I love the fact that you’re a “friendly contrarian” brother. You truly live up to your signature…A Berean.
The body of Christ definitely needs that.Like I said at the start of the essay, I’m not setting forth arguments to prove universalism, only to suggest that hope is a legitimate part of the whole package in formulating our opinions.
By the very thing your doing...challenging it! I believe that I said that if something is true, it will withstand the scrutiny, if not, it’s not worth holding on to anyway. The example you gave about the Mormons only serves to prove that point. They “feel” something is true, yet it’s fairly simple to demonstrate factually (to any honest seeker of the truth) that their belief system is false and that its founder was a charlatan. Thus their “feelings” about it are not validated by the facts.How do we guard against believing an illusion if our emotions, feelings, and imagination play a significant part in what we believe to be true?
But it’s really not a fair comparison. Feelings and imagination must be informed by logic and revelation. But that doesn’t invalidate the former in my opinion. They go together. I’m sorry if I didn’t make that point clear in the essay.
I’m not going to get into a discussion about Hebrews 6, nor about the meaning of "eternal", etc.. I think that topic has been fully covered already and I’m sure it has been suggested many times that eternal judgment can simply have the same meaning of “divine judgment” without the necessity of duration implied. I haven’t yet seen any of the universalists on this board deny the elementary doctrine of God’s judgment. It’s only the nature and duration of that judgment that is in dispute.
Talbott makes the suggestion in his book that every Christian has already been eternally destroyed in the same sense that Paul talks about having “died with Christ” or “died to sin” in passages like Romans 6, Galatians 2, Colossians 2, etc. In other words, if we are a new creation that is eternally alive, then it follows that our old self that died is eternally destroyed (dead…forever). So he suggests that everyone goes through some sort of eternal destruction of the “false self”, either through submission to Christ bringing forgiveness and mercy, or through fiery judgment and purification ultimately producing that same submission freely, willingly, and gladly. I’m not saying he’s right or wrong on that, but I find the argument coherent enough to allow room for hope.
You wrote:
Actually, I don’t think your caricature of post-modernism is entirely accurate. Post-modern thought does not necessitate absurdities like relativistic pluralism.Perhaps I misunderstand your point here. Are you saying our promised future "resurrection to eternal life, being present with Jesus" has the same "possibility of being true" as universal reconciliation, the truth of which you say can not be known?
Your criteria for determining what is true seems almost post-modern, i.e. each person comes up with their own truth; there is little objective truth that is knowable.
But that’s not the point. What I think I said was that scripture points to all those things as things we still “hope” for because they are not yet realized truths. We have faith in things we hope for, which means we don’t yet know them as fact. Therefore, it is not valid to categorically cast hope aside as irrelevant in this, or any other, discussion unless it can be empirically proven false (like in the case of the Mormons).
As far as settling on “objective truth”, of course it’s ideal to find that where we can. But I’m not convinced that the truth of this is something we’re supposed to know, or even can know, given the data we have available. If it was, I would think we’d have a clearer revelation of it? Again, this leaves room for hope.
In my mind, all the basic elements of the gospel remain present in all three views hell and the same commission of the King still applies to all three views as well. It doesn't mean we can make up our own truth, it simply means we are free to formulate our own honest opinions about it based on the available information and cognitive reasoning abilities (including imagination and emotion) we have been graciously given by our Creator.
And by the way, I don’t at all think we’re wasting our time on these discussions. I think they are producing some great fruit believe it or not…the fruit of “endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” (Eph 4:3). It’s tough sometimes, but well worth it. I wouldn’t have even understood the other views if it weren’t for these debates and I would have remained captive to my own prejudices. I’m very grateful that I better understand the viewpoints of others and that I’m not bound to judge them too harshly for it.
Lord bless you Homer, and keep on setting forth the challenges. It’s good for us.
