The Evangelical Universalist Forum

An Honest Question to Purgatorial Universalists

:laughing: I encourage anyone to go back to that thread you just linked to above and read all my posts challenging your PU (purgatorial universalism) and let them decided who wouldn’t answer and did their best to duck around questions.

I note also you plastered “Ultra-Universalism Refuted” for that thread — I’m not here to defend U-U but for you to add “Refuted” is just way too precious! :laughing:

So IOW you have - no comment - on whether or not your position has changed?

A simple yes or no will do.

Are you now a Ultra Universalist?

Or still a “fence sitter”?

Since you said:

What evidence do you have to share that “it’s NOT true!!”?

I’m neither UU nor PU… I’m a pantelist and all my answers in kind with my previous answers in this thread start HERE… just follow “davo” down through the pages and see PU wiped. :mrgreen:

So i take it your “on the fence” position remains the same. As posted in that thread:

"So to put several of your thoughts together:

1] You have no fear of after death torments for anyone, but
2] If you were God there would be postmortem redress, yet
3] You don’t lean in that direction but lean against it, although
4] The biblical text remains arguably silent on the matter

Do that about sum it up?"

I wonder why God would remain “silent on the matter”. Surely He must have some insights re the topic.

I’d rather trust context…

Well, the problem is this. It’s left up to the imagination, to determine how postmortem suffering plays out. I was thinking about the show It’s a Wonderful life.

And there’s a saying that:

So here’s one thought, about how this could play out. Each person experiencing postmortem suffering is given a bell. They ring it when they want to repent and accept Christ. That way, an angel gets its wings.

And everyone is:

Now I’m just letting my imagination run wild - mind you. Which is what we might all be doing. :wink:

Our Lord said, “For everyone will be salted with fire.” (Mark 9:49)

Yes, that is figurative language. But what does it represent? Literal salt and fire are both purifying agents.

There are many killers here on earth who may threaten us with death. Often these people carry our their threats. Many early Christians were put to death by burning them at stake, or by throwing them to the lions, or subjecting them to gladiators. In the middle ages, even the religlious leaders put many to death among those who disagreed with them.

When “the body” is killed, the person is gone, seemingly never to return again. But our Lord assures his listeners that these murdered persons are not gone forever! As stated three times in John 6, He will raise them up again at the last day. So their very essence, their “soul” is not permanently wiped out by death. They cannot “kill the soul”.

It is important to recognize that some scriptures use “destroy” in a different way from that which the modern person thinks of it. We think of destruction as annihilation, or we think of it as smashing something in such a way that it is rendered useless. It’s original form has been altered. Sometimes “destroy” is used in the New Testament in the sense of refining something, so that the original form is altered to a purified form. Consider the following passage from I Peter 1:3-6 ESV and verse 7, another translation:

Verse 7

Notice it is the proving of your faith which is much more valuable than the proving of gold. Peter speaks of “gold that is being destroyed through fire”. Now we know that gold is not annihilated or even destroyed in the sense of being rendered useless (such as a toy that is destroyed by smashing it). Rather the original form of the gold, the ore, is destroyed and the impurities removed so that after the refining process is complete, only the pure gold remains.So it is with the proving of our faith through various trials. We are refined, impurities removed until we come forth as “pure gold”.

So fear God who is able to destroy a person’s original character in Gehenna, by refining that character, and thus altering it. Why should we fear God lest we are required to be so refined? Because it is a painful process ---- much better that we should coöperate with the enabling grace of God for purification now, so that we won’t have to undergo that severe process. Even now, we may have to endure hardships which will help us to submit to present purification as the text indicates.

Here is a quite different translation of 1 Peter 1:7:

That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perishes, though it be tried with fire, might be found to praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:

Ellicott’s commentary opines:

“That perisheth, though it be tried with fire.—Rather, which is a thing that perisheth, and yet is tried through fire. The argument is this. Gold is a perishable thing, and comes to an end with the rest of the world, or is worn away with handling and is lost; and yet men take great pains to test it and show that it contains no dross, and do so by means of fire. How much more may we expect a fiery trial (1Peter 4:12) to test the character of our belief in the unseen Christ…” biblehub.com/commentaries/1_peter/1-7.htm

Is the refining of character in this life equally painful to that in Gehenna? How would you respond to someone who says they’ll take the refining later in Gehenna rather than now in this life?

