In this episode of Drunk Ex-Pastors, we witness a stunning turning-of-the-tables as Jason (the happy one) seeks to cheer up his pal Christian (the sad one). Once “Let Go, Let God” has done its job, the DXPs offer their condolences to a heartbroken caller, reflecting on the fact that, deep down, we’re all still lovesick teenagers. Christian then begins a drunken retraction of last week’s intolerance, only to change his mind and dig his heels, insisting that it’s human nature to blur the line between respecting a person and respecting his ideas (Jason reluctantly kind of agrees, but is mostly just amused at his BFF’s drunken demeanor). Christian reads a selection from Jason’s forthcoming book in which he argues that God’s archetypal fatherhood demands that divine mercy always gets the last word over divine punishment (and even Christian, our resident atheist [ahem], is impressed). We then take some voicemails which lead us to offer a modest endorsement for president, weigh in about the degree to which religion shrouds its adherents in ignorant darkness, and break down the phenomenon of “Christianese.” In a rare occurrence, Jason moves his cards a few inches from his chest and talks reluctantly about his personal life (if you blink your ears you might miss it). We then add a new and as-yet-untitled segment about things we like (imagine that), after which we launch into our biebers. Jason’s bieber involves TV and comfort zones, while Christian is biebered by emotional manipulation.
Also, how can anyone not have a crush on Taylor Swift? Heartless robots, all of you…
Podcast #245: All Dogs Go to Heaven
Podcast #416: Toilet Seats, Religious Texts, and Marriage
Podcast #483: Kids, Pride, and Protests
Podcast #478: Comedy, Life Experiences, and Iran
I am only a third in with this week’s podcast but I often find myself having more respect for people with whom I disagree than those who are in my camp: specifically when the people I agree with intellectually are acting like asshats. Perhaps this is because I value orthopraxy more than orthodoxy; I’m more interested in acting right rather than being right.
One can be right and still act injustly. One can be wrong and still be the victim in the situation.
Jason’s book sounds awesome. As a fellow CC’er I know the stranglehold of Biblical Inerrancy can prevent a brain from processing. But there are protestants who are evanglical in sympathy but don’t think of the Bible that way, which has been incredibly helpful for me. Two recent books I’ve read are by Derek Flood – Disarming the Bible and Peter Enns – The Bible Tells Me So. If you can’t afford the books I have digested versions on my blog of the first and I’m working through the second on my blog now. In short, acknowledge the Bible is human, but used by God and that Jesus is the Word of God and everything in the book has to be considered in light of his teaching and life.
John
umbl0g.blogspot.com
The people I respect the most are those who live with and accept doubt.
Those who say, “I think I’m right, and here is why I think that way, but it’s possible that I’m mistaken” are far more worthy of respect than those who say, “I’m right. You’re wrong and nothing you can say and no evidence you can present will ever change my mind of that opinion because God/The Bible/My Priest or Pastor/Favorite Political Group says so.”
My favorite bit of Christianese is still the “I’m not religious, I have a relationship with Jesus Christ.”
What do religious people do?
“They go to church, read their scriptures, pray, evangelize, do good works, and try to be good people to please God.”
And what do you do in that relationship?
“I go to church, read my bible, pray, evangelize, do good works, and try to be a good person to please Jesus Christ, but I get a really good warm fuzzy feeling from it.”
The conversation that was recorded helped to clarify Christian’s comments on last week’s pod for me a little bit more and I largely agree with his position. The position, whatever it may be, does have weight in my determination of the respectability of the person. Example: if someone has done the research and truly believes that the world is flat, I don’t think I could have respect for that person. Obviously an extreme example.
Also, no… Taylor Swift is not universally adored. Not by a long shot.
And yes, I know my heart is three sizes too small and black as coal.
Mike huckabee has my vote! Abolish the IRS, fairtax, term limits on the Congress and senate… dude is awesome
That’s why I describe myself as religious but not spiritual. . . .
That Bieber kid really Huckabees me.
Lol I now have no choice but to respect you less for not agreeing with me
Bwahaha!! Too-shay.
Thanks, but I’d like to have less of a hawk than the current president. And someone who will stand up to Israel’s excesses. And someone who isn’t beholden to voodoo economics.
Can you resurrect Eisenhower or T. Roosevelt? I’d vote the GOP ticket if you could give me one of those guys.
Comrade,
What is voodoo economics? I think Huckabee has a really exciting tax plan. Have you ever heard him defend his version?
https://youtu.be/gm4YG-xhLpM
Watch that video and then tell me his plan isn’t kick ass! I really hope people can look past his evangelicalness and evaluate the merit of his proposals. I think they are quite impressive.
BTW Texas uses a similar model, focuding on taxing consumption and not production. Our economy is…. well….. better than yours 🙂
Ah, politics and economics. Finally topics where I hold some semblance of knowledge!
Kenneth,
1. Voodoo economics is probably the more accurate description of Reaganomics or Supply Side Economy which is the template of the Republican economic plan since, well, pretty much forever. But as you might guess from the name, it was actually implemented by the Reagan administration. The idea is that if you reduce taxation (of pretty much every kind), capital (e.g. rich people) will have more money to invest in new business which would lead to new jobs which would lead to more tax payers. The idea has morphed into the slogan that you’re probably more familiar with: growing the tax base.
1a. The reason it’s called voodoo economics is because as the past 30 plus years have shown, it’s pretty much bullshit. When rich people get more money, they don’t invest in new business which lead to new jobs, they hoard it.
2. Consumption tax is highly regressive because those with lower incomes spend a higher proportion of it on consumables. Here’s a quick example, let’s say two people both spend $20,000/yr on expenses (rent, gas, food, etc) but person a earns $25,000 vs person b who earns $50,000. Person a would only have a non-taxable income of $5,000 vs person b who would have $30,000 of non-taxable income.
3. Texas is an oil producing state, and until the recent drop in crude prices, Texas has been a beneficiary of very high crude oil prices. That has allowed it to:
3a. Use tax incentives to lure businesses to the state. As such, the Texas miracle is a mirage based on a model of race to the bottom.
3b. Texas is actually in a pretty horrendous state economically. All of these amazing job growth have come from low wage service sector jobs.
3c. Combined with a state that basically spends no money on its citizens; bottom five in educational spending, bottom five in healthcare spending, middling ranks in both infant mortality and high school education, Texas is simply pushing off problems.
Comrade,
People like Roosevelt and Eisenhower would be median Democrats in today’s economic climate:
http://www.ginandtacos.com/2015/03/23/red-tide/
Hi greg!
I am not a defender of supply-side economics and I understand the brilliance of the Keynesian model. As such, I don’t have a big issue with the debt (that we mostly owe ourselves) or welfare programs. I get it. However, I do think it’s a bit disengenuous to label supply-side economics as “voodoo economics”. It is very debatable which system works out best in the long run.
As a student of economics, what do you think of Hucks proposal? Watch that 8 minute video and give me some feed back. I woukd love to hear what you think!
PS,
I can assure you that Texas is NOT in a horrendous state economically. Most people don’t have a very hard time finding jobs and the cost of living is gloriously low. So far as education, health, etc go there are a number of factors in play… such as large amounts of illegal immigration etc. Same reason why most state ls that border Mexico struggle in those categories (including california). There is a rather alarming percentage of students that don’t even speak english!!! All things considered, we are kicking ass. 10 billion dollar annual surplus is no joke.
Our ten billion dollar “rainy day fund” is no mirage 🙂
You have more minimum wage jobs per capita than any other state, fewer workplace and worker protections, fewer inspectors to make sure vaunted capitalists aren’t going to, let’s say, improperly store fertilizer and blow up an entire town, then declare bankruptcy and skate on paying out damages. More folks without health care clogging up your ERs.
