Hi David:
Just had a chance to read your essay/talk and thank you very much for it. Though I do confess that this sort of thing falls into the “second tier” of arguments for me personally. Which is to say that UR makes best sense to me in the context of ideas about God’s Love and the Universal nature of Christ’s sacrifice and the bibles insistence on God’s total and complete victory over death and sin and so on…
But there is another problem here which can be awkward at times too. And it’s been talked about I realize but I still struggle with the solution(s). It has to do with specific terms being used in different ways/senses depending on contexts. That is, if we say (or suggest) that “eternal” when applied to the fellowship of the redeemed with God lasting on for a time that has no end, then that meaning is sidestepped for another sense when it comes to the rehabilitative punishment of “hell” as being somehow “temporary” and having an end, we should expect to receive criticism.
IT seems to me a similar thing happens when we talk about words like “all”. Does all mean all without distinction – or only a weaker sense like “many”? Or take the phrase “kings of the earth” in Revelation. When we say this must be the exact same group that is pictured going IN to the Holy City as was earlier seen being cast into the lake of fire, our non-Universalist friends insist it must be a different group…
So I guessI wish I had a rule of thumb by which I could easily resolve ALL of these sorts of issues, but it seems we must handle each one as a individual case as we try to argue for one coherent whole theology…
TotalVictory
Bobx3