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chambes
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 41

Posted 7/28/2001 7:17 PM (GMT -6)

Here's a question about salvation that I have been wondering about. I'm sure someone here can shed some light on it for me.

Say there was a righteous man who was walking firmly with the Lord. But, for some reason he began to drift away from God, and eventually abandoned his faith completely. The common interpretation of judgement would say he goes to hell. But if he had gotten killed in an accident during his righteous days, he would have gone to heaven. So, that means that luck played a role in his salvation, or lack thereof. I don't like the idea that luck can play a role in one's salvation. Does this make sense?

Take another example. Say a two year-old dies. Most people would say the child would go to heaven. If that were true, wouldn't a child dying young be lucky because their salvation is assured? Taking this to its logical conclusion, wouldn't the best thing a parent could do for a child be to kill it, and assure its place in heaven?

Scenarios like this bother me; does anyone have an answer?

Ryan

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 7/28/2001 8:04 PM (GMT -6)

Dear Ryan:

I'm writing this not long after you posted yours. But this is later for me--I'm guessing--than it is for you......but maybe not.

I'm going to throw you a big curveball. Ready. And it IS coming over the plate!

__"Enoch walked with God: then he was no more because God took him away."__

What we can witness in that verse is a double motion of God-toward-man and man-toward-God. Scenes like the ones you posed leave God out of the picture, so that He is made to be just another thing. How she "...begins to drift away" sounds so innocent, almost cute. Adam and Eve wished to be gods, and on their own terms! Right? You just can't make a story where God doesn't get to write part of it too. What "makes sense" to you might not include what is going on behind the scenes--for him who has eyes to see, ears to hear.

And "gone to hell" and "place in heaven" are made-for-Hollywood. Sold well for Dante? There is no PLACE called hell; andymore than there is a PLACE called heaven. Heaven is a condition of being in communion with God--my mom's "there." God isn's assigned to a place--heaven is with God. The eastern Christian traditions speak of a "River of Fire" (in Revelation, and I think other places) where our God, the "consuming fire", is both heaven to some and hell to others. Specifically, God's burning love is paradise for some, and eternal (?) torment for those who's desire is to be their own god. In such a state/states the "Luck" factor just wouldn't work at all. Only GRACE/graciousness and our response/responsiveness matter.

C.S. Lewis wrote his own challenging story. In it he compared a rough, coarse man for whom mannered behavior was unreachable, but who relied on God's grace to buffet what wanted to come out. He compared that man to a nobleman of breading who easily hid what he really thought and felt. Imperfect the story may be, the moral was that the one who let God work, and who's effort was committed to trying with the Spirit's leading had something the other didn't.

But PLEASE. There are enough "nuts" in the world. DON"T tell stories about killing children. You will make us parents MAD!

I hope this gives you more ways to look at such a big issue, Ryan.

PotOnWheel

Pseudo-Intellectual
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 58

Posted 7/29/2001 2:51 AM (GMT -6)

quote:

I don't like the idea that luck can play a role in one's salvation. Does this make sense?

Oh it totally makes sense. I don’t like it either but whether we like it or not it may be true. I think the reason I don’t like it is because it is just another form of predestination only instead of God doing the predestining it is a number of random events. This leads me to believe that although luck may have something to do with salvation it cannot be the sole factor. Salvation is an authentic choice yet all authentic choices have some luck involved. “Time and chance happen to all,” says Qoheleth. Salvation is authentic because only you can chose to respond to grace (we should not that salvation is only possible because of what God has chosen and all Doc’s hair breath away from Calvinistic soteriology stuff). Death also is authentic, only you can die your own death. But that does not mean that shear luck won’t have anything to do with when or how you will die.

But your two hypothetical questions are intriguing. I have a couple of thoughts. The one about babies is probably unbiblical and it’s definitely untraditional. The idea that all babies go to heaven is a recent phenomena that the whole of Church history does not share. But the one about the man who fell away is more interesting.

In order to fall away in the first place one has to have made an authentic choice to turn from Christ. In order to do that we must still be free. For the most part I’m with Doc on his thoughts about solidification. Some Christians may be so solidified in Christ within their lifetime that they are no longer free to fall away. On the flip side some evil folks may be so solidified in their evil that they can no longer turn and repent. The idea of solidification is intricately knit to sanctification. What if purgatory is true? What if that guy had died when he was a Christian? Obviously he had not been totally sanctified as of yet. Would there be any guarantee that un-as-of-yet-solidified persons who die will not fall away after death? I know there has been a lot of Dante bashing going around here lately (in terms of theology not in literary terms) but I think we should cut him some slack. He certainly should be viewed as a theological authority that cannot be abandoned passively, after all had he been born in a different place at a different time he may have been a candidate for canonization (It is all a matter of luck after all). What I’m trying to say is that it is the end result that matters, were you are when you are finally solidified determines where you end up. We can work hard in this life to sanctify ourselves but the work that is left over will have to be done in the afterlife somehow (there are a lot of verses in the Bible that suggest some sort of post-earthly sanctification and even more in the Apocrypha which also BTW should have some theological say-so even if its not as much as the Bible).

dudechild

"If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?" -Art Hoppe

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