This is the fatal flaw of all organized religion: interpretation is easily corrupted by cultural biases. People think they know how existence works, but their understanding is shaped by their upbringing and social programming.
I think traditional (fire and brimstone) Christians who’d be most accepting of universalism are also most at risk at abandoning their faith altogether. I say this because once you get the courage to reject something as major as eternal Hell, the rest tends to fall like a house of cards.
But the reasons other Christians might reject universalism is because of what you say above. We have a hard time imagining someone like Hitler receiving the same treatment as his victims. It calls into question the whole purpose of this experiment we call life. Your answer to this is “I don’t know”, which is my response as well. But my “I don’t know” also extends to the afterlife.
Traditionalists have more certainty about life and afterlife. It’s asking a lot of them to give that up.
I think there’s a passage saying that even the demons of hell believe. Even they’d have more of a leg to stand on than the Pascal’s Wager crowd, who will claim to believe to hedge their bets. While we’re at it, the whole “if there’s no God\afterlife, why do good” thing is heresy from the pit of hell.
So, did the people who lived before anyone got around to telling them about Jesus have free will or not?
Does the lack of a consistent set of Gospels, let alone reasonable independent verification of the words and activities of Jesus contribute to free will or not?
If an astrologer told you than not following the advice in the horoscope she cast for you would lead to disaster, but refused to respond to your questions about the lack of evidence for astrology, would you believe her or not?
People die due to simple natural causes? Who put them into place? Is God too feeble to create a world where the landmasses are stable and thus do not experience earthquakes? Not very omnipotent, is he.
Read your Exodus. They saw plenty of miracles, and still seemed to have plenty of free will. Doesn’t matter that it didn’t happen - that is the very clear message from the Bible.
God withholding evidence that he exists and in fact creating a world that looks very much like one with no god is not contributing to our free will a bit. Unless God wants us to be suckers. And of course the evidence does not support one god over another. Including the one I grew up with who I could talk to directly without going through any third parties.
Or maybe God likes it the way he is. He sees every sparrow fall - and then laughs like hell when the sparrow goes splat. Just as good an explanation as yours is.
Good point. In the Ultimatum game, both players get some money, but either can reject the deal so that neither get money. Though the rational choice is to take the money, no matter what, since it is better than nothing, experiments have shown that if there is an imbalance in the payout the person getting less will veto the deal for being unfair. So something like rejecting a world where no one is damned because it is unfair seems built into our minds.
Emphasis added. I sympathize with your topicality issues. I refer you to post 126 in case you missed it.
I’ll give the OP a shot, as best I can. If you put up someone’s soul in front of a committee of Heavenly Ministers (ref: Book of Job), they presumably will assign a variety of destinies depending upon the subject’s resume and the slots they have open. Special cases such as Hitler are less interesting, as they exactly that – special cases.
Regardless, as Scripture and common experience indicate a policy of constructive ambiguity coming from the celestial communications office, Pascal’s wager suggests that we should assume a worst case scenario. So eternal damnation it is.
First of all, I don’t deny that there are verses that support a traditional theology of Hell – it would be surprising if there weren’t. So of course the challenge is to look at the whole of scripture for interpretation.
So, Revelation. First I should say that Revelation should be understood as a writing of apocalyptic vision and not a literal prediction of future events. Biblical literalism is a fairly recent phenomenon in the church. Anyway, chapter 20 describes the end of a great battle led by Satan against “the saints and the beloved city.” When it’s over, “the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire” (v. 10). Okay, but what about human beings?
Well the chapter then says “I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne… and the dead were judged according to there works as recorded in the books.” (Oh-uh, that doesn’t look good for ‘by faith alone’ Protestants). “The sea [and] Death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and all were judged according to what they had done.” So, this is consistent with other verses in the NT that describe people being judged before the throne of God (like Matt. 25, which I will get to).
(v. 14) "Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death… " Hallelujah! Satan and Death and the grave have been conquered by Jesus! Humankind is free from them! But uh-oh: “…and anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.” Well, shit. Who are those poor bastards? Chapters 13 and 17 say those names were written in the book “from the foundation of the world” and seems pretty clear that a lot of people are not written in it.
