Christian Universalism

[Seraph]

About 8 years ago I stopped calling myself Christian and rather began identifying as Agnostic Theist. However lately I’ve been someone enticed by the ideology of Christian Universalism. It’s come to my attention that the Greek word used in reference to “everlasting” punishment in the New Testament is the Greek word Aionis, which does not generally mean “for eternity” but rather “for an age”. To me Universalism would clear up so much for me theologically, as it seems like if God wills for everyone to be saved, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be able to make it happen rather than have the door slam shut behind you following your physical death and allow for no more chances of repentance. If God is maximally loving, it makes sense that God would listen to pleas for repentance even after one has gone to the lake of fire.

What say you?

[Nessa]

About 8 years ago I stopped calling myself Christian and rather began identifying as Agnostic Theist. However lately I’ve been someone enticed by the ideology of Christian Universalism. It’s come to my attention that the Greek word used in reference to “everlasting” punishment in the New Testament is the Greek word Aionis, which does not generally mean “for eternity” but rather “for an age”. To me Universalism would clear up so much for me theologically, as it seems like if God wills for everyone to be saved, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be able to make it happen rather than have the door slam shut behind you following your physical death and allow for no more chances of repentance. If God is maximally loving, it makes sense that God would listen to pleas for repentance even after one has gone to the lake of fire.

What say you?

Universalism is going beyond more chances for repentance though....it's saying that everyone will ultimately end up with God as far as I am aware.

As long as we have free will that will never happen. And God is the one that gave us the freedom to choose.

[Philip]

I wouldn't think anyone who buys into Universalism also believes in Hell. Nor would they seem to take Jesus' warnings about it seriously. Course, when one feels free to pick and choose whatever theological beliefs they want, like picking their favorite flavor of ice cream - well, they'll not let inconvenient passages in Scripture about Hell stop them.

[Seraph]

The vast majority of Universalists do indeed believe in a hell, they are called “Purgatorial Universalists”. They do not ignore scriptures about hell but believe it is a temporary purging hell for the reasons I mentioned in the OP.

Let me ask you, if someone finds themself in the lake of fire and maybe 100 million years they repent, calling out to God for mercy and God refuses them but insists they remain suffering for all eternity with no further chance of escape or reconciliation , is that maximally loving or good? If so, I’d be curious as to what qualifies as evil or “not good”.

[Seraph]

Universalism is going beyond more chances for repentance though....it's saying that everyone will ultimately end up with God as far as I am aware.

As long as we have free will that will never happen. And God is the one that gave us the freedom to choose.

I don’t believe in metaphysical free will since we live in a deterministic universe, in some sense God has to have chosen our destinies and choices for use when they picked the time and conditions in which to place us. If you believe God creates everyone individually that is.

But even with free will, over the course of literal eternity, would not everyone eventually choose to accept God at some point or another? Just because one rejects God before their bodily death doesn’t mean they would always continue to do so, especially after coming into contact with them. Especially if being with God is objectively a more appealing option than being in Gods absence.

[Philip]

Questions for Universalists: https://mattdabbs.com/2011/09/19/ten-qu ... ersalists/

[Seraph]

Questions for Universalists: https://mattdabbs.com/2011/09/19/ten-qu ... ersalists/

Most of these can be answered by one of three answers:
1. Universalism (at least the form of it I find somewhat philosophically interesting) still believes in a Hell, just not one of eternal conscious torment. Thus all the questions that begin with "If there is no Hell, then why..." are moot. If Hell is not eternal, that doesn't mean it isn't something which a person should strive to avoid. Non-eternal could still easily mean "1,000+ years".

2. Hell having a dividing chasm or being inescapable does not in any way suggest that it is eternal and permanent. A person in prison unable to leave a prison because of the walls separating them from the outside world, that does not suggest that their sentence will never end. As for why God didn't just place us in this hell like the author suggests, that seems to express a view that this life has no purpose whatsoever aside from "to get to heaven", which I don't accept.

3. The word Aionis does not always mean eternal, it more commonly means "for an age, or time period". It's where we get the word Eon in modern english. It was translated as such by people with agendas, largely the Roman church who did indeed believe in an eternal hell and saw it as a useful tool for gaining members. Pre-roman early churches as well as numerous prominent church fathers very often held universalist views. Regardless, it is fallacious reasoning to say "if you want heaven to be eternal, you have to translate the word as eternal" because that in itself has no bearing on the authors intended use of the word. Some like David Bentley Hart have also pointed out that the word used to describe the flame of the lake of fire is one often associated with a "purging flame" like a smith might use to refine a metal of impurities.


https://forum.evangelicaluniversalist.c ... eople/4008
I can just as easily give a link which gives verses which appear to support the idea of eventual universal reconciliation.

[Philip]

For people who desire to embrace Universalism - hopefully, they will come to realize that whatever it is that they believe about it won't change the reality of how God has set things up - whether or not they agree with this Board's contention that Scripture teaches something quite different. And "IF" the universalist is WRONG about this belief they are spreading and people wrongly believe it - as such people typically think it doesn't matter what they believe or how they live, that "if" the God of the Bible does turn out to exist, in the end, they'll be saved anyway - well, think of the horrific eternal consequences. And why is one obsessed with universalism, instead of focusing on encouraging people to commit themselves to Christ - which, btw (if obeyed), would make debates over universalism pointless. Ultimately, Jesus and the Apostles plainly stated that having faith and devotion to Christ NOW is the key to one's ETERNITY! Universalists are right there with those believing in false doctrine of purgatory - as if there is some TEMPORARY state of ETERNAL life after death that transitions.

