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Violin for God
Luke, I am your father. --Nooooooooo!!!!!
Date Joined Dec 2004
Total Posts : 690
| Posted 12/28/2004 6:03 PM (GMT -6) |   | quote:
Originally posted by GregBoyd
If one grants that God IS love, then one must see all God's attributes and activities as expressions of love. He's not LOVE + justice, but love AS justice.
I agree with the link between God's love and justice, but instead of "love as justice", it actually seems like justice as love, ie. that God's justice is an extension of His love (not, His love is an extension of his justice)... or going with a phrase/saying/whatever I heard from a friend, "God loves us so much that He'll welcome us as we are, but He loves us too much to leave us where we are."
But I don't know if I'm just being too picky on this point, but I've seen a lot of people quote this recently on other threads here and I think it's important to make that distinction.quote:
...In this light, I think we have to conclude that God will lovingly restore whatever can be restored, for he loves all, and God will lovingly (and vengeancefully) annihilate all that cannot be restored. (Unless someone can render keeping conscious beings in hopeless torment to be an act of perfect love).
This reminds me of a part of The Great Divorce where the teacher says something like if there's a tiny little spark that can be brought back, the efforts to bring back the true person will not cease. They'll keep blowing until all the ash is gone (don't have to book with me, but it's something like that).
Also I agree the endless torture seems a bit too much to the extreme from my perspective... but (since I haven't really studied much on this topic... it's kinda...morbid?) how did the church come to the conclusion that the unsaved would undergo an everlasting torment? Any verses anyone?quote:
Meph has brilliantly shown how such a view is coherent and consistent, even with the open view of the future. But this stops short of KNOWLEDGE.
And so long as our hope stops short of knowledge, it seems to me our attitude must be one of hope and warning.
Definitely something to hope for, but not sufficient enough (as far as I understand it) to claim it is true... who knows though? More investigating on this issue may make this seem more probable.
Anyway, this is probably a dead topic now anyway, but these are some of the thoughts I've had about this.
"Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows." - C.S.Lewis, The Great Divorce | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 12/29/2004 1:30 AM (GMT -6) | | Violin,
quote:
quote:
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Originally posted by GregBoyd
If one grants that God IS love, then one must see all God's attributes and activities as expressions of love. He's not LOVE + justice, but love AS justice.
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I agree with the link between God's love and justice, but instead of "love as justice", it actually seems like justice as love, ie. that God's justice is an extension of His love (not, His love is an extension of his justice)... or going with a phrase/saying/whatever I heard from a friend, "God loves us so much that He'll welcome us as we are, but He loves us too much to leave us where we are."
But I don't know if I'm just being too picky on this point, but I've seen a lot of people quote this recently on other threads here and I think it's important to make that distinction.
The reason I've quoted it is because it is a nice way of saying that love is not contradictory to justice in any way. And that's important to keep in mind when working on theodicies and eschatologies. I think we're tempted to put God in a straight jacket definition of love that WE have inherited from our own tradition and experience rather than allowing scripture to define that word for us.
quote:
Also I agree the endless torture seems a bit too much to the extreme from my perspective... but (since I haven't really studied much on this topic... it's kinda...morbid?) how did the church come to the conclusion that the unsaved would undergo an everlasting torment? Any verses anyone?
Matthew 25:46 - although I think it's referring to age-abiding torment only, not eternal torment. Moreover, I think even age-abiding torment is held out for only the most defiant of humans.
quote:
quote:
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Meph has brilliantly shown how such a view is coherent and consistent, even with the open view of the future. But this stops short of KNOWLEDGE.
And so long as our hope stops short of knowledge, it seems to me our attitude must be one of hope and warning.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Definitely something to hope for, but not sufficient enough (as far as I understand it) to claim it is true... who knows though? More investigating on this issue may make this seem more probable.
Anyway, this is probably a dead topic now anyway, but these are some of the thoughts I've had about this.
That's true, but people have had 2000 years!
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