The Evangelical Universalist Forum

john 3:36 ?

does it say that it is impossible to believe for some people to believe ?
6 he who is believing in the Son, hath life age-during; and he who is not believing the Son, shall not see life, but the wrath of God doth remain upon him.’
the man which doesn’t believe now SHALL not see life
thank you for your help

sorry i mean : is it impossible for some people to believe now ?

Here is what the verse actually says:

Whoever entrusts himself to the Son has lasting life; whoever is not persuaded by the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

There is nothing said here about any impossibility. But if a person is never persuaded by the Son to become His disciple, he will not see life. However, though he is not persuaded at the present time, and then is persuaded some time in the future, he WILL see life.

Impossible is a relative term. I believe that any human (including Christians) can fall into what I call a state of ‘critical falsification’ with regard to the truth of a particular belief, whereby one is unable, due to spiritual malfunction, to believe a true propsoition. John’s exposition of Jesus’ views illuminate this, as re Jn 1:5: “And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” and 3:19 “And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil.” Here, it is impossible to believe x, though x is true and in fact specifically because x is true. But impossibility here lies only on the human side of things.

Both passages speak to the ‘darkening’ power of a fundamental enmity between true and false. Ever wanted to crawl into a hole when someone was about to shine truth on a deed you frantically did not want made known? Paul also speaks to this issue in 1Cor 2:14: “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.” On a given truth, we can be completely unable to unite with (believe) that truth.

But what is impossible for humans is very possible for God. Grace is brought to light if we understand the ‘wrath of God’ to be regenerative and restorative. The mystery of the salvation of all imo lies in the fact that all God’s wrath is really regeneration, and hell is just the word we use to describe what it feels like from the human perspective to experience regeneration taking place in one’s soul. Hence, the belief that hell is experienced in life is accurate, assuming (as I do) that sanctification is really only regeneration performed fragmentally and progressively in time.

Which brings us full circle to the point I’m trying to make, that the disobedience of abiding in a critically falsified state brings on the wrath (regeneration) of God, which destroys the very thing which causes the critically falsified state. With darkness thus removed from the soul sufficient to ‘see’ and ‘hear’ the truth we were formerly unable to unite with, we now are free to embrace the truth in a union of the light in our own essence with the light of the truth proposed (Jn 3:21, 12:46). Hope this makes sense.