Christian Universalism. What's not to like?

[Shrewd Manager]

Wrong! Read my post again. The fact that some of what you selectively emphasized is correct but that does NOT negate the rest. What you think is not evidence of anything. The quotes I posted say nothing about murderers being spared.

I love it when you weigh in der Alte, you've got the fire for some pretty obscure doctrine. So whereabouts in the Mosaic law, in the Torah or Tanakh, do we see any support for the principle 'an eye for an eternity in hell'?

 

[Fervent]

It seems to me that what the person wants the text to say being more important than what it actually says, isn't limited to UR.

Just because others are guilty of it doesn't make it acceptable. Though UR, in particular, is egregious in that massive portions of Scripture have to be re-interpreted in ways that are not fit to the text and a handful of verses that at the very best ambiguously lend support to the position are given priority. A similarly egregious hermeneutic, in my eyes, is one that interprets a single chapter of Revelation and then force fits the rest of the Bible to fit that interpretation. The only thing Jesus talked about more than final judgment/punishment is money and in none of the cases does he explicitly teach that the punishment is limited. In fact, I can't think of anywhere in the Bible where a limit is placed on the punishment instead the notion of a limited punishment is entirely an invention within speculative theologies. In all cases the duration is either ambiguously defined or it is implied(and in some cases explicitly stated to be) everlasting.

 

[Fervent]

As far as I can tell from my primary lexicon (TDNT) and other scholarly works, "for an age" and "age-long" has no basis, nor does any translation that implies an explicit limit to the length.

However the word is used for things associated with God, e.g. in the LXX for the temple's everlasting doors, which obviously aren't literally eternal. I think you might be able to justify something like "punishment in eternity," or using scholars-speak but maybe more precision, "eschatological punishment." I.e. it's not clear that the phrase is an explicit statement about the length, whether limited or infinite.

Furthermore, similar wording was used by 1st Century Jews about Gehenna. It was in fact eternal in some sense, but people didn't necessarily stay in it eternally.

Given the variety of descriptions he used, I don't believe Jesus ever intended a precise definition of punishments given.

I think I understand why people think punishment is so important, but I don't understand why infinite punishment is important. Since Jesus suggested that we compare God to a father, I'd note that if a father threatens a spanking, his kid will probably take it literally, but if he says "I'll kill you" (short of an extremely abusive father) one would hope he would not. Jesus was certainly known to use hyperbole when talking about consequences, e.g. Mat 5:22, 5:29, etc.

I'd have to see specific contexts to fully weigh in on the LXX usage, as well as to see which is used the adjective or the noun since their lexical mapping is different in significant ways. Though even accepting that it is used of things that obviously did not last forever, if it were things of the temple it was intended to be eternal though the conditional nature of the covenant made the eternal promise revokable(and it was revoked because of the sins of the people). While the rabbinic traditions are of some interest in establishing that Jesus was working with a strata of belief that already existed and provides us with some context for understanding Jesus' warnings they aren't of much use given the speculative nature of the Jewish approach to theology. I'm not so certain that Jesus was being hyperbolic in the two instances you mentioned, in fact the claims of hyperbole I often find unconvincing. With the first example it seems Jesus is stressing the strictness and perfection required to stand before God on one's own merits, and in the second it seems comparing hell(whatever is meant by it) with bodily integrity it would be much preferable to lose bodily integrity to avoid such unpleasantness. In fact, dismembering oneself seems trivial when the torments of hell are considered. The issue with God as the father is that as far as I am aware the modern notion that "we are all children of God" is not taught anywhere in the Bible, so those in hell would decidedly not be God's children. In fact, it's my understanding that it is acceptance of the gospel that allows us to be adopted in as sons.

 

[Der Alte]

I love it when you weigh in der Alte, you've got the fire for some pretty obscure doctrine. So whereabouts in the Mosaic law, in the Torah or Tanakh, do we see any support for the principle 'an eye for an eternity in hell'?

Did you actually read my post trying to comprehend what I was actually saying? It does not appear so. You evidently skimmed a bit picked out a few things you wanted to complain about. Did the Jews before and during the time of Jesus have a belief in a fiery place of punishment which they called both hades and gehenna? Did Jesus know about that belief? Did Jesus ever say anything to contradict the Jewish belief. Jesus confronted the Jews about their beliefs and practices a number of times. I remember Jesus clearing the temple one time. Did Jesus ever confront the Jews about their belief in hell? I quoted Jesus a number of times and indicated how what Jesus taught was very similar to the Jewish belief in hell. All this about 14 centuries before Dante. I can draw you some pictures if you want me to.

 

[Shrewd Manager]

Did you actually read my post trying to comprehend what I was actually saying? It does not appear so. You evidently skimmed a bit picked out a few things you wanted to complain about. Did the Jews before and during the time of Jesus have a belief in a fiery place of punishment which they called both hades and gehenna? Did Jesus know about that belief? Did Jesus ever say anything to contradict the Jewish belief. Jesus confronted the Jews about their beliefs and practices a number of times. I remember Jesus clearing the temple one time. Did Jesus ever confront the Jews about their belief in hell? I quoted Jesus a number of times and indicated how what Jesus taught was very similar to the Jewish belief in hell. All this about 14 centuries before Dante. I can draw you some pictures if you want me to.

