I’m looking for a factual answer as to whether this is a recognized doctrine of a particular Christian faith, or just one dude’s personal belief:
A Christian described a doctrine in response to the objection ‘what about all the people born before Jesus, are they all in Hell by virtue of being born too early?’. The gist of it was that God picks which souls go into which bodies, and by virtue of His perfect knowledge he chose from among all the souls that would never accept Christ under any circumstances and caused all those souls to be born before Jesus. There may also have been the implication that similar souls were placed in groups of people who were/are uncontacted by Christian missionaries, and/or that this practice was the justification for some Biblical events like the Flood or the Midianite extermination. So ultimately, with the exception of some Patriarchs, yes they were in Hell, but they would have been in Hell if they had been born after Jesus, too, so no net loss. Similarly, no Midianite could ever be redeemed in any possible world (but then maybe no Israelite at the time, either, if we’re being internally consistent).
This sounds vaguely Calvinist to me, but I’m not certain. Does this doctrine ring a bell? Does it have a particular name or association with a particular sect?
Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Adam and Eve have passed away into nothingness (annihilation) but I think that’s only because they knew God and then disobeyed, so I don’t think that was for the rest of the BCE people.
Calvinism has/had a doctrine of double-predestination. From Encyclopedia Britannica:
According to this notion, God has determined from eternity whom he will save and whom he will damn, regardless of their faith, love, or merit or lack thereof.
So that’s part of it, but not the part about assigning pre-damned souls to all the people in times or places that had no possibility to become Christian.
Also, I believe the Calvinists would say that God doesn’t do anything because of what a human would or would not do; rather God acts based on his own motives and humans experience the consequences. E.g. God chooses some to be elect for his own inscrutable reasons, not based on any inherent qualities of the chosen. As I understand it, anyway.
I have encountered this idea, but I’ve never known a name for it, nor was it presented as the belief of any particular group, just one guy’s argument.
It does seem like the person would need to be Calvinist to believe this, but that wouldn’t be sufficient. You’d have to believe the faithful in the Old Testament—some of whom are specifically mentioned in Hebrews—didn’t go to heaven. And you’d need to explain the Transfiguration.
Well there sort of is, as redemption required Christ to be crucified (and risen), which has not happened yet in BC times, thus BC people are under the law, which they can not follow, thus will fail and be sent to Sheol/Hell, which is taken by some to be a eternal place. This is part of God allowing humans to try to do it on their own (and failing) thus showing us we need a savior as the only way. Yes there are massive holes in that you can drive a flying chariot through but I think that’s sort along the lines that the BCE people are in hell (or annihilated in some faiths ) reasoning.
Its completely unclear, this issue of entry to heaven (who and when ) is the stated reason for the Catholic vs eastern Orthodox schism, and they have left it unresolved for approx 1000 years ,and orthodox are still papist.
These things go around in fads, and there’s so many these were devout bible bashing hardliners… These days that goes with fundamentalist, charismatic small churches… its a character of them to have something to say about such abstract concepts … but not necessary and not sufficient
For example, I see early calvanists were in conflict about fundamentalist versus soft.
The 1549 Consensus Tigurinus unified Zwingli and Bullinger’s memorialist theology of the Eucharist, which taught that it was simply a reminder of Christ’s death, with Calvin’s view of it as a means of grace with Christ actually present, though spiritually rather than bodily as in Catholic doctrine.
They were saying “that transubstantiation stuff is garbage, its just a way to remember jesus, we are not cannibals !”. But Calvin says he is fundamentalist, what is written in the gospel is the truth… They mutually wanted reform you see. But I use this as an example to say Calvanism was not locked down on the “fundamentals” in the early days, and Presbyterians (or derived schisms… Baptists , Wesleyian, and so on ) do exist in the spectrum between soft christians and fundamentalists . A soft christian may believe that stories about heaven are allegorical…its a measuring system, not a place. its about what you and other people think of you, when alive and even after you are dead… that is the important thing.
The Orthodox churches are really the first protestants, they didnt want to send material support to the Vatican as that was going to sponsor domination, colonisation ,bullying ( eg Crimean war ? ) and proxy wars… that was all in the interests of the western powers…