Post Edited (Tom) : 4/16/2010 6:50:48 PM (GMT-5)

Exactamundo on the bolded part.  Basically, it's speaking against idolatry of any kind.  But, as usual, you've given a helpful parsing. You are right about what I was assuming and intending. At the same time, I do see how it's really good to detail and articulate how our love of God is truly conditioned upon God's previous love for us. As you've said, some people's historical formation would indeed make such unconditional love of ANY being (including God) impossible without God "revealing" His unconditional love to said being.  In other words, there really is a REASON to love God that God allows us to perceive from whence we can self-relate...especially considering our perception of the "logoi" and the divine energies.

Good call, homie.

Post Edited (One Love) : 4/16/2010 8:08:01 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (One Love) : 4/16/2010 8:04:35 PM (GMT-5)

D: I just wonder what happens if a person DOESN'T believe this.  What if a believer has such an "agnosticism" about God's intentions towards them...that they cannot access the full benefits of faith?

J: Remember the Psalm you quoted a while back? Where God is quoted as saying that the Israelites were perfectly shameless in their wrong-relating because they thought God was "altogether like them?" That's what is going for huge numbers of people. As Christ said, even the scribes and Pharisees thought they did God service by killing His very prophets. So it's possible for a person to think they believe Moses and still NOT believe Moses in actuality, as Christ said. IOW, it's possible for a person to think they believe a person when they don't.

So what Jesus did was explain that it's not MERELY about what we believe are God's intentions towards ourselves (the Pharisees thought God approved of them), it' about understanding what it means for God to love ALL. If we pursue the latter as realistically analogical as possible, we're doing all we can do.

That's why I argue for the most generic approach to UR. I.e., we can't prove exegetically that passages that speak of the kingdom have eternal application. After all, Christ will deliver HIS kingdom to the Father. Who's to say the Father won't have a finite reign thereafter in the state of ALL in ALL. Alternatively, the Father may remain the ALL in ALL, but not necessarily in a REIGNING scenario.

Thus, at bare minimum, we can say that UR is possible EVEN if it can only be actualized AFTER all prophecy is fulfilled (including the last chapters of Revelation, possibly). And that means we can attain the greatest analogical view of God's love for ALL with the most contextually-constraining (i.e., analogically constraining) approach to scripture. And thus conceiving of God's love is what allows us to see how mercy can boast over judgment in the most radical sense, etc. It allows us to perceive justice as another form of rational, benevolent motivation, like the disciplining of sons, etc--different, but similar as well.