This verse comes to mind:

New International Version
But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. (Mal.3:2)

This is somewhat like insisting that since Paul speaks of the reconciliation of all rebels to God through the blood of the cross, in Col 1, as though it has already happened, then ever since the crucifixion none of us must be in rebellion against God anymore, neither the things in the heavens, nor the things on the earth. Therefore also no one born (or otherwise created by God) after the crucifixion needs to be saved by God from their sins, since there can be no such rebels anymore.

Other verses (not even counting actual experience of history since the crucifixion) indicate reconciliation is a process, however, and one that can take a very long time to complete.

If there can be already/not-yet situations currently, and in our past, there can be already/not-yet situations in our future, too. The “already” sense indicates a promise of eventual fulfillment, from the perspective of divine ominscience. Where that’s true for reconciliation, it’s by the same proportion to the topic true of the restitution of all things (since the topics are related in the salvation of sinners from sin).

Similarly, one can say that the restitution of all things started with the Incarnation; and one can say it started with the crucifixion; and one can say it started with the Resurrection; and one can say it will start with the general resurrection; and one can say it started with the eternal ongoing self-sacrifice of God for the sake of creation’s existence (and so started with creation, in that sense, with the Lamb being slain from the foundation of the world.) All of those have some validity, and are true in related but distinct ways. But most are in our past history already. And all are rooted (if trinitarian theism is true) in the ongoing interpersonal unity of God’s eternally active self-existence, thus also in the submission of the living action of God to God’s living authority. (There are some variations of this idea for non-trinitarians, too, but those variations won’t have the same ontological importance.)

Among many other things, Jesus notes in GosJohn 5’s report, that those who honor the Son and the Father (and who do the good things) are raised to a resurrection of eonian life, and those who do not honor the Son and the Father (and who do the bad things) are raised to a resurrection of judging.

The purpose of being raised to judgment is so that those who do the bad things will come to honor the Son and the Father (with a positive honor-value term, not some false honor-value which God would not accept – so if they never come to truly honor God, by being annihilated out of existence or whatever, then God’s judgment purpose will have actually failed); but there’s an evident distinction in the initial condition of those who are raised to eonian life and those who are raised to judgment instead of eonian life.

Any such would only be meant to make the proud contrite, not to break a bruised reed or smother a smoldering wick. :slight_smile: In other words, it would be meant more for people like me, not for people like you.

There is not a single verse in any posts above mentioning or requiring any postmortem occurrence of affliction… not one.

To be “salted with fire” was neither a postmortem text nor even a text applicable to humanity in toto. Such was spoken TO and applicable Of Jesus’ followers… which IF ONLY those peddling other scenarios would CHECK the context of the passage such is there in black and white and requires no massaging of dubious theologies into it… Mk 9:30-31, 33-34, 38, 50.

In Jewish practice, all sacrifices were to be salted and no sacrifice was acceptable without it…

Jesus’ being salted had nothing to do with “postmortem correction/s” but was very much indicative of the antemortem (this life) nature of the preparatory effect persecution was about to bring. According to the context of the passage such salting would indeed be limited and yet fully inclusive of all in that grouping, i.e., the disciples — all disciples in faithful service were a “living sacrifice” (Rom 12:1) and would be tried by the fires of persecution.

Again… as salt accompanied OT sacrifices so would the soon coming fire of trial and tribulation accompany and try (refine) NT believers…

This then as I understand it is what Jesus meant when he said… “For everyone will be seasoned with fire, and every sacrifice will be seasoned with salt.” And this then is the same as Paul speaks of here…

Thus ‘being salted with fire’ speaks NOT to some universal global principle, or other, awaiting all and sundry postmortem, NO… this was time specific and is CLEAR from the texts… pertinent TO believers of that day — no more and no less!

Even John the Baptist speaking of Jesus’ ministry said… “He will baptise with the Holy Spirit and fire” — such ‘fire’ was an indicator of the afflictions those following their Master would likewise face, thus Jesus’ words here…

We see then this theme of affliction in service of God following and flowing through the rest of the NT story, as per the likes of…

Thus the case for supposed postmortem affliction… well, hmmm :question: :unamused:

I suppose Jesus was lying when he said there will be those who will endure eonian punishment in Matthew 25:46?

No not at all… but just like the present subject manner at hand, some do not understand what these things meant. :astonished:

Skerrick?? You throw ‘those kinds’ of words out now and then just to get me in a dither, right? So I have to look them up and like that; BUT the payoff for me is - I can use them in conversation and gain a reputation for being colorful! :laughing:

Just for you Dave… skerrick :mrgreen:

Thanks. At least I know enough not to ‘root’ for the wrong team. :laughing: