LONGER OVERVIEW
My Goals
I want to show you why – if you believe what the Bible teaches us – you can stop thinking “God will cause the infinite misery of Eternal Misery” so instead you are free to think “God is good and I can trust Him” and you will be able to fully love Him and “say YES to God” in your mind & heart (in your thinking & feeling) during your everyday living-by-faith. [more]
note: Although this is the "Longer Overview" it's only 1.70 times longer than the Short Overview, which I recommend reading first because it's a better balance of brevity-and-clarity.
Three Views of Hell
This section will help you understand what each view IS and (just as important) what it ISN'T.
What will happen in Hell? Three main views are proposed by Christians who say “I think the Bible teaches us the truth about everything, including hell, and I will believe what the Bible teaches.” The views have many similarities (they agree on all essential beliefs of Christian faith) and one difference.
many similarities: All three views agree that...
• the Bible teaches us the truth about Life and Afterlife.
• God hates sin and wants justice, is loving and good.
• God gives salvation — obtained for us through His self-sacrifice, with God's incarnation & crucifixion-plus-resurrection in Jesus — only to people who have belief-with-repentance.
• God saves some people (but not all) during Life, so at death there are two kinds of people, who are saved or unsaved.
• God will give every person an Afterlife with a body, and He will judge every person, with two results:
saved people will live in Eternal Joy with God, and with other saved believers, in His physical Heaven-Kingdom;
unsaved people will suffer in Hell. {yes, each view is a “hell view”}
• all people (both saved and unsaved) are sinful during Life, and are sinful when they die, so IF God ever “purifies a person” to make them become sinless, this will happen during their Afterlife.
• God will not allow any sinful person to enter His heavenly Afterlife-Kingdom, because only sinless people are capable of living in Eternal Joy with each other, so only sinless people will be allowed into God's Kingdom.
one difference: We see a major difference only when asking “What is the final state of unsaved humans?” because...
• with Universal Restoration {UR} they suffer temporarily in UR-Hell, where they are educated (so they believe-and-repent) and are corrected (are made correct, are “purified” to remove their sin, so they finally become what God always wanted them to be)*; they are saved by God, so they can live in Eternal Joy with each other and with God, in His Kingdom. / * Their sins are purged in a purgatorial UR-Hell, so this view is aka purgatorial UR {pUR}.
• with Final Annihilation {FA} they suffer temporarily in FA-Hell until they die, when they pass into permanent non-existence.
• with Eternal Misery {EM} they suffer permanently in EM-Hell because God keeps them alive forever, but He never helps them improve (as with UR), and He never ends their Misery by mercifully rescuing them with Restoration or Annihilation.
In two views (UR, FA) the suffering in Hell is temporary, and God will eliminate sin. But with EM, God would preserve sin forever, and this maintaining-of-sin is a biblical reason to reject EM.
Also, “hybrid views” are possible, as in a semi-UR proposing that some unsaved people will be restored and some will be annihilated.
UR is not pluralism: Because universalism is a word with many meanings, it's important to understand what Universal Restoration (UR) does and doesn't propose. UR rejects the religious pluralism (it's a common meaning of universalism) that claims “all roads lead to God.” Instead, UR is a Bible-based Christian Universalism that claims “only one road (saying YES to God by following Jesus Christ) leads to salvation, but if a person is now on another road, eventually God will guide them onto His road and will save them.” {so... why should you say YES to God now in Life instead of waiting until "eventually" in Afterlife?} / also: biblical UR is trinitarian, so UR isn't Unitarian Universalism.
Afterlife in God's physical Heaven-Kingdom: In this page, Afterlife is the embodied life that God will give everyone (either temporarily or permanently) at the General Resurrection of all people; and Heaven (the Heaven-Kingdom, the Kingdom that is God's Kingdom) is the physical place (Revelation 21-22) that God will create for embodied physical people who have been saved. {i.e. with the definitions I'm using, the Afterlife is not the Intermediate State between a person's death and the General Resurrection; and Heaven does not happen during the Intermediate Period.}
Restoration in God's final Heaven-Kingdom: If God produces Universal Restoration, this Restoration will be better than any state that has existed in the history of our world. It will be better in many ways. The most important way is its elimination of sin; in The Initial State for humans (in The Garden of Eden), people were capable of sinning and they decided to sin; but in The Final State, we will decide to not-sin. This final restoration will not restore creation back to its original state, instead it will restore creation to God's original intention for everything – especially for persons and our relationships – in order to produce the everlasting Kingdom of God.
But these terms – especially universalism – can refer to a variety of views, with a range of meanings. Therefore, to reduce misunderstandings I want to emphasize that...
In this page, Bible-based Universal Restoration (aka Christian Universalism) is non-pluralistic (instead it's exclusivist) because it claims that Jesus offers the only way to be saved, the narrow road leading to salvation.
also: biblical UR is purgatorial Universal Restoration (pUR, with a purging-Hell that purifies sinners, cleansing them from sin, healing them and restoring them so they finally become the sinless persons that God always wanted them to be. UR does not claim “there is no Hell,” instead the claim is that “Hell is a temporary process that will produce a permanent result of total Restoration.”
some verses aren't useful, in some ways: Does it matter when Jesus describes a "weeping and gnashing of teeth" in Afterlife? Yes and No. Yes, because He is warning us about a very unpleasant situation (suffering in Hell) that He wants us to avoid, that we should try to avoid. No, it doesn't help us logically evaluate the views-of-hell because all views agree that people will suffer in Hell. When we compare views to understand their similarities & differences, only some verses (where the views disagree) are useful in helping us distinguish between the views and logically evaluate the views.
[more about the views]
color symbolism: LINKS with background colors (purple green gray) go to biblegateway.com or to another page (not my three main pages-about-hell) written by me or by another author.
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Evaluating the Biblical Evidence
As explained with more depth in Studying the Bible and Using This Page, when we're biblically evaluating different views of hell our two essential foundations are understanding the Bible and the views. To increase these understandings,...
• instead of ASSUMING you already know what the Bible teaches, you can STUDY the Bible with the worthy goal of learning what it really does teach; and...
• you can study Three Views of Hell so your accurate view-understandings will be a solid foundation for your logical view-evaluations. In our own thinking and when we're communicating with others, we (you, me, others) should always evaluate a view for what it actually is; we should never argue against an inaccurate “strawman distortion” of a view by claiming the view does propose what it actually doesn't propose. [more about understanding & logic, strawmen & honesty and verses that don't matter]
There are many reasons to conclude that the Bible doesn't teach Eternal Misery, but the most important reason is...
Conditional Immortality
In Genesis and Revelation, we see that God did not create humans with immortality, instead He created us for immortality that He will give to those who meet His if-then condition for immortality: if a person is saved, then God will give them immortality.
By giving this conditional immortality, God is converting sin-and-death (in Genesis) into salvation-and-life (in Revelation):
Sin and Death — After the first disobedient sin, God declares (in Genesis 3:22) that a sinner "must not be allowed to... [eat from "the tree of life"] and live forever." God then actualized this death penalty by removing His death-stopping supernatural power (symbolized by His life-sustaining "tree of life") so – without God's supernatural protection – Adam & Eve began a natural process of gradually dying, described (in Genesis 2:17) as “dying you will die” during the yom that is a period of time with indefinite length, that isn't necessarily the “24 hours” implied (misleadingly) by the usual translation of yom as day. Logically, it seems that the purpose of God's death penalty – a sinner "must not... live forever" – is to be merciful, because death prevents people from living forever in a state of sin, with eternal misery. But although death is graciously merciful in some ways, it's also a severe penalty in other ways. / sin and misery: An eternal sinful life would be eternal misery IF the life is miserable for sinful people who are being caused (by God) to live forever. And we do see misery in EM-Hell caused by the physical torment of fire-etc (in traditional depictions like Dante's Inferno, sermons of Jonathan Edwards,...) and/or by the psychological torment of separation from God (in most current depictions). In fact, Eternal Misery (my term) is more commonly called Eternal Torment, or Eternal Conscious Torment. another reason: In addition to being merciful, God also wanted to GIVE immortality on His terms (in His holy way, without sin) instead of letting it be TAKEN by humans on our terms (in our disobedient way, with sin). [more]
As explained in Genesis 2:17 – which literally says (in old English) "dying thou dost die" or (in modern English) “dying you will die” – humans began a gradual process of continually "dying" (which happens naturally when we don't have the supernatural protection supplied by God thru His "tree of life") and this process leads to our eventual death. In this way, death became God's divine penalty for human sin.
