Of all the conceptions of the divine, of all the language Jesus could put on the lips of the God character in the story he tells, that what he has the Father say. You are always with me, and everything I have is yours.
Millions of people in our world were told that God so loved the world, that God sent his son to save the world, and that if they accept and believe in Jesus, then they'll be able to have a relationship with God...
But there's more. Millions have been taught that if they don't believe, if they don't accept in the right way, that is, the way the person telling them the gospel does, and they were hit by a car and died later that same day, God will have no choice but to punish them forever in conscious torment in hell... A loving heavenly father who will go to extraordinary lengths to have a relationship with them would, in the blink of an eye, become a cruel, mean, vicious tormentor who would ensure that they had no escape from an endless future of agony... if your God is loving one second and cruel the next, if your God will punish people for all eternity for sins committed in a few short years, no amount of clever marketing or compelling language or good music or great coffee will be able to disguise that one, true, glaring, untenable, acceptable, awful reality... sometimes the reason people have a problem accepting the gospel is that they sense that the God lurking behind Jesus isn't safe, loving, or good. It doesn't make sense it can't be reconciled, and so they say no... God create, because the endless joy and peace and shared life at the heart of this God knows no other way. Jesus invites us into THAT relationship, the one at the center of the universe... so when the gospel is diminished to a question of whether or not a person will get into heaven, that reduces the good news to a ticket, a way to get past the bouncer and into the club. The good news is better than that. - Rob Bell ( Love Wins)
"This much is certain, that we have no theological right to set any sort of limits to the loving-kindness of God which has appeared in Jesus Christ. Our theological duty is to see and understand it as being still greater than we had seen before." - Karl Barth
"Who, after all, is saying something more objectively atrocious, or more aggressively perverse. The person who claims that every newborn infant enters the world justly under the threat of eternal dereliction, and that a good God imposes or permits the imposition of a state of eternal agony on finite, created rational beings as part of the mystery of his love or sovereignty or justice? Or the person who observes that such ideas are cruel and barbarous and depraved. Which of these two should really be, if not ashamed of his or her words, at least hesitant, ambivalent, and even a little penitent in uttering them. And which has a better right to moral indignation at what the other has said? And, really, don't these questions answer themselves?
A belief does not merit unconditional reverence just because it is old, nor should it be immune to being challenged in terms commensurate to the scandal it seems to pose. And the belief that a God of infinite intellect, justice, love, and power would condemn rational beings to a state of perpetual torment, or would allow them to condemn themselves on account of their own delusion, pain, and anger, is probably worse than merely scandalous. It may be the single most horrid notion the religious imagination has ever conceived, and the most irrational and spiritually corrosive picture of existence possible. And anyone who thinks that such claims are too strong or caustic, while at the same time finding the traditional notion of a hell of everlasting suffering perfectly unobjectionable, needs to consider whether he or she is really thinking clearly about the matter at all. -David Bentley Hart
"Whatever we say about hell must be said under the rubric of a universal and effective reconciliation of all things in Christ. If we choose to say where hell is, it must somehow be inside Jesus' reconciliation. If we choose to explain how hell can be, we must somehow say that Jesus accepts our choosing of it without willing us into it in any deterministic way. If we want to say what hell does, we must somehow leave it with no detrimental effect on the universal picnic. And if we are so bold as to attempt to say what hell is like, we must somehow make it even more of a nothing than our first death, which is its master image. - Robert Farrar Capon