Eternal punishment prima facie contradicts the Torah, in particular the 'equal measure' of lex talionis. Again, where does Hebrew scripture make such a deviation from the fundamental principle? Seems you've gotten on to a lot of misanthropic rabbinical teachings that don't conform to Mosaic teachings on law and justice. Isn't that exactly what Jesus was decrying about Pharasaic dogma?

 

[Fervent]

Anyone here perfect? Why not? "EVERY MAN SHALL BE SALTED WITH FIRE/PUR" so did WE ALL miss our 5 sec of the REAL ETERNAL dose? After all, it's the same Greek word PUR for FIRE that their eternal torture HELL FIRE is defined with.

Also, what about all those who missed out on the "he shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and FIRE/PUR" and TONGUES too. Seems like a lot of misses in that opportunity to get the Hell burned out of both sides.

When you get perfect, you'll be able to answer your own question as to how much FIRE' is needed....experientially. As for me, I admit I haven't made perfection yet. Thank GOD I don't need to, because MY LORD ATTAINED SINLESS-NESS and perfection for ALL, and then he ATONED imputed righteousness FOR ALL. The orthodox church just hasn't figured that out in the last 1500 years.

The same fire that melts the butter hardens the egg.

So too, the same fire that refines the righteous like silver devours the wicked like stubble.

It seems that while UR proponents whine about not being understood in the pretzels they twist to turn removing the need to accept the gospel into the whole world being saved by the gospel they fail to engage with anything but the most blatant caricature of theological positions holding hell as eternal.

 

[ozso]

It seems that while UR proponents whine about not being understood in the pretzels they twist to turn removing the need to accept the gospel into the whole world being saved by the gospel they fail to engage with anything but the most blatant caricature of theological positions holding hell as eternal.

It seems to me that it would behoove you to rise above making lowbrow comments. When you do straight teaching you're a lot more solid and thought provoking. When you post things like this you come off more as sullen and harboring some sort of grudge.

 

[Fervent]

It seems to me that it would behoove you to rise above making lowbrow comments. When you do straight teaching you're a lot more solid and thought provoking. When you post things like this you come off more as sullen and harboring some sort of grudge.

Thank you for the insight and perspective. Perhaps something is coming through that I was unaware of until you said that. In my prior years I had a strong universalist desire, so much so that I was willing to discard anything that contradicted my attempts to reconcile. This led me to a great deal of cognitive dissonance(especially when combined with a false belief that Calvinism was the most Biblically defensible position.) Eventually I came to a point where I didn't trust anything the Bible said and nearly became completely apostate. Then, like Nebudcannezzer, I was struck mad. I may still harbor some emotional baggage from that.

 

[Lazarus Short]

Eternal punishment prima facie contradicts the Torah, in particular the 'equal measure' of lex talionis. Again, where does Hebrew scripture make such a deviation from the fundamental principle? Seems you've gotten on to a lot of misanthropic rabbinical teachings that don't conform to Mosaic teachings on law and justice. Isn't that exactly what Jesus was decrying about Pharasaic dogma?

Eternal punishment also contradicts the Law of the Jubilee, which states that whatever the debt is, if you have even sold yourself, when the Jubilee is declared, you must be set free and debt free, to go home to your inherited estate. Paul endorses this in Romans 6:7, "For he that is dead is freed from sin." If sin has been our Master all our lives, we are free of it when we die, and when we are resurrected, we receive our inheritance/rewards.

 

[ozso]

Just because others are guilty of it doesn't make it acceptable. Though UR, in particular, is egregious in that massive portions of Scripture have to be re-interpreted in ways that are not fit to the text and a handful of verses that at the very best ambiguously lend support to the position are given priority. A similarly egregious hermeneutic, in my eyes, is one that interprets a single chapter of Revelation and then force fits the rest of the Bible to fit that interpretation. The only thing Jesus talked about more than final judgment/punishment is money and in none of the cases does he explicitly teach that the punishment is limited. In fact, I can't think of anywhere in the Bible where a limit is placed on the punishment instead the notion of a limited punishment is entirely an invention within speculative theologies. In all cases the duration is either ambiguously defined or it is implied(and in some cases explicitly stated to be) everlasting.

Are talking about Revelation 21?

 

[Fervent]

Are talking about Revelation 21?

I had Revelation 20 in mind.

 

[Shrewd Manager]

Eternal punishment also contradicts the Law of the Jubilee, which states that whatever the debt is, if you have even sold yourself, when the Jubilee is declared, you must be set free and debt free, to go home to your inherited estate. Paul endorses this in Romans 6:7, "For he that is dead is freed from sin." If sin has been our Master all our lives, we are free of it when we die, and when we are resurrected, we receive our inheritance/rewards.

