The Evangelical Universalist Forum

what is the stake ?

if everybody will be ultimately in full joy with God, when God will be all in all, what is the stake to believe in Jesus ?
it is salvation from limited second death (which is not annihilation )
Does the bible says somewhere that it is important to be saved during life from LIMITED lenght suffering ?
saved from the suffering of emotionnal torments (which happen to people which fornicate often) , from medical suffering (people which eat too much chocolate and macdonald), from addiction (drugs, wine, smoking) suffering and so on …
what are your thoughts ?
thank you very much

This is a good question. I’ve been working on a condensed version of my unviersalism–and separate papers, responses to the criticisms I expect to raised against it by traditionalists and ‘traditional universalists’ as it’s more abstract and unorthodox for mundane tastes.

Briefly, salvation is never from the wrath of God because in my view what we call God’s wrath is actually regeneration of the human spirit. Hence, salvaiton is perfrormed in the very process of death and rebirth (regeneration) of the human spirit. This is the experience we call ‘hell’.

I take the position that the offer through conformity to Christ is a purely temporal situation, that God no such offer exists for unbelievers after death. This is the short view…the methodology I use actually leads to more possibilities, that all, even unbelievers will be purified to faith in time, even if only in the final days or moments of life, but the ‘base’ conclusion (for purposes of general discussion) are in the article below. This is not a finished product, been working on it off and on as time permits, but should provide fundamental answers to the questions you ask in your post. I think your main question is answered in Article 3, first item.

Fundamental Tenets of Christian Universalism

Most arguments against the idea of the salvation of all can be refuted using the relatively simple Biblical  structure of salvation outlined below.  This interpretive configuration is based on two integrated forms of dualism.  Not only are most arguments against the salvation of all refuted using this interpretive method, but in it the doctrine of eternal punishment is properly modified to show that the wrath of God is actually, ultimately and esoterically an act of His love and mercy toward mankind.   This arrangement is found below and is the basis for the majority of my subsequent defense of the Bible doctrine of the salvation of all.

1. Temporal/Eternal Dualism:

Time and eternity each has a distinct nature which  together form the constitution of Biblical salvation as set forth by God in Scripture.  Temporal and Eternal natures are manifested within Christianity in the soteriological traditions  of Calvinism and Arminianism. 

A) Arminian belief is modeled after the temporal, where alteration and modification are natural and salvific value is subject to change. The power and use of the human will, notions of the ability to gain or lose salvation by one’s choice are derived from the nature of time and space.

B) Calvinism is modeled after the eternal, where God’s decisions are unassailable and absolute value reigns—God’s sovereignty in salvation, predestination, efficacious grace in God’s decrees are derivatives of the nature of eternal immutability.

Temporal and Eternal modes of salvation exist together in Biblical salvation in that the offer to conform to the call of Christ and be saved by faith is an offer exclusive to time, while no such offer exists after physical death when the spirit returns to God.   This duality is seen in Paul’s writings, especially in Rom 11 where after describing the mutable nature of temporal salvation (**vv.  16-24**) he goes on to point out its eternal and universal nature (**vv. 25-27**).   The unfolding of events in time and space is ever and always supervised by God’s eternal nature.

2. Good/Evil Dualism

Good and evil and its associate characteristics are found in Scripture in two fundamental senses:

A) In a general sense as applied to individual, i.e., saved and unsaved, righteous and unrighteous, etc. which is produced in the literal understanding, and,

B) In a more specific and reductive sense, true and false or good and evil components within each individual, found in the Bible’s allegorical sense.

In its broadest sense, the removal of evil and its replacement with good is the purpose of salvation as per the testimony of the Bible.  Tensions raised in the literal sense are resolved in the allegorical.  For example, two schools of thought on the number of humans saved have existed in traditional soteriology for centuries, that few will be saved (**Luke 13:22-24, Mat 7:21-23 and 22:14**, etc.) on one side and many saved (**Isa 2:2-3 & 11.9,  Rev 7:9-10**, etc.) on the other.  When righteous/unrighteous wholes (in the literal) are seen in metaphor to represent elements *within* each whole (in the anagogical or, more loosely, allegorical) the tension is dissolved.  Many unrighteous elements perish within each soul in order to refurbish each and every individual to a pure state.  This is salvation.

3. Non-Traditional Tenets of Universalism

The following are logical inferences of the salvation of all derived from the structure outlined above. These principles of salvation are consequent from a blend of literal and allegorical meaning which together form a coherent whole.