"But at length, O God, will you not cast Death and Hell into the lake of Fire - even into your own consuming self. Death shall then die everlastingly. ... Then indeed will you be all in all. For then our poor brothers and sisters, every one - O God, we trust in you, the Consuming Fire - shall have been burnt clean and brought home. For if their moans, myriads of ages away, would turn heaven for us into hell - shall a man be more merciful than God? Shall, of all His glories, His mercy alone not be infinite? Shall a brother love a brother more than The Father loves a son? - more than The Brother Christ loves His brother? Would He not die yet again to save one brother more?" - George MacDonald
"God's love strides unswerving through everything, like a hero, and will not be insulted, despised, it rejected; it matches through the world with the helmet of hope on its head." -Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt
"You all belong to God! Whether you are godless or devout, under judgment or under grace, blessed or damned, you belong to God, and God is good and wants what is best for you. -C.F. Blumhardt
"As far as I am concerned, anyone who hopes for the universal reconciliation of all creatures with God must already believe that this would be the best possible ending to the Christian story; and such a person has then no excuse for imagining that God could bring any but the best possible ending to pass without thereby being in some sense a failed creator." -David Bentley Hart
"And what shall we say of the man Christ Jesus? Who, that loves his brother, would not, upheld by the love of Christ, and with a dim hope that in the far-off time there might be some help for him, arise from the company of the blessed, and walk down into the dismal regions of despair, to sit with the last, the only unredeemed, the Judas of his race, and be himself more blessed in the pains of hell, than in the glories of heaven? Who, in the midst of the golden harps and the white wings, knowing that one of his kind, one miserable brother in the old-world-time when men were taught to love their neighbor as themselves, was howling unheeded far below in the vaults of the creation, who, I say, would not feel that he must arise, that he had no choice, that, awful as it was, he must gird his loins, and go down into the smoke and the darkness and the fire, traveling the weary and fearful road into the far country to find his brother? who, I mean, that had the mind of Christ, that had the love of the Father? -George MacDonald
"It would be impious, I suppose, to suggest that, in his final divine judgment of creatures, God will judge himself; but one must hold that by that judgment God truly will disclose himself (which, of course, is to say the same thing, in a more hushed and reverential voice).
Even Paul asks, in the tortured, conditional voice of Romans 9, whether there might be vessels of wrath stored up solely for destruction only because he trusts that there are not, that instead all are bound in disobedience only so that God might prove himself just by showing mercy on all.
The argumentum ad baculum is a terrifying specter, momentarily conjured up only so as to be immediately chased away by a decisive, radiant argumentum ad caritatem." -David Bentley Hart
"Precisely because God does not determine himself in creation because there is no dialectical necessity binding him to time or chaos, no need to forge his identity in the fires of history in creating he reveals himself truly.
Thus every evil that time comprises, natural or moral a worthless distinction, really, since human nature is a natural phenomenon is an arraignment of Gods goodness: every death of a child, every chance calamity, every act of malice; everything diseased, thwarted, pitiless, purposeless, or cruel; and, until the end of all things, no answer has been given.
Precisely because creation is not a theogony, all of it is theophany." -David Bentley Hart
"It is impossible that wood, grass, and straw disappear in such a way as to not exist any more, but they (sinners) will disappear insofar as they are grass and so on. Indeed, this fire of the corrective punishment is not active against the substance, but against the habits and qualities. For this fire consumes, not creatures, but certain conditions and certain habits." -Didymus the Blind
"When Augustine lamented the soft-heartedness that made Origen believe that demons, heathens, and (most preposterously of all) unbaptized babies might ultimately be spared the torments of eternal fire, he made clear how the moral imagination must bend and twist in order to absorb such beliefs (in an eternal hell).
Pascal, in assuring us that our existence is explicable only in light of a belief in the eternal and condign torment of babies who die before reaching the baptismal font, shows us that there is often no meaningful distinction between perfect faith and perfect nihilism.
Calvin, in telling us that hell is copiously populated with infants not a cubit long, merely reminds us that, within a certain traditional understanding of grace and predestination, the choice to worship God rather than the devil is at most a matter of prudence.
