I try not to single 'you' out when addressing UR beliefs…So why do you often word your responses to me as if I am the only one who believes this…
I address my comments to you when I am responding to what you write to me. This seems only natural and considerate. I never said that you are the only one who holds your views. However, I don’t intend to hold you accountable for what the majority believe—only for what you believe and say.
You just wrote a book on 3 views of Hell, it should be clear that the overwhelming and predominate [sic] 'view' held by Christianity for 2000 years has been that Gehenna in these verses of Jesus refers to hell, so why refer to this view as my view?
Once again, while I know that the majority think a certain thing, I am not in dialogue with the majority of Christians. I am writing to you, and I don’t consider that you are under obligation to believe like the majority. In fact, you don’t. You believe in annihilation. Aren’t you aware that the predominant view of the church for centuries has been different from yours on this matter? Why should I think you bound to hold their views about Gehenna, if you reject majority views on other matters?
You even act as if you are ‘puzzled’ as to why Homer would see it this way, as if Homer was the first one to suggest such a theory
I am never surprised to hear someone espouse a poorly-supprted position if it is the only one they have heard. However, at this forum, other views are presented, allowing participants to critically cross-examine traditional views. What is surprising is when one has been given that opportunity to look at the evidence that seems to disprove the traditional idea, but chooses to repeat the tradition as if it had not been refuted.
The problem is that in order to defend UR and CU ‘you’ suggest Gehenna is a only place, and further more fulfilled as a Judgment in 70ad.
Do you think that is what I am doing? My view on Gehenna is based upon comparison of scripture with scripture, and is not done in the service of any extraneous theological agenda. If I come to embrace universalism someday, it won’t be because of my views about the meaning of Gehenna—and my views on the latter are entirely independent of any of the three views of hell (since I do not believe there is exegetical warrant for equating Gehenna with hell, by any of the three descriptions).
It sounds to me that you are unable to evaluate this question of Gehenna’s meaning apart from your associating it with some view of hell that you have decided not to consider seriously. Thus, your rejection of a particular view of hell (which is not associated directly with the identity of Gehenna) prevents your being able to consider my arguments objectively. I am not aware of any universalist writers who have made a major issue of the meaning of Gehenna. I think most of them probably assume, as you do, that Gehenna is hell. I’m not sure, because any discussion of it in their books does not stand out in my memory. I could think as I do about Gehenna and still hold any of the three views of hell.
there are many places you dogmatically address verses concerning judgments such as Gehenna as happening in 70ad, to be fair you sometimes add that it ‘may or may not' be fulfilled in 70ad
Is this a criticism? If so, what is your point?
Most of your next two posts quote clear statements of my position from my earlier posts, and then follow them with statements of your own that I find unclear at many points. First, I sometimes cannot decipher the sentences themselves, and second, I cannot see how the sentences I do decipher stand as criticisms of my statements. I consistently find your arguments hard to follow on this topic, though not necessarily on all topics. Last of all, you write:
It is the Universalist that needs to present more evidence that these judgments did ‘not’ have eternal consequences for those who experienced these Judgments in scripture (say, Pharaoh, Jezebel, Lots wife, Herod, Haman, etc.), as the content of many Judgments describe certainty, destruction, corpses, worms, fire, burning, and annihilation.
This is a “burden-of-proof” judgment. You think that, when a passage does not state what you are taking it to mean (i.e., a statement about a temporal judgment does not mention postmortem questions), that it is for those who disagree with you to prove that this silence necessarily eliminates the possibility of your assumptions being correct. Since the statements to do not contradict your view, they must be taken as supporting it. This might be more reasonable if your view was established somewhere upon other grounds. In the absence of such support, it seems to me that the burden of proof lies upon you to show that verses which make no mention of your thesis were nonetheless implying it.
