Metropolitan Kallistos, David Bentley Hart, Universalism, and the Church of the East

ArmyMatt · Oct 14, 2023

The Liturgist said:
That said, the fear of the inhabitants of Hell in the Great Divorce over what will happen in the fast-approaching night does not suggest a rosy outlook. However despite the dreadful outlook, it is not sufficient to persuade those people visiting the outer reaches of paradise via a bus tour that getting back on the bus for the drive back to Hell is probably not a good idea. But this is really the tragedy of sin, is it not? This was further emphasized when an implied homosexual couple decided not to board the bus when it was preparing to depart from its stop near the city center.

I’ve always wanted to make a film adaptation of that story.

yep

The Liturgist · Oct 18, 2023

gzt said:
That's not really an accurate description.

Aside from Psalm 1:12 and a few other notable exceptions, the Masoretic text is known to be less obviously Christological than the Septuagint, although there was a fellow who had a blog on Ancient Faith Radio for a while who constantly advocated the Orthodoxy of the MT. I think his name was Eric Jobe. And I am sure he had some valid points, but I still am much more comfortable with the Septuagint. I would also be comfortable if someone took the Septuagint and Masoretic Text and blended them together to maximize the Christological content by quoting from which ever version offered the more Christological reading. Also perhaps splicing together the two versions of verse 5 of Psalm 95 LXX/96 MT, since both are correct, but “the gods of the gentiles are demons” from the LXX is more useful, and perhaps the optimum form of that verse would be “the gods of the gentiles are idols of demons” or “idolatrous and demonic.” Since it is correct that every deity other than the our most glorious, loving and merciful God worshipped continually by the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church is an idol, and also in most cases there is an obvious demonic origin, for example, it is clear that every Sura in the Quran was either the result of Muhammed interacting with a demon posing as the Holy Archangel Gabriel, and we are warned that demons will try to impersonate angels, the devil preferring to appear as an angel of light, so it seems entirely probable that the “Jibreel” entity Muhammed reports encountering was a demon, or else, he was simply uttering a series of whoppers. Based on the controversy of the “satanic verses” which Salmon Rushdie made the mistake of writing a novel about, and was severely injured recently in an attempt on his life by an Islamist fanatic, but which do exist in reality, it seems likely that at a certain point Muhammed stopped interacting with the demon and began making it up and also regurgitating pre-existent material and writing Suras to justify his political decisions as leader of the early Muslim community and as ruler of Medina and later of Mecca.

gzt · Oct 18, 2023

The Liturgist said:
the Masoretic text is known to be less obviously Christological

Is that *known* or *asserted*?

The Liturgist said:
there was a fellow who had a blog on Ancient Faith Radio for a while who constantly advocated the Orthodoxy of the MT. I think his name was Eric Jobe.

Yes, good memory, and he was quite correct about it: people asserting that the above is "known" typically don't have the Hebrew chops to back up their assertion. I will just note that while we don't like Protestant exegesis, they have little trouble finding a wealth of Christological readings of the MT.

Light of the East · Oct 20, 2023

ArmyMatt said:
yes, that is the point. the dwarves at the end are in Aslan’s County (heaven), but they refuse to see the beauty around them. there is no window or door that can be opened for them if they refuse to repent.

How can you repent when you do not see?

Light of the East · Oct 20, 2023

The Liturgist said:
It is difficult to see such people being able to change, but it might be possible, through God all things are possible, but we do have scriptural scripture that warns some people will refuse all attempts of God at grace. Consider the parable Christ our True God gave of the servant forgiven for his debt, who then refused to forgive another for his debt and was condemned for that.

Where? Chapter and verse, please. So God just gives up on them? Refuses to extend his love to them anymore? Or does He continue to shower His love on them until they realize they are nothing outside of a loving union with Him and turn to Him in metanoia?

More than that, though. If God, foreknowing the future, foreknew that millions would be so overtaken by sin so as to be in a position from which they would find it impossible to repent, went ahead with all creation, knowing the sure condemnation to torment of millions (billions?), of what character does that make Him? After all, knowing such an end for millions and yet preceding with a creation act unnecessary in any way to fulfill anything in the perfect God, then you must assume that the torment of millions is His will from the beginning, and therefore the Calvinists and their wretched and evil dogma of "double-predestination" are correct. (This is, BTW, Hart's first meditation on creatio ex nihlo from his book, which to this day, no one has given a satisfactory answer to.)