Now you can certainly argue that all of that is better than letting government interfer more in the economy, but I’d disagree with you vigorously.
And California is doing quite nicely, thank you very much. You know… at least until we run out of water. But considering Texas is likewise in the southwestern drought zone, you guys won’t be that far behind us.
comrade,
Right. Business insider has TX ranked as the number 2 economy. The American legislative exchange council has Texas ranked number one. CNBC has texas ranked at number 2. What are they all missing?
As for California, no doubt we would all love to live there. Beautiful weather, great wine, pretty girls, high grade marijuana….. plenty to be proud of! However, as far as dollars and cents go California is pretty sucky. People in Texas make around 53k on average. People in Cali make around 57k. The problem? California is WAY more expensive.
Cali vs Texas
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/07/03/texas-v-california-the-real-facts-behind-the-lone-star-states-miracle/
Choice quote:
42% more people in poverty…. YIKES
I suppose it all depends on what statistics you’re going to pull. By typical account, Texas ranks 46th in the nation with an official poverty rate of 16.8% as of 2014, while California had an official rate of 13.2% which placed it as 35th in the nation.
I can likewise link to stories outlining the differences between the two economies, how California is recovering quite nicely, and how Texas is poised to crash with the fall in oil prices.
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/california-bested-texas
And, once again, number of towns that have been destroyed in Texas by lax oversight of industry: 1
Number of towns destroyed by industry in California: 0
Comrade,
Not a hill I’m willing to die on. I was just curious as to what you thought about huckabee and the fair tax
I’m not a fan. It shifts the burden of taxation from the wealthy to the poor and middle class. I think it would be preferable if we returned to higher taxation rates on capital gains and income taxes, and offered a guaranteed minimum income via negative taxation rates to the truly poor.
And for the record, I’m not completely down on Texas. I just disagree with their philosophy on government and think that corporations do require a strong check on their power to curb abuses.
Gary Johnson 2016! http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Gary_Johnson
Comrade,
It’s just a fun little quasi rivalry between states. If I could maintain my quality of living I would move to Cali in a heart beat! It’s just too damn expensive.
As one of those people who spend most of their income every month, I don’t mind the fair tax at all. I get my entire paycheck every week, the IRS is completely gone with April 15th just being another spring day, AND the cost of goods dont go up because the 22% production tax is gone too. So prices stay the same and I keep my whole paycheck. That’s freaking awesome. I might have a higher percentage of my income taxed…. but I’m not even going to notice so who cares?!?
Serena –
Libertarians: Republicans with better branding.
Kenneth –
I see that while I was away Comraderead performed a more than admirable job of stating many of my positions so probably not a lot of point of wading back into the water.
However, all this talk about California being too expensive, if you’re talking about living next to (hell, anywhere near) then yes, California is expensive — because that area is highly desirable. There are plenty of places in California (it’s kind of a large state you know) which are far cheaper to live and are still quite nice.
Finally, you’re still young (if memory serves you mentioned somewhere along the line that you’re 27?) so I guess saving isn’t something that you’re too concerned with at the moment but even leaving that aside, think about this scenario. Because a greater percentage of your income is taxed, it probably also means a greater percentage of your income is taken away by taxes, without the safety net of savings (if your paycheck is taken up by taxes & expenses, you’d have less savings), aren’t you in that much more precarious of a position? What happens if you got sick or hurt and lose your job?
Leaving aside merits of smaller governments, all of the tax proposals put forward by any Republican is highly regressive and will only serve to increase inequality, is that what people truly want? Here’s something that Dean Baker wrote in 2007 when Huckabee first gained real presidential prominence:
I thought it was “Republicans who wanted to smoke weed (and don’t dislike gay people).”
But yes, their economic ideas are the GOP’s on steroids. The last place I’d want to live is a libertarian Objectivist dystopia where our corporate overlords run the show.
Comradedread, in a “libertarian dystopia” there would be no corporate welfare!
There’d also be no corporate accountability and no corporate oversight.
heh@comraderead. That’s a good one.
It’s very weird why so many self proclaimed christians also call themselves libertarians. The ethics espoused by their religion run rather counter to the ethics espoused by libertarianism.
Greg,
However, all this talk about California being too expensive, if you’re talking about living next to (hell, anywhere near) then yes, California is expensive — because that area is highly desirable. There are plenty of places in California (it’s kind of a large state you know) which are far cheaper to live and are still quite nice.
Good point! Didnt think about that.
Finally, you’re still young (if memory serves you mentioned somewhere along the line that you’re 27?) so I guess saving isn’t something that you’re too concerned with at the moment but even leaving that aside, think about this scenario. Because a greater percentage of your income is taxed, it probably also means a greater percentage of your income is taken away by taxes, without the safety net of savings (if your paycheck is taken up by taxes & expenses, you’d have less savings), aren’t you in that much more precarious of a position? What happens if you got sick or hurt and lose your job?
The fair tax actually enables me to save more! Rather than having 300 dollars per week taken out of my paycheck for taxes, I get the entire amount and can invest it however I chose. If I were to put that in a 401k (which I currently have) I WOULDN’T get taxed on the money until I spent it. In fact, no investments would, which helps compound interests take off.
Leaving aside merits of smaller governments, all of the tax proposals put forward by any Republican is highly regressive and will only serve to increase inequality, is that what people truly want?
The fair tax is not highly progressive because low income families receive a “prebate” every month. Which is the estimated dollar amount they would spend in taxes on every day needs. SO if I have a family of 5, and spend most of my money on day to day items and groceries, I would pay virtually no taxes at all. Meanwhile, Bill gates throws himself a 26 million dollar birthday party and the government gets a pay check. The prebate concept levels the playing field and makes the fair tax… well, fair.
I don’t think that very many people would want to move to another country just to avoid paying a sales tax lol Seems kind of silly. The details on what the percentage needs to be can be worked out along the way. The thing to remember is this: there is already a built in tax of about 28% on all products made in the USA. This built it cost comes from compliance pay, payroll taxes, etc. etc. Once that is all gone the price of goods will drop by 28%. SO even if the fair tax does end up being 40% thats only a 12% increase from what we are already paying which is really not all that extreme.
Example: Say a 16 pack of toilet paper can be produced for $12.24. Unfortunately, because the IRS currently taxes production, around $3.43 will be added to the cost to make up for payroll taxes, corporate taxes, etc. making the final price $15.66. If all those taxes were eliminated the price comes back down to $12.24. Once we apply the apocalyptic 40% sales tax (an estimate that ridiculously high) the price of toilet paper is only $17.14!!!! Barely more than a dollar difference from the current $15.66. Keep in mind that advocates of the fairtax claim that the percentage only needs to float around 25%-30%.
There should be WAY more people advocating for this system. You can write you congress and learn more about the fairtax here
http://fairtax.org/
Christian and Jason,
I was suprised that you both seem to think that the bible teaches that every single living person is a child of God. Neither the bible nor the Church teaches this concept. We are all made in God’s image, but we only become *adopted* as His children, with Christ as our brother, upon receiving our justification. God is fathering a family, but that family does not encompass every individual, even though every individual is invited and eligible for adoption.
Consider this analogy:
God creates moral creatures with objective moral values and duties. His standard is perfection aka “the law”.
So imagine a carpenter tells all of emplyees “make for me a perfect box”. The first person works and measures and uses all the finest technology to make the perfect box. He doesn’t much care for the carpenter, doesn’t really want to know Him, but does the best he can out of a sense of obligation. He wants to earn his wage. The carpenter examines this box, finds the tiniest flaw, and smashes it into pieces. The standard was perfection, and the person failed.