Hebrews 9:27

And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment

2 Corinthians 5:10

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

D.A. Carson, a renowned, widely respected theologian and emeritus professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School has stated, “I don’t think there’s a scrap of biblical suggestion that people in hell repent. The rich man in hell (Luke 16) does not repent. In fact, he still thinks he’s at the center of the universe.” And this parable Carson references is the Parable of the rich man and Lazarus, in which Jesus explains the fate of the dead.

So, if the New Testament teaches universalism, the apostles and Jesus did a very poor job of explaining it - in fact, what they did instead powerfully re-enforces the teaching that there are no second chances and that one's eternal fate is tied to the faith they had or didn't have while still on this earth! Again, people can believe what they will - but it won't change the coming reality of how God deals with them!

[Seraph]

And if God intends to torment the non saved for all eternal eternity, he did a very poor job of presenting it in the Old Testament, which never once refers to a hell or eternal torment for any non saved. The only word mentioned is Sheol which literally means “the grave” or the state of being dead. And in the New Testament he did a poor job as well since the most common word translated to the word “hell” in English is that same word Sheol. Otherwise it’s the word Gehenna which Jews recognize as a *temporary* place of purifying punishment. Or the word hades, a reference to the Greek concept of the underworld.

Nice appeal to fear by the way, one of the most common forms of logical fallacy. Nothing says confidence in one’s position like abandoning all reason and appealing to peoples emotions.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_fear

[Philip]

Seraph, as you're not a Christian - why do you care whether universalism is true or not? I'm merely appealing to people who take the Bible as the word of God - those who believe getting a crucial theological belief correct truly matters. Only Believers would fear (have the utmost respect for God and His word, and yes, fear of consequences of rejecting Him). So, again, why do you care so much? I see you've posted 676 posts over the years, all arguing in one form or the other against the Bible and Christianity as being true. Sounds like you are weirdly obsessed with Christianity, for some reason. I mean, if one doesn't believe Zeus exists and his neighbors get comfort and satisfaction from their faith in Zeus - and you believe he and all other so-called gods are all merely make-believe / superstition - why would you care so much? Do you spend such an amount of time on forums for Muslims, Hindus, Bahais, etc, etc? It seems you feel threatened if Christ is real and is God, so much so that you must feel you have credibly dispatched Scripture's assertions - likely in an attempt to convince yourself you are correct.

[Seraph]

Well no not exactly, I was a strong Christian for about 12 years, during which time I was a regular poster on this board. The vast majority of my posts here were supporting Christianity, not attacking it (though I’d lock horns with presuppositionalists a lot). Once I was no longer convinced Christianity was true I stopped posting here for the most part aside from checking back on occasion out of curiosity. I still have a strong interest in theism and belief in a God of some sort.

I do engage with Baha’i, Muslims, and atheists on other on other platforms in fact, some ideologies of which I find more grotesque than others. Much of my criticism of Islam in particular overlaps with fundamentalist Christianity since they’re perhaps the only religions which teach eternal damnation of some sort on the basis of belief or lack thereof. But I do have a genuine interest in some forms of Christianity, I’m not here just to antagonize and attack it out of some petty obsession.

[Philip]

Seraph, now I remember interacting with you a long while back.

So, what caused you to drop your Christian beliefs?

[Stu]

I think a lot of backslidden Christians, or even those who have since rejected the faith, will get a huge wake up call when the cataclysmic events of the tribulation and end days like the mark and so forth start unfolding.
There will be those who are fooled by the deceptions (fake Aliens, etc.) that are to come, as the Bible says as much, but for many with just a little knowledge of Daniel, prophecy and the New Testament, it will be clear that the Bible is true and that there will be a choice to be made between the Anti-Christ and Jesus.

[Seraph]

Seraph, now I remember interacting with you a long while back.

So, what caused you to drop your Christian beliefs?

A combination of many things, the main ones being
1. Genesis is scientifically absurd and could not have happened literally, given the evidence available. Biological evolution and abiogenesis have a mountain of evidence in their favor while the Genesis story not only lacks evidence in its favor but also has evidence against it being true.

2. Christian theology not making philosophical sense if God is all knowing and all powerful. Free will or not, God would have known before ever making the universe how things would play out, dependent on how he did things. Yet Christianity says we live in a fallen world and are in need of Gods forgiveness, despite God being in total control over everything that happens and having perfect foresight. The idea of penal substitution also does not make sense and essentially presumes that God acts according to adherence to a form of blood magic and scapegoating. It is not just not sensible to punish an innocent person and consider the guilty person to be absolved. On top of this, the common Christian interpretation of the Bible is that this punishment is eternal torment, which I do not think a single living thing deserves.

3. At some point I realized that the reason Christianity was the religious system I was exposed to, and thus raised in, is because it just so happened to be the dominant religion in the time and place I was born. However countless other belief systems have existed throughout history and exist today which I could have just as easily been born into.

[Seraph]

I think a lot of backslidden Christians, or even those who have since rejected the faith, will get a huge wake up call when the cataclysmic events of the tribulation and end days like the mark and so forth start unfolding.
There will be those who are fooled by the deceptions (fake Aliens, etc.) that are to come, as the Bible says as much, but for many with just a little knowledge of Daniel, prophecy and the New Testament, it will be clear that the Bible is true and that there will be a choice to be made between the Anti-Christ and Jesus.

I think this link speaks for itself:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predict ... ond_Coming

Do you think it would be just for God to torment and kill people for not believing in an unsupported claim?