The servant who was forgiven the great debt was thrown into the debtor's prison until he could pay up. This corresponds with our Lord's words where he says in verse 18 of that parable "So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses." And anticipating your response, let me exegete this passage a bit more.

The servant was not a field hand. You don't lend ten thousand talents to a field hand. You lend them to one who is a master of the household, someone of authority who would have a good income and the ability to pay back. From the parable, one might conclude that the master of the household had spend the money lent to him on fine things which decorated his house. So, until he paid back the debt owed to him by selling off those things, he would be incarcerated.

The Liturgist said:
In other words, for damnation not to be a possibility, it seems inconsistent with the text given the amount of time our Lord and His apostles spent admonishing us on how to avoid it.

Our Lord and the Apostles wrote in expectation of the immanent destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Jesus spoke of "Gehenna" of the "fires that are unquenchable and where the worm dieth not." Gehenna was the garbage dump of Jerusalem, where the bodies of those Jews who refused Christ wound up after the Romans sacked the city and murdered over a million inhabitants. The warnings of both Christ and Paul are directed to the Jews of the first century in a prophetic manner to keep them, if they will listen, from going into that horror, dying there, and suffering the chastening, age-long fires of Christ's restoration, a most painful event indeed, where there would be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Final Point: Just to be sure that I am staying within the boundaries of permitted Orthodox thought: This is why I have a strong HOPE - not dogma, but HOPE - that God's will and eventual victory will be the restoration of all things. My answers may sound dogmatic, but they are HOPE.

Light of the East · Oct 20, 2023

abacabb3 said:
People can argue until the cows come home but anyone who claims that universalism is the simplest conclusion one can draw from the bible, fathers, and council are liars...and the book of revelation tells us what happens to unrepentant liars...

I invite you to debate me on the subject in the debate forum of TAW. I have a very strong hope in God's ability to save all, based on Scripture, Patristics, and philosophy.

And no, I'm not a liar.

Light of the East · Oct 20, 2023

The Liturgist said:
I cannot recall the Last Battle as I lack a copy of the Chronicles of Narnia and was too young to appreciate its theological depth. I have however read The Space Trilogy, which I loved, and what is more important, the writings of CS Lewis that actually deal with Christianity and this issue, including all of his theological writings and the Great Divorce, which is specifically about this issue.

The point CS Lewis was trying to make in the works of his I read, and what it sounds like he was trying to make in The Last Battle, is that for the damned, the only way for them to escape their damnation is to change, which is tragically unlikely since it was their arrogant refusal to abandon immature passions and to cooperate with God in their spiritual formation that got them into that mess.

If we are going to follow the analogy in the book, the reason they cannot understand is because they cannot see. All Aslan has to do is open the barn doors and let in the light. Then the dwarfs will see that what they have thought was rotten food and water from a horse trough is really the best of food. They will also see Aslan in all his might and glory.

Analogous to this is our blindness as sinners. We need the light to be shown to us. Many never even get the light, such as pagans who lived before Christ and out of Israel, numerous tribes in isolated countries, etc. Shall they be damned because the light never came to them? Certainly Aquinas and others think so, for they suppose the repentance and turning to Christ is impossible after death. So these unfortunates are condemned to an eternity of suffering simply because the light never got to them? My, how fair!

I certainly hope that God is as eagerly intent on saving souls as some people are in seeing them damned.

ArmyMatt · Oct 20, 2023

Light of the East said:
How can you repent when you do not see?

because they refuse to see.

ArmyMatt · Oct 20, 2023

Light of the East said:
All Aslan has to do is open the barn doors and let in the light.

you need to reread the book. they are all in Aslan’s Country. the dwarves are surrounded by light and beauty. there is no door to open.

Light of the East · Oct 20, 2023

ArmyMatt said:
you need to reread the book. they are all in Aslan’s Country. the dwarves are surrounded by light and beauty. there is no door to open.