  1. The offer by God of salvation to mankind in which human will and choice plays a role is the temporal aspect of salvation. The salvation of those who reject the temporal offer is experienced in the terrible refinement of hell in the Lake of Fire following physical death. This is the unchanging decree of God or the eternal aspect of salvation. Understanding salvation in this sense is consistent with the entire Bible and especially in understanding Paul’s theology.

  2. The Lake of Fire is a metaphor for the pure Truth or essence of God. As the Bible attests to repeatedly, evil in the human soul is kindling to the purity of God’s essence.

  3. Hell and Regeneration are words which refer to the same event. The experience we call regeneration or being born again is an action performed in human spirit by God, hell is the word we give the discomfort which naturally accompanies it. The reason we don’t typically associate hell with regeneration is that regeneration is performed gradually and fragmentally in time such that its recipients hardly notice it (Isa 42:25, for example). Because discomfort is naturally associated with the ‘spiritual surgery’ of regeneration, and because it is performed virtually imperceptibly, the discomforts which accompany it are blended in with the normal trials, hurts, pains and tribulations of everyday life. Many universalists and traditionalist Christians alike sense intuitively that ‘life is hell on earth’, and this is true in a more real sense than most imagine.

Although the restorative flames of the Lake of Fire of God’s pure Truth is a terrible thing to contemplate, nonetheless God’s nature remains the same in eternity as in time, and regeneration is regeneration, regardless of how one chooses to receive it. In the end, love wins over anger and perfect justice is accomplished.

  1. One does not escape the Lake of Fire, one is refined of all that is false in spirit, is reborn to a perfect or ‘true’ state and becomes one with it (true) in essence. See Dan 3, where Daniel’s friends in Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace represent this state.)

Buzz thats interesting. I’d say one thing though. The LOF isnt terrible. That is the carnal mind speaking, fearing that going up to the fiery mountain we should die in His presence. But Moses came back down as a glorious one, having to wear a veil to cover the glory from all those carnal minds. It is the most glorious experience to be in the fire. Even why you are writhing in agony which is not coming from the fire. It is coming from inside you as your sins are laid bare before the pure One. Your shame and nakedness is the only pain. The fire warms you, it energises you as you faint. How can you stand in the presence? He stands you up and you continue to fall over dead, but just as you think that, His love fills that void of hurt. This goes on until you can stand in His presence because you are the mirror image. The entire process is the most freeing experience you could imagine. God is love and that love casts out all fear.

Thats my experience and I cant even imagine anything else now. God is so much better than we’ve imagined.

“Time and eternity each has a distinct nature which together form the constitution of Biblical salvation as set forth by God in Scripture.”

that is interesting
but it seems that about eternity what we believe during our life has no consequences

anyway we will live in full happiness with God for the eternity ?

believe or not believe in Jesus at the moment of the ETERNITY everybody will have fogotten the TIME

what is the value of the TIME ?
maybe it is important for us TODAY , we have to be successful during the TIME, even if TIME will finish

Hi redhot,

I forgot about having posted in this thread as I am wont to do…need to remember to use the ‘view your posts’ link…

But it is precisely the ‘carnal mind’ (depending on how we define it) that has to die. Don’t believe me, believe Him:
**"“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” **(Jn 12:24)
I’m working on a paper explaining my view that the LOF is actually God, or more accurately it is His essence. Thus, God does not actively punish sins, it is what we might call the “substance of sin” [falsity] which burns up as chaff in the fire by simple virtue of juxtaposition of the human soul with it–and, as might be derived from Jesus’s words in Jn 12:24, is reborn to a true or perfect state which is now unaffected by it. This is shown us metaphorically in Daniel’s friends walking unhurt in Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace. Paul notes the same process in 1Cor 3:11-15. It is ‘carnality’ uncovered by faith which burns and dies in the fire. Spirit returns to God after physical death (Heb 9:27, Eccl 12:7) Even though our carnality suffers and dies in God’s pure holiness, the fire is restorative. Restoration is found IN or as a product of spiritual destruction.

The remainder of your post suggests we are essentially on the same page here. The regeneration of the LOF is only terrible to the mind still set on the carnal, the love of sin. Once it is burned off, one becomes one in truth with absolute Truth, and all that is evil within us has burned to ash, after which we have been restored and made one in essence with the LOF and walk in it unscathed. This is the mystery of the salvation of all, and it’s not found in the literal word. The fact that traditional evangelicals cling to the literal explains why they cannot see this, which is explained symbolically in Mal 4:1-3 “For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace; and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff; and the day that is coming will set them ablaze,” says the LORD of hosts, “so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear My name the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings; and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall. And you will tread down the wicked, for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day which I am preparing,” says the LORD of hosts. The ‘wicked’ is that carnality in one’s own spirit which has suffered eternal torment (eternally separated, the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, Rev 14:7 & 19:3] never to return) in the LOF such that you and I now embrace God and God embraces us in the unity and perfection of truth.

