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Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > Theological Q&A > (No Subject)
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blakeolson
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Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 4
| Posted 10/23/2001 5:20 PM (GMT -6) |   | While attending "The Institute" at WHC, our small group has been talking a lot about Heaven, and what it is going to be like. Doc, your definition on this sounds to me like it is basically where our character has been solidified to the point that we no longer have the desire to sin. This brings a few questions to mind that we have been discussing.
1. Are we then, still capable of sin in Heaven? (An 85 year old man has been a grouch all his life, and therefore is character is solidified, but sometimes, that man can surprise us by being happy a cheerful for a day, he stepped out of his solidified character, can the same happen in Heaven?)
2. If there is not a choice for sin, can then love still exist being that there is not the possibility for hate?
3. What about the grumpy old man that has come to Christ in his last moments of life; surly his character has not been solidified to the point where he no longer has the desire to sin...
More questions on this to come, but we'll start with just these.
Blake
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MrIndifference
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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 144
| Posted 10/23/2001 5:44 PM (GMT -6) | | One definition of judgement is to purify. I believe that part of the final judgement is Gods purification of His bride. The way I see it ,after being here on earth and seeing the impact of sin up close and waaaaaay toooooo personal, we probably will not even have the urge to sin. Especially after seeing the glory of God. I don't necessarily think that the freedom to sin will be taken away, but it will turn into a major improbability because we will have seen both sides of the picture. Adam and Eve did not have that privelage when they made their choice.
Mr I. | | Back to Top | | |
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blakeolson
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Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 4
| Posted 10/26/2001 3:17 PM (GMT -6) | | Sin in Heaven being improbable meaning very unlikely, but it still could happen. So if it were possible to sin in Heaven, then would we be sent to Hell like Satan?
Blake
Now is the time to Worship! | | Back to Top | | |
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Modes of Thought
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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 817
| Posted 10/26/2001 3:51 PM (GMT -6) | | I am very interested in where these questions end up. I have never heard a description of heaven that has actually gained credibility and plausibility to my mind as it became more descriptive. This is not to say that I don't believe in heaven, but just that in order for it to actually BE heaven, it seems that most analogs to my exeperience would have to break down, and fast. I think that in heaven, we will find that there are many surprises in store for us. Who is there, what its actually like, how we function as persons, it will all be vaguely familar but more unlike than like anything we imagined. The most helpful pictures for me in the Bible are the ones found in Romans 8:18-25 and in Revelation 21:3-4 (this latter reference actually stems from Isa. 25:8 and 35:10).
Heaven is actually the most puzzling of the Christian doctrines to me. Hope you get some really illuminating responses from someone who knows more about this than me!
"Christianly understood, truth is obviously not to know the truth but to be the truth. Despite all modern philosophy, there is an infinite difference here..." SK | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 10/26/2001 3:58 PM (GMT -6) | | There is evident much more fun in speculation that I share. If some are talking about whether someone unaffected by the fall and having become that which of Paul writes, "we know not what we shall be..." -- then I just won't find that discussion fun. But.......
Here is one thing to add, if anyone want to pick it up.
We will not be subject to the DEATH that followed sin (Romans 5), that death that leads to more sin. Mortality, will not powerful enough to always make us sin -- often it is still a choice to sin (I think) -- does lead us to sin if we follow. (I don't think most people sin everytime they are tempted -- and I'm just guessing.)
Free of that, what will it be like? Imagine it. What will it be like?
I think that this thread so far, in its short life, is vacant of the content of the Incarnation. That God became man so that we may become like God by grace. God JOINED himself to us (hypostasis) and took our humanity through the cross and the Resurrection. Tha Spirit ministers that Life of Chirst to us.
Would anyone like to add that into the mix?Seems to me that any imaginarium along the lines above must take intoconsideration what God has already accomplished (according to Christ on the Cross); rather than an undefined future.
Just a thought.
Lets see where you go.
PotOnWheel
(ISA 64:8 "Yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.")
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GregBoyd
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818
| Posted 10/27/2001 4:11 AM (GMT -6) | | The traditional western understanding has been that while we are "justified" through Christ -- forgiven from all sin, legally absolved of all debt -- our character needs to be brought into alignment with God. This is "sanctification." Traditionally, it has not been seen as "optional."
Because the idea of "purgatory" got wrapped up with an idea that a) we have to further pay for our sin and b) the corrupted notion of "indulgences" [buying your way out of puragatory], Luther and the Protestants that followed him went to the other extreme and insisted that we are perfected the moment we die. No further "sanctification" was necessary. Sanctification thus became optional -- which has contributed to the theology of "cheap grace" today.
For my part -- and I'm following the lead of C.S.Lewis and a few other Protestants here -- I'd like to consider the possibility that Protestants over-reacted against the Catholic idea of purgatory. It may be (not the tentativeness!) that there is an intermediate state in which the process of sanctification is made complete -- perhaps in a moment, perhaps over a period of "time" (though "time" here would look very different from "time" as we experience it now).
This notion might address not only how our characters become compatible with heaven, but also what becomes of (say) people who die before having a chance to even choose whether or not they will exist toward God or away from God in eternity (e.g. babies, mentally incapacitated people, heathen).
