First, I think you need to understand what hell is. Hell, I believe, is the natural consequences of our sin. For instance, if you rob a bank, you go to prison. You can always repent of your sin and escape hell (though you might escape prison):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?
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
I have searched for but have been unable to find the EOC giving any kind of credence to the doctrine of apokatastasis, other than OrthodoxWiki and pro-universalist articles mentioning it as the minority view of some members of the orthodox church. Perhaps our EOC friends could help us with this .. as well if there is any 'official' position taken by the EOC about Hell?
Which is not opposed to Scripture revealing God's judgements, wrath, anger as eternal. See post :30Scripture reveals God's judgements, wrath, anger & such are corrective:
Job 5:17-18 “Behold, happy is the man whom God corrects; Therefore do not despise the chastening of the Almighty. For He bruises, but he binds up; He wounds, but His hands make whole.”
Hab.1:12 O LORD my God, my Holy One, you who are eternal--surely you do not plan to wipe us out? O LORD, our Rock, you have sent these Babylonians to correct us, to punish us for our many sins.
Because I have sinned against him, I will bear the LORD’s wrath, until he pleads my case and upholds my cause. He will bring me out into the light;I will see his righteousness. (Micah 7:9)
Isaiah 12:1
Then you will say on that day, "I will give thanks to You, O LORD; For although You were angry with me, Your anger is turned away, And You comfort me.
Hosea 6:1
"Come, let us return to the LORD. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us.
Isa.57:17 “Because of the iniquity of his unjust gain I was angry and struck him;
I hid My face and was angry, And he went on turning away, in the way of his heart.
18“I have seen his ways, but I will heal him;
I will lead him and restore comfort to him and to his mourners,
Mat 18:34 And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him.
https://www.tentmaker.org/books/hope_beyond_hell.pdf
Which is not opposed to Scripture revealing God's judgements, wrath, anger as eternal. See post :30
The EOC members i've heard from here have stated a hope for universalism is a valid option within their faith. The same is true of the RC faith. These are BTW the two largest church denominations.
Here's what one veteran EO member here said:
"We cannot teach universalism, because that was not given to us by the Apostles, nor by Christ. However, along with God, we hope and pray for the salvation of each person."
"...Now the speculative part. We can HOPE, and we do, that it is possible that with knowing the Truth, humans who hate God might let go of what sets them against God, at some point. It would be consistent with God's character for this to happen. He doesn't punish to exact pain, but everything He does is ultimately for restoration. We don't say that it is impossible for Him to restore those souls ... if not all, perhaps many it most ... from their torment. We desire, we pray, we love with God, and we hope that all men will eventually be drawn to Him. Or almost all. We don't know. We cannot proclaim this. We must not assure anyone of the chance of delayed reconciliation. But we always hope in the case if each person. And we certainly don't say "God can't". We do know He desires it."
Will the Universe, the Wicked, Death, and Hell All One Day Be Destroyed?
Another EO source, from one of their scholars, states:
""Orthodoxy’s entire dogmatic deposit resides in the canons of the seven ecumenical councils—everything else in Orthodox tradition, be it ever so venerable, beautiful, or spiritually nourishing, can possess at most the authority of accepted custom, licit conjecture, or fruitful practice—and the consensus of the most conscientious and historically literate Orthodox theologians and scholars over the past several decades (Evdokimov, Bulgakov, Clément, Turincev, Ware, Alfeyev, to name a few) is that universalism as such, as a permissible theologoumenon or plausible hope, has never been condemned by the Church. Doctrine is silent on the matter. So live and let live."
"But there are those who find this an intolerable state of affairs, sometimes because of an earnest if misguided devotion to what they believe Scripture or tradition demands, sometimes because the idea of the eternal torment of the derelict appeals to some unpleasantly obvious emotional pathologies on their parts."
Saint Origen | David Bentley Hart
"Moreover, Orthodoxy includes a prevalent tradition of apokatastasis, or the restoration of all things in the end. This has been taught most notably by Origen, but also many other Church fathers and Saints, including Gregory of Nyssa. The Second Council of Constantinople (553 C.E.) affirmed the orthodoxy of Gregory of Nyssa while simultaneously condemning Origen's brand of universalism because it taught the restoration back to our pre-existent state, which Orthodoxy doesn't teach. It is also a teaching of such eminent Orthodox theologians as Olivier Clément, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, and Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev.[53] Although apokatastasis is not a dogma of the church but instead a theologoumena, it is no less a teaching of the Orthodox Church than its rejection. As Met. Kallistos Ware explains, "It is heretical to say that all must be saved, for this is to deny free will; but, it is legitimate to hope that all may be saved,"[54] as insisting on torment without end also denies free will."