Salvation and Life — These are related, because “if Salvation, then eternal Life.” As described above (in Sin and Death), God removed human immortality (to allow human death) due to human sin. But God loves us, so He wants to remove our sin AND give us immortality. These two gifts are connected. God will give eternal life only to people He has saved (and has sin-purified) so they will have sinless eternal JOY instead of sinful eternal MISERY. God's lovingly gracious gift (His eliminating of death) will be actualized by giving back "the tree of life," as stated in Revelation 2:7 and 22:14. But this divine gift of immortality will be given to only those who "overcome" (2:7) because they "wash their robes" (22:14), who are saved by accepting The Grace of God, offered through Christ, so they meet the IF-THEN Condition that has been set by God: IF you accept The Grace (offered by God) so you are saved by God, THEN you get The Life (supplied by God) through His "tree of [everlasting] life." In this way, God will not passively reward sinful disobedience with immortality “on sinner's terms,” instead He will actively give immortality “on His own terms.”
the logic: Conditional Immortality is defined by a logical iff-then Condition – iff (if and only if) saved by God, then made immortal by God – even though this usually is simplified to an if-then Condition, “if saved, then immortal”. / The condition that "only if" is not stated explicitly in the Bible, but it's logically implied by giving-of-life promises in Revelation 2:7 ("to the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life") and 22:14 ("blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life"), implying that until people are "victorious" (when they "wash their robes") God will not let them eat from "the tree of life" and make them immortal by returning what was mercifully removed in Genesis 3:22.
The Death Penalty: Consistent with this Conditional Immortality, throughout the Bible we see that death (not long-term suffering, as with EM) is God's judicial penalty for sin. We see death – not permanent suffering – in God's severe penalties (first by removing His death-stopping supernatural "tree of life" in Genesis 3, then in The Flood, Sodom & Gomorrah, The Law,...) and His rescues (Abraham with Isaac, The Passover) and His gifts of substitutionary atonement in the OT (with sacrificial deaths of animals) and in the NT (by the self-sacrificing death of God while He was incarnated as Jesus).
Let's examine some results of Conditional Immortality (CI, with FA or UR) and UnConditional Immortality (with EM).
a merciful penalty: Even though death is a severe penalty – because by sinning we lost immortality (that God had wanted to give us with His "tree of life") when God lets us die – death also is an act of mercy because God wants to prevent people from living forever in a state of sin, with eternal misery. He can prevent this unacceptable combination in two ways, either with Annihilation (by eliminating sinners, killing them so they're not living forever) or with Restoration (by eliminating sin-within-sinners, purifying them so they're not in a state of sin). {how can a penalty be merciful? – the consequences (intrinsic & judicial) of sin – hint: in Afterlife, would annihilation be merciful?}
what God will do: God eventually will stop death, and thus will give continuing life. God could do this with two methods for divine “damage control” that, with loving mercy, prevent eternal misery – with either Final Annihilation or* Universal Restoration. Either way, eventually God will fulfill His if-then conditional promise (in Revelation) that “IF saved, THEN immortal” by giving Eternal Joy to every person who is alive in The Final State. / * God could mercifully prevent Eternal Misery "with either...or" so we should define Conditional Immortality logically as FA-or-UR instead of the illogical only-FA that is commonly assumed.
what God will not do: God will not violate His own principles or defeat His own purposes. God's purpose in removing access to His "tree of life" was to allow death and thus to prevent living forever in a state of sin, in either Life or Afterlife. But this purpose would be defeated with a divine policy of causing Eternal Misery, and God would be deciding that “sinners MUST live forever” thus violating His own judicial decree that “sinners MUST NOT live forever.” And to actualize this EM-policy, He would have to force unsaved sinners to live forever because God created people for immortality (for dependent immortality that He will supernaturally provide “IF saved”) but not with immortality.
intrinsic immortality: No, we don't have intrinsic immortality that automatically sustains life. If someone claims that being made "in the image of God" means that, like God, we are immortal, ask them if this also makes us omniexisting or omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, or omnibenevolent. All biblical answers are “no” despite the common-yet-unbiblical belief in immortal souls with intrinsic immortality.
an unbiblical circular argument: Unfortunately, the common unbiblical assumption of intrinsic-and-unconditional immortality – imported into Christianity from Greek philosophy, especially from Plato – often leads to unbiblical reasoning. If we assume (as a logical premise) unconditional immortality, then we logically will conclude (due to circular reasoning) unconditional immortality; all humans are immortal so all must live forever, either in Heaven (with salvation and Eternal Joy) or in Hell (with damnation and Eternal Misery), but UR is false so EM is true because FA is impossible due to our automatic universal immortality. / This logic ends with an unbiblical conclusion – claiming that immortality will be unconditional (and certainly universal) instead of being conditional (and possibly universal) – because it begins with an unbiblical assumption of unconditional immortality.
dependent immortality allows conditional immortality: Life depends on God. If a human becomes immortal, this will be a dependent immortality that depends on God's supernatural power to sustain their life. Our dependent immortality gives God personally-customizable control for His decisions about conditional immortality. God's sovereign decisions about using His power (to decide whether or not He will give eternal life to a person) will be conditional, will be based on His if-then Condition for Conditional Immortality – if saved, then immortal – so He won't cause an unsaved sinner (who doesn't satisfy His Condition) to live forever in Eternal Misery.
Crucifixion-and-Resurrection: Consistent with His penalty of death (for sin), God designed an OT sacrificial system {using many sacrificial deaths of animals} and a NT sacrificial system {with one self-sacrificing death by God, in the human form of Jesus}. In the two central events of biblical history – a pairing of The Crucifixion with The Resurrection – God first sacrificed Himself for us (to pay our death penalty) and then God showed us (with His victorious resurrection) that He has conquered death so He can (and will) give us afterlife-without-death, eventually. This two-event pairing shows us two kinds of divine love, first by God submitting to death (as servant-Jesus, to pay the penalty of death for sinners) and then by conquering death (as victor-Jesus who overcomes death, thus can give life without death to saved sinners). When the effects of these paired events are combined, we see how God's NT System is much more effective (compared with His OT System) for achieving His purpose of saving us from the personal results of sin (our slavery to it and the damage this produces) and from the judicial results of sin (God's penalty of death).
is a view-of-hell satisfactory? (yes-yes, no): When we logically examine The Crucifixion-and-Resurrection, we conclude that this pair of events is compatible with Conditional Immortality (and thus with FA or UR, yes-yes) because CI claims the sin-penalty is death. But these events are not compatible with EM (no) because it claims the sin-penalty is the infinite suffering of Eternal Misery; this unbiblical claim causes two problems (• •) because...
• penalty-paying substitution for atonement is unsatisfactory with EM: When you compare the actual Crucifixion Experience (finite temporary suffering with death) and an imagined Eternal Misery Experience (infinite permanent suffering without death), do you see the two mis-matchings? The “substitution” that is different – for suffering (finite vs infinite) and death (with vs without) – would cause unsatisfactory substitution if the sin-penalty is infinite suffering (as in eternal misery) instead of death. {how the divine Death Penalty is merciful AND why Penal (penalty-paying) Substitutionary Atonement is biblical}
• connecting of crucifixion-and-resurrection is unsatisfactory with EM: The focus of biblical history is this pair of death-related events, when God (as the humanly fragile death-receiving Jesus, achieving victory by not using His divine power) first pays the sinner's penalty of death, and then God (as the victorious death-defeating Jesus, achieving victory by using His divine power) rises to life, showing us that He has conquered death. God converted sin-and-death into salvation-and-life with crucifixion (to fix the problem of sin-and-death in Genesis) and with resurrection (to insure His promise of salvation-and-life in Revelation). Because a sinner's penalty is death, this pair of events (with its contrast between submitting-to-death and conquering-of-death) makes beautiful sense, logically and dramatically. But the death-connections disappear if instead a sinner's penalty is the infinite suffering of Eternal Misery. {symbolic death and un-death in Romans 6, briefly & in depth}
Penal Substitutionary Atonement plus Christus Victor: Both of these models for atonement are useful, in ways that are different yet related, when we are trying to understand the profound meanings of Crucifixion (where PSA seems more useful) and Resurrection (where CV seems more useful). Both models help us understand the depth of God's love in what They (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) have done for us, giving us more reasons to praise God. {PSA-and-CV in the pairing of Crucifixion-and-Resurrection}
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In addition to these two death-related difficulties of EM — because EM claims the sin-penalty is not death (instead it's infinite suffering), EM would have unsatisfactory substitution in PSA and unsatisfactory connection in Crucifixion & Resurrection — EM also would cause other problems, including three (• • •) outlined below. / These EM-difficulties occur due to the contrasting final results of Conditional Immortality (with CI, every person who is alive will have glorious Eternal Joy!) and Eternal Misery (with most people being forced to endure infinite suffering that is very unpleasant, with the misery being caused partly by their knowledge that their conscious experiencing of misery..... will never end). Because of this contrast between CI (produced by UR or FA) and EM, we see that...