We have to at the start acknowledge that Scripture is largely silent on this issue. Hence we are involved in speculation here. But there are perhaps a few hints in Scripture that the after life of people is a bit more complex than automatic heaven or hell.
To begin, several familiar passages of Scripture could be understood to teach that certain people were given the chance to decide to follow Christ after death (1 Pet. 3:18–20; 4:6; Eph. 4:8–10, Rom. 10:7). Now these texts are capable of several interpretations, but at least one plausible one is that certain people are offered the possibility of salvation after death.
Other texts suggest that believers whose sanctification is not completed in this life may somehow be completed and made fit for the Kingdom of God in the next. Several of Christ’s teachings seem to point in this direction. For example, on the need to quickly reconcile with brothers and sisters, Jesus says:
Come to terms quickly with your accuser… or your accuser will hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny (Matt. 5:25–26).
Jesus is addressing disciples here—otherwise he could never give people hope of "getting out" after they’ve paid the "last penny." I don’t believe Jesus is literally saying that the person pays for their sin during this time, as though this person is atoning for their sin in "purgatory." Scripture is clear that Christ’s sacrifice alone atones for sin, and it is sufficient for all sin (Rom. 3:21–25; Heb. 12:17, 9:27–28; 1 John 2:2, 4:10). His point may rather be that we either make things right now or we get them made right later. And getting them right later is going to take time.
In other words, this passage suggests that sanctification is not optional for disciples. If it doesn’t happen now, it will later. We are not told about when or how this completion shall take place, but we are clearly taught that all believers will appear before the Judg-ment Seat of Christ, and it may be that this completion process is part of this judgment (Rom. 14:10; 2 Cor. 5:10). Unlike the White Throne Judgment , this judgment is for believers and is remedial rather than retributive. Here, everything in a believer’s life ministry that was not "built upon the foundation of Jesus Christ" is burned up with "fire." Paul writes:
…the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire (1 Cor. 3:13–14).
Paul seems to be suggesting that everything that is not consistent with Christ’s Lordship will be burned up. We do not take garbage into the kingdom. As a majority of Church fathers and mothers prior to the Reformation taught, if indeed nothing unclean can enter the Kingdom of God (Rev. 21:27, 22:14–15), then the refining of the believer must be completed before they enter into heaven.
This teaching on the believer’s judgment in no way compromises the scriptural truth that Christ’s death is sufficient for our righteousness before God or that we are saved exclusively by God’s grace. God’s chastisements which refine our character in this life are done out of love and do not compromise our salvation by grace (Heb. 12:5–6; Rev. 3:19). Why think differently if similar refining chastisements occur after death before the Judgement Seat of Christ? It’s just a matter of completing then what was left undone now.
How does all this apply to the issue of the fate of people who never had a chance to hear the gospel (e.g. babies, mentally incapacitated persons, heathen)? It suggests that there is some prece-dent in Scrip-ture for suggesting that certain processes that are incomplete at death are completed after death. If this is true of people who die before their sanctification is complete, might something like this be true of people who die before their self-determination for or against Christ is complete?
This conclusion is of course highly speculative and must be developed tentatively. The worst that can be said about it is that it has no more explicit rooting in Scripture and is thus no more speculative than any other position proposed in Church history on this subject. In the end, the issue must be decided on other grounds. So far as I can see, this view is the only one consistent with the understanding that love must be freely chosen, and thus with a free will defense.
Chew on it.
Doc
"Three is the magic number, oh yes it is, it's the Magic Number" - De La Soul | | Back to Top | | |
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MrIndifference
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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 144
| Posted 10/27/2001 6:17 AM (GMT -6) | | Thank you Doc...
Pergatory, or at least a variation of it, is a view that I have held over the past couple of years.
quote:
Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Matt 18.18
When I look at this verse with the context of Matt 18.21-27, I see unforgiveness as something that is binding. If you hold unforgiveness here on earth, then you are not only binding yourself here on earth, but also in heaven.
When I look at judgement in the bible, I don't see it as condemnation, but instead as purification. Throughout Matthew are parables where people keep being thown into the place of "weeping and gnashing of teeth". Cognitively I see how this more than likely represents hell. At the same time it seems as though that this place is more a purifying fire than anything. This is a place of purification for those who accept it and hell for those who reject God.
Once I heard one view on hell, I think it may be an Orthodox view, that states that it is simply being in the presence of God. Those who reject God are tortured simply by seeing his glory, having their sins wide open for all to see and being in the presence of the thing that they hate most and always trying to get away from that glory. Judgement on the other hand is willingly facing the worldliness, unforgiveness, and sinfullness that one holds onto and slowly one-by-one letting them go. Sin at salvation is forgiven by God, but at the same time we, as humans, must let go of our sin to be fully sanctified. What is bound must be unbound. A perfect depiction of this is in 'The Final Quest' by Rick Joyner
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 10/27/2001 7:26 AM (GMT -6) | | Nice contribution Mr. I.
quote:
Once I heard one view on hell, I think it may be an Orthodox view, that states that it is simply being in the presence of God. . . .at the same time we, as humans, must let go of our sin to be fully sanctified.
I find it interesting, from what I've read of Orthodox authors, that their tradition does not have a separate concept of "Sanctification" as in the west. (Haven't Protestants drawn a lot of lines in the dirt theorizing about it...!) | | Back to Top | | |
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