The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Holiness in Heaven: The Need for Purgation

Bob, It has been awhile since I’ve read it, but I think J. Preston Eby’s lake of fire series takes a similar tack; and it seems somewhat familiar from other sources as well, although I don’t recall what they are at the moment. I’m not sure that Eby takes so much an anti-purgation stance as an anti torment stance, but it’s probably worth a read.

Hi Ruth; I don’t think that he’s saying that our pain replaces something Jesus was unable to do, but rather that the experience of our process of the realization of the new life includes elements that were modeled in the death and resurrection. We share both in Christ’s death and His life; one does not come without the other. Also, see my other post here on the apostle Paul for additional example.

I’m SO confused!! :exclamation: :confused: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush:

And NOW, very, very afraid. :frowning: :cry:

Hi Mel,

This is lifted directly from one of Bob’s earlier posts in this thread.

Perhaps one could say that the cross created ‘salvation,’ if this meant something like it ‘offers’ it or establishes it “in principle.” **But my preference would be to say that the cross did not “create salvation” in that no one is automatically saved by the cross apart from the appropriate response to the offer of God’s grace, and that it is Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, exaltation, and his facilitation of the Holy Spirit’s work that makes salvation possible. **If the past event of the cross alone created our salvation, then wouldn’t everyone would already be saved? My sense is that God will secure everyone’s salvation, but that this is securely worked out over time, and the Bible’s assumption is that we play a part in it as we choose to respond to God’s grace. In other words, I think the NT is consistent with the OT in looking for an obedient and righteous response of faith to the always unmerited love and grace of God. Thus I do think saying that Jesus and the cross provide the “path to salvation” is appropriate, since the Bible suggests that experiencing salvation’s wholeness involves following his example and taking up our own cross.

That sounds like salvation (which is a problematic word that now means anything and everything) is something that is completed by the individual’s experience and not what God has accomplished in and through the experience of Jesus for us. The Gospel is about what is done for us not by us. It is not a about good advise, good practice, good laws or anything else other than the good news of what was done independent of who we are and what we do. The Gospel is not a path to God or of salvation, it is the path from God walked by Jesus through Golgotha and into the new creation of all things. That is what makes the Gospel singularly and unequivocally universal good news for all of creation! The world is in desperate need for real, hardcore good news not more religion, ideology or some other human-centered surrogate for what God and only God can do. We can no more be the saviors of the world, or of our selves, than we can be creators of the universe. Salvation is an act of creation, it is that radical and that comprehensive and universal.

How can anybody claim to experience salvation’s wholeness in this broken world where there is so much injustice and suffering going on. Wholeness will only come at the Parousia when all things will be healed and resurrected into the life of the new creation made possible by the singular experience of Jesus at Golgotha.

For those who are still confused carefully read through this thread again and see for yourself what is actually being said. If you are confused by anything that I wrote please let me know I will gladly make my best effort to make it less confusing.

Dave

No - please, no! Bret, if you are confused and afraid, that is NOT the good news you are hearing, so do not listen to it!

Jesus reached out to people who were in pain. He spoke kind words to them, only kind and comforting words, never threatened them, always said, “Don’t be afraid!” He never, never told anyone to be afraid. He is Perfect Love, and Perfect Love casts out fear, because fear brings torment - and to PERFECT LOVE, the torment of the beloved (that’s YOU) is utterly intolerable. He would rather let HIMSELF be tormented to the end of time… and actually, that’s just what he did.

Jesus says, “Don’t be afraid!” “It’s me, don’t be afraid!” because he takes away all reason to fear.

Honestly, now I’m sad, and angry too. Striking terror into people like this is not a game: it does real damage. Jesus got angry too about hurting and frightening people.

Hi all!

I’m heading on the road, and distinguishing our semantics here seems to remain confusing. My impression is that Mel totally catches my position and meaning perfectly. I don’t think that affirming that the saving work in us must ultimately be credited to God’s work means that we are not called to any participation in the transformation that God seeks. To me, part of the genius of universalism is that it helps us hold together these two major themes in the Biblical narrative. We are called to respond to conditions such as faith and repentance, while at the same time the assurance of the promise of ultimately completing the work that God has begun in us is totally secure because it lies altogether in God’s loving character. Both sides of this tension seem amplified in Scripture, and the reading of must students of it. So just as the burden of defending universalism falls especially on us who offer this minority interpretation, so I think it falls on those who argue that Scripture does Not point to conditions for enjoying God’s best blessings.