• elimination of sin is unsatisfactory with EM: Throughout the Bible a central theme is that God hates sin (because it disrespects Him and harms people) so He wants to eliminate sin, and eventually God will achieve His goal. With FA or UR, sin will be eliminated so God will achieve His goal. By contrast, God would fail with EM, because EM would produce eternally lasting sin by causing sinners (and their sins) to remain alive forever. This is a strong biblical reason to reject EM. / The Bible tells us that God hates sin and loves people. Is each view-of-hell consistent with these essential attributes of God? (no, yes & yes) no: EM is weak on sin (by letting it exist forever, by actually causing evil sinfulness to exist forever)* but is tough on people (by tormenting them forever). yes & yes: FA & UR are tough on sin (eliminating it by eliminating sinners, or eliminating sin-within-sinners) but are loving for people (with the blessed relief of FA, or the blessed justification-and-sanctification of UR). {* with EM, God would cause evil to exist forever by forcing sinners to exist forever – with "forcing" necessary because humans are not intrinsically immortal – even though the sinners are not reconciled with God, are not loving God, are sinfully continuing their evil opposition to the goodness of God.} [more]
• achieving righteous justice is unsatisfactory with EM: Throughout the Bible we see that God wants to achieve justice, and God is loving, with love shown in His forgiving and also His correcting, and in other ways. Because justice is righteousness, UR would produce the best justice — a justice with love, achieved by transformative corrections that make everything righteous (with all persons & all relationships corrected, made right with no sin) so there is the most possible righteousness (i.e. the most possible justice) in the best possible final state — and EM would produce the worst justice because EM would actively cause immense injustice (= unrighteousness) by actively causing an immense number of unrighteous sinners (and their evil sinning) to exist forever.
Think about the logical implications of these two unsatisfactory results. The Bible tells us that God hates sin and loves people and wants justice, but He would be weak on sin and tough on people and a causer-of-injustice if He causes EM, so this is logical evidence that He won't cause EM.
• the character of God is unsatisfactory with EM: There is a logical mis-match when we compare the biblically-revealed character of God (He is good) and the non-good actions of causing the infinite suffering of Eternal Misery; believing EM requires believing that “God is good” AND “God will cause infinite misery” but for many people this combination is difficult to believe, and this logic can lead them to doubt the existence of God when they conclude that “this God who is loving AND causes Eternal Misery” cannot logically exist (it's a mis-match) and therefore God doesn't exist. [more and re-defining what “being good & doing good” means]
By contrast, Conditional Immortality – graciously given by God with FA or UR – would be theologically satisfactory in these five ways that EM fails. And there is additional...
Biblical Evidence against Eternal Misery
Above you see many biblical reasons to reject Eternal Misery, because it would fail in many ways (where FA and UR succeed) by violating biblically-supported Conditional Immortality and Death Penalty and having major theological problems, being unsatisfactory for Penal Substitutionary Atonement & Crucifixion-plus-Resurrection and Eliminating Sin & Producing Righteous Justice and The Character of God. And there are other reasons to reject Eternal Misery, including...
the Bible & church history: The OT never mentions EM. In their NT sermons & letters, Christian leaders (Peter, John, Paul, James) never teach EM, so it seems they didn't believe it, or at least they didn't think it was worth mentioning. All views (UR, FA, EM) were common in the early church, and “what will happen in hell” was not considered to be an essential doctrine so their major doctrinal statements – the Apostles' Creed, and the Nicene Creed that simply says "we look forward to the resurrection of the dead, and to life in the world to come" – allow all 3 views. In some periods of early history, probably most church leaders proposed UR. But later this changed, with EM becoming culturally dominant, due to... philosophical influences from non-Biblical sources, theological influence by pro-EM Augustine, practical political utility of fear-causing EM, translation bias favoring EM, the powerful inertia of tradition. Yes, in our past (and present) the popularity of EM has been (and is) supported by non-biblical factors. / A common argument against UR is that it was condemned at the
[more about church history including the UR-allowing conclusion of the Nicene Creed]
divine persuasion: Why isn't God more obvious about His existence and activities? Maybe... because our uncertainties help us learn how to live by faith? But... how does the typical absence of clear evidence affect a person who dies as an unsaved nonbeliever – but who might have “said yes” with stronger persuasion by God – and will have extremely different results if Hell will produce UR or FA, or EM? So... why does weak divine persuasion provide evidence against EM, and for UR? [more]
weak support for EM: The main biblical support claimed for EM is a few “hell verses” that are isolated, are not connected with the whole-Bible themes we see for FA (killing of people) or UR (restoring of people). But when we closely examine the verses – and see the translating that sometimes is biased to favor EM – the apparent support for EM becomes much weaker. This translating bias misleads readers; it hinders understanding. It's a big disadvantage for people who want to find truth but cannot read the original language, who must depend on getting accurate meanings from the translations they assume are accurate. For example,
Matthew 25:46 (overview) – Most translations tell us that some people "will go away into eternal punishment" (in English) which (in Greek) is "... aionios kolasis" that (based on scholarly study of Greek language) instead could be translated as “age-associated corrective pruning.” {aion means age, and if aionios means age-associated or occurring in a future age it's answering the question of “when?” instead of “how long?” – and the same “when” (in a future age) would occur for all views, for EM, FA, UR.} Although "eternal punishment" seems to support the non-UR of FA or EM, this apparent evidence becomes much weaker (it actually disappears) if the two Greek words are translated – as they logically can be, and maybe should be – to tell us there will be "age-associated corrective pruning" because aion means age,* and – certainly in classical Greek, plausibly in NT Greek – kolasis (an agriculture-related term) meant corrective pruning that improves the health of a plant. Also, even if aionios means eternal, the punishment (a noun) might be caused by either everlasting punishing (as in the permanent verb-process of EM's person-tormenting), or it could be everlasting punishment (in the permanent noun-result of FA's person-killing) or everlasting
correction (in the permanent noun-result of UR's person-correcting with corrective pruning). {* but if the process-of-punishing is not-eternal, is the process-of-life also not-eternal? no, this “parallels argument” fails biblically, with both logic & ethics}
more about Matthew 25 and other verses claimed by EM (in Luke 16 and 2 Thessalonians 1, Revelation 14 & 20)
Here is another example of apparent support-for-EM that becomes much weaker when it's examined: Jesus describes (in Matthew 3:12, Mark 9:43) the unquenchable fire of Hell, but this just means that God's fire cannot be quenched – it cannot be stopped by those who are being affected by the divine fire of God – until His goal is achieved, until His fire has consumed people (if FA) or (if UR) has corrected people.
the teachings of Jesus: Defenders of Eternal Misery often claim that “Jesus said more about Hell than anyone else in the Bible.” This is true, because “everlasting torment” is absent in the Old Testament and in the New Testament sermons & letters of Peter, John, James, and Paul, although they often warn about divine judgment. Jesus also talks about judgment; He sets extremely high standards for everyone and He warns everyone that their actions during Life will produce consequences during Afterlife, but He doesn't say these will last eternally, as explained above.
Biblical Evidence for Universal Restoration
In a careful study of the Bible, we find biblical evidence against Eternal Misery (above) and also biblical evidence for Universal Restoration.
Yes, biblical support for UR does exist, in four ways:
• When we combine common theologies (Arminian plus Calvinist, with each justifiably claiming biblical support) we logically conclude that “God will save everyone” because IF God wants to save everyone (accepted by Arminians) and IF God gets what God wants (accepted by Calvinists), THEN God will save everyone, to produce Universal Restoration. { a summary: the Bible tells us that God wants to save all, and He can, so He will. In this way, Arminianism + Calvinism ➞ Universalism. } / The logical conclusion – that God will produce UR – can be avoided by rejecting either of the IF-premises: the first IF is rejected by Calvinists, and the second IF is rejected by Arminians. { free will becoming freed will } / We also can understand this IF-IF-THEN logic by thinking about theologies of grace: IF God gives saving grace to all people (claimed by Arminians), and IF divine saving grace is sufficient to produce salvation (claimed by Calvinists), THEN God will give salvation to everyone (with UR). This conclusion can be avoided by limiting the scope of grace (in Calvinism) or limiting the sufficiency of grace (in Arminianism). { salvation based on personal merit ➞ deeper examinations of if-if-then logic and limited grace }
• God tells us that He will not let anyone live forever in a state of sin (with eternal misery) because He will give Conditional Immortality that would happen with UR or FA, but not with EM, so for this reason (and other reasons) EM seems biblically implausible. In a second step of evaluation – comparing UR versus FA – the more I learn, the more I'm recognizing...