I went back and read it. The analogy fails. We are all, in a sense, in Aslan's country, but we are not. You cannot compare those who have never even heard of Christ with dwarfs who hear the voice and refuse it. The darkness is not in our minds either. It has been imposed upon us by the fall of Adam and the expulsion from the Garden of mankind. At death, all will see clearly, unlike the dwarfs. There will be no willful shutting of the eyes, no escaping or misunderstanding what is said. We will all see clearly, some unto bliss and some unto torment. This is, I believe, the Orthodox position, that after death, we all see and experience Christ in His love. That love feels like torment to those who are wicked and is bliss to the redeemed.

The only question then remains as to whether this torment is remedial or retribution. Those who believe in ECT believe it is retribution. Those who believe in Apokatastasis believe it achieves the destruction of the wood, hay, and stubble mentioned in 1 Corinthians 3 so that the gold of the image of God can be uncovered and brought to glory.

The Liturgist · Oct 20, 2023

Light of the East said:
If we are going to follow the analogy in the book, the reason they cannot understand is because they cannot see. All Aslan has to do is open the barn doors and let in the light. Then the dwarfs will see that what they have thought was rotten food and water from a horse trough is really the best of food. They will also see Aslan in all his might and glory.

Analogous to this is our blindness as sinners. We need the light to be shown to us. Many never even get the light, such as pagans who lived before Christ and out of Israel, numerous tribes in isolated countries, etc. Shall they be damned because the light never came to them? Certainly Aquinas and others think so, for they suppose the repentance and turning to Christ is impossible after death. So these unfortunates are condemned to an eternity of suffering simply because the light never got to them? My, how fair!

I certainly hope that God is as eagerly intent on saving souls as some people are in seeing them damned.

If you think we want to see people damned to eternal hellfire, you are completely mistaken. In the Litany of Peace, the Great Ektenia, there is a prayer for the salvation of all, and what is more, we also confess in the confiteor ante communionem to being the chief of sinners, so if anyone is going to be damned, as I see it, it could be me, for I am the most sinful person I know of, since I have no right to judge the sinfulness of others, that role being reserved for Christ Pantocrator. Note however that I do not despair of my salvation, for that is a grave sin; St. Silouan the Athonite warns us that we must flee from both the thought that we are holy, and also from the thought that we are beyond hope of salvation.

So naturally, like Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, I fervently hope that somehow, all may be saved, while acknowledging that I cannot say all must be saved, because the tradition of the Orthodox Church rejects monergism, and because, as Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, memory eternal, pointed out, the one thing God cannot do is to force us to love Him (a remark I would qualify by saying that he cannot force us to voluntarily love Him and that true love is by nature voluntary, for example, His love for us, but he could cause us to love Him involuntarily, but this would be less valuable than the voluntary love He has for us, and also the idea of Dr. David Bentley Hart and also of the Assyrians that Hell is a temporary state where we are tortured until we decide to change our mind and love God is a horrifying one, because it attributes to God a behavior which is entirely unloving and rather which seems to be one of rape.

Rather, the reality is that love to be meaningful must be voluntary, and God’s infinite love for us requires that He give us the ability to not reciprocate His love, which has the effect of inflicting harm on us by causing us to wind up in the Outer Darkness, but even this is a mercy, so we are not tortured by experiencing the consuming fire of God’s love as wrath, since God is immutable, Orthodox theologians have reasoned that His wrath is not Him literally becoming angry, but the experience of the consuming fire of His love from someone who is aligned in opposition to God’s uncreated energies, and therefore, this life is given to us for repentance so that we might align ourselves with the uncreated grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ and the sacramental grace of the Holy Orthodox Church (and hopefully other churches as well, since many of them are so close to us in matters of faith that it is difficult to regard the schism as being anything more than administrative or political in nature as opposed to the present existence of heterodoxy).

Frankly I am somewhat offended that you would allege that we are hoping for the damnation of people. All we are trying to do is preserve Orthodox doctrine for fear that if indeed as Scripture and Church Tradition indicates some people will be damned, the Orthodox faithful will not have been misled by a false doctrine that leads to them neglecting to repent and thus Inadvertently condemning themselves to the outer darkness.