Grace be with you,
Bob

Ok, I guess my current understanding is perhaps slightly different than Bob’s. I see salvation as already a done deal in one sense, but also something that must be ‘worked out’ in order to experience its fullness. I think this was James’ whole point with his works vs. faith thing. It isn’t one or the other, it’s both; In other words, we can’t experience faith without it “working out” in our lives any more than we can experience the salvation that has been provided without its truth permeating our lives, transforming us in the process. I do agree that God does all of it in us somehow; it’s really hard (for me) to quantify how our “response” plays into it.

Perhaps a somewhat crude illustration might be helpful here. Let’s say that I’m a smoker, and salvation from smoking has already been provided for me. I can mentally assent to the idea that salvation has been provided from that and that smoking is bad for me. But until that knowledge actually transforms me, including the damaging habits, I don’t fully experience salvation from smoking until that happens, even if that’s a process outside of my control.

Mel,

You express the issue just as I sometimes put it! It’s hard to spell this issue out with clarity, but when I speak of God “completing” in us our salvation, this corresponds to what you describe as experiencing its’ benefits. I agree that it is already ‘complete’ in the sense that its’ accomplishment lies securely in God’s character, where in reality, it’s a done deal. But the focus here has been on whether there is any place in our coming to experience God’s salvation and wholeness for a process that may involve painful purfication. A great deal of Scripture and experience say to me that the answer is yes. So would we be on the same page if the distinguishing issue is, "There are ‘conditions’ of response on our end which are necessary for enjoying the benefits of our ‘salvation’?

why thank-you , an interesting, intelligent and enjoyable post, I don’t have the time to read all the responces just now but to quote a movie star ‘‘I’ll be back’’ ! :smiley:

The interesting thing is that Christ was perfected through suffering yet Ruth expects to walk the same path as Jesus without being perfected in suffering. If people go to hell either their suffering will bring about perfection or it will not and they will simply suffer for retribution sake.

It’s getting a lttle chilly in here. :cry:

Actually, I don’t expect to walk the same path as Jesus.

  • I am not the Way from God to the creation.

  • I cannot walk around healing others by creating sight where there was never any, by making maimed or withered hands grow again, by creating a healthy working nervous system and/or musculoskeletal structure where someone was paralysed, because I am not the creator.

  • I cannot go to a dead person’s tomb and call them back to life.

  • I cannot take the suffering and pain on myself, so that the creation won’t have it.

  • I cannot go to Golgotha and pour life, healing and forgiveness into the world even as I die.

  • I cannot go into the nothingness, fill it to overflowing with the life of God so even death cannot hold anything any more.

  • I cannot spill so much life that the splashback raises me to a new kind of life that never even existed before.

  • I cannot lead the creation from its death spiral into that new-creation kind of life.

THAT is Jesus’s path.

NONE of us can walk it. Only he ever could walk it.

Sorry, Ruth, but all of your points seem to me to be nothing more than excuses why you can’t imitate Christ and God, as we are asked to do in the NT. If all of those “cannots” you listed are impossible for you to try, within our human limitations, I would submit that what you are proclaiming is little more than the feel-good prosperity gospel that is so popular in the US these days.

1.)* I am not the Way from God to the creation.*
Of course, none of us are. Yet we point to the Way by the manner in which we live, showing how to endure, rather than avoid trials and pain.

2.) * I cannot walk around healing others by creating sight where there was never any, by making maimed or withered hands grow again, by creating a healthy working nervous system and/or musculoskeletal structure where someone was paralysed, because I am not the creator.*
While we may not be able to bring physical healing, we can bring spiritual healing with our compassion.

3.)* I cannot go to a dead person’s tomb and call them back to life.*
We can go to their tombs, and offer hope and comfort to those who are grieving, leading them to new life.

4.) * I cannot go to Golgotha and pour life, healing and forgiveness into the world even as I die.*
We can go to Golgotha in our hearts, and partake of what He did there, and bring life, healing, and forgiveness into our own hearts and lives, and into the hearts and lives of those around us.

5.)* I cannot go into the nothingness, fill it to overflowing with the life of God so even death cannot hold anything any more.*
We do not walk into the void to accomplish what God did. Rather, we step into to it to understand His love more deeply.

6.) I cannot spill so much life that the splashback raises me to a new kind of life that never even existed before.
How can you know that you can’t do that if you don’t try?

7.) * I cannot lead the creation from its death spiral into that new-creation kind of life.*
Then what use is any preaching or evangelism if we cannot lead people to the new life in Christ?

