Hi Homer,
The use of human fathers as a type for how God must treat us is, in my opinion, questionable. First of all, I believe we in the West have a different perspective than cultures in the East or ancient Israel. For example, I am sure that although the father loves the child, in many places we hear that the father or other family members will kill a son, daughter, or sibling that brings dishonor upon the family. And we know the penalty for a rebellious son was death under the law. These practices are repulsive to us but these "children" are referenced in scripture as children of the devil, children of wrath.
I have said nothing about "how God
must treat us." You are arguing against someone other than me. There are people who seem to think that they can dictate to God what He must or must not do. I am not in that group. I am desiring to discover what God actually revealed about His own character and behavior. He is the one who encourages us to look at earthly fathers to understand Him.
If you think that "honor killings" are a good reflection of God's concept of fathering, we will have to live with the disagreement. Under the law, there are indeed cases where a father, as an agent of society, had to participate in the execution of a rebellious child. One can hardly believe that such a father, unless himself a monster, could ever regard the task as anything other than horribly repugnant to him, or, if he were God, would have set up a system in which he would have obligated himself to do such a thing. I think Jesus defined a father's heart in terms we can all relate to: "If you fathers, being evil, give good gifts to your children..."
It is Jesus who invited the comparison with earthly fathers. He assumed we knew what fathers are like—good ones, that is. It makes more sense to try to deny God's universal fatherhood than to accept it and still argue that He created a system in which He must necessarily give up on His pursuit of His lost sons at some arbitrarily-determined point.
Can we say He is wrong if His great patience runs out on some of the rebellious ones and He puts them out of their misery for good, knowing their case to be hopeless?
No, I would not say God is wrong to do any such thing. The question is whether His doing so is what is taught in scripture. God has the
prerogative to do many things that do not agree with His character. It is the
character of God that I have been addressing, not His prerogatives. If a situation truly is "hopeless" then it would make sense to put a man down like a rabid dog. I have made this point frequently myself, when giving the case for conditionalism. The question is whether the Bible represents any case as ultimately "hopeless."
And then again we hear the Jonathan Edwards strawman put forward as an argument against the "traditional" view. You know full well that many knowledgeable Christians who hold to the eternal punishment view do not see hell as Edwards saw it.
Of course, I know that. That is one reason he does not come up in these discussions much.
I see it likely, if the eternal punishment view is correct, that the lost will be separated from God in a sense we do not know in this world, a horrible place that we can only imagine. But in their hardened state they will be exactly where they want to be.
So, on this view, God has perpetual enemies for eternity, whom He has never been successful in defeating. Whence, then, all the biblical language declaring Christ's amazing victory over Satan. Looks like Satan is the decisive winner in your system.
I wrote:
A God who could adopt a universalist system but chooses not to do so is not even quite as good as most good men
To which you replied:
That is a shocking statement to hear; I can hardly believe you said it. And I thought Jepthah was rash!
I did not write rashly. In fact, I was fully aware of the import of my statement, and re-read it several times before posting, just to make sure it was not inaccurate. I included the proper conditions in the statement. If someone is in the position to do something helpful for another person, and does not choose to do so (like the priest and the Levite in the story of the Samaritan), then that person, by Jesus' definition, is not good.
On your view, God
is not capable of adopting a universalist system (because human free will is unconquerable—except for yours and mine, of course!), which preserves the possibility of His being "good," despite His not having saved everyone. I left room for that possibility in my statement. It was hypothetical, based on what the Bible teaches about goodness. That is the option your system chooses. God is good—but simply impotent. His creatures are ultimately stronger than He is. He has indeed created a rock that even He cannot move.
Maybe so. However, I have inside knowledge of human nature—being a human myself. I know that I am a sinner, and capable of great rebellion—but I think not
infinite rebellion. It is hard to think that a finite creature is capable of any infinite attribute. I think human resistance can be worn down, given enough time. You either believe that man's resistance can never be worn down, even by a God who has infinite time at HIs disposal (which preserves His goodness, despite His failure), or else that man's resistance could be worn down, but God hasn't the patience to keep at it. If man is incapable of infinite resistance (I have heard that this fact has been proven by human torturers), then God's giving up on the process simply can be attributed to God's impatience. Impatience is not a good attribute, according to scripture—nor is it one of God's.
Picture a man who has a son born with a crippling disability that will kill him, if not cured. This is a true analogy of what the Bible portrays as God's position. Now imagine that that father (unlike ordinary mortals) is actually capable, if he wishes, of working on his son's rehabilitation without interruption forever, but he arbitrarily sets a limit on how long he will do so, although his continuing may well bring about a full recovery. Such a father does not love his son "with an everlasting love." With this father, it cannot be said that "love never fails." This is a father who is not as good as many fathers would be. Is this the kind of father that God is? If so, He might somehow be a good God, but not a very good father.
If certain people are infinitely "hopeless," then I fully agree that God will have to annihilate them. He would still be both good and loving in such a case. But on what basis can we declare that anyone is infinitely hopeless? The Bible seems to be written to dispel the idea that, where God is, things remain hopeless. If universalism isn't true, then annihilationism is—but it is hard to imagine that a God who has infinite time, power, wisdom, and resources would not be able to come up with a plan in which He gains more than He loses.
Certainly God can do anything He wants and if universalism is false I would not want to have judged God.
Me too. If universalism is false, then man must be capable of defeating God. Possibly so.
The continual reference to God as not as good as a human father if He doesn't do what we think proper is shallow thinking. Do we blame God for what happened recently in Newtown Connecticut? I have no doubt He could have prevented it if He chose to, but He allowed it to happen. Any decent human would have intervened given the opportunity, just as some teachers gave their lives to save the children. So are they better than God?
Nonesense. This is indeed shallow thinking. God allows everyone to die. He could delay it, but not indefinitely. When God decides to take His children home, it is no less loving for Him to use a gunman for this than a tumor. If God allows an unbeliever to die, this is not unloving if, by doing so, God intends to graduate that person to the next level of moral education. If God unnecessarily kills people prematurely, merely in order to send them to an eternal hell, then, yes, that is hard to reconcile with either His goodness or His love.
You recently asked for where the following statement was found in Schaff-Herzog:
But the writers defending the apocatastasis are decidedly in the minority; and so bad was the reputation of Origin for sound thinking that any theory known to be derived from him was was looked at askance by the sober-minded.
What I asked you about this quote was not where it was found (I think you had already given the reference), but what time period it was being applied to.
Earlier you mentioned that this discussion about hell was something of a private discussion among Christians. This is not so (not regarding the Christian part) because this forum, as are other Christian forums, is accessed by a Google search rather easily. More than once I have searched for information on Google and the result prominently displayed a post from this forum. The world can easily read topics posted here.
I do not expect this to be a totally private, in-house discussion among Christians. Anyone may show up. But then, I would not post anything here that I would not wish for an unbeliever to read. I am only interested in saying things agreeable with what the scripture teaches. I think God knew that unbelievers might, at times, pick up and read a Bible. I don't think He said anything there that embarrasses Him. His love for sinners, Christ's determination to save them, and everything I have posted are actually things that God must want us all to know.
