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Surrender
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Date Joined Feb 2010
Total Posts : 41
| Posted 8/6/2010 3:08 PM (GMT -6) |   | | I'm a sis. :-) You guys speak of UR and ECT earlier in this thread. What do they stand for? | | Back to Top | | |
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Asher
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Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 477
| Posted 8/6/2010 4:24 PM (GMT -6) | | Surrender,
UR - Universal Reconciliation (all will be saved, or at least all will always have the possibility of being saved...grace and love never ends...there is no giving up on anyone)
ECT - Eternal Conscious Torment (traditional view of hell)
and the third main possibility is annihilation (the lost are totally destroyed) | | Back to Top | | |
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Surrender
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Date Joined Feb 2010
Total Posts : 41
| Posted 8/6/2010 5:18 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/7/2010 10:28 AM (GMT -6) | | Surrender: If you believed UR was true, would that help you square your intuitive conception of divine love with how you think scripture and the real world constrain the import of that conception?
Tom: Can you clarify what you mean by how Scripture and the world constrain the import of our intuitions? I'm not quite following ya.
I think our intuitions are already, by definition, constrained/shaped by the real world (both the internal world of our experience of subjectivity, self-awareness, morality and our experience of the external world). And I don't think it can be that Scripture constrains our intuitions since intuitions are definitive of human being per se. Maybe inasmuch as we're fallen and warped by sin, Scripture can shed light on what rightly-related human being ought to look like. Is that what you mean?
So I'd say that for me, at this point, yes, my intuitions (informed by my experience and my reading of Scripture) tell me that divine love is most coherent with UR (in comparison with other eschatologies like annihilation and ECT).
What about Scripture rules out UR? Nothing that I can see. Of course, there are the standard (key) biblical objections to UR (that aionios means "unending temporal duration of an irrevocable state," and a handful of key passages--Mat. 24, 1Th 1, Rev 20-21). But those don't absolutely prevent the possibility of UR. But there are other universalistic passages too. So on balance, one has to combine the exegetical evidence with one's intuitions (we ALL do this, and we cannot BUT do it), a fair reading of tradition, and a fair and careful engagement with reason/philosophy. I can accept that after doing all this there are those who end up with ECT. Cool. But I can also accept that there are those who end up with UR or annihilationism. I wish all three camps would grant this fact and live and let live instead of charging each other with heresy.
Tom
KIXYTΘEMTAPost Edited (Tom) : 8/7/2010 12:46:31 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Daniel M
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Date Joined Jan 2009
Total Posts : 263
| Posted 8/7/2010 12:33 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom: I wish all three camps would grant this fact and live and let live instead of charging each other with heresy.
Daniel; Unacceptable. Just unacceptable  | | Back to Top | | |
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Surrender
Registered Member
Date Joined Feb 2010
Total Posts : 41
| Posted 8/7/2010 1:33 PM (GMT -6) | |
Similutude:
If you believed UR was true, would that help you square your intuitive conception of divine love with how you think scripture and the real world constrain the import of that conception? If so (as is the case for me), what about scripture do you think rules out UR? If nothing, just posit UR for the sake of logical consistency. That's what I do. How could that be irrational?
Surrender:
Hi Similtude (Jeff, is it?). I have never looked into UR as an option. I guess I never even thought of it as a viable position. I’ll have to give it a look. I was brought up with ECT, but I now lean toward the position of annihilation at this point in my journey. Ever since I began to really study, all my positions are going through adjustments (for example, OT is a bit new for me still, but makes more sense than anything else I’ve seen). If some of our church members knew I believed in OT and annihilation, I would be considered nuts or a heretic.
I believe Scripture teaches that Christ Jesus was 100% man, and I believe Scripture teaches that Christ Jesus was also 100% God. I believe Christ Jesus is the perfect revelation of God, and I don’t have a problem seeing the outrageous, unconditional love He demonstrated in His life, ministry, death and resurrection. It appears to me that God, in Christ Jesus, clearly confirmed that He is against all suffering caused by various illnesses, disease, and demonic possession. God, in Christ Jesus, demonstrated His own suffering as He shared in the grief of others when He wept as He was “deeply moved” and “troubled” by their pain (John 1:33, 35). I do not believe Christ’s humanity and divinity can be separated (i.e. “in His humanity, Jesus wept”). God wept.