Also it should be obvious that since God is love, as many as can be saved will be saved, but being pure love requires granting the freedom for people to not reciprocate His love, despite the very unpleasant consequences that has. Insofar as it remains a monergist theology, Universalism suffers from the same problems as Calvinism or some sort of hypothetical nightmare theology in which everyone is damned (which actually in a sense appears to have been the belief of the Sadducees who rejected the idea of eternal life, and rather adhered to the Torah for the blessings of God in the present, and likewise many of the Pagan religions of antiquity such as Grego-Roman Paganism, but not Egyptian Paganism, which did have a well defined concept of the Afterlife), in that it entails God forcing a predetermined outcome upon our eschatological status that does not take into account our love for Him.

The Liturgist · Oct 20, 2023

Light of the East said:
I went back and read it. The analogy fails. We are all, in a sense, in Aslan's country, but we are not. You cannot compare those who have never even heard of Christ with dwarfs who hear the voice and refuse it. The darkness is not in our minds either. It has been imposed upon us by the fall of Adam and the expulsion from the Garden of mankind. At death, all will see clearly, unlike the dwarfs. There will be no willful shutting of the eyes, no escaping or misunderstanding what is said. We will all see clearly, some unto bliss and some unto torment. This is, I believe, the Orthodox position, that after death, we all see and experience Christ in His love. That love feels like torment to those who are wicked and is bliss to the redeemed.

The only question then remains as to whether this torment is remedial or retribution. Those who believe in ECT believe it is retribution. Those who believe in Apokatastasis believe it achieves the destruction of the wood, hay, and stubble mentioned in 1 Corinthians 3 so that the gold of the image of God can be uncovered and brought to glory.

Since I can’t recall the plot of the Narnia trilogy other than the opening bits involving the wardrobe and the lamp post in the snow, after which I tuned out in fifth grade and went back to drawing pictures of the Convair CV-880, which is a gorgeous jetliner by the way, as is its larger cousin the CV-990, and the Convair liners were incredibly well manufactured and never had a fatal accident, and indeed I can’t even recall a hull loss, which puts them in an elite category shared by just a few other jetliners with low production runs, such as the Dassault-Breguet Mercure, which was similiar to the 737-200 but longer, with the seating capacity of an Airbus A320, and which was built in the early 1970s, but unfortunately the initial model had very short range, being built specifically for the use of Air Inter on domestic flights within France, and efforts to sell a longer-ranged version were unsuccessful), or the Handley Paige HP42 Hannibal and Heracles class, flown by Imperial Airways without incident, and the related Short Brothers Scylla, a very similar aircraft of which two were built to provide additional capacity when HP refused to manufacture many more HP42 aircraft, with the HP42 being the largest and most powerful airliner in commercial service for most of the 1930s, until it was outclassed by the great flying boats such as the Martin China Clipper, the Short Empire flying boats, and the massive Boeing 314 built to enable Pan Am to fly to Europe, unfortunately rolling off the production line right on the eve of WWII. Thus, since I was distracted with these lovely airliners, I am unable to participate in this conversation using analogies from the Chronicles of Narnia, so perhaps we could use material that we are mutually familiar with. Otherwise it would be a bit like me trying to explain to you my belief in the potential of all being saved using examples from the history of the airline industry, which is filled with ecclesiastical metaphors (indeed, as the British writer Olaf Stapledon pointed out in his amazing 1920s science fiction novel Last and First Men, aeroplanes have a cruciform shape).

Light of the East · Oct 20, 2023

The Liturgist said:
If you think we want to see people damned to eternal hellfire, you are completely mistaken. In the Litany of Peace, the Great Ektenia, there is a prayer for the salvation of all, and what is more, we also confess in the confiteor ante communionem to being the chief of sinners, so if anyone is going to be damned, as I see it, it could be me, for I am the most sinful person I know of, since I have no right to judge the sinfulness of others, that role being reserved for Christ Pantocrator. Note however that I do not despair of my salvation, for that is a grave sin; St. Silouan the Athonite warns us that we must flee from both the thought that we are holy, and also from the thought that we are beyond hope of salvation.