• more evidence for UR because the Bible tells us in some places that God wants to save all people — so would His goals be achieved if He saves only some of the persons He created but loses most? — and in some places (including these) that God will save all people.
• less evidence against UR — as in arguments-against-UR based on verses that describe suffering in hell {this would happen with UR} and two kinds of people (unsaved & saved) with unsaved people not traveling the narrow road, God hating sin & wanting justice — because UR can say “yes, but...” and explain how UR is consistent with these verses. How? Because...
UR does propose two kinds of people (saved & unsaved) during Life and early-Afterlife (including UR-Hell) but only one kind in late-Afterlife after everyone has been saved, after all previously-unsaved persons have been restored so their penultimate (semifinal) damnation has been converted into ultimate (final) salvation. And the verses about people being “burned with fire” are compatible with UR, due to biblically-logical connections between Fire and Baptism and Death implying that God may use His divine fire (in The Lake of Fire that is pUR-Hell) to “burn up” the evil character within a sinful person; maybe God's baptism of fire will consume sins in order to correct unsaved people so He can make them be correct (be right, without sin) for the purpose of producing righteousness that is justice.
UR is compatible with The Narrow Road because (as explained below) UR rejects religious pluralism so UR's road to salvation is narrow, and although we now see “two kinds of people” because few are traveling the narrow road now, many can travel it later – to produce UR – if God will allow salvation in Afterlife.
UR would produce the best justice by producing righteousness (that is justice), when God makes everything right by eliminating all unrighteous sinning from The Final State; UR or FA would eliminate sin to produce righteous justice, but EM would maintain sin forever. {EM is weak on sin and tough on people}
UR is not disproved by Matthew 25:46, and this verse actually supports UR when the Greek words (aionios kolasis) are translated – as they can be, and probably should be – into “age-associated corrective pruning” instead of "eternal punishment".
[more about Biblical Evidence for UR]
some of the abundant biblical evidence for UR:
In the Bible, God tells us (in some places) that He wants to save all people, and (in some places) that He will save all people to produce Universal Restoration, by declaring that "as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15:22) because "as through one transgression [the sin of Adam] there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness [atonement by Jesus] there resulted justification of life to all men" (Romans 5:18) and (Romans 11:32) "God has shut up all in disobedience [due to Adam] so that [through Christ] He may show mercy to all [including "all Israel"]" with His loving "mercy to all" inspiring (in Romans 11:33-36) a celebration of worship: "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! ... For from Him and through Him and for Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen." * The birth of Jesus was "good news of great joy which will be for all the people" (Luke 2:10) so we joyfully "have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe" (1 Timothy 4:10) because Jesus came "to save the world" (John 12:47) by becoming "the atoning sacrifice... for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:2) so He "takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29) and is "the Savior of the world" (1 John 4:14) in a process that will be actualized when (in Life or in Afterlife) God saves every person, motivated by His love for us — like a good shepherd who loves all of his sheep and wants to find-and-save every sheep (or coin or son, as Jesus tells us in Luke 15 where the numbers remaining lost are 0-of-100, 0-of-10, 0-of-2) — God will "go after the one that is lost, until he finds it." (Luke 15:4) If you have not "settled matters" with other people, "you may be thrown into prison... [and] you will not get out until you have paid the last penny" (Matthew 5:26) but ultimately – when "until" has happened for every person – God will (through Jesus Christ) "reconcile all things [the same "all things" that "were created...by Him"] to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross" (Colossians 1:15-20) and (Philippians 2:11) "at the name of Jesus every knee will bow... [and] every tongue will confess [with sincerity and loving admiration] that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father," so (Romans 14:11) "every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall confess to God (acknowledge Him to His honor and to His praise)," and (Romans 10:9) "if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." / * This conclusion of Romans 9-11, with "mercy to all" and thus "glory forever" in 11:32-36, leads to Paul's exhortation in Romans 12:1-2, "Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy [in 11:32] to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." { more: there are many other UR-supporting passages in the Old Testament & New Testament }
The Narrow Gate and Pluralism: Jesus tells us that a person can be saved only by traveling the narrow road that leads them through "the narrow gate" so pluralism (claiming “all roads lead to God”) is biblically false. Instead of pluralistic inclusivism, the Bible teaches exclusivism. { but biblical Christian Universalism – as in Universal Restoration – is not pluralism } [more]
The Narrow Gate and Salvation: With a grammatically correct literal translating of Greek into English,* Jesus tells us that "few" are finding "the narrow gate" leading to salvation, NOW during Life. But many can travel the narrow road LATER during Afterlife (as claimed by UR) if God will allow salvation in afterlife. Jesus tells us that few are now finding the road, but He isn't saying that few will ever find it and be saved, either NOW (in Life) or LATER (in Afterlife). Thinking about now-AND-later is important because “not yet” isn't the same as “not ever” so Universal Restoration is possible. / But the other views (FA & EM) reject salvation in Afterlife, so FA & EM do claim that because only a few people are now finding "the narrow gate" during Life, only these few will ever be saved, and all others will be damned. / * Jesus says literally that “few are finding the gate” now, but most translations misleadingly tell us “few will find the gate” either now (all views agree about this) or later (as claimed by FA & EM, but not UR). { God's people: did God intentionally “hide the truth” from His people, thus leading most Jews to reject the narrow road so they will be damned to annihilation or torment, with FA or EM? or “will all Israel be saved” by God ? }
Divine Killing: The Bible reports rare killings by God, as with Sodom & Gomorrah (in OT) and Ananias & Sapphira (in NT) and others, especially before & after The Exodus, in Egypt & in the Promised Land. Of course these killings are compatible with FA's claim that God will kill unsaved sinners in Afterlife. But they're also compatible with UR, because when God killed people during Life this caused only temporary death; later the people who were killed by God, along with all other people, will be resurrected into Afterlife when God can educate-and-correct them (with UR) instead of re-killing them (with FA) to produce permanent death.
Divine Fire: Throughout the Bible (in OT & NT) fire often symbolizes the divine presence-and-power of God. In the "lake of fire" (Revelation 20:11-15) the "second death" could cause a death of person (FA), or death of sin (UR) as in Romans 6, or a living death (EM); these would end the sinner's life or sinful nature or quality of life, with fire that kills or purifies or torments. God's divine fire could be a hurtful fire if He uses it to annihilate people or torment people, or a helpful fire (with person-benefiting love in action) if He uses it to purify people,* to remove their sin so they become the people He always wanted them to be. {* in Greek, fire is pur as in purify, and in the Bible divine fire is often used to purify}
 Fire and Baptism and Death: These seem to be related in symbolically-logical ways that support purgatorial UR, with “big picture” connections. How? By using Bible-based logic, sin-purifying in Matthew 3 — IF when Jesus baptizes with fire He will burn the evil "chaff" in a person's character so only the good "wheat" remains in their character,* as in Matthew 13 if a person's "weeds" {all evil parts of their character, all ways-of-thinking that hinder them from fully loving God and fully loving people} are burned up so only their "wheat" {their good character, everything that helps them fully love} remains, so they have been sin-purified to become "the righteous [who] will shine forth like the sun in the kingdom of their Father" — can be connected with sin-purifying in the analogous immersions of Revelation 20 (if His Matthew 3 baptism with fire occurs by immersion in The Lake of Fire to produce a purifying death-of-sin during Afterlife) and Romans 6 (when baptism with water by immersion in a lake of water symbolizes a purifying death-of-sin during Life). {* wheat & chaff are parts of the same plant, analogous to good character & bad character being parts of the same person.} {although the diagram includes 1 Corinthians 3, that fire-experience might be either for only Christians, or for all people.} [more and much more]
seeing dimly now, but clearly later: I'm not claiming that these important biblical themes (fire, baptism, death) must be interpreted using these connections, thus proving UR. But the connections are plausible; they should be carefully studied (not casually rejected) and they do provide support for UR. Why? Because it seems rational – based on the logical relationships between symbolisms – to imagine how we could be looking back (later in Afterlife when we're able to see clearly) and see how the verses that confused us (that with a first-impression “surface reading” seemed to support FA instead of the true view, UR) could have looked different – if the verses were examined more carefully, and were considered in a wider biblical context – and they could have been interpreted in a way that would have led us toward the truth of Universal Restoration. Or maybe not, if UR won't happen. It's "maybe" due to our current uncertainty. Now during Life we don't know which view is true (with true defined as what will happen in the reality of Afterlife) because the evidence is ambiguous and we're not observing the reality of Afterlife. But we're searching for truth, so we should try to understand how biblical evidences “can all fit together” for each of the views, in the way I'm attempting for fire-baptism-death and UR.
comparing UR and FA: Conditional Immortality (with a sin-penalty of death) would occur with either FA or UR, so both views are similar in being satisfactory for... elimination of sin (in The Final State)* and substitution (in Penal Substitutionary Atonement) and connections (of Crucifixion-with-Resurrection). To see some of the other similarities & differences when we compare FA with UR, we can ask three questions – two (re: what & who) about death, and one (re: when) about timing:
first, “WHAT is the penalty for sin?” — both views agree that it's everlasting total death;
then, “WHO will receive this penalty?” — it's some people (if FA), but no person (if UR),
or, “How many death penalties will God pay for?” — only some (if FA), but all (if UR),
or, “so the penalty of death would be actual with FA, but only potential if UR, {actual vs potential}
and “WHEN can a person be saved?” — it's “only in Life” with FA, but “in Life or Afterlife” with UR.
