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A common rationalisation for Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT) is that the punishment for crimes against God must be eternal because God is eternal. By this logic, a crime against a 100-year-old should be punished with a 100-year prison sentence, and stealing a baby's rattle should carry a...

Is anyone really sorry about anything? Infernalism says that we must genuinely repent of all our sins in this life in order to be saved from the punishment of eternal torture. But is this even possible and has anyone ever managed to do it? Can anyone here say that they have faced up to the...

It would be particularly good to hear from Catholics or Orthodox Christians because we don't often hear their views on this subject. If you're Protestant, like me, and you'd like to contribute, would you please only give what you believe is the established view of your denomination, if it has...

Here are some Christmas carols that you may wish to include in your repertoire. I've bolded the universalist parts so that you can sing these bits out with particular gusto! 'Tis the season for universalism. Merry Christmas to all. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing – Charles Wesley, George...

People often say that Christian universalism is a fringe viewpoint that is dismissed as heretical by most Christians. But how true is that? Most people don't know what universalism actually is as was the case with me until I started reading some of the universalist threads here on CF a year or...

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love." 1 John 4:18 Jesus we the infinite breadth and length and height of God’s love for us. That's why the Bible urges us to fully embrace our faith...

In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the older brother was annoyed that his younger brother was welcomed back by his father. This seems to make some sense because after all he had been the dutiful son and it must have seemed that his loyalty meant nothing to his dad. But it also feels that this...

Infernalists and Annihilationists believe that hell is necessary to preserve our free will because we're free to reject God and there must be consequences if we do. There must be consequences but does it make sense that this has to be either eternal torture or permanent destruction, take your...

Okay, a clickbait title! The question really is, did Adam do wrong or is it we who are doing the wrong by misunderstanding God? The common understanding seems to be that Adam/Adam and Eve/just Eve alone did something wrong which took the whole world into chaos and Jesus was subsequently sent...

Imagine a fire-alarm going off at our place of work or wherever we are and we run outside and the register's taken. Some are not accounted for so, while we're naturally glad we survived, we are also affected by sadness. God is love and we're meant to become more and more like Him, so we're...

Universalists are often dismissed as being emotional because they object to the idea of anyone being tortured forever. But is it such a bad thing to feel uneasy with such an idea? I'd like to ask a few questions to anyone who believes in Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT): How do you experience...

Well predicted by Team Hell. Satan won and God lost. Satan succeeded in dragging the majority, the "wide road", down to hell. Jesus's suffering in life and death, though unimaginable, wasn't quite enough and in the end death and sin triumphed. His ressurection, initially so full of love and...

I listened to an interesting talk by Robin Parry on the history of universalism that I'd like to try to summarise. The talk's here: He focuses on the post-Reformation period and says how amazing it is that universalism seems to have been repeatedly rediscovered over this time. While the...

Just to briefly explain the options offered in the poll: C.S. Lewis envisages hell as a place where the door is always shut from the inside, so that we can always open it whenever we want. It's our choice if we're in Hell and God is largely passive. N.T. Wight thinks that if we continually...

Presumably God would have foreseen that the vagueness in the Bible about heaven and hell would lead to different interpretations and the arguments we see today about Infernalism, Annihalism and Universalism. Did He have a good reason for keeping things so undefined? Mark 4:11-12 seems to...

Is it God Himself or does He simply send us there and delegates the burning and torment to other creatures? Or is the whole picture an incoherent fantasy and hell is more something like an unrepentant person's experience of God's presence? That God's presence is experienced differently...

In the story of the Flood, God wanted to destroy the world and start again with Noah and two representatives of each land and air based species. Presumably He was happy with the fish or the story is not meant to be taken literally. So, when we look at where we are today, does God want to...

In the past, many self-identified Christians used the Bible to justify slavery quoting passages such as Ephesians 6:5-8: “Slaves, be obedient to your human masters with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ”. I can imagine them saying that's clearly "what the Bible says", and...

Alternatively, why has Christian universalism never gone away? The question's not discussed in churches and if it's mentioned at all it's usually only to denounce it as a heresy. And yet the belief in universal reconciliation (UR) has been a consistent strand throughout church history. Today...

What is it about universal redemption that annoys so many Christians? Shouldn’t we be happy that God’s love and mercy are wider, higher, deeper, and broader than we could ever imagine? We all sin at times so shouldn't we welcome the thought that God is not going to annihilate or eternally...