So, to answer your question, I don’t think that even if I believed in UR that that would help me reconcile my belief in divine love with suffering. Whether He chooses to annihilate souls who reject His love in this life or offer salvation to them later, I don’t understand how He can continue to allow the depth of sin we see in the OP. Embracing OT has helped a little. I understand that the abuse of free will through sin causes suffering. I get that free will hinders God from always interfering, but why doesn’t He intervene more often? Why is it that God can intervene when someone is about to accidentally break their arm but doesn’t intervene when a baby is about to be raped? And if there are some kind of rules that were set in place at the beginning of creation which govern the universe that simply do not “allow” God to intervene in these cases, why not just call it a day and end this thing? We are suffering as a result of sin running amuck, God is suffering with us…just come back and end it.
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Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 8/8/2010 9:20 AM (GMT -6) | | | Surrender: So, to answer your question, I don’t think that even if I believed in UR that that would help me reconcile my belief in divine love with suffering. Whether He chooses to annihilate souls who reject His love in this life or offer salvation to them later, I don’t understand how He can continue to allow the depth of sin we see in the OP.
Jeff: Here's how I see it. What it means for a volitional action/thought to be "right" is only intelligible in terms of consequentialism. So let's look at UR from that point of view. Jesus told Judas it would have been better for him had he never been born. At face value, that seems to contradict UR if consequentialism is the argument for UR. Forget that seeming exegetical problem for UR for now. Let's just consider the fact that IF UR is true, it could never be the case, absolutely, that it was ever "better" for any human to have not been born. If you can agree with that, then we have the relevant difference between UR and annihilation, as far as theodicy is concerned.
So if you agree, I'll try to find the great quotes that Tom once found in Ecclesiaties that help us reconcile Christ's statement to Judas with UR. Let me know if you're on board with me so far.
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Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 8/8/2010 3:18 PM (GMT -6) | | So, Daniel, if doing the "right" thing means, by coincidence or otherwise, doing what increases suffering in every instance, you have no problem with that? Seriously? I have no idea what benevolent even means apart from consequentialism. Why is boiling a healthy baby to death any different, ethically/morally speaking, than putting a dying, suffering baby to death by pain-free, lethal injection apart from consequentialism? Remember, I'm including the POST-MORTEM consequences of actions in consequentialism. So, YEAH, it's probably never right to boil a live baby to death. What could possibly be gained by that for anyone?
Post Edited (Similitude) : 8/8/2010 3:23:19 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Daniel M
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Date Joined Jan 2009
Total Posts : 263
| Posted 8/8/2010 5:21 PM (GMT -6) | | The reason I brought up the boiling baby example is because it was Abscombe's response to the "if you do X to one person, it will save 100,000 people. Thus doing X HAS to be morally acceptable because regardless of what X is, having it happen to one person is better then 100,000 dying".
Abscombe's response was that it is never right to boil a baby. Even if it saved 100,000 from death, it is not right to boil a baby. Just like it is not right to rape someone if it saves 100 other peoples lives. | | Back to Top | | |
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Daniel M
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Date Joined Jan 2009
Total Posts : 263
| Posted 8/8/2010 5:23 PM (GMT -6) | | Jeff: So, Daniel, if doing the "right" thing means, by coincidence or otherwise, doing what increases suffering in every instance, you have no problem with that?
Daniel: It seems as though, by this standard, the mission of Christ was a complete failure. | | Back to Top | | |
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Daniel M
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Date Joined Jan 2009
Total Posts : 263
| Posted 8/8/2010 5:31 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom : Personally, I think part of the screwed up nature of this fallen world is its tendency to leave us with options all of which entails SOME level of complicity in evil.
Daniel: Unless, of course, we're not responsible for the consequences but responsible to listening to God's voice and direction in every situation. Then there is no need to collude with the fallen forces. Consequentialism leads, inevitably, to that collusion. Following the Gospel deontologically, doesn't.