* God will win His War Against Sin, and His Victorious Final State would be similar whether it's UR or FA, but with FA there would be far fewer people because Satan (who wants to prevent sinners from being saved) has “won the battles” for the souls of most people, and God would lose these battles. Is this immense loss-of-persons what God wants? If yes, FA will achieve His goals. If not, He can prevent the FA-losses by saving these persons with UR. {A Huge Throw-Away Triage?} {A Wonderful Life Principle for Total Joy}
instead of all, only some (only a few): If most soul-battles are lost with FA – so only some (and they are few) will be saved, with most lost – the joyful proclamations of Paul become much less joyful. With FA, with reduced joy we can proclaim only that "as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all some [a small minority] will be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15:22), and that "just as one trespass [the sin of Adam] resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act [atonement by Jesus] resulted in justification and life for all some people" (Romans 5:18) and (Romans 11:32) "God has shut up all in disobedience [due to Adam] so that [through Christ] He may show mercy to all some [including "all some Israel"]" with His loving "mercy to all some [i.e. a few]" inspiring (in Romans 11:33-36) our worship: "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! ... For from Him and through Him and for Him are all some things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen." And we can join John in sharing The Good News (well, at least The Totally-Good News The Partially-Good News) that Jesus came "to save [some of] the world" (John 12:47) by becoming "the atoning sacrifice... for the sins of the whole [partial] world" (1 John 2:2) so He "takes away the sin of [a few people in] the world" (John 1:29) and is thus "the Savior of [all in some in] the [whole partial] world" (1 John 4:14) {and there are other changes from "all" [actually written in Bible] to “some” [in claims made by FA-Interpretations of Bible]}
logically, CI is FA-or-UR: The common-yet-incorrect definition of Conditional Immortality (CI) is “only FA”. Why is this logically incorrect? Because CI would occur with either FA or UR (but not with EM) so CI is “FA-or-UR”. Let's examine the logic:
If at the end of Life some people are saved and some are unsaved, in Afterlife the Initial State will include saved people and unsaved people. Later, an eternal Final State that is consistent with Conditional Immortality will include only saved people, who satisfy The CI-Condition (that “if saved, then immortal”) and therefore will remain alive forever.
This kind of Final State, that is compatible with CI because it includes only saved people,
is possible with Final Annihilation, because FA-Hell has killed all unsaved people, so only saved people remain alive;
is possible with Universal Restoration, because UR-Hell has saved all unsaved people, so everyone is now saved people;
is impossible with Eternal Misery; EM-Hell doesn't annihilate or restore, so EM's Final State includes unsaved people who are immortal, and this is not-CI.
The representations below show the changes for unsaved people, from The Initial State to The Final State that is proposed in each view. With all views (FA, UR, EM) the early-Afterlife is a mixture of people who are (saved + unsaved). But after each version of Hell (symbolized by "➞") the immortal Final State (with everlasting life for all who remain alive at that time) is different for each view, with only EM causing not-CI due to the permanent presence of people who are unsaved and are immortal if God causes EM.
if FA, (saved + unsaved) ➞ Final State (saved + unsaved), it's CI,
if UR, (saved + unsaved) ➞ Final State (saved + unsaved), it's CI,
if EM, (saved + unsaved) ➞ Final State (saved + unsaved), not-CI.
In a table, these initial-to-final possibilities are...
| |
in early Afterlife, |
|
Final State after Hell, |
| if FA-Hell |
(saved + UNSAVED) |
➞ |
(saved + UNSAVED) |
| if UR-Hell |
(saved + UNSAVED) |
➞ |
(saved + UNSAVED) |
| if EM-Hell |
(saved + UNSAVED) |
➞ |
(saved + UNSAVED) |
Therefore, a logical definition of CI is “FA or UR” because both FA and UR are compatible with CI. Both could occur with CI, because each could be produced by CI.
Here are logical analyses of...
• two kinds of timing:
for the timing of immortality, God would give unsaved people temporary non-immortal bodies during a time-period after Resurrection, with either FA or UR; during this period, for awhile some “temporary experiences & actions” would occur, and then God either annihilates these persons (if FA) or saves-and-immortalizes them (if UR).
and for the process of evaluation, a person could decide that “God will produce UR” with a process-of-logic that... either first incorrectly assumes unbiblical intrinsic [and unconditional] immortality and then compares UR-versus-EM, or first correctly assumes biblical dependent [and conditional] immortality and then compares UR-versus-FA. Each process-of-logic is used by some proponents of UR.
• an implication – or occasionally even an explicit claim – that sometimes is made by proponents of FA, who begin with the obvious fact that UR involves universal immortality {this is true}. Then they shift to an implication that UR's universal immortality can occur only with unconditional immortality {this is false}, that universal immortality must be unconditional immortality {false}, and this false claim is required to defend “UR is not-CI” so “CI is only-FA”. How is this done? They do this with an illogical fallacy, by converting “what is sufficient” into “what is necessary” without calling attention to the illogical shift. They convert “unconditional immortality is sufficient for producing universal immortality” {this is true} into “unconditional immortality is necessary for producing universal immortality” {this is false}. They are failing to acknowledge the difference between sufficiency (yes, UnConditional is sufficient to cause Universal) and necessity (no, UnConditional is not necessary to cause Universal). / A logical Venn-Diagram for Final States shows the two ways that universal immortality can occur — either with Universal that is not-UnConditional, or with Universal that is Conditional — so an implication that “universal immortality must be unconditional immortality” is logically incorrect, is false. {* one way to produce universal immortality is UnConditional and is not-CI, but the other way is Conditional and is CI. } / Here is another perspective on the logic: Basically, proponents of FA are blurring the distinction between Universal and UnConditional, are claiming that “Universal means UnConditional” even though this is logically incorrect because “if UnConditional, then Universal” is true, but a reversed-claim that “if Universal, then UnConditional” is logically false.
• another logical fallacy, by implying (or even explicitly claiming) that with Conditional Immortality — based on the if-then Condition that “if Saved, then Immortal” — some people must fail to meet the Condition, therefore some people will not be made Immortal. But this is equivalent to illogically declaring that when there is an if-then condition, it's impossible for all people to satisfy this condition. Of course this is untrue, and we can think of many counter-examples; e.g. a bus driver decides “if you show me your ticket, then you can ride the bus” and all show tickets; or a league decides “if your basketball players are academically eligible, then they can play” and all are eligible.
• This illogical requirement – claiming that some people MUST fail to satisfy The Condition – might be related to a simple defense of “CI is only-FA” by just declaring (using circular logic by assuming the conclusion) that Conditional Immortality IS DEFINED — as in the common definition that is traditional even though it's illogical — as the view that humans don't have Intrinsic Immortality (part of CI) AND (not part of CI) that only some people will be made immortal. / * This definition is equivalent to ignoring the fact that the essence of CI (it's the reason for its name) is the if-then CONDITION of CONDITIONAL Immortality, and simply declaring that we should ignore THE CONDITION by choosing to define CI traditionally instead of logically. / There is a partly-logical but mostly-historical reason for the claim that CI should be defined in the traditional way. Logically, Immortality-with-UR could occur in two ways, either with unbiblical Intrinsic Immortality (that is UnConditional) or with biblical Dependent Immortality (that is Conditional); by contrast, Immortality-with-FA can occur in only one way, with Dependent Immortality (that is Conditional) because IF there is Intrinsic Immortality (that God cannot, or will not, eliminate) then God will not annihilate anyone to produce Final Annihilation. And historically, FA-ists have argued against the Intrinsic Immortality that was accepted by many (most?) UR-ists even they could begin with Dependent Immortality, so there are two timings for concluding UR. { why begging the question (a silly illogical term) is (logically) assuming the conclusion }
• Why are some proponents-of-FA motivated to insist that “CI is only-FA”? This varies with individuals, but I think there are two main reasons. / First, CI claims that God gives immortality to some people, and this “seems kinder” than FA's actual claim that after He resurrects all people, God takes immortality by actively killing some people, or (euphemistically) by passively letting them die. / Second, CI is strongly supported in the Bible, so when “CI is only-FA” is accepted, FA gets all the credit from this biblical support-from-CI, and UR (which is defined to be non-CI) doesn't get any of the credit. This difference seems to support their CI-view (FA) when it's compared with the competing CI-view (UR), even though this apparent support is misleading and superficial – it isn't actual support – because it's based only on their illogical self-serving definition.
more about why we should logically define Conditional Immortality (Parts 1, 2, 3) – and much more.