Yes indeed. And Jesus' mission is to proclaim the super-Jubilee, which he does in Luke 4:18 reading Isa 61:1, and his coming as prophesied by Daniel in the 70 weeks of years. Even does Jesus teach forgiveness 70 times 7 times (Matt 18:22), correcting Lamech's sin in Gen 4:24. In fact it's Lamech's unbridled vengeance which comes closest to the doctrine of eternal torment. As in the Days of Noah, eh?

 

[Saint Steven]

I guess God is "no respecter of persons", but Jesus sure sounds fickle.

A handy workaround, I'm sure. - lol
Never argue with God.

 

[Saint Steven]

Is the Earth Eternal? – Megiddo Church.


Question:
How do you harmonize Gen. 8:22, “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease” (implying that the earth is eternal) with 2 Pet. 3:10, “The earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up?”

Answer:
The physical earth is without question eternal. We have the plainest statement of this fact in Ecclesiastes 1:4, that “the earth abides for ever” (see also Ps. 148:4-6).


I thought this was relevant to "how long is eternal" and such.

Typically a bad idea to base a doctrine on a book of poetry. Just sayin'.
Some have built a doctrine from the same book that claims the dead are unconscious and nonexistent. (SDA) "The dead know nothing..." (only true under the sun)

 

[Saint Steven]

Eternal punishment also contradicts the Law of the Jubilee, which states that whatever the debt is, if you have even sold yourself, when the Jubilee is declared, you must be set free and debt free, to go home to your inherited estate. Paul endorses this in Romans 6:7, "For he that is dead is freed from sin." If sin has been our Master all our lives, we are free of it when we die, and when we are resurrected, we receive our inheritance/rewards.

That's an outstanding insight. Even the law was built around measured restoration.

 

[hedrick]

Wrong! Read my post again. The fact that some of what you selectively emphasized is correct but that does NOT negate the rest. What you think is not evidence of anything. The quotes I posted say nothing about murderers being spared.

I’m not limited to using your quotes. Bernstein’s book has additional material that does say this.

"Tractate Sanhedrin examines the question of capital punishment and, at the end, moves from the fate of executed criminals to the subject of death in general.15 Here the Mishnah makes a remarkable declaration: “All Israel have a portion in the world to come” (San. 90a; p. 601). This manifesto does not mean that only Jews may enjoy this inheritance, but rather that even criminals executed by the local courts do. It must be assumed that their deaths purge them of their sins."

(Bernstein, Alan E.. Hell and Its Rivals: Death and Retribution among Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Early Middle Ages (p. 247). Cornell University Press.)

I'm using murderers as an example of a capital crime. There were others.

That death purges one of sin is supported by Paul: "For whoever has died is freed from sin." (Rom 6:7)

The problem is that there's lots of beliefs, many of which don't agree, over a long period of time. But I don't care what the Talmud asserts. It's all speculation, which has no real authority for me. Where it's useful is in illuminating what Jesus' hearers were likely to understand when he said what he did.

This isn't an easy job, because we have very little contemporary evidence. But as far as I can tell, the most likely views in Jesus' time said that all of Israel would come out of Gehennon except a few particularly notorious people. But Jesus was preaching to ordinary people. For them, Gehennon is probably a maximum of a year. The one-year maximum was highly controversial in the debates that happened over time. But it seems to have applied around Jesus' time.

Another, safer approach might be to say that given the varying ideas about Gehennon, people would understand it as referring to punishment in the afterlife but would not assume that Jesus was referring to any particular views of how long it lasted or who went there. In that sense, "hell" is a misleading translation, because for most people today it explicitly means ECT. Since Jesus used quite a variety of images, ranging from missing a dinner (Luke 14:15 ff), saying that he wasn't giving any particular description of the form punishment would take is probably a reasonable conclusion anyway. My real position is not universalism, but simply that Jesus taught that we would be accountable for what we did, without describing the specific way that accountability would happen.

For my skepticism over ECT I don't refer to any particular reconstruction of 1st Cent. Jewish views, but Paul's description of the end. I don't think that explicitly gives us universalism, but I don't see how eternal torment, particularly of most humans, could be consistent with it.

 

[ozso]

Wrong! Read my post again.

Replying to your posts, pretty much results in a slap on the face from you most of the time.

 

[Fervent]

Typically a bad idea to base a doctrine on a book of poetry. Just sayin'.
Some have built a doctrine from the same book that claims the dead are unconscious and nonexistent. (SDA) "The dead know nothing..." (only true under the sun)

There's nothing wrong with building doctrine from poetry, per se, it's simply that it is poetry has to be kept in mind and the language use treated accordingly. In fact poetry and music can be one of the richest ways to transmit doctrine which is why churches with a rich musical culture are the ones that survive persecutions(and even grow during them.)

 

[Der Alte]

I love it when you weigh in der Alte, you've got the fire for some pretty obscure doctrine. So whereabouts in the Mosaic law, in the Torah or Tanakh, do we see any support for the principle 'an eye for an eternity in hell'?

I don't recall ever saying anything like "an eye for an eternity in hell'?" If you have a specific post in mind, quote it and I might be able to respond.

 

[Der Alte]

Replying to your posts, pretty much results in a slap on the face from you most of the time.

You know I get that feeling a lot myself.