8.)* THAT is Jesus’s path.

NONE of us can walk it. Only he ever could walk it.*

Then why are we asked to take up our crosses and follow Him? If we cannot walk that same path, then there is no way that we can follow Him, and our lives have little meaning in light of His sacrifice.

First, I heartily disapprove of the prosperity “gospel”. It is anti-justice in that it teaches people it’s fine to get more and more wealth for themselves, never mind if it is at the expense of those weaker than themselves. This completely opposes the spirit of Jesus.

Your other responses amply demonstrate the point I was making – our limitations prevent us doing these things.

You have clearly stated that you know we can’t do what Jesus did - I mean REALLY what Jesus did. In other words, we can’t walk “his path”.

You have made a number of suggestions as to what we should do instead. Well, doing something instead is not doing the actual deed itself. And I have to say that they are very poor substitutes.

Sure, we can do a lot of them but let’s face it, offering hope and comfort to the bereaved doesn’t quite cut it when what’s really needed is to restore their loved one to them alive and in good health: that would REALLY comfort them and give them hope. And a rather nebulous “spiritual healing” (whatever that means) doesn’t grow back a hand that’s been lost in an industrial accident - grow the hand back and the “spiritual” healing will come as part of the package.

Others are also offering compassion and inner healing, providing hope and comfort to those who are grieving, and bringing life, healing, and forgiveness to others. A lot of those doing these things are not even Christians, but this may well be a response to the spirit of Jesus. My feeling about this is - Go for it! Do as much good and alleviate as much suffering as you can!

I’m astonished that you present this as comparable to YHWH becoming flesh, coming into the world to experience what we experience, to live among us as one of us. His endurance was not an endurance test, nor was it an example for us to follow: he came to be in solidarity with us in our suffering and to know us intimately by physically experiencing the worst that we experience; he was also after the outcome – to rescue the whole creation from that suffering and give it abundant life.

What Jesus did was very concrete, very physical, very real. Golgotha is God coming to us, not us going to him.

He went to Golgotha to give Life to all at the cost of his own life. He brings Life to those who are unable to go and get it for themselves – the helpless, the hopeless, those who have given up on even the idea of a god or a healer or any kind of rescue or relief. He gives freely to all, even (and especially) to those who can’t take it for themselves.

He is the creator, we are the creation: we don’t partake in the act of creation, we have life because of it. In just the same way, we can’t partake in what Jesus did at Golgotha; we are beneficiaries because of it.

Again, you agree that we don’t accomplish what God did.

It’s hard to understand what you mean by the rest of your comment. Wasn’t the purpose of Jesus’s death so that we wouldn’t step into the void?

I’m astonished by your reply. You must have a very different idea of what that means.

On the cross, Jesus poured out the life of God to such an extent that death was overflowed by life: it couldn’t hold Jesus, and he was raised in a physicality that worked differently from what we are familiar with. It was, as Paul puts it, like a solid house in comparison to a tent – we might say super-physical – and the pattern of how the entire creation will be when it is made new, when God is all in all, when he is directly present to all.

That is what I mean – that none of us can start the entire New Creation by our own death!

There’s no point in preaching or “evangelism” if what you preach is not the “evangel” – the good news about Jesus.

In any case, we can’t lead anyone, we are not the good shepherd, Jesus is. He is the one who seeks and saves, not us. He goes after the lost sheep, no matter where or how far he has to go, or through what danger, discomfort, or pain. He goes alone, leaving the other sheep behind in a safe place, finds the lost sheep and carries him home.

I’m afraid it sounds as though you’re just presenting another guru, and Jesus didn’t come into the world to teach the world but to save it.

“Taking up one’s cross” meant something very specific to the people Jesus was speaking to: it meant literally carrying a cross to a place of execution and then dying on that cross. It didn’t mean anything other than that or less than that.

Jesus did not ask anyone to do this. He said that if anyone wanted to follow him, it would involve doing just what he did.

I’m not bothered about the meaning of our lives, what matters is the meaning of his life and death – because that’s what brings real life to the world.

Well, Ruth, we have little common ground to discuss very much, since it seems to me that you’re a literalist, and I have little use for study of scripture on a detached, non-personal surface level.

If “Taking up one’s Cross” refers only to those in Christ’s time literally doing that, then the lives of many devoted followers of Christ since then have been utterly meaningless. And by declaring that statement as having no meaning on our personal lives today, then there can be no new and real life in the world today.