So here’s my response:
– Revelation is one of the best proof-texts for a “second death” for the non-elect. However, note that it describes annihilation of God’s enemies; not eternal torture. So not exactly and endorsement of the “eternal punishment” theory.
– These verses can also be used to support 1. Predestination and 2. Salvation by works, both of which are anathema to most evangelical protestants.
– Revelation, from alpha to omega, it a pretty problematic book and difficult to parse. It’s the only book of its genre in the Bible (except maybe parts of Daniel). Christians have argued for centuries about what it means. Is it about Rome? (probably, IMO). Is it about the end of the world? It claims to be.
– Anyway, for me, it comes down to this: these verses are an insufficient to deny the message woven through the rest of the NT - that Jesus came to save all the world.
I’m out of time to delve into Matthew 25 right now, but I’ll try to get back to it later. Very briefly, though, I don’t think it negates a universalist view either.
Well, ask any five churchgoers why they go and you’ll get 10 answers. “But people won’t go to church” is way, way down on my list of objections to universalism. Most people don’t regularly go to church now; and my concern is truth, not supporting the church as a social institution (as much as I love it myself, it is a very flawed institution). That that argument gets a shoulder-shrug from me. Maybe people will stop going; maybe the church will change; maybe a combination of both while portions of the existing institution live on. I’m comfortable leaving that in God’s hands.
This, coupled with the acknowledgement that billions of people throughout history have not been exposed to the gospel, is a strong philosophical argument for the “many paths to god idea.” Joe Buddhist can still be saved by this way of thinking by accepting Christ within his own cultural and religious context (whatever that might look like) even if he has never been taught about Christ’s atonement.
It’s still heathen apostasy, of course, and rife with more questions. Sort of Universalist Lite. But it is at least an attempt to side step the idea of an evil god condemning the ignorant to hell.
.
Pascal’s Wager should really be called Pascal’s Sophistry, because it’s so flimsy it can only be held to suggest things if a person deliberately sets up their examples to ignore everything that shreds whatever point they’re going for. And there’s always a possible afterlife that shreds the point, because there’s no limitation on the possible gods so there could always be one that punishes what you’re advocating and rewards what you’re criticizing. Taken without sophistry it’s literally impossible for the Wager to advocate for any specific belief or behavior.
It just annoys me to see that thing even referenced as if it could ever be useful.
You’re welcome!
Sorry to stop you so early, but your OP asked how anybody could resist being a universalist. Most religious people don’t challenge themselves by looking at the whole of their scripture; they just listen to whatever cherry-picked verses and stories and theoretical constructs their pastor chooses to feed them. So, yeah, there’s the answer to your OP. Even if you have a nice tight argument that the only rational interpretation of scripture is that universalism is true (which I’m not sure you do), only you have that argument, and everyone else is left to their own devices.
Universalism is okay with selective annihilation? I get that it’s better than fire-and-brimstone (and in fact I’m perfectly happy with my belief that everybody “gets annihilated”), but I’m not seeing how it’s particularly universalistic.
Is the thrust of your argument that Universalism is biblically supported, or merely that Fire-And-Brimstone (mostly) isn’t? Because there’s a pretty large middle there that you might be excluding.
Most of the bible, including the new testament, is considered to be “up for interpretation”, and has been “argued for centuries” about. Revelation is definitely worse than other chapters, but if biblical inerrancy is out then we need to apply the same lens of flexible interpretation to verses you like.
I freely and enthusiastically admit that I’m not a font of detailed knowledge about the biblical text - I have other hobbies that I like way more, and they’ve gotten most of my attention. However what I have gleaned about the bible suggests that Jesus didn’t come down to save all the world. I think that (within the fiction of the bible) he came down to offer salvation to all the world.
My impression is that the sequence of events will be as follows:
Everyone dies. (Not all at once.)
God resurrects everybody, so that he can judge them.