So it is that, for many Christians down the years, the rationale of evangelization has been a desperate race to save as many souls as possible from God." -David Bentley Hart
"The traditional ontological definition of evil as a privatio boni is not merely a logically necessary metaphysical axiom about the transcendental structure of being, but also an assertion that when we say God is good we are speaking of him not only relative to his creation, but (however apophatically) as he is in himself; for in every sense being is act, and God in his simplicity and infinite freedom is what he does." -David B. Hart
"That the majority of people do not embrace salvation in this life does not mean that their experiences now do not lay a foundation for a later acceptance of it. -Gregory MacDonald (aka Dr. Robin Perry)
This much is certain, that we have no theological right to set any sort of limits to the loving-kindness of God which has appeared in Jesus Christ. Our theological duty is to see and understand it as being still greater than we had seen before.
"I have been supposing that God loves everyone and wants to show mercy on all. Indeed, I have hinted that I believe that if God did not love and try to save everyone, he would be less than perfect. Calvinists will not agree to this. God has to be just, they maintain, but he does not have to be merciful. He has to punish unforgiven sin, but he does not have to forgive sin. This is a common view among theologians, but it ought to be seen as problematic for a Christian view of God. To subordinate divine love to divine justice so that God has to be just but does not have to love is odd for a Christian who confesses that God is love." -Gregory MacDonald
"I shall argue that Jesus, in his Messianic role, fulfils the calling of Israel in his own person. In his death Israels exilic curse reaches its climax, and in his resurrection Israel returns from exile. Jesus is also the second Adam who reverses the curse of expulsion from Eden by his execution and enables the restoration of humanity by his resurrection. As in the Isaianic plot, this restoration of Israel in the Servant precipitates the restoration of Zion and the pilgrimage of the Gentiles. However, unexpectedly, this true Israel, this new humanity in Christ composed of Jew and Gentile, is restricted to the church. These insights are not unusual in biblical scholarship and hardly amount to universalism. What is usually missed, though, is that the church is only a foretaste of the redemption of Israel and the pilgrimage of the nations. We shall see that the New Testament anticipates a future fulfillment in which all Israel will be saved and the nations will come to worship before the one who sits on the throne and the Lamb. - Dr. Robin Perry
"What we find in Colossians is a theology that locates the origin of creation, the revelation of God, and the salvation of world in Christ. It recognizes the massive rupture introduced into the world through sin, and it sees the solution to this problem in the death of Christ. It requires a response of obedient faith to share in Christ and in the inheritance of eternal life. It offers no hope of a nice God letting everyone into heaven no matter how they live or what they believe. However, in spite of that, it holds before us a confident hope in the salvation of the whole creation. It is Gods covenant purpose that his world will one day be reconciled in Christ. For now, only the Church shares in that privilege, but this is not a position God has granted his people so they can gloat over the world. On the contrary, the Church must live by gospel standards and proclaim its gospel message so that the world will come to share in the saving work of Christ. This is the outline of the evangelical universalist theology I wish to commend to the reader." ― Gregory MacDonald/ Dr. Robin Perry
"You all belong to God! Whether you are godless or devout, under judgment or under grace, blessed or damned, you belong to God, and God is good and wants what is best for you." - Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt
"Not all paths lead to God, but God can lead any path to himself. This God will dine with anyone." -Ricky Maye
"God loves all mankind, and will reconcile all mankind to Himself. He however reserves His deepest satisfaction for those He enjoys, the especially of His grace." -David E. Johnson
"Must universalists have too rosy a view of how willingly people will embrace the gospel, I see no reason why we should. The universalist could easily believe that sin so corrupts humans that nobody would or could accept the gospel without divine assistance. Indeed, that is what I do believe. All that we need claim is that God will eventually provide such assistance to all." -Gregory MacDonald/ Dr. Robin Perry
"The universalist will happily concur that reconciliation is only for those who are in Christ through faith. There is no salvation outside of Christ, and one is included in Christ through faith. However, the universalist will also maintain that, in the end, everyone will be in Christ through faith." -Dr. Robin Perry
"I have argued that eternal conscious torment is not a just response to sin; and, in the eyes of some, this amounts to an underestimate of the severity of sin." -Dr. Robin Perry
"To suppose that one does not take divine punishment seriously unless one construes it in the most maximally awful way possible is just playing games."