The second person, a small two year old, is adopted into the carpenters family. He worked as hard as he could to make the perfect box not out of obligation, but from love. His box is super crappy. About as good as one would expect from a 2 year old. The carpenter looks at this box and finds it blameless. He says to the child “well done, you have made a fantastic box, I love it”. The standard was the same, but love forgives a multitude of errors. Love is gracious. The difference was in the relationship.
Was there any injustice on the part of the carpenter? Nope. He will accept the boxes he accepts and reject whichever he pleases. (Romans 9) He may have known all along that no one would meet his demands. He may have known from the beginning that the only boxes he would accept were from those in his own family. The standard was perfection. He is not obligated to the strangers who never knew him. Yet, he may be merciful to those in his family who love him.
If you want to have a blameless box, you need to find yourself in God’s family. Otherwise, you better hope the standard you have imagined is “good enough” matches the one God has in mind. Nothing unclean will enter His house.
Was there any injustice on the part of the carpenter?
Nope, he’s just a dick.
Kenneth, is each person a creation of God or not?
Christian,
No more than a judge is a dick when sentencing a criminal. Or when a boss fires a coworker for not living up to expectations.
Yes, we are all creations of God. So are rocks, insects, bears, water, tress etc.
Like I said in the podcast, if I create a vase for the purpose of destroying it, no problem. The vase is an inanimate object. If I create a child for the purpose of destroying it, I’m a dick.
Also, a judge can’t let someone who committed a crime off the hook just because the perpetrator’s got a great attitude.
Christian,
Judges actually do that all the time! I have a great innocent white boy face and it’s gotten me off the hook quite a few times 🙂
You have created created children right? What is their purpose? Whatever they choose right? Is it the fault of Hitlers parents that he chose to be a wacko? No. In the same way, God creates man to be good. It is not His fault when they disobey, although it is His doing when they are good. Why He choses some and passes over others has no reason but the divine will. He has mercy on whom He has mercy. He allows the others to have their just desserts.
Jason and Christian,
On the subject of universalism, I want to see as many people in Heaven as possible! I hope to actually *be* there, myself, to see them; I don’t simply assume that I will be there because I am currently attempting, often poorly, to follow Christ as a Catholic.
I don’t get any happiness out of thinking of people being in Hell– other than, perhaps, people who just persist and persist in truly heinous sin against others in this life and never show the slightest hint of remorse and repentance about it. I’m thinking here of people such as sex traffickers who kidnap little girls and send them to brothels, where they have to “service” 20 to 40 men each night. For sex traffickers who never, ever repent of such sins against defenseless little girls in this life, and who are never caught and punished for their crimes in this life, eternal separation from God could truly be justice, and I would honestly have no problem with it.
For most people though, I don’t want to see them in Hell– how could I, as a person who is trying to love others with the love of a perfect, loving, Father God, and with the humanly embodied love of God the Son in Christ?? I don’t rejoice over thinking of people going to Hell, and especially not for non-heinous sins– and for Catholics, the truth is, we don’t know the *ultimate* degree of peoples’ *subjective* culpability for what are even, *objectively*, mortal sins in Catholic teaching.
At the same time, I have to acknowledge that it’s *possible* for people to go to Hell, because people can, theoretically, make the choice, of their own free will, to reject God forever. Some people have actually told me that they just do not want to be with God forever! I don’t think that God should force upon them what they don’t want. I do hope that they come to a very different view before they die and face God and eternity though. I hope that as many people as possible are saved, while still respecting the freedom of people to say “No” to God– even, possibly, forever.
Hmm, I’m trying to post another comment, but it doesn’t seem to be showing up here. I’m going to stop now, because I’ve tried twice, and I don’t want to accidentally repost over and over. 🙂
The lesson, Christian, is to fear and worship the great old one who threatens you with unending pain for your mere existence in his universe in the hopes that this great capricious one will spare you and take your neighbors instead.
Cthuhlu has nothing on Jehovah.
Comradedread,
Your summation of Jehovah is much closer to Allah. Keep trying though!
Will God torture me forever in a lake of fire if I do not believe or insincerely believe what you think is necessary for my salvation?
Is God not torturing billions of human souls this instant in a place called Hell or Hades? Will He torture them forever? Will He torture me if I do not do what you say He says I must do to be spared this eternal torture?
The lesson, Comrade, is that your idea of what “god” is and what His duties and obligations entail are too cuddly. You have taken one image of God, as divine father, and elevated it above all the other analogies. Master/slave, potter/clay, etc.
In one sense, the liberal is no different than the fundamentalist. No tension can ever enter into the picture. It’s EITHER God is a cuddly teddy bear OR a monstrous being not worthy of worship. EITHER everyone is in heaven OR the whole story goes out the window. You need to be willing to allow God’s word to speak. Every once in a while we find certain truths that are difficult to comprehend. It is the theologians job to explore, explain, and reconcile, these truths while maintaining the integrity of the teaching. We must leave some room for mystery and acknowledge that there are certain paradoxical truths that we can never unravel this side of heaven.
The liberal and the fundamentalist jettison this methodology. They just want whatever answer makes them feel best. Pick on side of the paradox and explain away the rest as best you can. This is theology for infadels, or, if you would prefer, theology for Americans.
No. Either God is just and merciful or God is a monster who inflicts pain on a sentient creature forever (and threatens the same upon everyone to gain new worshipers)
But you’re accepted on faith that there must be some reason God would torture billions of humans forever that would flip morality upon its head and make the action good and proper and something worthy of your worship, so I hardly think rehashing the last five arguments we’ve had on this topic is worth our mutual time.
It’s certainly not. It’s only worth noting that you refuse to let God’s word speak. If Comrade can’t understand, it must not be so. You have made yourself pope 🙂
“If I only submit when I agree, the only authority is me”
It’s nice little jingle. I would love to see some argument from scripture that the entire population of planet earth make up the family of God. I don’t think we have covered that ground yet.
This is nonsense.
Tension exists all over Christianity for me. I know how the canon was put together. I’ve studied various theories on authorship, background, and motivations and how these fit in the timeline with when the texts were written.
I’ve seen the contradictions in the text. I’ve seen the implausible miracles (such as thousands of dead people rising from the graves and walking around Jerusalem at the moment of Christ’s death which is mentioned nowhere else), I can clearly see the evolution of theology and ideas as later texts built upon the theology of older ones. I clearly feel the tension between the scientific fact of evolution and the Genesis narrative.
The trinity itself defies any explanation beyond the most general insufficient one.
And I still have faith.
I still believe in the resurrection and the kingdom of heaven. I still believe that there is a better kingdom, one without oppression, without pain, without injustice, without exploitation, where the smallest one matters as much as the most ‘important’ one, where love reigns and we all think of one another more highly than we do ourselves. Where there is no need, no human suffering, only peace and happiness.
And I still believe that it’s our responsibility to work for that kingdom’s realization.
My belief is tenuous at times, especially when revisiting things which drove me out of fundamentalism. But it’s still there, weathered and beaten. So please do not tell me I’m not familiar with tension or the conflict between faith and doubt.
Hogwash. The Word of God is Christ. The bible may be inspired and useful for doctrine, but it was written by flawed and fallible men who were a product of their times and just as prone to error as we are. If a biblical concept or idea contradicts the nature and character of Christ, then we are either misinterpreting it or the idea was not from God in the first place.
I answer to God and my conscience only for myself. Should I simply lie to myself and tell my mind and my conscience to be silent simply because someone in a religion I do not hold to has decided that his reading of the bible is the only correct one despite what the text, reason, and my conscience tell me?
I think not.
Comrade,
Well then suffice it to say that you will not allow there to be any tension on this issue and have instead resolved the mystery by sacrificing the integrity of doctrinal truths. Just as a “Oneness Pentecostal” might find tensions with evolution etc. acceptable, but then resolve the mystery of the Trinity by simply explaining away the texts that disagree with him. Liberals and fundies all have their little pet peeves. Various tensions and paradoxes they just cant hold together. It seems that your attitude towards hell is in the same vein.
