So what I hear you saying, Meph, is that the kind of repentance Judas exhibited would actually be evangelical in nature, and that the second distinct kind of repentance pointed out in the above articles is not really any different from the Judas type of repentance.

In any case, it's nice to know that I'm not totally off in left field with my understanding of true evangelical repentance (repentance unto life).

John

Post Edited (JEE) : 3/7/2005 12:28:25 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Lee Merrill) : 3/7/2005 10:42:23 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Selah) : 3/8/2005 3:28:10 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Selah) : 3/8/2005 12:43:25 PM (GMT-6)

Hey ya’ll-

Sorry to keep you waiting on my thoughts on Reitan, Mephi. My bad. Just been wiped out with this flu and catching up on other stuff while I’ve been home. I haven’t been checkin this thread out, but I just did this morning, and wanted to make a couple of comments. I noticed how Selah said she was really affected by your reply to her on page one, so I wanted to check it out! After all Selah’s soul has become a battleground between you and me on the question of universalism (“I want her!” “No, I want her.” “No, she’s mine!”). OoooooK…

Mephi: But you've asked me how I do it. How about this...First, I look around me. I look at what's going on in the world. I see demonic matrices EVERYONE, plaguing and destroying life. This is NOT to say that I don't see the glory of God's good creation in life. I do. But I also see all of the pain, hatred, heartache, and powerlessness. I see people who have been given HELLIFIED hard life situations that make it EXTREMELY HARD for them to trust any human being...let alone a God. I see people whose very cultural heritages makes things hard for them to see the truth of Jesus Christ. I think about people who have hardened themselves into pathetic shells of the people that God has created them to be. I think about ALL of the psychological and emotional maladies that assault the human psyche that make even healthy HUMAN relationships almost impossible…

…When I think about all of this...when I REALLY enter this emotionally and not just intellectually...my despair is almost more than I can contain.

Tom: As I read through this I thought, “I feel exactly the same way. So why am I not a universalist?” I think it’s because universalism isn’t the ONLY way God can adequately address the enormous disadvantages that people face in this world and which people take with them when they die. It’s not like universalists are the only ones claiming that a loving God would do something about these disadvantages. We’ve talked about this. A person actually can argue that a loving God would insure that every human being receives an optimal level of grace so that she can make a responsible choice.

Mephi: I then feel like Jesus in Gethsemene. "God, is there NO OTHER WAY here? Is there NO OTHER WAY to get your goals accomplished than to have people languish in an everlasting hell after a temporal one.

Tom: But who’s saying this is the way one enters an everlasting hell?

Mephi: But...there IS another way. There IS another way! I see another way that God could fully consummate divine justice, validates moral autonomy, and provide for God's divine purposespurposes...WHILE AT THE SAME TIME...guaranteeing Godself that no one would be ETERNALLY lost.

Tom: I don’t AT ALL see that it validates moral autonomy where it matters most, that is, where it’s absolutely necessary: in the choice to determine ourselves or not with respect to being in a loving relationship with God. The agent does not determine that for himself and that completely undermines autonomy with respect to the relationship.

Mephi: For me, insofar as I believe these things, universalism follows for me:

1. God IS love. Not God is "loving" God IS love.
2. God is completely omnipotent. God can accomplish whatever God wants to accomplish that doesn't a) violate the laws of logic and b) does not go against God's necessary essential existence.

3. God REALLY wants display His glorious nature to something OTHER THAN God and have it represented back to God by that something. In words, God requires relative ontological distinction.
4. God REALLY wants those "others" to participate significantly in their OWN moral existence. In other words, the relative ontological distinction facilitates moral autonomy and responsibility.
5. God REALLY wants all sentient beings in Creation to embody and reflect God's glorious nature to God and each other forever...extending the "dance of the Trinity"

6. God REALLY DOESN'T WANT any sentient being to experience eternal destruction. Not only because it's bad for the sentient beings...but because that would TAKE AWAY from God's own aesthetic experience of contingent reality.
7. If there is ANY POSSIBLE WAY that God can actualize God's own divine disposition and intentions, God will do so.

Tom: You qualify several things with “relative,” which leaves me wondering, but I think I understand where you’re going. OK…

No problem with (1).

(2) has to be qualified so that the rules of logic (which are the rules of MEANING) include the metaphysics, or logic, of love (love requiring LFW). If God can’t make “married bachelors” because the end product is self-contradictory, it seems to me that your universalism violates the same logic. God can’t “determine” that others will “love” him, which is what your view claims. Inasmuch as that is part of your system, I find it meaningless and self-contradictory. I simply have no idea what sort of relationship rockbottomers will have with God, what manner of salvation they’ll enjoy, or what kind of worship they’ll offer.

In (3) I’m not sure what “relative ontological distinction” means. Nobody has “absolute” ontological distinction. That’s what “aseity” is and only God possesses that. So all ontology other than God is relatively distinct because though it is not-God, it’s God-dependent.