I'll look up that thread  | | Back to Top | | |
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Surrender
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Date Joined Feb 2010
Total Posts : 41
| Posted 8/8/2010 8:03 PM (GMT -6) | |
Jeff:
Here's how I see it. What it means for a volitional action/thought to be "right" is only intelligible in terms of consequentialism. So let's look at UR from that point of view. Jesus told Judas it would have been better for him had he never been born. At face value, that seems to contradict UR if consequentialism is the argument for UR. Forget that seeming exegetical problem for UR for now. Let's just consider the fact that IF UR is true, it could never be the case, absolutely, that it was ever "better" for any human to have not been born. If you can agree with that, then we have the relevant difference between UR and annihilation, as far as theodicy is concerned.
So if you agree, I'll try to find the great quotes that Tom once found in Ecclesiaties that help us reconcile Christ's statement to Judas with UR. Let me know if you're on board with me so far.
Surrender:
I think what you’re saying is that eternal life far exceeds any possible suffering anyone could go through here, and I don’t disagree with that. What I struggle with is why God doesn’t intervene in every (or more) repulsive acts (i.e. like the one in the OP) and less often in the smaller situations (i.e. preventing a broken arm). If the reason God can’t interfere all the time has to do with the fact that He must allow His free will agents to act freely to some prearranged extent, why doesn’t God simply back off from helping out in the smaller events and help out more in the bigger things? Do you see what I’m saying? I guess it’s really the age old question, “Why me?” I guess I’m not satisfied with His answer to Job—“There is no way for you to always understand why tragedies strike in the way they do, because you, being finite, are unable to understand the complexity of the universe and the forces of evil impacting it and what I, God, must contend with.” I think God’s answer to Job is something along those lines, but I’m still not satisfied with it.
Why not just call it a day if everyone continues to suffer like we do, including God Himself?
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/9/2010 9:00 AM (GMT -6) | | Wish I could think of that Ecclesiastes passage too, Jeff. Do you remember the gist of the point? I think what we said was that Jesus' words are to be understood as describing the experience of Judas from Judas' point of view at the time he committed suicide and not an absolute valuation of good vs evil per se.
Mk 14.21/Mt 26.24 (specifically about Judas, the one by whom Jesus was betrayed): "good were it for that man if he had never been born."
Was that it?
I also was asking myself, what if Jesus' words simply mean that the one who betrays the Son will be better off committing suicide, taking "to have never been born" as a euphemism for suicide? Hmmm. Maybe not. But if so, then Jesus is saying something like, "Look, the guy who betrays me will enter an existential horror from which he will not surface in this life. It's better for him to just end it all."
Then again, since this is only said about Judas specifically and not about everybody who goes to hell, it makes little sense on the ECT view that ONLY this one guy will experience an objective suffering that renders it better JUST IN HIS CASE that he never had existed. Given that the unspeakable suffering of hell is IRREVOCABLY ETERNAL (on ECT) for all who go there, how does the same objective comparison not become true of them all? So the logic of Jesus' words, at face value perhaps, seem to rule out ECT, unless Jesus is saying about Judas what is true about everybody who goes to hell, which doesn't seem to be what's going on.
And if it's really objectively better (more good) for those in hell (assuming they cannot be redeemed) to have never been born, then that sounds like a good argument for annihilationism. If it's better that they never have been born, then its better that God never had created, since the vast majority of humans would go to hell. So we end up condemning God. Why would a perfectly benevolent and just God keep in existence those about whom it is objectively better that they had never existed? Wouldn't God bring about what is better and annihilate them? Seems so.
Tom
KIXYTΘEMTAPost Edited (Tom) : 8/9/2010 9:03:40 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 8/10/2010 6:00 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom: Wish I could think of that Ecclesiastes passage too, Jeff. Do you remember the gist of the point? I think what we said was that Jesus' words are to be understood as describing the experience of Judas from Judas' point of view at the time he committed suicide and not an absolute valuation of good vs evil per se.
Jeff: To my memory, those verses made similar comparisons that, if taken absolutely, were non-sensical in terms of eschatology. That led me to believe that some liimited, contextual time-frame and range of experience was being assumed to render the comparisons sensible. And therefore it is fair to assume that Christ was using just such a limited, contextual comparison. IOW, he could have been saying that, sans UR, Judas would regret having been born once he received the full consequences of what he had done. IOW, the comparison is perfecty rational WITHIN those contextual constraints (sans UR constraints).
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