Universalism

I feel obliged to nail my colours to the mast......for old times sake. And for what its worth.

To be honest I've given up on the Bible and with those who would see it as the "only" word of God and who build their various theologies upon it. If such wish to, then go ahead, build and believe in endless torment for those who "reject" the "only way", Jesus. I no longer seek to double guess exactly why anyone would want to believe any such thing, but then that's up to them. The alternatives out there await their perusal.......but I note more often than not a distinct lack of interest, so they must gain some satisfaction from asserting and believing that any finite human being at all, born without being asked into this ambiguous world, with all its inequalities, will end up JUSTLY (in their eyes) suffering eternally at their God's hands. "Free will" I guess.

Anyway, here are the four best books I know of, all written by those who could be called "Bible Christians", who actually teach Universalism...

"That All Shall Be Saved" by David Bentley Hart

"Patristic Universalism" by David Burnfield

"The Evangelical Universalist" by Gregory MacDonald

"The Inescapable Love of God" by Thomas Talbott

These men know their Bibles; they know all the various passages and verses that "teach eternal hell without doubt" but answer them - in my own view, adequately and with fidelity to Christ and in love of their fellow human beings, this by putting them within the context of other Biblical verses.

And here we have the words of the Russian Orthodox Church thelogian/philosopher Nicolas Berdyaev,, who said that the existence of an actual hell is.....

.[i]....incomprehensible, inadmissable and revolting. It is impossible to be reconciled to the thought that God could have created the world and man if He forsaw hell, that He could have predetermined it for the sake of justice, or that He tolerates it as a special diabolical realm of being side by side with His own Kingdom. From the divine point of view it means that creation is a failure. The idea.....is altogether unthinkable and, indeed, incompatible with faith in God. A God who deliberately allows the existence of eternal torments is not God at all but is more like the devil. Hell......is a fairy tale; there is not a shadow of reality about it; it is borrowed from our everyday existence with its rewards and punishments. The idea of an eternal hell.......is one of the most hideous and contemptible products of the triumphant herdmind........From the point of view of God, there cannot be any hell. To admit hell would be to deny God.

[/i]
(Fundamentally, the positive thought of the Eastern Orthodox Churches has never been suppressed by the idea of Divine justice and it never forgot the idea of Divine love. Chiefly, it did not define man from the point of view of Divine justice but from the idea of transfiguration and Deification of man and cosmos. Alas, our Protestant friends would argue differently.)

But I am off to the Pure Land and wish those who insist upon the "truth" of hell well.

pipedreams

To continue. Universalism is the [i]only[/i] logical and coherent way of uniting two of the fundamental Christian doctrines i.e. salvation purely by Grace, and that God [i][b]is[/b][/i] Love.

To bring in freewill is to confuse matters entirely. If brought in then the purity of salvation by Grace alone is broken. The [i][b]causal basis[/b][/i] of salvation becomes our "decision" for Christ in time and space, and therefore of "works" rather that of faith/grace alone. When Grace is the [i]causal basis[/i] then, as said, if God IS Love, Universalism follows. Otherwise the believer is faced with why God, who is Love, who "wills that all shall be saved" does not in fact do so.

As I have said elsewhere, I am neither a theist nor a Christian. I am a non-theistic non-dualist Buddhist (Pure Land) I see things and relate to them from a Buddhist perspective, which is different from the Christian - not deeper, or higher, just [i]different[/i].

Therefore I think in terms of [i]Original Enlightenment.[/i] Therefore, if such is so, why do I need to practice in order to be enlightened? When the Buddha himself was asked why he continued to meditate even though enlightened he replied:-

[i]Out of compassion for the world[/i]

Which can bring us back to Christianity. Why act or live in any particular way if all are saved anyway? The answer is simple to see. Suffering exists, indisputably. Will continue to be until the final reconciliation of all things. To live "out of compassion for the world" can make our lives a great adventure, knowing that Reality, the ultimate Source (God) is on our side. On everyone's side. Knowing that the Incarnation was not a one off event lasting for just 30 years or so in the past, but is eternal. That the Father eternally gives birth to the Son - as the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart taught in one of his many great Sermons.

Anyway, I am done. No one seems particularly interested, and I assume that many of the Christians here will completely ignore all that has been posted on this thread yet will, sooner or later, simply post once again in favour of the eternal conscious torment of individual souls. So be it. They have had the invitation to hear the matter here. If they wish to continue in their shame and their folly, that is their choice.

Thank you

Adstar · 56-60, M

Universalims is just a feel good doctrine that people who's personal idea of God and His will does not agree with the actual will of the God that does exist...

Hell and the Eternal lake of fire exist.. And no amount of disagreement with their existence will cause them to cease to exist..

But they will deny the God that exists to create the idol god that conforms to their idea of what God should be.. In the end they are simply worshiping a god in their own image.. They are in the end their own god..

You're off to the land of deception and delusion and eventual eternal damnation..

pipedreams

I appreciate that for most in our modern, secular age, hell as a place of perpetual conscious torment post-mortem is simply a fairy tale. All well and good. But there are others, here, who would insist upon its reality. So far NONE of them have accepted the challenge to actually re-address the matter in their own mind/hearts. Thus falling guilty to the words of there God in Proverbs 18:13:-

[i]Those who answer a matter before hearing it, it is a shame and a folly to them.[/i]

Such believers often accuse other of cherry picking from the Bible. On this matter they are guilty themselves. The neither heed the Proverb nor do they take every word of the Bible into account.

In David Bentley Hart's book he lists 23 substantial verses from the New Testament that support the doctrine of Universalism, and claims that there are others.

The problem is that many simply think of the parable of Jesus where some are despatched to "eternal torment" and their thinking is done. The matter closed. That the word translated "eternal" does not mean perpetual in the original Greek is unknown to them. From this point on every mention of being "saved" and "accepting Christ" is seen in the light of the doctrine of eternal torment, whereas such verses can just as easily be understood in the context of the [i]eventual[/i] salvation of all.

Anyway, I must go.

Thank you if you have read this far.