Inspired by this thread: How can a God of love send people to hell?
and my recent Bible studies, I wanted to open up discussion about this.
There's a whole alternative framework (that's not ever been deemed as heretical by the church) that seems to fit in much better with passages like John 3:16.
If we "dare to hope all men will be saved" (as the author Hans Urs von Balthasar writes) and if we believe that God laid down His life for us....not to "save us" from an angry Father...but to demonstrate His love for us.....it all fits together much better.
Instead of looking at the end.....maybe it'd be better to look at the beginning and start from there?
and my recent Bible studies, I wanted to open up discussion about this.
There's a whole alternative framework (that's not ever been deemed as heretical by the church) that seems to fit in much better with passages like John 3:16.
If we "dare to hope all men will be saved" (as the author Hans Urs von Balthasar writes) and if we believe that God laid down His life for us....not to "save us" from an angry Father...but to demonstrate His love for us.....it all fits together much better.
Instead of looking at the end.....maybe it'd be better to look at the beginning and start from there?
From Fr Richard Rohr: The incarnation of God and the redemption of the world could never be a mere mop-up exercise in response to human sinfulness, but the proactive work of God from the very beginning. We were "chosen in Christ before the world was made," as the hymn in Ephesians puts it (1:4). Our sin could not possibly be the motive for the divine incarnation, but only perfect love and divine self-revelation! For Scotus, God never merely reacts, but always supremely and freely acts, and always acts totally out of love. Scotus was very Trinitarian.
The best way I can summarize how Scotus tried to change the old notion of retributive justice is this: Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity (it did not need changing)! Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God. God in Jesus moved people beyond the counting, weighing, and punishing model, that the ego prefers, to the utterly new world that Jesus offered, where God's abundance has made any economy of merit, sacrifice, reparation, or atonement both unhelpful and unnecessary. Jesus undid "once and for all" (Hebrews 7:27; 9:12; 10:10) all notions of human and animal sacrifice and replaced them with his new economy of grace, which is the very heart of the gospel revolution. Jesus was meant to be a game changer for the human psyche and for religion itself. When we begin negatively, or focused on the problem, we never get out of the hamster wheel.~Richard Rohr's Meditation: Love, Not Atonement
The best way I can summarize how Scotus tried to change the old notion of retributive justice is this: Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity (it did not need changing)! Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God. God in Jesus moved people beyond the counting, weighing, and punishing model, that the ego prefers, to the utterly new world that Jesus offered, where God's abundance has made any economy of merit, sacrifice, reparation, or atonement both unhelpful and unnecessary. Jesus undid "once and for all" (Hebrews 7:27; 9:12; 10:10) all notions of human and animal sacrifice and replaced them with his new economy of grace, which is the very heart of the gospel revolution. Jesus was meant to be a game changer for the human psyche and for religion itself. When we begin negatively, or focused on the problem, we never get out of the hamster wheel.~Richard Rohr's Meditation: Love, Not Atonement