The bible is word for word inspired of God. Letter for letter. There are ZERO errors in the biblical texts. This is an important starting place. Once abandoned, there remains no need for mystery. You can then use the bible as a kind of rag-doll and jerk it around until it conforms with whatever the age demands of it. (sounds like your position. Bet you an e-beer you don’t hold to biblical inerrancy) If you are the kind of person that believes in the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, you must then affirm that there can be no contradiction between scripture and the nature and character of Christ. Which is of course exactly what the Church teaches. All that remains is a willingness to allow the text to speak and, when necessary, hold the tension. The Trinity is one such instance. How does it make sense that there are 3 people and 1 God? Well it doesnt on the surface. It has taken thousands of years to ponder. We cant abandon it because its clearly spelled out in the text.
In the same way, the biblical teaching on hell is absolutely undeniable. There exists a place where people will be forever and ever that is not enjoyable. How do we reconcile this with Gods love? It can be tough, but it still must be done if we are to be faithful students of divine revelation. You don’t actually believe that scripture teaches universalism do you? If i strapped you to a lie detector, could you say with a straight face and clear conscience “Neither Jesus nor any of the apostles taught that hell exists as a place of eternal torment. Jesus and the apostles were all under the impression that everyone will eventually be in heaven”. You know you don’t actually believe that 😉
there is a such thing as assent of the will. We may not always understand or agree but that doesnt give us the right to dissent
@greghao I don’t think there is any contradiction at all being a Christian and a libertarian, don’t equate Ayn Rand and Gordon Gekko with libertarianism. I can call myself libertarian (I prefer classic liberal) because I believe we are all flawed human beings in a fallen world, anarchy and communism could never work because our fallen nature could never allow us to leave in harmony without some controlled oversight and having flawed human beings having massive control over other flawed humans is well, flawed. Even a Catholic Theocracy were the catechism of the Church were the law of the land, would be a failure because flawed human beings would be enforcing it. The premise behind “government works best when government works least” is the best system where flawed humans with a propensity to do good, can thrive. Also, I am convinced that most members of Congress are off the charts on the Narcissism scale, and they should not be given too much power.
Re: hell, you are forgetting that the Catholic Church does believe in a Hell, but for all we know if could be empty. If there are people there, they are there because they want to be there, God did not put them there. Of course you’re thinking, ‘Why would anyone chose hell?”. The church is also big on your conscience. If Hitler is in hell it is not just because he murdered millions of people. What is the worldview or moral framework one has to have to actually implement a holocaust? That along with his ‘works” was a result of his decision to reject God’s love. Any evil act is the result of taking over and disregarding someone’s free will, when God himself does not take over our will. Basically when someone commits an evil act, they see themselves as a “God” .
Here’s a better explanation from the late Fr. Albacete http://meaningoflife.tv/video.php?speaker=albacete&topic=death
@Serena –
Fair enough, most of the libertarians I know and come in contact with are of the Ayn Rand/Objectivism/Austrian School and less of the “classic” civil libertarian type. However, I am not sure I follow your logical train of thought: Given our fallen/sinful nature, wouldn’t anarchy actually be the only solution? The idea that I cannot trust any authority higher than myself (or I guess God) and must therefore be responsible for myself in all aspects of life kind of describes anarchy. In fact, I would say that communism is the anti-thesis of anarchy — the communal aspect of communism is to live for the good of the community and not myself.
The primary issue with libertarianism, in your sense, is that it doesn’t really scale. It may have worked a few hundred years ago when the entirety of your life was within a 50 to 100 mile radius of your house but we don’t live in that world anymore.
When I say anarchy I mean it in the original definition..complete lawlessness little to no civil structure, and I do see communism and the anti-thesis but because we’re flawed we all have a tendency to live for ourselves, as was evident by the cushy lifestyles communist leaders in comparison to their subjects.
Tom Hanks is a universaly liked guy although his name would be hard to turn into a verb. But I mean just watch this video http://youtu.be/qV5lzRHrGeg
comradedread,
You asked me if God is “torturing billions of souls” for not believing “what I think is necessary” for not spending eternity in Hell. The very fact that you would even pose the question in that way indicates that you think the Catholic Church teaches what *certain groups of fundamentalist Protestants believe* about Hell. By definition, though, the Catholic Church is not a fundamentalistic Protestant group/denomination! 🙂
I don’t claim to know how many souls are in Hell. Neither does the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church occasionally makes official statements about who she believes to be in Heaven (canonized Saints), but to my knowledge, the Church has never made an official teaching declaration about who is currently in Hell and how many souls are there.
Please read my comment to Jason and Christian on universalism. It might help you to understand my thinking (which is completely acceptable within orthodox Catholicism). I’m not a flat-out universalist, but I hope and pray that the population of Heaven is very, very, very large. In fact, in the Divine Mercy chaplet prayer, Catholics pray that God would “lead all souls to Heaven, especially those most in need of Thy mercy.”
As for what is necessary to go to Heaven, the Catholic Church teaches about what is, objectively, soul-damning sin (not all sin *is* soul-damning in Catholic teaching), but the Church also teaches about various levels of *subjective culpability* for sin. I don’t know whether any individual person is in Hell. Scripture does indicate that at least Judas is there, because Jesus says that it would have been better for him if he had never been born.
Scripture also says that the path is narrow, and few find it, but the Church does not claim, from this passage, that all non-Christians are damned. The Church teaches that anyone who *is* saved, ultimately, is saved by Christ, but that does not necessarily mean that every person who is saved *consciously knows* that he or she is being saved by Christ.
This is plainly false since I can point to copying errors in the Old Testament.
Aside from which, if you google bible contradictions, you’ll find entire lists of various passages that conflict with one another. Some of them are weak contradictions that require the reader to take poetic or figurative language literally, others are more substantial.
The problem with arguing this with you is that I already know what the outcome will be. No doubt, the Catholic Church has already had a theologian explain away these contradictions which since you take their interpretation as absolute truth makes arguing the point meaningless.
Likewise for universalism, I could site 1 Corinthians 15:22, Colossians 1:19-20, Romans 5:18-19, Romans 11:32, John 12:32 or any other scriptures that lend support to the idea that all things will be reconciled through Christ, and it won’t matter. You have your dogma already and your appeal to authority, therefore I must be wrong.
And, no, I obviously believe in evolution, so I don’t believe a literal Genesis account. And the entire process of putting together the canon relied on men deciding which books were inspired, and there was disagreement and political maneuvering about some books for centuries after the fact. So no, I am not a believer in biblical inerrancy.
But I do love how your entire assumption of my hermeneutic automatically assumes the worst of me and other liberal Christians in assuming there is no thought or meditation on the scriptures other than “How can we make the world like us?”
That’s a very human response to the problem and a recognition that there is a problem.
It reminds me of the bit in the Apocalypse of Peter where Peter asks for mercy for the damned and Christ asks him if Peter really thinks he is more just or merciful than Christ and lets him know that in the end, all will be reconciled after they have been sufficiently punished for their sins. God punishing sin, but also allowing it as a way to bring forth mercy, forgiveness, and compassion from his church.
Except libertarianism generally ignores money power or corporate power. Gutting government simply shifts the power balance towards those with more resources and more influence over communities. The entire progressive system of laws, particularly with regards to labor were a direct response to the failures of laisse faire capitalism.
I’d rather not replace a government overlord that I can at least vote for, with a corporate one whom I cannot.
Comraderead & Serena –
Comraderead makes an excellent point that despite all the freedom talk that libertarians never seems to want to talk about, asymmetry of power. Yes, it’s true that if I don’t like the terms of employment with my employer that I have the freedom to go work somewhere else. But if I happen to mostly like my job (or am in an industry where there are fewer to no alternatives) then what good is that freedom? Specific example is the hatred of libertarians and republicans of collective bargaining. Even a middle school child understand that between capital and labour, capital is going to win on a one to one basis precisely due to the asymmetry of power in that bargain.
Serena –
As a semi-committed communist (probably closer to marxist for reasons below), I agree with your point above that communism is never going to work because we cannot overcome our base desires (man’s fallen nature in your parlance). So the fact that the Soviets and Chinese Communist Party call themselves communist, they are in fact, not. For the simple fact that it is still mostly authoritarian.
To your point about anarchy, we can quibble over the minor differences but did you mean to say that you identify with anarchy due to your libertarianism? Because that’s what it probably ought to be… Unless I am missing something.
Yes, it’s true that if I don’t like the terms of employment with my employer that I have the freedom to go work somewhere else.
Unless, of course, the same multinational corporation happens to own that workplace too. Or they collude with other industry giants to make sure that the same working conditions are offered to their employees too. Or they blacklist you as a troublemaker with other employers in the industry.
The power dynamics between the capitalist and the worker are ripe for abuse.
Or even between a capitalist and their customers. Or between the capitalist and his community.
In short, I want strong government oversight of industry and I’d like strong citizen oversight of government to keep all the power bases in check. I’d also like to see laws making it easier to unionize again.
I don’t have anything against unions, in fact I could have benefited from unions in a couple of jobs (and that was in non-profit!) but the problem comes from forced union membership of employees, which goes against freedom of association. You would probably agree there should be a different standard for public sector unions when cops who violate civil rights are allowed to stay on the job.
No I don’t identify with anarchy as a libertarian, I can’t see how law enforcement, courts, etc., would work being privately funded.
comradedread, what about the power dynamics between government and the governed? That is also ripe for abuse that can be ameliorated by giving the government less power. Also, the reason why legislators are so influenced by corporate $$$ is because of the power they have especially in regards to protectionism (almost sounds like the mafia, doesn’t it? ;)), which is the complete antithesis of free markets. Thankfully, this libertarian non-profit pretty much forced the hand of my hometown city council to lift protectionist regulations against food trucks. http://www.ij.org/el-paso-vending
The idea here is that with elected officials they at least have to pay lip service to the public because they could be voted out. Now, being punished at the polls is not something that happens all that often but at least there is the veneer of accountability. Private corporations have none of that.
comradedread,
You mentioned the “Apocalypse of Peter” teaching that in the end, all souls will be reconciled to God (seemingly). As initially attractive as this idea may seem, I just can’t get around the many Biblical passages which do speak about the real danger of souls going to Hell– and, it seems, going there eternally. I don’t exempt *myself* from this danger either. Not at all.
I do know that there are *other* Biblical passages which can be understand as saying that all souls will be reconciled to God, but as a Catholic who believes in the apostolic teaching authority of the Church, I am not simply free to interpret those passages according to my own understanding (and I’m *glad* that I’m not free to do so, because as a former five-point Calvinist Protestant, I interpreted too many passages wrongly in retrospect!).
I also can’t accept the 2nd-century-vintage Apocalypse of Peter as being part of the Biblical canon, because it has never been considered to be so, whether in the early centuries of Christianity (by the Catholic Church), or later in the Reformation (when Martin Luther did some “scissor work” on the canon, kicking out seven books from the Old Testament and making the Protestant canon. He also wanted to kick out the books of James and Revelation too, but finally, he was persuaded by others not to do so!) Again, I’m thankful here that I am not in charge of deciding which books are canonical or not, because left to myself, I could make some serious mistakes! 🙂
Also, flat-out universalism (the concept that all souls will definitely be saved) was officially condemned as heresy in an early Church council, I believe, in the 3rd or 4th century A.D. That fact is not negligible to me.
I do want to see as many, many, many more souls in Heaven than in Hell. I pray and work to this end. However, what about people who just don’t *want*, even up the end of their lives on earth, to *be* with God in Heaven? What about people who rape and/or murder others, on a daily basis, and never repent of these sins at all and are never punished for them in this life?
I go back to what I wrote to Jason and Christian previously:
“At the same time, I have to acknowledge that it’s *possible* for people to go to Hell, because people can, theoretically, make the choice, of their own free will, to reject God forever. Some people have actually told me that they just do not want to be with God forever! I don’t think that God should force upon them what they don’t want. I do hope that they come to a very different view before they die and face God and eternity though. I hope that as many people as possible are saved, while still respecting the freedom of people to say “No” to God– even, possibly, forever.”
Comrade,
This is plainly false since I can point to copying errors in the Old Tesament
Lol copy errors have no impact on the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.
Aside from which, if you google bible contradictions, you’ll find entire lists of various passages that conflict with one another. Some of them are weak contradictions that require the reader to take poetic or figurative language literally, others are more substantial.
Yes that’s true…… there are many alleged contradictions. I don’t think any of them hold water.
The problem with arguing this with you is that I already know what the outcome will be. No doubt, the Catholic Church has already had a theologian explain away these contradictions which since you take their interpretation as absolute truth makes arguing the point meaningless.
You may know what my position may be but that doesn’t mean you are familiar with all of the arguments that accompany that position. Likewise, I may not understand the depths of your objections. So long as their is an opportunity to learn something new a conversation is never meaningless.
Likewise for universalism, I could site 1 Corinthians 15:22, Colossians 1:19-20, Romans 5:18-19, Romans 11:32, John 12:32 or any other scriptures that lend support to the idea that all things will be reconciled through Christ, and it won’t matter. You have your dogma already and your appeal to authority, therefore I must be wrong.
Ha! You would be wrong for a multitude of reasons. Only one of which is your interpretation being out of sync with the teachings of the Church. Again, like a fundamentalist, you cherry pick scriptures and elevate them above any others that may disagree with your position. You eliminate the mystery by explaining away vast teachings in the bible in favor of your pet verses. This methodology is fatally flawed. A student of divine revelation should allow the text to speak, and then reconcile the texts while allowing for tension and mystery. In this particular area you have allowed neither.
And, no, I obviously believe in evolution, so I don’t believe a literal Genesis account. And the entire process of putting together the canon relied on men deciding which books were inspired, and there was disagreement and political maneuvering about some books for centuries after the fact. So no, I am not a believer in biblical inerrancy.
Yes, I had already discerned you had absondonde biblical inerrancy. There is no way to defend your position with an inerrant text.
But I do love how your entire assumption of my hermeneutic automatically assumes the worst of me and other liberal Christians in assuming there is no thought or meditation on the scriptures other than “How can we make the world like us?”
I’m sure you thought and meditated mightily on how to make the bible fit your 21st century cultural beliefs and sensibilities. Nevertheless, your view is a result of culture and modern influence and distinctly NOT a result of allowing scripture to speak for itself. Which I’m sure you already know. Again, if I put you in a lie detector test you do you really believe you could say:
“Jesus and the apostles believed that every single person to ever live would be in heaven one day. They had no concept whatsoever of an everlasting lake of fire. No idea of never ending torment for the wicked. They believed people would only receive temporary punishment for misdeeds and then go on to enjoy paradise.”
Bet you another ebeer you would flunk the polygraph 😉
Best lie detector video ever
https://youtu.be/-t6SGKO2lCc
That’s a rather horrible way to live. I’ve been there: deathly afraid of a God that supposedly loves me because in my own eyes, I’m not good enough or sincere enough in my faith. It sucked.
I hope you see the tension of your statement. You have simply transferred your confidence in the correctness of your faith from one set of traditions and experts to another, choosing Augustine and the Papacy over Calvin and the Reformers. You have faith that you (and They) are right now, but you had faith that you (and the other They) were right however many years ago when you were a Reformed Christian.