I did not mean to infer that you personally want to see anyone condemned. It's just that some people, whose works I have read online as they debate Universalists, seem to get really, really upset at the idea of God having the power and ability to bring all to repentance. They go to great lengths to deny certain facts which scholars have brought up (such as the bogus canons of Constantinople II, which are so bad that even the Catholic Encyclopedia refuses to list them with the canons of C2) and twist and turn the wording of Scripture to suit their agenda. I find it disingenuous at best and slavishness to an agenda at worst.

I also agree with your statement about personal sinfulness, which is why I am hopeful that Apokatastasis is true, because I am a deeply flawed and wicked person who, despite my efforts, cannot seem to "get it right" in regard to the Christian life. I somedays have to really struggle to not despair of my salvation because Orthodoxy teaches us that salvation is not the Protestant idea of a legal "not guilty" decree, but God dealing with us as we really are, and what I really am is horrifying to me, despite my prayers, fasting, and best efforts.

The Liturgist said:
So naturally, like Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, I fervently hope that somehow, all may be saved, while acknowledging that I cannot say all must be saved, because the tradition of the Orthodox Church rejects monergism, and because, as Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, memory eternal, pointed out, the one thing God cannot do is to force us to love Him (a remark I would qualify by saying that he cannot force us to voluntarily love Him and that true love is by nature voluntary, for example, His love for us, but he could cause us to love Him involuntarily, but this would be less valuable than the voluntary love He has for us, and also the idea of Dr. David Bentley Hart and also of the Assyrians that Hell is a temporary state where we are tortured until we decide to change our mind and love God is a horrifying one, because it attributes to God a behavior which is entirely unloving and rather which seems to be one of rape.

So how does the synergist view the following verse from St. Paul?

Romans 5: 18 Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. 19 For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

The bolded part certainly looks to me like God has acted alone to save all mankind without any input from us at all. This is, of course, the Protestant position, which decries what they view to be "works salvation." I can't help but wonder if all mankind has been redeemed and put on the road to salvation (theosis) and that it is a matter not of ultimate salvation, but rather of entering into that theosis here and now. What if salvation truly is a free gift, and our response here and now determines not if we are ultimately saved, but what crowns, rewards, and glory we will experience in the ages of ages to come?

You cannot torture a person into loving you. Anyone who believes that . . . well, that is just bizarre beyond belief!! But what you can do is to A.) show them the beauty of your person B.) show them the ugliness of that which they thought was beautiful, i.e., their sins, so that C.) a person comes see what is truly the good and desirable and turns from the love of sin to the love of God.

God does not torture. What tortures, or causes deep pain to the sinner, is the knowledge of the truth. I have experienced this personally and I can tell you that it is a horrible experience, beyond any words to describe it when God opens your spiritual eyes to see what you have really been instead of what you fancy yourself to be.

The Liturgist said:
Rather, the reality is that love to be meaningful must be voluntary, and God’s infinite love for us requires that He give us the ability to not reciprocate His love, which has the effect of inflicting harm on us by causing us to wind up in the Outer Darkness, but even this is a mercy, so we are not tortured by experiencing the consuming fire of God’s love as wrath, since God is immutable, Orthodox theologians have reasoned that His wrath is not Him literally becoming angry, but the experience of the consuming fire of His love from someone who is aligned in opposition to God’s uncreated energies, and therefore, this life is given to us for repentance so that we might align ourselves with the uncreated grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ and the sacramental grace of the Holy Orthodox Church (and hopefully other churches as well, since many of them are so close to us in matters of faith that it is difficult to regard the schism as being anything more than administrative or political in nature as opposed to the present existence of heterodoxy).

Agreed. But why limit it to only this life? Again, (and I hate beating this horse to death) what of the millions who have and will ever live and never have heard of Christ and repentance? No chance for them to be brought into the presence of Christ and to repent there? Even Lewis seemed to hint at that in THE LAST BATTLE, where the young worshiper of Tash, upon seeing Aslan, casts himself at Aslan's feet in worship. And Aslan does not hold him guilty for false worship, but says that in his heart, the Tash worshiper was really seeking Aslan himslef.

