I like how systematically you responded, Zoe.
It's a habit. 8 years of message boarding will do that to you.
Mostly I just want to take a fresh look, free of stereotypes.
While I don't know that any of us can completely free ourselves of stereotypes, it's certainly worthwhile to try.
No doubt it's controversial, and indeed has little scripture about it either way. I'm interested in seeing the various reactions to it.
On the message board I came from, one of our members presented a lengthy and fairly thorough presentation in favor of Universal Reconciliation (the belief that people can and ultimately will repent after death, even after the judgment). If you want I can try to reproduce it here, or better yet, I think RETS may have already done so in another thread. I can ask him.
There are two angles to the debate, which should be kept distinct more than they tend to be: 1. Which is more likely true, 2. which is more beneficial in bringing people to conversion.
As I'm sure you will agree, angle 2 has nothing to do with whether or not a belief is true or even whether or not we should believe it. On the other hand, there are a number of doctrines, from various denominations and disciplines, that if true, would probably make me reject Christianity. I have concluded from this that either these doctrines are false, or God is allowing me to believe a false doctrine for the purpose of keeping me true to Him while I grow into the person who one day will be able to accept the true doctrine. This second possibility is a bit of a stretch but it works very well when someone from another denomination is trying to "convert" you.
My reasons in favor of further chances are primarily that, since God is not willing that any should perish, but all come to repentance (II Pet. 3:9), he would give people a chance whenever it is possible that they would truly repent.
Agreed. God's heart is always for reconciliation, and I don't know why death should change that. We think of death as the ultimate barrier, the end of the road, the last stop; God has a way of knocking down barriers and otherwise overturning our cherished theories. It's one of those cases in which I am not completely convinced by it (I have to study Scripture a good deal more), but if I get to heaven and find that it was true all along, I certainly will not complain. I get the feeling sometimes that there are a lot of Christians who would. . . .
And it seems that many or most people die before they are so set in their ways that they would never change and repent.
This is the stance C. S. Lewis took whenever he discussed the subject of hell, including The Great Divorce. Of course, The Great Divorce ends with the protagonist leaving hell and journeying toward heaven. Lewis' belief seems to have been that this would be a rare occurrence, so people who call him a Universalist or Universal Reconciliationist are mistaken. That is, in the works I've read of his I can't see that he ever suggested
everyone would eventually make it to heaven, just that some people we don't expect to, might.
I Peter 3:6 ("For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.") sounds to me like it means that when Jesus preached to the dead when He was in Hades, his purpose was so that they, though having received the judgment of death, they might repent and come into relationship with God "...in the spirit."
I don't know what sort of background in the Church you have, but I was raised Baptist and CMA (Christian & Missionary Alliance), and references to this verse were few and far between. I always found that peculiar. Anyway, this verse is certainly the basis of the teaching that when Jesus died, he preached to the souls in Hades and many of them repented and their sentence was changed from death to life.
About Gehenna, yes it literally means the valley of Hinnom, but Jesus used it as a name for a place of future punishment. Since the best picture he could find was of a dump with an evil background, that sounds to me like a place where evil things are destroyed, yet not totally obliterated. Something between annihilation and eternal torment. That's why I said either word describes it about equally well (though of course they're very different.) Just what that looks like I don't know.
Okay, I understand what you meant now.
It seems not at all consistent with God's character, who is love, and has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, to eternally torment people with not purpose in it (except to show his hatred of sin, which would be shown just as clear by showing his love of righteousness). But as CS Lewis pointed out, anything we know of, when it is destroyed, doesn't just disappear, but leaves something. That must be how it'll be in the lake of fire, which is described as being forever.
In life, the judgments God enacted on the wicked, whether it was Israel or some other nation, seems to have been for the purpose of repentance and reconciliation. Even when people died, there was always a call to those who did not die to repent. For example, the plagues on Egypt were done not merely to release Israel from bondage or to punish the Egyptians, but primarily to show the world who the real God was, presumably so the world would repent and turn to Him.
As for Tartaros, the demons that go there are already there, I only mentioned it because it's mentioned in II Peter 2:4 (with a parallel in Jude 6) It's described as chains in darkness, apparently for the angels of Genesis 6, who came to earth for the women, and begot the nephilim.
Do you think Tartaros is the same place as the lake of fire(Mt. 25:41) or the Abyss (Lk. 8:31) or both? Or are all three separate locations?
What I do know is that death is explained as "sleep" in many many places of the bible. And that there are a couple places that seem to relate that our soul is just our being here of God's breath to make us live and returns to Him upon death. And there are SEVERAL points that say that immortality is a GIFT to those who God chooses. Without this immortality it is impossible for sinners to "burn in hell forever".
It's actually more than that. The word "spirit," both in Hebrew (ruach) and Greek (pneuma) is literally translated "breath." To put it in other words, the spirit is the animating life-force that causes us to live and move and have our being (cf. Acts 17:28), and the source of it is God (Gen. 2:7). When we die, our spirit or breath leaves our body.
This isn't to say there is no punishment because uh... burning up? we don't know what that will entail when it is from God, what it will do to the mind and the inner being... but this "hell fire" is not "eternal" as we think it is.
I did a simple word study on this several years ago, and going strictly from the wording of the Bible as it is translated into English, the
fire of hell is eternal or everlasting, but it doesn't actually say whether the
punishment or
experience of those in hell is also eternal or everlasting. Of course, there is on top of that some debate as to the actual meaning of some of the words used to describe the afterlife. This is part of my friend from the other message board's argument. I'll post it here if you want.