And yet you trust the wisdom of men, like yourself, given to their own set of biases, politics, and fallibility to make that decision for you?
Also, many of the books of the canon are arguably second century works, including the Revelation of John that made it in, IIRC, as part of a deal to also let Hebrews into the official canon.
They will be punished by God.
For nothing is hidden, except to be revealed; nor has anything been secret, but that it would come to light. – Luke 8:17
on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus. – Romans 2:16
“For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and WILL THEN REPAY EVERY MAN ACCORDING TO HIS DEEDS. “ – Matthew 16:27
6 God “will repay each person according to what they have done.” 7 To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. 8 But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. 9 There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil – Romans 2:6ff
36 But I tell you that every careless word that people [ah]speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment. 37 For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” – Matthew 12:36
So from this, there is the idea that every man will be judged. This isn’t that far out for Catholics, who believe in a place of purgatory where even saved Christians will be purified/punished for some types of sin in order to be made ready for heaven.
Hebrews describes God as a consuming fire. Paul in Corinthians describes a judgment where every man’s life will be put into a fire. The worthless things being burned to ashes and the valuable things being purified. He describes some as having their entire lives burned, yet continuing on. They have lost everything they valued, everything they have done, and are still saved.
That stripping away of our privacy, that exposure of ourselves to others, that purification by fire… all of that sounds tremendously painful. And it sounds as if some will be in the fire longer while the worthless and evil things in their lives are burned away.
Would there be some so evil that they would literally burn forever? Would there be some that would be utterly consumed until there was nothing left remaining?? Would that moment of having everything that you are and were laid bare for all to see and seeing everyone else in the same condition and feeling the harm you have caused others and having others see the pain you carried with you over their words and deeds seem like an utter eternity? Probably. And in the middle of it all is God bringing it all out in to the light telling us to let it go into the fire and be free. Would there be some that would flee from the presence of God and the warmth and purity of the fire choosing to cling to their worthless deeds and lives. Maybe. Would God ever give up on them? I don’t think so.
It’s that latter sentiment that makes me a universalist. Not the idea that everyone skips out on punishment, but the idea that God will never leave the front porch of his house. Never stop looking for the last prodigal to come home.
There is no forcing them home. Just love and hope that they will.
Well, of course, that means I’m wrong.
There is no way to reasonably defend an inerrant text in my opinion.
I’ve already explained to you in past conversations how I interpret scripture.
I would say simply that I believe so, but have no way of being certain of it. Arguably none of the apostles left behind writings for us, save Paul who is pretty light on the subject of the afterlife and who alternates passages between saying all will be reconciled and every knee will bow to Jesus and implying more of a annihilationist perspective on unbelievers. (And I guess Peter left us the gospel of Mark secondhand.)
As to Jesus, taking the gospel accounts at face value, He speaks much of a reversal of fortune between the rich and poor, between the respected and the outcasts. He speaks of being shut out of the kingdom of heaven in outer darkness. He speaks with figurative language of fires that are never quenched and that it would better to be maimed than to spend one moment there, but that doesn’t really speak on the question of eternal punishment vs. temporal punishment.
And Jesus also pleads forgiveness for those who killed him, begging God not to hold their ignorance against them. It doesn’t sound very much like the angry vengeance Jesus ready to consign all of His enemies to the eternal torture pit.
To sum it all up, you don’t know. I don’t know. You speak of tension in your point of view, but you’ve settled on one end of the spectrum. You don’t really have tension at all. God will eternally torture people (probably billions of people), but you’re sure He has a really great reason for it. The possibility of reconciliation after death is not even in your world view.
I’ve chosen the other side of the argument, because it fits better with the character of Jesus Christ as presented to us in the gospels.
comradedread,
I didn’t write anything in my reply to you about my being deathly afraid of God. It seems that you might be projecting your own past views of God onto what I’m writing, because I don’t hold those views of Him. I don’t live my life in cowering fear of Him. I hope that I do have at least some of what the Bible calls “the fear of the Lord,” but that is different from what you’re describing. Just because I believe that it is *possible* for Christians (including me) to turn away from God and go to Hell does *not* mean that I live in terrible fear of God.
As Jason said in an earlier podcast, I believe that God will give every person, including me, exactly what he or she deserves. I don’t spend a lot of time stewing over my eternal salvation. I just try to live my life, love God and neighbor, and leave the results, temporally and eternally, up to God.
You write that I have only transferred my trust from Luther and Calvin to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. That is not accurate. When I was a five-point Calvinist, it was *not* because I looked to Calvin as the apostolic teaching authority of the Church that Christ founded.
I was a Calvinist because, at the time, that particular theology fit my personal interpretation of the Bible. I didn’t trust in Luther and Calvin to give me the correct interpretation of Scripture. I was my final interpretive authority in reading the Bible as a Protestant. Now, at the time, I would have said, and meant, that the Holy Spirit was my final interpretive authority, and I do think that the Spirit played a role, but I was ultimately my final Biblical interpretive authority.
I came to accept the teaching authority of the Catholic Church through something that the Church calls the “motives of credibility.” This involved a combination of Biblical study and researching of Christian history, from the time just after the deaths of Jesus and the original apostles, through the 1st century A.D. up to the present day.
As an experiment, I began to consciously attempt to read the Bible through non-Protestant lenses, which was hard to do, because I had been a Protestant for several years– but I tried, and the results surprised me. When read without Protestant assumptions, Scripture began to sound more “Catholic” than I had ever imagined it would. However, I didn’t stop with personal Bible reading.
I also began to look seriously into the writings of the very early Church Fathers, some of whom were discipled by the men who were discipled by Jesus Himself. I was shocked to find very “Catholic-sounding” language in patristic writings from much, much earlier than I had expected.
I had thought that the earliest Christians held to the same “Sola Scriptura” Protestant-like thinking that I held. I could not have been more wrong about that. As just one example (and there are so many others too), this passage from “Against Heresies” in 189 A.D, by St. Irenaeus, was hard for me to stomach as a Protestant, but I had to think seriously about it:
“But since it would be too long to enumerate in such a volume as this the succession of all the churches, we shall confound all those who, in whatever manner, whether through self-satisfaction or vainglory, or through blindness and wicked opinion, assemble other than where it is proper, by pointing out here the successions of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul, that church which has the tradition and the faith which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the apostles. With that church, because of its superior origin, all the churches must agree, that is, all the faithful in the whole world, and it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the apostolic tradition” (Against Heresies 3:3:2 [A.D. 189]).
Comrade,
I would say simply that I believe so, but have no way of being certain of it. Arguably none of the apostles left behind writings for us, save Paul who is pretty light on the subject of the afterlife and who alternates passages between saying all will be reconciled and every knee will bow to Jesus and implying more of a annihilationist perspective on unbelievers. (And I guess Peter left us the gospel of Mark secondhand.)
Again, rather than even attempting to reconcile Pauline thought you have dismissed his writings as alternating and implying that they are contradictory. Paul is not very “light” in Romans 9. Also, he deals a death blow to your “temporary punishment hypothesis when he says
And these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power,” (2 Thess. 1:9).
What kind of destruction? ETERNAL destruction. If you want to interpret this as teaching annihilationism fine, but either way there is no idea of a universally applied temporary chastisement.
As to Jesus, taking the gospel accounts at face value, He speaks much of a reversal of fortune between the rich and poor, between the respected and the outcasts. He speaks of being shut out of the kingdom of heaven in outer darkness. He speaks with figurative language of fires that are never quenched and that it would better to be maimed than to spend one moment there, but that doesn’t really speak on the question of eternal punishment vs. temporal punishment.