God gets really, really mad about the fact that anybody sinned at all.
Jesus reminds God that Jesus let god torture him to get that all out of his system. God reminisces for a while on that time he let off steam for a while, takes a deep breath, and calms down somewhat.
Some people are still too awful for him to accept. He tosses them into the incinerator. (He tosses Satan in there too, but he may be too sturdy to completely burn.)
Taking more deep breaths, he grudgingly says that he’s fairly okay with everybody, and offers to clear their permanent records and pretend to forget the nasty things they did as long as they never do things like that again. (It’s only pretend, because he’s omniscient and can’t really forget, but he makes a game effort.)
Some people, who have been watching this whole thing, aren’t really sure about all this. Maybe they don’t like scapegoat sacrifices and think that murder via cross is not wonderful; maybe they think that god seems to have a temper problem and is scary. Maybe they don’t like accepting favors they can’t pay back; maybe they’re troubled by the idea that some people are currently burning to death in the incinerator. Or maybe they’re just feeling contrary. Regardless of the reason, they reject God’s offer. God responds by chucking them in the incinerator too.
The remaining people, who thought the deal mediated for them by Jesus with God is great, get their records cleared and are admitted into heaven, and live happily ever after, because nothing at all that just happened bothers them.
And, final note, maybe how everyone turned out was predictable in advance, because their natures are fixed (some people just don’t like cross murders) or maybe it’s just that God is omniscient and of course knows how things were going to go down. Doesn’t matter; God still doesn’t want annoying contrary sinner people in his condo, so to the incinerator they go.
I freely concede that everything is up for interpretation, but I believe that most or all biblical verses can be found not to contradict this model. Particularly if you’re willing to bend them a little.
I’d like to make a clarification. I know that some people have made the argument that hell is necessary for heaven to look good, but that’s not the point I was making earlier. I was responding to monstro’s question about the purpose of suffering in THIS life. Something like “My cake tastes good now because I was hungry before.”
(The distinction between temporal - finite - suffering and eternal damnation might also be useful in the side debate that Czarcasm and DrDeth are having.)
Well, yes, I was using a bit of rhetorical device, because of course you are right: people are taught eternal damnation from their pastors and either 1) believe it or 2) leave the church. But Universalism has been around as long as the church has been; and has at least as much if not more biblical support, and does’t have to deal with the fact that a good God who loves the world sends people to hell. The only ‘inconvenient truth’ about universalism is that we don’t get the satisfaction of Hitler burning alive for all eternity, which is not one of our better instincts to begin with.
No, the idea that some people are annihilated is inconsistent with Universalism. But it’s also inconsistent with eternal torment, is my point. There are Christians who believe, based on this passage, that anyone not reconciled to God are eventually annihilated and not tortured forever but I don’t think that is supported by the rest of scripture.
No argument here. I believe that all scripture is inspired by God, and I believe that God through the holy spirit influenced which ancient writings have been included, but I don’t believe in word-for-word inerrancy or literalism. The book was written and edited by dozens of people over several centuries, much of it handed down orally before that, and all of it translated from later copies. But it’s the best source we have to understand God’s relationship with the world.
Well, that’s the point of my OP. The story you’ve laid out is pretty much in line with modern Evangelical theology, but is not the dominant thread of Christianity throughout it’s history and not as scripturally sound as you think. I laid out a bunch of verses in the OP that seem to contradict this narrative, and there are many more. And yes, there are a few verses that seem to imply eternal torture too – but I think most Christians are guilty of only seeing these verses through the context of the theology they’ve already been taught. When you start to look at the verses through the lens of “why doesn’t God just save everyone?” it begins to look more and more like that’s exactly what Jesus did.
Yeah, like humans are primarily driven by better instincts. :rolleyes:
Matthew 25:46 is not particularly vague, nor silent on the subject.
The bible is a big book. And, dare I say (I do!), a badly and inconsistently written one. It’s more incomprehensible than anything short of James Joyce and Ikea instructions, and can be used to justify anything - including any disproof of anything. Including your interpretation of it. And I could say that with confidence without having to take into account what your interpretation is!
