heaven.
Hasn't there been one already?
Ask Milton.
Sounds like the happy life of a well cared for dog. (I'm serious)
This is what some Yogis say enlightenment is.
The Love I imagine, encompasses infinite nature, immanently, from the ground of being on up. They encompass infinite transcendent creation above that. You can't get to Them from the Bible. You can only get to pathetically, primitively anthropically, infinitely, risibly less. Even in Christ, who is the moral pivot of the ages. You have to transcend the Bible with liberalism, which most here do.
It is surprising, and grimly gratifying as misery loves company, to see how many here have deconstructed once to often and are no longer able to construct faith. I see that I'm far from alone. I spent a long time hanging on by my fingernails, and see familiar names doing that too.
The God of the Bible (and faith in it only), is not (all the omnis) Love. Because He's not universalist.
Love would be.
This is probably not what was meant, but it’s an excellent novel.
[/Tangent]
I do not practice idology of the Bible (faith in it only) but it does the Word, which is love. However, even Paul says this side of eternity we can only see through a glass but dimly. At best, the Bible gives us a reflection on how we have grown to understand God through folk lore and history. It did not stop at the conclusion of the book of Revelation or at the Reformation, or at the Great Awakenings. It is not complete even now.
God is love, therefore, to me, God is a universalist.
Oh aye, that's what's meant.
I agree.
Human evil isn’t some binary thing where if a person has done enough really bad things then they count as 100% evil. Everyone has good and evil in them, to varying degrees. No amount of evil can or should erase the good.
Of course, that also means no amount of good can erase the evil. But putting it that way round is far less controversial within Christian circles for some reason. Why is it that we’re far more comfortable saying that even the greatest saint has done some bad things in their life than we are saying that even the greatest sinner has done some good things in their life?
I think it's because we are instinctively Pelagian and so see good works as - in some sense - salvific.
Of course it is not true: as said above no one is wholly evil and there is usually a reason why they have ended up behaving in the way they did.
But read that again, and you see someone who was groomed by men from her early teenage years, and sexually abused by at least her her mid teens - displaying distress through self-harm and self medicating via drugs and alcohol. Her parents apparently seeing her as wilful and rebellious rather than vulnerable.
Of course many people are abused and drawn into petty crime without becoming serial killers - but you will almost never find people that disturbed who have had a perfectly safe early life.
Mind blowing as this is, it means that our human perception of reality is seriously skewed. So our omniscient Creator knows already who of His creatures will attain salvation and who will be eternally damned. This goes for everyone He ever made or will make. So in spite of being a God of eternal love, He creates sentient beings knowing that they will spend eternity in conscious torment. So we may as well say that He creates such beings for the purpose of seeing them tortured for eternity. Please forgive me if I should refuse to worship such an evil God should it exist.
An evangelical friend of mine had told me that he doesn't believe in eternal conscious torment but is instead an anihilationist, or believer in conditional immortality. So in this scenario, God creates numerous sentient beings who turn out to be a failed experiment. Again, no worship from me! If anyone is appealing to free will, it's a bogus concept. If all of God's realm is already known to Him, nothing I or you do can influence what already is. So for me unless God saves everything He creates, He isn't worthy of the name.
I'd go with that. Except the bit about Einstein saying time is an illusion. There are some modern theoretical physicists suggesting that but I don’t see it in Einstein.
So we'd assume that if event A happens at the same time as both event B and event C, then event B and event C happen at the same time as each other; and according to Einstein that is often not true.
Time is an illusion is a crude way of saying time doesn't work how it intuitively seems to work.
Calling it an illusion doesn't mean it's false, just that our perception of it is distorted. Only a God who doesn't know the future could create a being bound for eternal hell, and I don't believe that's what God is.
(a) A chain of unconnected belief predicated on eternalism since Parmenides.
(b) In his philosophical musing "The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.", he does not mean (a). And where does he say he was an eternalist? He was bemused by the relativity of simultaneity, as are we all, and will have had to entertain eternalism. As in the B-theory of time. B for Block and Bollocks.
(c) So true. Especially trapped inside belief.
(d) Hate = love. So far, so bad. But wait! Superb! Good man! Transcendent, trans-infinite, Love is competent! Yes! Regardless of Jesus' struggle to emerge.
Sorry! Manners. Welcome indeed, although, to be honest, to my own hurt, I'd seen you around and hadn't got that you believe in unconditional Love. My apologies.
God cannot anticipate before creation what the outcome of that creation will be - which beings will spend eternity with him, and which beings will not - because, in a timeless eternity, there is no "before". In a timeless eternity, there is only existence or non-existence. There is no before or after, no past or future.
Assuming, in your conception of eternity, that God's act of creation also applies at an individual level (which seems more tenuous), God can't know any being's future, because in a timeless eternity, there is no "future", there is only existence or non-existence. There is no "before" during which "time" He can pre-consider the outcome, because that requires the existence of the thing that He is considering. Everything about that individual comes into being in the act of creation itself.