1st I have to notice the irony of you appealing to the scriptures that you just claimed were arguably not written by the apostles. 2nd if you will permit me to quote from one of these so called questionable documents….
Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels;42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 44 Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ 45 Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”(Matt. 25:41-46)
This eternal punishment, meant for the angels is discussed by yet another questionable book of the bible…
And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever,” (Rev. 20:10).
And Jesus also pleads forgiveness for those who killed him, begging God not to hold their ignorance against them. It doesn’t sound very much like the angry vengeance Jesus ready to consign all of His enemies to the eternal torture pit.
So then you just give yourself license to dismiss all biblical teaching on “angry jesus” in lue of whichever passages you favor. Fundamentalist at heart.
To sum it all up, you don’t know. I don’t know. You speak of tension in your point of view, but you’ve settled on one end of the spectrum. You don’t really have tension at all. God will eternally torture people (probably billions of people), but you’re sure He has a really great reason for it. The possibility of reconciliation after death is not even in your world view.
Of course reconiliation after death is in my world view. You’ve heard of purgatory? The tension is found in holding to all biblical teaching on the afterlife. We must affirm Christ’s perfect love and mercy with His perfect justice and holiness. We must affirm that he desires all men to be saved and yet, some are lost. I do not put a number on the damned. I do not claim that there are “probably billions” of people in hell. I have no idea, but the answer is definitely not zero lol
I’ve chosen the other side of the argument, because it fits better with the character of Jesus Christ as presented to us in the gospels.
Yes, those gospels that were arguably not even written by the apostles, riddled full of error and contradiction, and that are only in the canon due to church politics. You use a smoke screen of fallible and errant texts to defend against teachings you don’t like, and then when convenient, switch back to trusting biblical descriptions of Christ that you favor. You have cut off the very branch that you are sitting on! This position is far less intellectually honest and far more difficult to defend than the traditional and orthodox view of scripture.
Well, first of all, I said that the bible contains contradictions and errors, I haven’t touched upon the gospels.
Secondly, the gospels are the only records I have that Jesus existed as well as the only record of his teachings. If (or when) I stop holding on to those records, I might as well abandon Christianity altogether.
Perhaps I will one day, but today is not that day.
The overall picture of Jesus in the gospels is one of a man who has devoted his life to helping and serving others in compassion and embraces the outcasts, while criticizing the fundamentalist religion of his day.
Your citation of Matthew 25 isn’t a definitive statement on hell being eternal as I’m sure you well know. Again, I’d refer you to google Matthew 25 and universalism.
In my understanding of Catholic teachings, Purgatory is only for the saved so it’s not reconciliation at all, but purification for the already reconciled. So there is zero reconciliation after death in your viewpoint.
And while we’re at quoting random scriptures, let’s go with ‘wide is the path to destruction and there are many that find it.’ So saying that you want to believe that the number of people in hell will be small, it seems as if you’re simply fooling yourself.
Comrade,
Your citation of Matthew 25 isn’t a definitive statement on hell being eternal as I’m sure you well know. Again, I’d refer you to google Matthew 25 and universalism.
Googled it. Found zero meaningful interpretations. Let’s look at the word eternal in the Greek and see if you can lawyer your way out of this one somehow.
If you want to interpret the punishment as non eternal, and there is no good reason to do so, then you must also interpret heaven as non eternal life!
In my understanding of Catholic teachings, Purgatory is only for the saved so it’s not reconciliation at all, but purification for the already reconciled. So there is zero reconciliation after death in your viewpoint.
Oh I’m sorry I misunderstood. No, there is no opportunity to receive justification after death. Reference the very same chapter of matthew. There is not even a hint of possibility of reconciliation. Eternal punishment and that’s it.
And while we’re at quoting random scriptures, let’s go with ‘wide is the path to destruction and there are many that find it.’ So saying that you want to believe that the number of people in hell will be small, it seems as if you’re simply fooling yourself.
It’s true, that statement from Christ is pretty glum. However, from the perspective of am all loving father, what quantity of parishioners children constitutes “many”? What quantity of saved children constitutes “few”? These are questions we can only speculate on
*parishing* children
http://evangelicaluniversalist.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=232
http://www.auburn.edu/~allenkc/barclay1.html
You may dismiss this all as semantics or quibbling, but it is an interpretation that has some weight to it.
Grammatically I think their argument is a sound one. However, I think it makes a total mess of the context in which the word is placed. If Christ is only speaking to the quality of the reward or punishment (eternal in the sense that it stems from Him) does that not also eliminate the idea of paradise that goes on forever?
Also, what are the odds that these Jewish authors were a bunch of platonists lol highly doubtful.
Pretty good considering the idea of heaven as the perfect form and the world as a shadow was borrowed or influenced by Plato’s philosophy and Paul was an educated Roman citizen.
Also John’s gospel with the use of the Logos runs pretty close with some of Plato’s concepts.
And Augustine, IIRC, seemed to think that Paul and Plato were on the same page with Paul being superior for being touched by God’s grace.
The Gnostics took the Platonism overboard though and came up with a neo-pantheon with Sophia being the form of wisdom as an offshoot of the benevolent God that fathered Jesus and the creator God Jehovah being an imperfect expression of the essence of divinity, and it just got weird.
But there was a bit of Platonic influence on early Christian thought.
Comrade,
If you explain away eternal when scripture uses it to describe punishment how is it consistent to believe that all men will one day be forever in heaven? It’s the same adjective in both cases.
All I can day is that the whole “platonic apostles” hasn’t been seriously argued for in quite some time. It sort of disappeared academically with the “christianity is borrowed from mythrianism” arguments.
Cole,
Christian and Jason could be “Hankful.” And I loved the video.
Comrade,
Your Biblical and historical research, which has led you to the universalist conclusion, has definitely taken serious thought, time, and effort. Even as I disagree with your conclusion, I will say that it’s commendable that you’ve done serious research on the matter.
I ask you to seriously consider this though– the amount of research that you’ve done to reach the universalist conclusion could *never* have been done by most of the early Christians. In addition to being under a state of intense persecution in the 1st and 2nd centuries, many, many Christians simply could not read. The historical fact is that they relied on the Church to teach them.
This same teaching Church also took the books which would eventually be known, together, as the New Testament, and finally voted on them to be compiled into a canon at a Church council in 382 A.D. This is how we have the N.T. today. Certain books were accepted, and others were rejected, by the Church’s teaching authority. This is how we have the four Gospels, which, according to you, are the basis for your faith in Jesus. (I don’t think that the Gospels, or the NT in general, are the *only* reason to have faith in Jesus, because there are other historical documents which testify to Him, but I’m going on what you said is the basis for your faith in Him.)
If you accept the books of the N.T., which the Church voted on in a Council to *become* the officially accepted canonical NT, then logically speaking, it seems that you should also take seriously the historical documents which testify to this same Church having teaching authority *before* the N.T. was compiled. These historical documents are the writings of the early Church Fathers, such as St. Irenaeus, who wrote these words in !89 A.D., almost two centuries before the canonization of the N.T.:
“But since it would be too long to enumerate in such a volume as this the succession of all the churches, we shall confound all those who, in whatever manner, whether through self-satisfaction or vainglory, or through blindness and wicked opinion, assemble other than where it is proper, by pointing out here the successions of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul, that church which has the tradition and the faith which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the apostles. With that church, because of its superior origin, all the churches must agree, that is, all the faithful in the whole world, and it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the apostolic tradition” (Against Heresies 3:3:2 [A.D. 189]).
The teaching Church which brought us the canon of the N.T. (via a Church council, as guided by the Holy Spirit) also voted to condemn universalism, as an heretical interpretation of the Scriptures, at another Church council in the 300s. If you accept the Church’s decision on the canonicity of the N.T., then, logically speaking, why would you reject their condemnation of universalism, which happened fairly close to the time period in which the N.T. canon was decided?
I would say that the school of Alexandria and the thoughts of Origin dispute that notion. Christian universalism was something that was grappled with, believed by some, and rejected by others.
I would also counter that it is precisely that persecution that would perhaps skew some early believers into desiring a more retributive judgment against those unbelievers who making their lives miserable through political persecution or violence. Like the cries of the Old Testament Psalmists wondering how long God was going to let wicked people prosper and when God was going to enact vengeance against them.
My acceptance of the New Testament is complicated. My evangelical roots have sort of brainwashed me into accepting it unquestionably as inerrant and authoritative, while my reading and research on how the New Testament came to be has pushed me more into seeing the records we have as the viewpoints and stories of various fallible people and factions within the early church, of whom the eventual Catholic church was simply one of until they came to more political dominance and had the opportunity to employ the state to assist in their claim as the one true expression of Christianity.
I don’t necessarily accept it. I’m conflicted, as I said. But even if I did, I cannot assume logically that because a group of fallible men made a decision correctly, that the same group will make all decisions correctly or can never be wrong.
Especially since said men might have been worried (correctly or incorrectly) of the moral hazards of telling the people that Christ would redeem all eventually, or the reduction in their own personal power to control the masses via the loss of their so-called ‘binding and loosing’ powers.
That is, if the peasants no longer feared hell, they wouldn’t fear a clergyman threatening to excommunicate them if they didn’t fall in line with church doctrine/teaching/commands.
Comrade,
When I mentioned the historical fact that many early Christians could not read, I wasn’t thinking of people such as Origen. Obviously, there were believers who had much schooling, theologically and otherwise, in the early Church. This was not the state of the *average* Christian, however, who did rely on the Church’s teaching authority for knowledge of the faith. The average believer of the 1st and 2nd centuries did not have the time or resources to do the kind of Biblical and historical research that you have done (which has led you to the universalist conclusion).
I notice that you haven’t addressed the passage from St. Irenaeus in 189 A.D. Even at that early time, he was articulating a Catholic understanding of Church teaching authority, via apostolic succession from Christ’s original apostles, and of Catholic church government from the “mother church” in Rome– understandings which were also shared by other early Church Fathers. This vision was was not some invention of a “later” church which came to be known as the Catholic Church. It is the vision of the Church found in the years closely following the deaths of Christ’s first apostles. You can certainly speculate that even during this early period, the Church was going perilously off the tracks, but if you go there, then you’re basically embracing a Mormon-esque version of Christian history that simply doesn’t fit with the historical documents of early Christianity that we have.
The early Church did not teach universalism. A few voices in the early Church *did* embrace it, and they were censured for doing so, and then, universalism was officially condemned by the Church’s teaching authority. You can characterize this as a power play with the Church, or you can view it as angry Christians longing for a harsh afterlife for their persecutors, but then, you would have to explain the fact that, at the very same time that the early Church taught the eternality of Hell, she also continued to teach Christ’s commands for Christians to pray for their persecutors, seek to love them, and *not* seek revenge against them.
Well, we all know that we Christians always follow the teachings of Jesus Christ and never harbor grudges or let our pain and anger override our charity. 🙂
Though, in all seriousness, isn’t that exactly the sort of tension you’d expect within Christianity? We were born from Judaism which is a very tribalistic sort of religion where God loves and blesses those inside the tribe, but reserves fiery vengeance upon those outside the tribe especially those that would persecute His chosen people?
That’s been part of the tension from the start, between the ‘love your enemies’ and ‘turn the other cheek’ Jesus and the more smite-y Old Testament stories of Yahweh, where He supposedly would order the Hebrews to commit wholesale genocide against their enemies.
I think this is an adequate summation of my current view of the bible:
That’s a great quote. I suppose the problem ultimately lies with interpretation right? I’m sure there are christians out there who think that trying to convert homosexuals is actually an act of love.
That’s the problem Greg. All that quote means is basically, “that’s like your opinion, man”. Moral relativism. The exact thing believers accuse non-believers of. I really don’t understand how Christians can, out of one side of their mouth say, “ohh yeah murder is terrible” then out of the other side say, “welll if God condones it then it’s ok,.”
That quote means that the bible isn’t an infallible book. It is a book one has to wrestle with. One that has to be read in it context, taking into account what it would mean to its intended audience, what circumstances they were going through, etc.
It means, most of all, that if the bible says God did or said something that is in conflict iwth the person and character of Jesus Christ, that we choose Jesus Christ.
Comrade,
Seems kind of arbitrary. If the teachings can be wrong why not also the descriptions of Jesus? What’s the use of reading something in context if at the end of the day one can just say the message is in error. You can get a ressurected Lord by reading the texts as fallible historical documents, but you can’t get much else.
Comrade,
It seems that we are at an impasse. Our starting points for even thinking about the Bible and Christian history are so different. I’m not a fundamentalist, but neither do I subscribe to most of your views on the subjects at hand.
I do believe in reading all of the Bible through the lens of our Savior and Lord. I interpret both the OT and the NT through the reality of the Incarnation, Jesus Christ. This is generally the Catholic interpretive paradigm– with the crucial understanding of reading the Bible through the Church Fathers, rather than outside of them, *given* that the early Church Fathers predated the formation of the NT canon and provided the earliest interpretations of it.
The Church Fathers understood the NT to teach the eternality of Hell. Universalism was very much a minority view in the early Church, and it was officially condemned at a Church council. To you, these are either just details of history, or evidences of some conspiracy in the Church to keep universalism off the table for believers. To me, Church councils (whether they are approving the Trinity as official Christian doctrine, or condemning universalism) are doing part of the work of Christ’s Church, in her role of officially defining what constitutes Christian orthodoxy and heresy.
Perhaps we would agree on the one principle of interpreting the Bible through the Incarnation. Beyond that, and even, in our *applications* of that principle, I see now that we have too many differences to even really begin to make progress in our discussion, so to avoid wasting your time, I’m bowing out here.
Context, audience, and historical background are important precisely to avoid a bad interpretation. Interpreting in the context of Christ is likewise important to distinguish cultural context from divine imperative.
You can get more than that, but at some point, it does require a little leap of faith.
That’s fine.
I’m not trying to convince you out of Catholicism. I’m simply saying I can’t accept Catholicism because it doesn’t make sense to me intellectually much as my conclusions don’t make sense to you intellectually. Ultimately, what matters is how our world views affect our being, our actions, and our lives. Does Catholicism bring you comfort, hope, and encourage you to be a better, kinder, and more loving person willing to give comfort and hope to others and fight injustice in the world? Awesome. I hope more people find that paradigm. Does mine? I’d like to think so, though I’m still in the process of change.
Christopher and Kenneth,
Do you know of this guy? I thought this was pretty good…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmsa0sg4Od4
Christian,
Yeah Fr. Barron is a really thoughtful and cool guy. That’s definitely a position that RCs are free to hold. I thought the last part of the video was most interesting. When he says that if you hold that
God is love and man is free It follows that hell exists as an option (because man is free to resist love).
He has a 12 part DVD set called “catholicism” that is absolutely stunning. It’s very much like the discovery channel series “planet earth”. Incredible cinematography.
I like Fr. Barron and respect his opinion. I tend to side with Aquinas and Augustine, but would love got them (and myself) to be totally wrong on this issue!
* but would love it if they (and myself) were completely wrong on this issue*
Autocorrect….
I found a funny! What if God had to deal with autocorrect?
http://www.downtheupwardspiral.com/purpose.html
Christian, your like for this episode was Deuce Bigelow’s daughter’s song X’s and O’s. Check America’s Sweetheart if you haven’t already. http://youtu.be/ALqmgpNS_QA
Yeah, I’ve heard most of her music. Really like her.