Not that I believe in such things (or the bible either), but I would think that a modern-day prophet would be a much better source about God’s relationship with the world than the end results of a centuries-long game of Telephone.
I gather that there are a number of different flavors of modern-day prophet around with all different levels of disreputability to choose from.
I looked at your verses and I don’t even have to bend them much to make them fall in line with the story I laid out.
There were the ones who said that all will be made alive. Sure they will! That was step 2. Gotta be alive to be judged, or there’s no point. You can’t torture a dead man.
Jesus said at several points that he was there to bring salvation to everyone, and be merciful to everyone, and bring all people to him, and all that. Sure! He’s not limiting it or excluding anyone; everyone is brought to the table and offered a place at it. That doesn’t mean everyone has to sit. Some people might see the crucified dude that’s the centerpiece and back away. That would be entirely consistent with everything Jesus said, and the scriptures that say that there’s going to be a pain party in that eternal fire pit that God prepared.
Trying to come up with something that is consistent with every verse in the bible is a fool’s errand, of course, but I think there’s more traction in an approach that includes both the “everybody gets salvation!” and “Some people (who don’t redeem their ticket) are boned in boneville for a super-long time, even forever”. It’s hard to believe the claim that ignores more verses is more consistent with the book.
Could those who never heard of Jesus choose him?
BTW, Adam and Eve is a myth.
You are walking along the street. Someone comes up to you and tells you that “too bad, you screwed up and now you are going to die.”
You say “Wha?”
The man picks up a paper, under which is a card turned upside down, which reads “to save your life, count down from 10 now.”
He says “see, you had every chance of saving your life. You blew it.”
Just like Christianity. Except that if it really was like Christianity, the card and paper would be in the next state.
Some people would argue that those who feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, etc. are choosing Jesus whether they know his name or not.
Though if you want to claim that some professed Christians are not fulfilling that mission, well, that’s another reason not to believe in universalism.
Then those missionaries were wasting a lot of time, weren’t they?
Why? I’d think that knowing heathens are more moral than Christians in this sense would be an excellent reason to believe in Universalism. And I thought that good works don’t cut it.
But what do I know? I’m Jewish and your religion is all meshuggah to me.
Whether heathens can stumble upon “choosing god” by accident or not relates to the question of whether people choose God.
Universalism, as I understand it, is related to whether God chooses people. It’s my understanding that in a truly universalist mythos whether or not you choose/find God would be an unimportant detail - something to chat about over afterlife-coffee, not something that significantly effects your future.
It more assumes that participation is required by the entrant to gain entry. Of course how much participation is required becomes the rub. Here’s a loosely graduated scale:
0: You WILL enter heaven. You have no choice.
1: Anyone with even the slightest interest in doing so can enter heaven; alternatively there are other options, if they’re not in the mood for harps.
2: Anyone with even the slightest interest in doing so can enter heaven; alternatively there’s this lovely fire pit of eternal torture. There are no other options and this is not coercion at all.
3: You have to complete some sort of nominal task to enter heaven. Sincerely apologize, condone and endorse murder by cross, purchase a ticket, something. This can be done at the door, after you’re dead; you don’t have to do anything in life.
You have to complete some sort of nominal task to enter heaven, and you have to have done it in life. You can’t buy the ticket at the door. If you didn’t do this task you are SOL.
You have to be the right sort of person to enter heaven, and earth gave you the chance to grow into that sort of right person (unless you died as a baby or something). If you are not the right sort of person by the time you die you’re SOL.
You have to be the right sort of person to enter heaven, and nothing you can do will change whether you’re that sort of person or not. You were blessed or doomed right from the get-go. Some people are just SOL.
Forget heaven - nobody’s getting in. Gods and angels only. Humanity exists only to writhe and dance for the gods’ amusement from afar: the original reality TV.
Position 0 is certainly universalist, and position 1 probably would be considered so by most, and position 2 arguably by some maybe. Below that, not so much.