Biblical Ambiguity about UR-versus-FA
Due to the very strong evidence for Conditional Immortality (thus for UR-or-FA) and for other reasons, I'm very confident that EM won't happen. But I cannot confidently claim “it will be UR” or “it will be FA.” Why? We can ask two why-questions: A) “why is there no clear winner?” and B) “why has God allowed this ambiguity?”
A) Why is there no clear winner? Because in the whole Bible and in specific verses, I see strong support for UR (but FA has strong counter-arguments) and also strong support for FA (but UR has strong counter-arguments).* { Or maybe it's clear, and I'm just not seeing it. But if there is a clear biblically-supported winner, why are there different views among devout Bible-believing Christians who have carefully studied the Bible, with some defending UR & FA – the views I think are biblically plausible – and even EM? } {but for Biblical reasons I'm optimistic that God will produce Universal Restoration, with roughly 90% confidence}
* For example, carefully examining a passage claiming support for UR {or FA} – by studying the arguments & counter-arguments – can lead to concluding that the verse doesn't provide 100%-support for UR {or FA} but there isn't a decrease to 0%-support, and this happens for ALL passages claiming to support UR {and FA}. Also, whole-Bible themes can be claimed as support for UR, but also for FA. Therefore when all things are considered — the conflicting whole-Bible themes, plus the many passages that provide support for UR or FA ranging from near-zero to near-100% (with different estimates from different evaluators) — the overall evidence seems ambiguous.
iou – Currently a major limitation of my web-pages is their weakness in examining UR-vs-FA more thoroughly, regarding the pros & cons of each view. In the near future (maybe by mid-2025) I want to explain, with more detail than in the current summaries,* why I'm 90% persuaded about UR. Why is my confidence this high (i.e. why is it 90% instead of 0% or 50%) and why is it lower than 100%? This page describes some evidence for UR (much more than for FA – yes, it's biased) and there is a beginning for deeper UR-vs-FA examinations of strong UR-supporting passages from Paul and John — in Romans 5:18 and 11:32-36, and 14:11 combined with Philippians 2:11 and Colossians 1:20, plus John 1:29 & 12:47 and 1 John 2:2 & 4:14 — to illustrate the validity of arguments & counter-arguments, and my current conclusion that neither view can claim certainty. I'll do a little more soon, Nov 21-24, and then gradually (continuing into early 2023) I'll expand the carefully-thorough logical analysis by describing each view's main claims & arguments, along with counter-arguments and counter-counter-arguments, and so on. { Some biblical evidence for UR is summarized in three sets of sections, in my overviews: Short - Long - Longer. }
now, appropriate humility: Although I think the biblical evidence about UR-vs-FA is ambiguous, so we cannot claim either view with certainty “beyond a reasonable doubt,” I'm not a postmodern relativist. For our views about hell – and for many other questions that are important in life – proof is impossible, but we can develop a rationally justifiable confidence about “a good way to bet.” When we study the Bible, our evidence-based logical evaluation will lead us to improved understanding, and will help us reach conclusions that we do hold (and should describe) with a logically-justifiable appropriate confidence that is not too little, not too much. / Of course, justifiable confidence varies with the question being asked. When I'm evaluating the three views of hell, in my first stage – comparing CI (UR-or-FA) with EM – I'm extremely confident in concluding that EM is biblically-implausible so it should be eliminated from serious consideration. But in the second stage – comparing UR with FA – although I think the biblical evidence-and-logic favors UR, I cannot confidently claim “it will be UR.”
later, clear understanding: In many ways, including our views of hell, our knowledge now is incomplete and uncertain. Paul describes our current lack of clarity: "Now {in this time of imperfection} we see a dim {blurred} reflection {of reality as in a riddle or enigma}, as if we were looking into a mirror [through a glass darkly], but then [when the time of perfection comes we will see reality] face to face. Now I know in part (imperfectly), but then I shall know and understand fully and clearly." {1 Cor 13:12 combining EXB & AMP & AMPC} Regarding truth – about the reality of what was, and is, and will be – eventually in the Afterlife-Kingdom of God we will know with certainty. We will know the true view (that is true because it's happening in reality), whether it's UR or FA, or EM, or a hybrid view, or something else. Regarding biblical knowledge, I think God will help us understand the intended meaning of each Bible verse. Maybe... with Life-Review Videos we'll be able to examine how-and-what we were thinking earlier, and we'll realize how during Life we could have been thinking about each verse in a way that would have guided us toward believing the true view. Later we will see how the verses that confused us – that with a first-impression “surface reading” didn't seem to support the true view – could have been interpreted in a way that would have led us toward the truth. This experience would be like arriving at the end of a well-designed mystery story, looking back and thinking “yes, it all fits together” when we recognize how the author provided clues that were intended to logically lead us (although not in obvious ways) toward finding the truth. {can we begin this process now?}
B) Why has God allowed this ambiguity? Maybe... it's to avoid certainty about Afterlife, because uncertainty can help us develop skills in living by faith. If God has intentionally produced some ambiguity (and I think it seems likely), maybe... one purpose is so (Luke 2:35) "the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed" when we respond to the ambiguity. One response occurs when we use motivated reasoning (our tendency to believe what we want to believe, and find reasons for believing it) and thus “reveal the thoughts of our hearts.” If the uncertainty helps us learn-and-improve, it would be educationally useful. And maybe a major purpose of Life is for God to let us (and help us) learn from our Life-experiences, and improve. If this is the divine educational method being used by God, it would be similar to the human educational method of a teacher who produces opportunities for inquiry learning by causing a gap in knowledge – in conceptual knowledge (so students don't understand) and/or procedural knowledge (so they don't know what to do, or how) – that stimulates mental action, so students are allowed to think-do-learn. Guided by the teacher, students do inquiry activities so they can get more experiences and learn more from their experiences. I think this kind of educational method is used by God. {more about possible reasons for biblical ambiguity and Inquiry Learning with Educational Drama in Life & Afterlife} {and why does persuasional ambiguity – because God does not provide most people with strong evidence for His existence-and-actions – give us a reason to believe UR and not-believe EM?}
permanent benefits of temporary ambiguity: Eventually our temporary uncertainty will be gone, and we'll know the truth about hell. More generally and more important, when we have better understanding with a “big picture” overview of everything, we'll appreciate what God was trying to teach us – and how, with methods that included ambiguity – during Life. I have faith that ultimately every person will look back on what happened to them (and to all other people) in Life & Afterlife, and each of us will say “it was fair, God was just, He was loving-and-good.”
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What is my view? Based on my studies — beginning in 1987 by evaluating EM-vs-FA and concluding almost-certainly FA, then learning more about UR since 2014 and concluding probably UR — I've become extremely confident that God will not cause Eternal Misery in Afterlife. I've reached this conclusion for many biblical reasons that include strong evidence for the Conditional Immortality that would occur with either Universal Restoration (UR) or Final Annihilation (FA).
I'm hopeful and optimistic about UR, am hoping it will happen, and although we have strong biblical reasons to be very optimistic (roughly 90% for me) that it will happen, I cannot claim “it will be UR, not FA” so my view is UR-or-FA. I think UR would be wonderful and FA would be fair yet sad. [more about my views and my feelings about my views]
Hoping for The Best: If God will heal all persons & all relationships this Universal Restoration would be the best possible ending for God's Grand Story, producing the greatest good (eternal joy) for the greatest number (for everyone), so we should hope it will happen. With "the best possible ending" of UR, The Gospel would truly be Good News, not Mixed News.