Also, to view that statement as a purely literal call to welcome one’s own crucifixion makes no sense at all, since He gave this instruction to the disciples long before He walked the Via Dolorosa, and used that instruction in the context of daily self sacrifice.

Challenging questions about the nature of what Jesus was seeking to do seem to be at stake in this discussion. Like Eric, my own perception is that when his movement saw “Jesus as the way” to mean that we are called to be “the people of his way,” who follow in his steps and teaching, Christianity operated with great power. But when later eras changed to an emphasis on believing that Jesus in himself provided an objective transaction that in some magical sense transformed the nature of God and/or of our existence & what God’s calling is, then Christianity lost its’ effective purpose & power.

I admit that this is the evangelical paradigm in which most of us have been shaped. But if what Jesus was talking about means that in what God is pursuing there are now no “conditions” on our part, and no significant role for our pursuit of righteousness, then I personally would feel that I am not understanding anything that he was talking about, and as well must reject most of what seems to clearly be the Bible’s storyline.

Sorry, I’ve been on holiday/ vacation. Just getting back into things.

Bob;
I think so, yes. The weird thing for me (and what’s harder for me to pin down, but I believe is the crux of the apparent disagreement between parties here) is that God seems to be the cause of us fulfilling the conditions of response allowing us to experience salvation fully, as well as being the initiator of the process. I certainly agree that it’s a process, and that it’s often painful; not in a punitive way, but more as a matter of course. It just seems to be the way that God designed things to work. For example, let’s say that I have a cold. I actually have the virus for several days before I feel its effects, but once I begin to experience symptoms, it’s because my body is already working hard to kick the virus out. That miserable feeling that we often get when we have a cold is actually the sign that our body is already recovering, unpleasant as the experience is… This is what many in the natural health professions refer to as a “healing crisis”; the body actually has to feel worse temporarily while it is actually getting better! I see this reflected as well in scripture, as you also seem to see the same themes from a different perspective, but it’s certainly there. It’s counter-intuitive; we’d all like the quick-fix, but that is the exception that proves the rule. Make sense? Now, it may not always be this way, and once the new heavens and earth arrive, things may operate very differently. But I think at that point, all things are already made new, so the process is over, so to speak…

Mel,

Thanks, you well express my bias about how to formulate this. I agree that universalists especially should recognize that God is the “cause” who gets the credit for bringing us to meet the required conditions. And I also believe that seeing the process as “the way God has designed things to work” is a healthy view that allows common ground with others who are seeking to make sense of life. It does appear that the Bible can speak of our suffering as direct and punishing acts of God, i.e. “extrinsic.” But it also comes to think of sin as bringing “intrinsic” consequences, wherein God is perceived as giving us over to such results, in order to bring us to repentance and restoration. I prefer to emphasize the second, although as theodicy, if God “designs” it that way, perhaps it does not ultimately remove God’s personal involvement.

Yes; what’s interesting to me is that it isn’t even always those being given over to the results of unrighteousness that are (immediately) being pushed toward repentance. Israel was (is) cut off (temporarily) in order for the gentiles to benefit from salvation as well.
But I agree. I think it’s Isaiah that said that we learn righteousness when God’s judgments are in the earth; it isn’t his favors, but his judgments that bring righteousness. But it is at the same time the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. And; God is not mocked, man still reaps what he sows. (i.e. natural consequences). I think our problem is that the Church has long held a very wrong-headed idea of what judgment is, and so as universalists our tendency is to react too much the other way.

Bob,

It “seems” you are saying that my illness, my pain, and my current conditon, can be a direct punishment from God?? If this IS true, why would I want to worship such a God?? I don’t think I like your God very much IF this is the case… I’d rather be an atheist!!! Or maybe you ARE right and I DO deserve exactly what I’m getting as in one reaps what they have sown. I must have done some pretty horrible, rotten, and very mean things growing up than, because the payback now is horrendous. I realize you are basing your thoughts on the Bible, I just think any of us can find in the Bible whatever it is we want to find. However, IF you ARE right, I want nothing to do with that/your God. Sorry Bob, I just can’t believe that God is “up there” passing this harsh of a judgment on me… what, so I’ll get on my knees and beg forgivness?? Been there done that. I’m still dying. As to whether or not God IS personally involved in my situation, I don’t know. I’d like to think He’s only letting a sinful world do what it does, cause pain and suffering. Your words scare the heck out of me, as I’ve previously said. Maybe it’s because I don’t want them to be true?? Again, IF they are true, you can have Him, I want nothing to do with a god like that! :frowning:

Bret