The Liturgist said:
Frankly I am somewhat offended that you would allege that we are hoping for the damnation of people. All we are trying to do is preserve Orthodox doctrine for fear that if indeed as Scripture and Church Tradition indicates some people will be damned, the Orthodox faithful will not have been misled by a false doctrine that leads to them neglecting to repent and thus Inadvertently condemning themselves to the outer darkness.

Forgive me. That was not intended, nor aimed at you. As mentioned, it is others I have seen in debates who go ballistic when even trying to discuss this issue.

The Liturgist said:
Also it should be obvious that since God is love, as many as can be saved will be saved, but being pure love requires granting the freedom for people to not reciprocate His love, despite the very unpleasant consequences that has. Insofar as it remains a monergist theology, Universalism suffers from the same problems as Calvinism or some sort of hypothetical nightmare theology in which everyone is damned (which actually in a sense appears to have been the belief of the Sadducees who rejected the idea of eternal life, and rather adhered to the Torah for the blessings of God in the present, and likewise many of the Pagan religions of antiquity such as Grego-Roman Paganism, but not Egyptian Paganism, which did have a well defined concept of the Afterlife), in that it entails God forcing a predetermined outcome upon our eschatological status that does not take into account our love for Him.

I disagree with that part in bold. The predetermined outcome is that the devil owns nothing, has no right to souls, and his "house" has been plundered by the strong man. Our eschatological status is determined by our deeds here on earth according to Jesus and St. Paul. There is no way I would have the honor, crowns, glory, and majesty of Saint Paisios of Athos or any other one who has succeeded in the ascetic fight. These true saints will shine forever as the stars in the sky. I, on the other hand, will be fortunate to look like a flashlight running on burned out batteries.

In my opinion, the monergistic act of God is the salvation of all and the restoration of all things. The synergistic reality of this is how we will obey what we have been shown and the rewards of obedience that we will experience in the ages of ages to come. These are two entirely different things. One is God's work on the Cross alone. The other is dependent upon my cooperation with the Holy Spirit and His promptings. If my eternal salvation, and escaping torment, depends in any way upon me . . . I'm in deep kimchee! It seems to me that those who are upset at a monergistic salvation, are afraid that by teaching this, they will cause people to not work on theosis in this life.

Unlike some people I have read, who will gladly tell you exactly what life after death is, I don't know a thing about it. But I do wonder: could it be that there will not only be levels of glory dependent upon our obedience in this life, but also levels of joy and bliss that correspond with our actions in this life? What do you think? Different levels and experiences of bliss for different people? Why else would Jesus speak of different rewards and those who would be "greater" in the Kingdom than others?

ArmyMatt · Oct 20, 2023

Light of the East said:
You cannot compare those who have never even heard of Christ with dwarfs who hear the voice and refuse it.

I am not, no one is.

Light of the East said:
The darkness is not in our minds either. It has been imposed upon us by the fall of Adam and the expulsion from the Garden of mankind.

it originated with Adam’s fall, but it is in our minds due to the Fall. every aspect of us is darkened, including our minds.

Light of the East said:
At death, all will see clearly, unlike the dwarfs.

right, so there is no door that Aslan can open to show them.

Light of the East said:
There will be no willful shutting of the eyes, no escaping or misunderstanding what is said.

so says you. I can willingly shut my eyes if I don’t like what I see when I open them.

Light of the East said:
We will all see clearly, some unto bliss and some unto torment. This is, I believe, the Orthodox position, that after death, we all see and experience Christ in His love. That love feels like torment to those who are wicked and is bliss to the redeemed.

true.

Light of the East said:
The only question then remains as to whether this torment is remedial or retribution. Those who believe in ECT believe it is retribution. Those who believe in Apokatastasis believe it achieves the destruction of the wood, hay, and stubble mentioned in 1 Corinthians 3 so that the gold of the image of God can be uncovered and brought to glory.

and what if I want the wood, hay, and stubble and desire to cling to that and I don’t want the gold image to be brought to glory? what happens then?