On a person-to-person level, Jesus commands you to "love your neighbor as you love yourself" and you want yourself to have Eternal Joy, so you should want your neighbor to have Eternal Joy. You should love everyone — every neighbor, including everyone in your family & friends,* and even strangers — by wanting for them what you want for you. / * Instead of a generic “neighbor” you can think about someone you love who probably wasn't saved when they died. Do you want them to eternally have Joy, or Misery, or Non-Existence? { e.g. my wonderful sister }
But our thinking-and-feeling is complex. In addition to reasons for wanting UR, Christians also can have reasons to not want this happy ending. These reasons include wanting to reduce conflicts (internal personal & external interpersonal) and maintain fear-motivation and avoid causing false hope and more. |
Universal Restoration:
if God will produce UR,
When, What, How, Why?
when? salvation in Afterlife: if God will produce universal Universal Restoration by saving all people, this seems to require salvation during Afterlife. {will this happen? the Bible doesn't clearly say Yes or No} Is this question important? Yes, because if the possibility of salvation-in-afterlife is accepted – at least hypothetically (by treating it as an “if” so we can do if-then evaluation) – then some of the main Biblical objections to UR are weakened or eliminated.
what? damnation in Afterlife: When proponents of non-UR (FA or EM) assume that salvation in Afterlife is impossible, and they observe (agreeing with UR) that few are now traveling the narrow road-to-salvation before Afterlife, they will conclude that only a few will ever travel the narrow road to salvation, so most people will be damned and UR won't happen.
what? Great is God's Faithfulness: if God loves all people before they die, but He will cause Eternal Misery for most people after they die, can we still praise God because "as You have been, You forever will be" so "Your compassions they fail not" ? or does God “love people unconditionally” only until they die, when – unless a person already has satisfied God's conditions for salvation, has earned their salvation by the personal merit of their wise decision – He will kill them (with FA) or torment them forever (with EM)? or will He lovingly heal them (with UR)? / Jesus tells us that a good shepherd who loves all of his sheep will want to find-and-save every sheep (or coin or son, as we see in Luke 15 where the numbers remaining lost are 0-of-100, 0-of-10, 0-of-2); He is telling us, by analogy, that God will “go after the one who is lost, until he finds them” but will His finding (and His loving?) end when a person dies, or will He continue searching after death – with “compassions that fail not” – until he finds them? {does this parable prove UR? no, but...} / Is there a change in the loving of God? We can say either No Change or Immense Change, because it depends on what He will do:
With UR we can say No Change, because "as You have been [by loving people with unfailing compassions], You forever will be." But with EM, for an unsaved person there would be an Immense Change between their Life and Afterlife, as described in pages 70 and 200 of a book by a prominent pastor: During their Life "each of us [including this unsaved person?] is loved by God, and loved in a way that is different – and better – than the way of human love. ... God's love is different. God's love is permanent and unchanging. ... While others may love you today and abandon you tomorrow, God's love never changes. ... Nothing can separate us from God's love." But in their Afterlife, God will cause this person to have "unspeakable suffering.... in hell, [where] there will be complete separation from God and people... the physical pain of endless suffering, the emotional void of hurting without anyone to comfort you, and the knowledge that you'll suffer alone with no relief coming – ever." Wow.
According to this now-and-later claim of EM, now (during Life) "God's love is permanent and unchanging" but later (in Afterlife) He will cause unloving Eternal Misery – with "endless suffering... alone with no relief coming, ever" – for people who reject God during their Life. What caused the change? Evidently "nothing [except death] can separate us from God's love."
Are these claims for now-and-later biblically correct? (yes and no) In the Bible we do see that "each of us is loved by God... in a way that is... better than the way of human love" so (yes). But (no) there is strong biblical evidence that God will not cause "endless suffering" for any person. {more about the immense change, between 70 & 200, if EM in the context of my praising The Actual God who loves forever, and criticizing a non-actual “God” that is just an incorrect idea}
a strategy for reading: If you haven't done this already, I suggest first reading two shorter overviews (as described here) so you can more easily develop a “big picture” understanding of the whole plus the details, by using a “successive approximations” reading strategy.
what and how? salvation with education-and-correction, Part 1: if God will produce UR, probably... He will use an Afterlife-process of educating unsaved people (so they believe-and-repent) and correcting them (to make them right, to produce righteousness that is justice when all people & all relationships have been restored so they are what God always wanted them to be, are fully loving without sin, are righteous). / The process of education-and-correction (to produce justification-and-sanctification) is described with more detail in Part 2, after examining...
what and when? justification + sanctification = salvation: Jesus told sinners that "your sins are forgiven" (this is justification) and (for sanctification) "sin no more," and His salvation is the combined “package deal” of justification followed by sanctification. The salvation that is given by God will be similar, whether justification occurs when a person believes-and-repents during Life (with EM, FA, UR) or (if UR) during Afterlife, and whether God begins the process of helping a person become sanctified during Life (with EM, FA, UR) or (if UR) during Afterlife.* With both timings, salvation occurs in a similar way. If a person is saved in UR-Hell, their salvation won't be earned by the person with their suffering (as claimed in a false strawman-distortion of UR), instead it will be graciously given by God, earned for us by Jesus when He died for us so His death would pay our sin-penalty (with PSA) and thus atone for our sins. {controversies about terms & realities}
what and when? timing for Conditional Immortality: In order to actualize Conditional Immortality (if saved, then immortal) with UR, after a person is justified-and-sanctified (is saved) God will make them immortal. Or at least He will make them immortal only after they are justified and therefore will be sanctified-and-saved. [more]
once saved, always saved? Maybe, and Yes. It's "maybe" from our POV (with knowledge that is incomplete & unreliable), but is "yes" from God's POV (with knowledge that is complete & reliable). / The question of “OSAS?” is intensely debated, because different answers can claim biblical support. Here are two common causes of confusion: First, in common language we say saved even though it's more accurate to say justified, if salvation is a “package deal” that requires justification-plus-(total)sanctification. But this is only about our using of words. Second, and much more important, even if during Life a person cannot know (with certainty) that they have been justified and thus will be saved,* God knows. So even though we can debate “OSAS” when saved is defined from our perspective — and we are just speculating when we ask “is this person (yourself or another) saved?” and humbly answer “yes” or “no” or “probably” or “probably not” — there is no doubt about OSAS when saved is defined from God's perspective and is decided by God, because when a person is truly justified by God – whether this happens in Life (with EM, FA, UR) or in Afterlife (if UR) – in Afterlife this person eventually will be totally-sanctified and saved. {* Jesus told people that some who now think they are saved – who during Life say "Lord, Lord" and "do many miracles" in His name – will discover later, in Afterlife, that they were not saved-in-Life when Jesus tells them "I never knew you [i.e. "you have never been mine"], depart from me."}
saved-in-Life: Technically, nobody is totally saved in Life (with ALL benefits of salvation, of justification-plus-sanctification) because nobody can become totally sanctified during Life. But most Christians say “Sarah has been saved” instead of “Sarah has been justified” even if they (like me) distinguish between these terms and they know that justified is more technically correct. Consistent with this custom, I also say that a person is “saved in Life” if during Life they have been genuinely justified by God (although only He knows this for certain) so their salvation is guaranteed by God, and in Afterlife He will make them become totally sanctified to complete their “package deal” of salvation that is justification-plus-sanctification. {the Bible refers to salvation as past & present & future – telling us that Sarah “has been saved” & “is being saved” & “will be saved” – and this time-complexity is one of the many reasons for disagreements about terms and realities}
how? becoming more sanctified: * How does God help a person become sanctified, during Life and/or Afterlife? Jesus wants us to "sin no more" and He will help His followers (Christians who are saved in Life) pursue this goal in Life, with a process that is more effective when we cooperate; Paul tells us "do not conform to the pattern of this world, but [with obedient cooperation] let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind." But although we can become more sanctified (less sinful) during Life, we will become only partly sanctified (partly not-sinful) at death, until Afterlife when God transforms us into being totally sanctified (totally not-sinful, totally able & willing to feel-and-think/do in all of the ways that God wants). How will this happen? We can ask questions (re: what-how-when in Afterlife) about...