In (4) I’m wondering what “significantly participation” is. That just begs definition. For you “significant participation” doesn’t have to include self-determining participation on the very question of whether or not a person participates in a relationship with God. This kinda makes the rest of the participation very INsignificant for me.

(5) sounds great.

I’m sure there’s a truth in what (6) is saying, but God is a pretty well-adjusted person and will have to live with the consequences if there is in fact an eternal hell.

(7) seems to be true to me. Where you and I differ is on the whether or not God’s “unilaterally determining us to be in loving relationship” (and that’s still what it looks like to me) is A POSSIBLE WAY God can actualize his intentions. I say such determination is simply metaphysically impossible and so violates your (2).

If…

a) I can’t be convinced to surrender TWT1 and grant that God can unilaterally render a person’s disposition and desire in favor of a relationship with God (so that God essentially unilaterally establishes a causal chain that infallibly eventuates in the person’s reasoning and choosing her way through to a loving relationship with God), then I cannot be a universalist,

and if...

b) I am ultimately convinced by Talbott and Reitan that a free, fully informed, and decisive choice against God (made AFTER God has provided optimal grace) is also an incoherent and meaningless piece of assertion, then…

I’ll have to opt for annihilationism.

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 3/10/2005 12:04:37 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (TGB) : 3/10/2005 11:58:42 AM (GMT-6)

Tom: Given the combination of just you a) hardwired inability to choose against God, b) the finiteness of LFW (it MUST be spent, MUST resolve into compatibilistic freedom), c) a disposition unilaterally rendered infallibly favorable towards God, you really CANNOT claim anything other than an absolute, certain, 100%, determinately the case, outcome.

Mephi: Nope. This is not true, Tom. The only thing that I do, Tom, is give metaphysical conceptualization to what Reitan talks about. In other words, the REASON that beings act the way that Talbott and Reitan propose that they do is because of the dispositional reality that interacts with God's increasing presence.

Tom: Right. That’s how I was taking it. But if the dispositional reality is, as you say, unilaterally established by God and also infallibly eventuates in the choice for God, then the choice for God is unilaterally established by God. Now, given the finiteness of freedom, you really must say that this disposition “infallibly” eventuates into the choice FOR God. See below.

Mephi: Your description of a) is a bad depiction of what c) claims to be. The "unilateral rendering" is the INCREASED epistemic distance leading to the "rock-bottom" experience. This renders things HIGHLY, HIGHLY probable towards eventual choice for and solidification in God. Now, a leap into utter irrationality and utter self-denial from the "rock-bottom" position is still LOGICALLY POSSIBLE. PLEASE note this! However, it is highly, highly improbable.

Tom: How can it be anything other than 100% guaranteed, given the disposition and the finiteness of freedom? Given the finiteness of freedom, namely, that it CAN’T remain unsolidified forever, and given the impossibility of solidification AGAINST God, how is its solidification FOR God not infallibly guaranteed? On what basis do you admit ANY possibility however remote that an agent will solidify herself against God? You agree such a choice is existentially impossible, philosophically incoherent, and constitutionally ruled out for us by creative design. Where’s this remote possibility live?

Mephi: Moreover, your understand of the finitude of LFW has always particularly eluded me. I never understood how this was a hinderance. All the finitude of LFW states is that finality must come sometime. There is no possible ETERNALLY unsolidified state. That's all.

Tom: That’s all I’m assuming. Nothing more. Our LFW is limited. It’s got to run out. It’s running out is hardwired in to us. We MUST, by creation, solidify. Must solidify. Must solidify. That’s all I mean, like you.

BUT…you also agree that we, by the very same creative act, CANNOT solidify AGAINST God. I’m no genius, but if you MUST spend your freedom in solidification, and you CANNOT spend it in solidifying yourself against God, then you MUST spend it solidifying yourself in some OTHER direction. And the only other direction is FOR God. So how does this not equal: We must of necessity, by unilateral creative design, exhaust our freedom in solidification FOR God?

Mephi: I didn't like the pennies analogy, but I decided not to pick it up as a topic.

Tom: Cool. That’s fine.

Mephi: In my view, post-rock-bottom existence was 100% UNSOLIDIFIED with respect to enacting a loving act or loving inclination. It's not like they just had 1% unsolidification left. (Which seemed to be what you've been saying).

Tom: Doesn’t matter. OK. Let’s assume post-rockbotters are 100% unsolidified with respect to enacting love. Add in your other features:

a) This unsolidified freedom is FINITE, meaning it MUST, by creative rule of constitution, expire itself into a 100% solidified orientation.

b) This freedom CANNOT, by the same creative rule of constitution (i.e., hardwiring), expire itself into 100% solidified orientation AGAINST God.

c) The only other orientation available is in FAVOR of God, in LOVE with God.