Thus, one never exits the LOF, *one becomes one with Him *and the terribleness melts away and is replaced by pure joy and harmony. It’s really all very logical and congruous with all Scripture. Sorry so longwinded…I get wound up on this stuff…

Hi erwan,

Emmanuel Swedenborg truly stated IMO that the Bible is a book of correspondences. The literal reads true belief as a responsibility of man. Metaphorically and cosmically or eternally, though, it is simply a condition of the soul produced by God’s grace.

If belief is man’s responsibility, then salvation is man’s responsibility. And this bears some truth in the salvation of time (as all literal truth is at least foundational), where we are invited to participate with Christ in our regeneration to an approved or faith state (Jas 1:12).

But at the same time the eternal promise is already in place (Jn 12:32) and at work–all are salted with regenerational fire in life (Mark 9:49), producing the capacity to believe and unite with truth, which we may reject as a consequence of the mutable character of the temporal. Though the unbeliever may ‘kill’ his prescriptive belief capabilities, yet the salting continues and imparts God’s seed to one’s spirit. Once His seed is planted–and it’s planted in all souls (Jn 1:9)–God’s promise to Abraham on the road to Damascus where the principle that God will never destroy good, only evil, commits Him to His plan to save every individual. To not save an individual in whom there exists even the tiniest bit of good (see Isa 42:3-4) would, as God establishes with Abraham, violates the perfection of His justice. By this we know that both eternal torment and annihilationism are logically untenable.

why is annihilationism impossible ?
your answer is interesting

I’ll copy/paste a thing I wrote a couple years ago explaining why the traditionalist argument that ET is necessary in order that Godly justice be served is an error of logic.

The Biblical Principle of the Separation of Evil from Good

The claim by traditional Christianity that all humans are not saved in eternity—that some (perhaps most) are either destroyed completely or assigned to eternal separation and suffering is a harsh violation of God’s perfection.  This axiom is established in the first book of the Bible.
Informed by God that He was going to Sodom to investigate and, if necessary, destroy the evil city, Abraham quickly struck up a conversation with his Creator. His nephew Lot and family lived there, and Abraham doubtless had pressing concerns about his kin being destroyed with all others in the city.  Thus he began his famous conversation with God on the road to Sodom in Gen 18 by querying in v. 23, **“….’Wilt Thou indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?’”**
Beginning here and running to the end of this chapter, God establishes here not only an inviolable principle conerning the perfection of His justice, but also His framework of the process of salvation so fundamentally and harmoniously woven into both testaments of the Bible it’s hard to see how its significance has been overlooked.  This  is elaborated in vv. 24-25, where Abraham asks: 

"Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; wilt Thou indeed sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from Thee to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from Thee! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?"
It seems reasonable to suppose that there is one supervising characteristic which governs all God’s other attributes: perfection. We might properly assert that God is just, loving, merciful, faithful, etc., but if He is imperfect in any of these, He is not God as we understand Him to have revealed Himself in Scripture. Abraham, it seems, recognized this truth when he exclaimed, “Far be it from thee to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and wicked are treated alike….Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” Abraham recognized that for God to destroy good [1] was an unthinkable abomination, a wholly illogical and improper idea—a violation of His perfection. In this conversation, God established in His dialogue with Abraham this spiritual principle:

God will not destroy a whole in which some good exists.

I contend that In removing Lot and family from Sodom before destroying it, God establishes early in the Bible the mystery and methodology of not only the salvation of the ecclesia in time, but of every human being in eternity.  The difference is only in when and how the process is applied.  This pattern is woven throughout both Testaments in symbolic references so numerous it's hard to see how it has been overlooked for so many centuries of Bible study.

===================================================================
How the mystery of the savlation of all is accomplished by God-- by separation of bad parts from good from the whole–after being established in Gen 18, is seen metaphorically throughout the Bible. Separation of sheep from goats (Mat 25), wheat from tares (Mat 13), good figs and rotten figs (Jer 24), branches from the vine (Jn 15), righteous from wicked (Ezek 21:3-5), etc. Once you understand the principle and keep your eyes open, the passages which speak to this separation jump out from throughout both Testaments. The organized church has gone over like the Pharisees to a harsh literalism which does not allow their prisoners to see this, even though they too read Paul’s admonition that the letter kills but the spirit gives life.