Afterlife - Wikipedia
Re the RCC faith, this is from "Good Goats: Healing Our Image of God", p.66 via the Paulist Press, 1994:
"The Church, which invokes its infallibility in the canonization of the saints, has never done so with regard to the damned. We cannot know with certainty if even one human soul does in fact go to hell" (quoting RC scholar Karl Rahner).
More info re the RCC, EO & universalism here:
"Universalism is the new Christian orthodoxy"
Here's what one veteran EO member here said:
"We cannot teach universalism, because that was not given to us by the Apostles, nor by Christ."*
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
1861 - Mortal sin is a radical possibility of human freedom, as is love itself. It results in the loss of charity and the privation of sanctifying grace, that is, of the state of grace. If it is not redeemed by repentance and God's forgiveness, it causes exclusion from Christ's kingdom and the eternal death of hell, for our freedom has the power to make choices for ever, with no turning back.
To deny hell would be to deny this teaching of the church. That would amount to heresy.
Hi Clement, the problem here is that what is traditionally believed (because it is so clearly taught in the Bible) seems the same for the Orthodox as it does for all other churches. IOW, their teaching that the next age will be populated by some who experience eternal bliss, and others, eternal agony, seems dogmatic, while the minority view among some members of the Orthodox church seems just as sketchy and unsupportable as it does in any other church body within Christendom. It is more of a "hope" on the part of some than a "belief" that is taught/held by the EOC or any other church/denomination for that matter.
For what it's worth (quite a bit IMO) the overwhelming majority of Bible believing Christians also don't see it your way, according to the scriptures.
Is there any evidence you can provide that endless torments is a majority view in either the RCC or EO denominations? What evidence is there that universalism, or the hope thereof, is not the view of the vast majority? Why would you care?
Scripture reveals God's judgements, wrath, anger & such are corrective:
Job 5:17-18 “Behold, happy is the man whom God corrects; Therefore do not despise the chastening of the Almighty. For He bruises, but he binds up; He wounds, but His hands make whole.”
Hab.1:12 O LORD my God, my Holy One, you who are eternal--surely you do not plan to wipe us out? O LORD, our Rock, you have sent these Babylonians to correct us, to punish us for our many sins.
Because I have sinned against him, I will bear the LORD’s wrath, until he pleads my case and upholds my cause. He will bring me out into the light;I will see his righteousness. (Micah 7:9)
Isaiah 12:1
Then you will say on that day, "I will give thanks to You, O LORD; For although You were angry with me, Your anger is turned away, And You comfort me.
Hosea 6:1
"Come, let us return to the LORD. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us.
Isa.57:17 “Because of the iniquity of his unjust gain I was angry and struck him;
I hid My face and was angry, And he went on turning away, in the way of his heart.
18“I have seen his ways, but I will heal him;
I will lead him and restore comfort to him and to his mourners,
Mat 18:34 And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him.
https://www.tentmaker.org/books/hope_beyond_hell.pdf
Hi again Clement, I assume that the majority of RC's and EO's believe what their churches teach (if they do not, why would they stay), so when I speak of a "minority" view among the members of any church, I am speaking of those who choose to hold to different beliefs than the ones that their church teaches.
Though not all of these Scriptures attest to your point, I will grant that judgments from God can have a disciplinary and corrective character. This assumes, of course, that these judgments actually succeed in producing repentance and that the sinner is corrected by them. Sadly, we know from experience and from Scripture that many will not repent when faced with God's discipline. God's discipline will only harden them in their sinful position, unto their ultimate destruction. See Revelation 16:9.
Every Christian with an ounce of compassion "hopes" for universalism. We don't need the permission of the RC or the EO to do so.................... both the RC & EO allow one to hope for universalism, though many don't just hope but believe it in spite of their church's position.
I know that universalism is a tempting, lovely-seeming idea. I used to kind of hope in it. But it is said that we send ourselves to Hell, and that God allows us to go there, who love sin and disbelief more than the God who gave Himself for us.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?
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
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?
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
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