Therefore, you cannot, given the features you propose, admit even the slightest possibility that agents will not solidify in favor of God. It’s simply impossible given your view. And since this solidification is ultimately guarantee by a unilateral creative act of God, it can’t be libertarian and so cannot, so far as I see, amount to a loving and personal relationship with God.

Mephi: They would have 1% of themSELVES left (using your percentage motif). If you go back to the "Tom and the Chocolate Store" analogy, the state where I left you in front of the store to decide what you wanted to do is like unto the post-rock-bottom state. It's up to YOU to go back into the store or not.

Tom: OK. But Mephi, figure all your features into what’s really the case about me when God leaves me in front of the chocolate store. It’s also true that a) the freedom I have to go into the store or not is finite, meaning it’s gonna run out, meaning it MUST be spent in solidifying myself irrevocably with respect to chocolate, and also true that b) I cannot (that’s a “cannot” – viz., am unable to) by design, solidify myself AGAINST chocolate with respect TO chocolate. What’s left Mephi? Can I choose forever NOT to go back into the store while remaining forever free to choose to go into the store? No. That’s to deny that LFW is finite, or to say I can remain unsolidified forever. Can I irrevocably choose to solidify myself against chocolate and so forever lock myself out of the chocolate store? No. You’ve said THAT option is removed from my hardwiring by God. He simply draws the line there and doesn’t allow me that option. So I MUST solidify with respect to chocolate and I CANNOT solidify against chocolate.

How does this all NOT add up to: I must, by design, by hardwiring, by unilateral divine action eventually (assuming post-rockbottermers are 100% unsolified with respect to chocolate) solidify myself in favor of chocolate by entering that store?

Mephi: It was functionally like what Walls kept saying. The post-rock-bottom state was a state where the "optimum grace" had been given to where a TRULY free choice could be made that was devoid of compulsion-producing false ideas. Walls and I ultimately AGREE on God providing an "optimum grace" thing. We DISAGREED that this provision of "optimum grace" would effectively "rig" the whole subsequent development process in God's favor. But as you've seen with Talbott and Reitan, the alternative really makes no existential sense (though, again, it's LOGICALLY possible).

Tom: How is it logically possible if God has hardwired OUT the only option that constitutes the logical alternative, i.e., solidifying ourselves in evil? So long as this option is, as you say, ruled out, rendered impossible, by God’s creative decree, then it just means nothing for you to say it still remains “logically” possible. The most you can say it that it is “logically” possible in that it represents a possible world God COULD HAVE chosen to create (though given you reliance on “God is love” I don’t see how you can admit even this). But you in fact argue God didn’t create this world, so it doesn’t matter whether God could have created a world in which we were free to solidify against him forever. The point is, in THIS world, the world you believe God created, such irrevocable solidification against God is NOT logically possible. It is in every sense of the word an impossibility. God did NOT take this risk.

So, it’s not enough to say that agents MUST exhaust their freedom in solidifying themselves in SOME respect (that’s what freedom’s finiteness amounts to) and then claim everything is cool, TWT1 is upheld, WHEN YOU ALSO ERASE FROM OUR CONSTITUTION THE ABILITY TO SOLIDIFY AGAINST GOD. When you erase that option, you leave agents with only ONE other direction in which they MUST exhaust their freedom: in favor of God.

Mephi: In short, my view is VERY MUCH THE SAME view as Reitan's. Which means that there IS a possibility of a sentient creature being eternally lost...but the possible world in which that occurs is SO REMOTE, all things considered, that it's functionally "inevitable" that all it will never occur.

Tom: Then I’m lost again. Do you or do you not believe God drew the line in his constitutionally speaking, and hardwired into us the inability to irrevocably choose against God? All the while I’ve been hearing you say this was a risk God would not take.

Mephi: Hey, you've gotta do what you've gotta do. No biggie to me. It's interesting to me, though. It seems that if your view does develop in this vein, all God can do, in the end, is put people out of their misery. The divine euthanasia person. That's cool, I suppose. That would make sense, because God cannot, in any way, render things such that people don't become totally "hopeless cases" that have to be "Ol' Yeller-ed" In that view, God cannot provide MEANINGFUL and effective "optimal grace." as your b) above would indicate.

Tom: I certainly want to argue that if God annihilates somebody his being love and wanting love with them would mean God would provide such optimal grace to people. For those who decide not to choose God, they’d be annihilated.

Mephi: As far as I'm concerned, it IS meaningful for me to...

2) assert a form of TWT 1 that allows for such an intervention, while preserving the CRUCIAL link between self-determination and loving activity.

Tom: I’m still looking for this. If it’s out there, I’m just a stupid blind idiot!

We’ll talk. I’ll call ya man.

In the meantime, Selah, pour me a glass of that wine-remedy stuff you spoke of.

Tom

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 3/10/2005 1:47:02 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 3/10/2005 2:55:08 PM (GMT-6)