The Liturgist · Oct 21, 2023

Light of the East said:
Agreed. But why limit it to only this life? Again, (and I hate beating this horse to death) what of the millions who have and will ever live and never have heard of Christ and repentance?

Actually, CS Lewis specifically addressed that issue in his writings, and the fallacies associated with it. However, there is also the Roman Catholic doctrine of Invincible Ignorance, which would apply to such people, and which as far as I am aware has not been rejected by the Orthodox Church, which would apply to those who have not heard of our Lord, such as the Sentinelese on North Sentinel Island in the Chagos Archipelago. Also for persons born before the Incarnation, there is the doctrine, widely held by Orthodox Christians, of the Harrowing of Hell, in which our Lord descended to the realm of the dead in order to free the souls of the righteous and anyone else down there who heard Him and wished to follow Him, which could be why St. John Chrysostom describes Hell as overthrown and despoiled.

The main issue is rather in the case of those who chose not to love Jesus Christ. As Metropolitan Kallistos Ware pointed out, God cannot force these people to love Him, and there are people who are self-destructive and hateful to the point where they will choose Hell over God (I should know, I have encountered some people who are, I hope, temporarily, in such a state of mind).

The Liturgist · Oct 21, 2023

Light of the East said:
I disagree with that part in bold. The predetermined outcome is that the devil owns nothing, has no right to souls, and his "house" has been plundered by the strong man.

I am not saying that he is owed anything; indeed Metropolitan Kallistos Ware expressly declared that the devil has no rights.

Rather the issue is one of choice, and preserving the Orthodox doctrine that we must repent of our fallen, impassioned self-destructive desires which prompt us towards a Misotheism that would make spending an eternity with God an intolerable torture, forcing our exclusion to the Outer Darkness as an act of mercy.

Light of the East said:
So how does the synergist view the following verse from St. Paul?

‘

I am unwilling to answer that question since both the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Church are, and always have been, defined by their doctrinal synergism, and have had to endure baseless accusations of Pelagianism from Calvinists as a result for the past five centuries.

The only ancient church that for any significant length of time embraced Apokatastasis as its official doctrine regarding the Eschaton was the Church of the East, which survives today as the Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East due to a schism over the last hereditary Catholicos adopting the Gregorian calendar in the 1960s (and also the fact that a bishop of the church found an ancient Syriac manuscript that contained their nomocanon, a collection of canon law equivalent to the Eastern Orthodox Pedalion, which prohibited a bishop from choosing his successor and thus prohibited by extension the hereditary patriarchate, which depended on each Catholicos selecting one of his nephews as his successor), in the centuries before most of them were killed by the genocidal Muslim warlord Tamerlane and his sons (prior to that time, the Church of the East covered the largest area of any Church before the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of the New World and the Russian annexation of Siberia and Alaska, and was arguably more influential on a global scale in terms of world trade from its Patriarchate in Seleucia-Cstesiphon than the Roman Catholic Church, and was certainly on a par with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the main difference being the Church of the East had historically been isolated as it existed primarily in the territories of the Sassanian Empire in Persia, which was in a centuries-long cold war with the Roman Empire which occasionally boiled over into armed conflict, before it and the southeastern provinces of the surviving Byzantine half of the Roman Empire were conquered by the Ummayid Caliphate and its successors, such as the Fatimid Caliphate. However as far as I can tell, the Assyrians no longer adhere to the doctrine of apokatastasis, and for sound and logical reasons.

So to repeat: Metropolitan Kallistos Ware stressed that we can hope for Apoktatastasis, and we do pray for the salvation of all men. However, there are serious problems concerning the nature of love and free will that render a Universalist eschatology incompatible with Orthodoxy. Additionally, there is the related problem that if a large number of Orthodox Christians start to embrace Universalism, they might cease to repent. I mean, why go through the bother of partaking of the Eucharist, repenting, fasting, giving alms and preaching the Gospel so as to baptize all nations in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, if one is going to be saved anyway? Unless we adhere to the nightmarish form of apokatastasis alluded to in The Book of the Bee by the Assyrian Bishop of Basra, in which we will be punished (he uses the phrase “receive stripes”) appropriate for our sins before being admitted to paradise, a view I like to call Hell-as-Purgatory, which I reject for the same reason I reject the doctrine of Purgatory (although I am inclined to agree with Fr. Seraphim Rose that the aerial tollhouses, while not literal, reflect an underlying spiritual reality, and for this reason prayers for the dead are important,

rusmeister · Oct 21, 2023

gzt said:
Is that *known* or *asserted*?