"To object by saying, Well, if hell is not forever, it doesn't really matter if someone has a spell there, is like suggesting that because you will recover from the long and painful illness, it isn't worth taking precautions to avoid it. -Dr. Robin Perry
"God will not conquer evil by crushing it under-foot-any god of man's idea could do that-but by conquest of heart over heart, of life over life, of life over death, of love over all." -George MacDonald
"I have been supposing that God loves everyone and wants to show mercy on all. Indeed, I have hinted that I believe that if God did not love and try to save everyone, he would be less than perfect. Calvinists will not agree to this. God has to be just, they maintain, but he does not have to be merciful. He has to punish unforgiven sin, but he does not have to forgive sin. This is a common view among theologians, but it ought to be seen as problematic for a Christian view of God. To subordinate divine love to divine justice so that God has to be just but does not have to love is odd for a Christian who confesses that God is love." -Dr. Robin Perry
"I do not myself believe that mere punishment exists anywhere in the economy of the highest. I think mere punishment is a human idea, not a divine one. But the consuming fire is more terrible to the evildoer than any idea of punishment invented by the most riotous of human imaginations. Punishment it is, though not mere punishment, which is a thing not of creation but destruction: it is a power of God and for his creature. As love is God?s being and creative energy in one, so the pains of God are to the recreation of the things his love has made, and sin has unmade." -George MacDonald
Every soul that is ultimately lost is a defeat of the love of God.
"God's saving, cross-shaped love excludes nobody. It wants all people to come to repentance and find salvation (2 Pet 3:9). I think that the reflective Christian ought to start by taking the tradition as the default position, it should be assumed to be correct unless good grounds can be found to reject it. I suggest that the problem is not that the universalist sentimentalizes God's love and forgets his wrath but, rather, that the traditional theologians underestimate God's love and unhelpfully disconnect it from his justice. -Dr. Robin Perry
Quote from: FineLinen on March 11, 2021, 05:48:25 PM
"God will not conquer evil by crushing it under-foot-any god of man's idea could do that-but by conquest of heart over heart, of life over life, of life over death, of love over all." -George MacDonald
"I have been supposing that God loves everyone and wants to show mercy on all. Indeed, I have hinted that I believe that if God did not love and try to save everyone, he would be less than perfect. Calvinists will not agree to this. God has to be just, they maintain, but he does not have to be merciful. He has to punish unforgiven sin, but he does not have to forgive sin. This is a common view among theologians, but it ought to be seen as problematic for a Christian view of God. To subordinate divine love to divine justice so that God has to be just but does not have to love is odd for a Christian who confesses that God is love." -Dr. Robin Perry
Hi FineLinen, :friendstu:
I was thinking, :Chinscratch: If Christ died for all the sins of the world, past, present and future, what is hell for? I ask someone this and they said unbelief. I said "is unbelief a sin" and they said "yes", :doh: Well, if unbelief is a sin and Christ died for all sin
, my question is still, what is hell for?
CHB
Quote from: CHB on March 14, 2021, 10:03:30 PM
Quote from: FineLinen on March 11, 2021, 05:48:25 PM
"God will not conquer evil by crushing it under-foot-any god of man's idea could do that-but by conquest of heart over heart, of life over life, of life over death, of love over all." -George MacDonald
"I have been supposing that God loves everyone and wants to show mercy on all. Indeed, I have hinted that I believe that if God did not love and try to save everyone, he would be less than perfect. Calvinists will not agree to this. God has to be just, they maintain, but he does not have to be merciful. He has to punish unforgiven sin, but he does not have to forgive sin. This is a common view among theologians, but it ought to be seen as problematic for a Christian view of God. To subordinate divine love to divine justice so that God has to be just but does not have to love is odd for a Christian who confesses that God is love." -Dr. Robin Perry
Hi FineLinen, :friendstu:
I was thinking, :Chinscratch: If Christ died for all the sins of the world, past, present and future, what is hell for? I ask someone this and they said unbelief. I said "is unbelief a sin" and they said "yes", :doh: Well, if unbelief is a sin and Christ died for all sin
, my question is still, what is hell for?