Yes, good memory, and he was quite correct about it: people asserting that the above is "known" typically don't have the Hebrew chops to back up their assertion. I will just note that while we don't like Protestant exegesis, they have little trouble finding a wealth of Christological readings of the MT.

Even if none of us *know* anything, we have brains and can use them.
To the logical thinker: When and why were the Masoretic texts written?
When: 8th/9th century A.D.
Why: Numerous reasons are given. However, one of the reasons I read back in the day was to either eliminate or at least limit or make less probable Christian interpretation of the texts, which is highly plausible, in addition to other reasons given. As you point out, such a goal only had limited success, though.

But far more important than any of that is how people of the first centuries understood the texts THEY had. We have Christ and the apostles quoting ancient Scripture, we have the Church fathers commenting on it. If the Church did not need the MT for a thousand years, why would we need them now?

abacabb3 · Oct 21, 2023

Light of the East said:
I invite you to debate me on the subject in the debate forum of TAW. I have a very strong hope in God's ability to save all, based on Scripture, Patristics, and philosophy.

And no, I'm not a liar.

I appreciate the kind invitation, but I'm not interested.

Nicea II speaks of the subject authoritatively in its 6th session:

Definition 18 [of Hieria]: If any one confess not the resurrection of the dead, the judgment to come, the retribution of each one according to his merits, in the righteous balance of the Lord that neither will there be any end of punishment nor indeed of the kingdom of heaven, that is the full enjoyment of God, for the kingdom of heaven is not meat and drink but righteousness joy and peace in the Holy Ghost, as the divine Apostle teaches, let him be anathema.

Epiphanius [in giving the definitive reply of Nicea II to Hiera] reads: This is the confession of the patrons of our true faith the holy Apostles, the divinely inspired Fathers–this is the confession of the Catholic Church and not of heretics. That which follows, however, their own full of ignorance and absurdity for thus they bluster… (Source, p. 423)

Nothing to debate. The subject has been settled.

Lukaris · Oct 21, 2023

St. Paul mentions outcomes in 1 Corinthians 6:1-4 about the saints judging the world as well as angels. What this means I don’t know but it gives me a sense of hopeful speculation that maybe the Lord grants the saved to still preach salvation by grace to the unsaved? Perhaps this is a further advancement of the Lord’s Prayer ( Matthew 6:9-13)?

I am not assuming my own salvation in this & maybe among those needing a “second chance”. St. Paul also says he was caught up to paradise & heard matters beyond things permitted to us here ( 2 Corinthians 12:4).

I have said before that I believe a basically guaranteed hell that was preached for centuries In much of “Christiandom” laid the seeds for the falling away of now. A guaranteed hell or heaven seems to contradict what the Lord says about judgment of the good vs the evil in John 5:22-30. The Lord didn’t say this only includes only those who might have said some sinners prayer while excluding those who were otherwise good but might have been innocently ignorant of the Lord Himself ( I include many who might have been informed of the Gospel but confused of it by hypocritical preaching etc.)( Matthew 7:19-23). Still, I don’t think we can assume anything but hope for all & leave it to the Holy Trinity.

ArmyMatt · Oct 21, 2023

Light of the East said:
Again, (and I hate beating this horse to death) what of the millions who have and will ever live and never have heard of Christ and repentance? No chance for them to be brought into the presence of Christ and to repent there? Even Lewis seemed to hint at that in THE LAST BATTLE, where the young worshiper of Tash, upon seeing Aslan, casts himself at Aslan's feet in worship. And Aslan does not hold him guilty for false worship, but says that in his heart, the Tash worshiper was really seeking Aslan himslef.

you already know the answer, and you in fact gave it with reference to Emeth. God judges based on the light one is given. and while Aslan accepted Emeth, Rishda and Shift are given over to Tash.

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