CHB
My friend Charlotte: The way back into our loving Father is many dimensioned. Each individual has a unique experience tailor made to bring about His purpose and plan for them. I know this, our hell's are but a road into His expansive gulp of unlimited proportions.
https://www.godfire.net/eby/hell.html
Quote from: FineLinen on March 15, 2021, 01:14:55 AM
Quote from: CHB on March 14, 2021, 10:03:30 PM
Quote from: FineLinen on March 11, 2021, 05:48:25 PM
"God will not conquer evil by crushing it under-foot-any god of man's idea could do that-but by conquest of heart over heart, of life over life, of life over death, of love over all." -George MacDonald
"I have been supposing that God loves everyone and wants to show mercy on all. Indeed, I have hinted that I believe that if God did not love and try to save everyone, he would be less than perfect. Calvinists will not agree to this. God has to be just, they maintain, but he does not have to be merciful. He has to punish unforgiven sin, but he does not have to forgive sin. This is a common view among theologians, but it ought to be seen as problematic for a Christian view of God. To subordinate divine love to divine justice so that God has to be just but does not have to love is odd for a Christian who confesses that God is love." -Dr. Robin Perry
Hi FineLinen, :friendstu:
I was thinking, :Chinscratch: If Christ died for all the sins of the world, past, present and future, what is hell for? I ask someone this and they said unbelief. I said "is unbelief a sin" and they said "yes", :doh: Well, if unbelief is a sin and Christ died for all sin
, my question is still, what is hell for?
CHB
My friend Charlotte: The way back into our loving Father is many dimensioned. Each individual has a unique experience tailor made to bring about His purpose and plan for them. I know this, our hell's are but a road into His expansive gulp of unlimited proportions.
https://www.godfire.net/eby/hell.html
the Bible seems to say this, yes.
"I am frequently saddened to hear and see how so many people who call themselves Christians, and often even real Christians, cannot bring themselves to wish good to all people as they wish it for themselves. How few are filled with God's gift of forgiveness! Instead most set themselves apart by setting themselves above others. But if we are awaiting the Savior, then we are awaiting the forgiveness of the world's sins, not just our own (1 John 2:2). -Christoph Blumhardt
"What we find in Colossians, then, is a theology that locates the origin of creation, the revelation of God, and the salvation of world in Christ. It recognizes the massive rupture introduced into the world through sin, and it sees the solution to this problem in the death of Christ. It requires a response of obedient faith to share in Christ and in the inheritance of eternal life. It offers no hope of a nice God letting everyone into heaven no matter how they live or what they believe. However, in spite of that, it holds before us a confident hope in the salvation of the whole creation. It is God's covenant purpose that his world will one day be reconciled in Christ. For now, only the Church shares in that privilege, but this is not a position God has granted his people so they can gloat over the world. On the contrary, the Church must live by gospel standards and proclaim its gospel message so that the world will come to share in the saving work of Christ." -Dr. Robin Perry
"Any authentically Christian system is going to have to keep off the kick of human merit and demerit and stick resolutely to a universalism of grace that overrides the subject of human works." - Robert Farrar
"The Cross is the ultimate evidence that there is no length the love of God will refuse to go in effecting reconciliation." - R. Kent Hughes
"Nothing can separate you from His love, absolutely nothing, neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature... We do not need to beg Him to bless us, He simply cannot help it. Therefore God is enough! God is enough for time, God is enough for eternity. God is enough!" -Hannah W. Smith
"Because the judgment serves the new creation of all things, its justice is a healing creative justice according to the future, not a retaliatory justice referring to the past. Separating people into believers and unbelievers is wrong because it is godless. God is not the enemy of unbelievers or the executioner of the godless.. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong." -Jurgen Moltmann