sanctification for saved people & unsaved people: How will God radically transform saved people so we are not-sinful, so we become totally sanctified and are suitable for Afterlife in His Heaven-Kingdom? will this sanctifying transformation occur instantly, or will God gradually change us during a period of time? will we passively receive the changes, or be active participants, with changes being “done to us” or requiring our cooperation? Compared with the transformations of saved people in Life and Afterlife, what will be the similarities & differences for unsaved people,* if God will produce UR? The Bible tells that Afterlife will be much better for saved people, but... how? in what ways will it be better? {more about what-how-when} {* how is God working in the lives of unbelievers during Life if He will cause UR, or FA or EM? }
what and how? salvation with education-and-correction, Part 2: if God will cause UR, probably... salvation (justification-plus-sanctification) will occur during a process of educating-plus-correcting in purgatorial UR-Hell where God purges the sins of unsaved people with purifying divine fire (in Greek, fire is pur) in His lake of fire. In pUR-Hell this process will be educational {so a person believes-and-repents, and is justified by God, is forgiven}, and it will be corrective {with God "helping a person become sanctified" by skillfully using Holy Spirit surgery to remove the sinful character that prevents this person from fully loving Him and fully loving people, so they become healthy personally & interpersonally, they become purified} with correction that transforms their feeling-thinking-doing until it becomes fully corrected and they are fully sanctified, without sin, when personally (internally) they have become a healthy person, and interpersonally (externally) they have healthy relationships with other persons and with God, so they have become fully restored, are totally righteous, after being transformed into the person that God always wanted them to be. {unsaved people will suffer while they are being sin-purified, so we ask “why will God cause pain in pUR-Hell?”}
a summary: if God produces UR by saving all people, He will give salvation (= justification-and-sanctification) to some people beginning in Life, and to other people by using education-and-correction in pUR-Hell during Afterlife.
producing The Best (most righteous) Justice
what and why? eliminating sin: God hates sin – because it disrespects God, and it harms persons & relationships – so He wants to eliminate sin. He can do this with Annihilation (to eliminate sinners) or with Restoration (to eliminate sin-in-sinners), but not with Eternal Misery. God wants us to take sin seriously, because He does; He sets high standards for what He wants us to feel & think-and-do during Life, because He loves us and He wants to decrease the harmful consequences of sin, so we can have better lives. [more]
what and why? producing righteous justice: God is loving and just. God wants justice, so – because justice is righteousness – He wants to make things right (the way they should be) by eliminating sin, to produce righteous justice.
what and why? producing The Best Justice with The Best Possible Ending: God loves people, so He wants to produce the best possible Final State with everyone having Eternal Joy, without sin, in The Kingdom of God. God would achieve this goal with Universal Restoration – by using education-and-correction to transform all people & all relationships so they have become right, without sin – and this total righteousness (total justice) would be the best possible ending for God's grand story.* If God does this, pUR-Hell will be love in action and we can enthusiastically praise God because of what He will do for people in Hell. {for versus to: in pUR-Hell, God does things for people, for their benefit, to help them; but God does things to people, to punish them, to harm them, in FA-Hell or EM-Hell.} {* a Final State without sin also would happen with FA, but with fewer people; the missing people would violate a Wonderful Life Principle and... their absence would decrease joyfulness.}
what? we are victims and victimizers: Currently during Life, every person sometimes is a victim (who is hurt by the sinful offenses of others) and sometimes is an victimizer (who is sinfully hurting others). These many hurtings produce needs: as victims, we need to forgive people, and we want to know that they have sorrowfully repented; as victimizers, we should want to repent-and-apologize, and we need to be forgiven by people & by God. These forgivings – done by us for others, and by others for us – are an essential part of producing reconciliations that are “horizontal” (between people) and “vertical” (between people and God).
what? correcting injustices: Each of the many interpersonal hurtings (done to a person as a victim, and done by them as an victimizer) is an injustice. These hurtings are not right, are not the way things should be, so to achieve justice God must heal the hurtings and make the relationships become right.
what? everyone forgives everyone: How? Maybe... God will give every person powerful interpersonally-interactive experiences that produce mutual empathies & mutual compassions, with each person knowing the sorrowful repenting-in-Afterlife of all victimizers who hurt them during Life. And then what? The result will be that everyone forgives everyone, so all will be emotionally healed and spiritually healed, to produce a Total Reconciling of all people with each other and with God, helping all people to fully love each other and fully love God.
what? love-with-justice: Some correcting-in-Afterlife will be necessary, because it's impossible to have divine love without divine justice. Why? God is the only all-powerful entity, so if there will be total justice this must be produced by Him. God loves people, so He wants to produce justice for us. In an imaginary love-without-justice, God might use a “gentle bunny” approach, like an incompetent human judge who says “you're innocent” or “you're guilty, but free to walk away” for every crime, despite evidence that the crime actually was committed. To achieve biblical justice, God must make things right.
what? justice-with-love: Some people think justice requires retributive punishing, with justice being produced by punishment. But justice is righteousness and it's produced by making things right, the way they should be, the way God wants them to be, the way people want them to be. Although victims might feel temporary vengeful glee when seeing their victimizers punished, victims will feel permanent deep satisfaction only by knowing that their victimizers have sincerely apologized for their sinful actions, have truly repented so they no longer have a sinful desire to hurt others. God will achieve righteous justice when all victimizers — and therefore all persons (because each of us has sinned, and has damaged other persons) — have been restored so we have become righteous.
what? maximum joy: The maximum Eternal Joy will happen if all persons and all relationships are purified by God, so there is no sin. After this righteousness has been produced by God, every person will be fully reconciled with themself (internally, personally) and (externally, interpersonally) with every other person & with God.
what? correction is necessary: Because each person is sinful, we need to be corrected, radically transformed by God, purified so we have become not-sinful. A common misunderstanding of UR is thinking that for very evil people (e.g. Hitler) God will simply say “what you did was very bad, and you still are not a good person, but I'm unconditionally forgiving, so come into Heaven and make yourself at home, just as you are.” No. Instead UR proposes that sinful people (like Hitler, you, and me) will be welcomed into God's Kingdom AFTER God has radically transformed us so we have genuinely repented – and our victims know this – and we are not being hindered (as we are now) by sinful feelings & thoughts-and-actions, so we are able to be fruitful members of God's Kingdom.
what and how? salvation by educating-and-correcting: IF God will use pUR-Hell to restore unsaved people, probably His process will be education-and-correction {how} to produce justification-and-sanctification that is salvation {what}.
what and how? by the power of God: What? God will eliminate sin, to produce righteous justice. How? UR claims that although SIN is very evil and is powerful, GOD is very good and is more powerful. God wants to eliminate sin, so the final result is that sin will be defeated by GOD. {God will win the war against sin, but will He lose most battles?} [more]
how? using videos to re-experience Life: The Bible doesn't give us many details about what will happen in Afterlife, but Jesus does tell us one activity: "everything that is covered up will be revealed." This re-experiencing of Life doesn't happen during Life, so (logically) it will happen in Afterlife, maybe... with Life-Review Videos that (if they're used) will reveal the history of your feeling-and-thinking about people (yourself & others) and about God, showing you how your actions affected yourself & others, and what God was feeling-thinking-doing about your actions. {in what ways was God trying to tell you “do this” or “don't do that” and were you responding by obeying or ignoring?} [more]
two kinds of Life-Review Videos: God could let a person re-experience events in their own life, or experience events in the lives of other people, as in mutual viewings.
a disclaimer: The "maybe..." and "if" acknowledge that these are just my biblically-informed speculations. Therefore many titles – especially those about "how" – could be written as questions, like “using videos to re-experience Life?” I feel fairly confident about biblical “what-goals” for righteous justice, but less confident about a “how-process” for producing justice. / I think humility also is warranted for many afterlife-claims made by others (re: how sanctification happens, what will happen in Hell & Heaven, and more) and we should "examine the Scriptures" to evaluate all claims.* {e.g. Randy Alcorn's "Heaven" book is biblically solid, and he labels his speculations as "maybe..."}
NDEs: Life Review Videos occur in many Near-Death Experiences (NDEs), but this isn't why I'm proposing Videos. My ideas were independently developed. / I haven't studied NDEs deeply, and probably won't. * Regarding our theology, Christians should be like the noble Bereans who "examined the Scriptures," by rejecting any NDE-influenced ideas that are not consistent with what is taught in the Bible. Why do NDEs occur? Of course, near-death is not full-death, and I think near-death experiences probably are caused by complex changes in physiology (by temporary changes in a brain's neurochemistry, due to the biological traumas of near-death) that we don't understand. {more about NDEs}
what and how? the importance of Life: Your life is God's gift for you. The way you live is your gift to God. The more you learn from your life-experiences so you can make wise decisions (that help you achieve God's purposes for your life) and do loving actions, the more satisfied God will be when He asks “what did you do with the life I gave you, with your abilities-and-opportunities?” A dedicated disciple of Jesus is motivated by wanting Jesus to say "Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!" Life is important. If the main purpose of your Life is learning how to improve your loving of God and people (the Two Great Commandments), does God want you to continue learning in Afterlife? I think you will agree “yes & yes” for learning in Life & Afterlife. And using Life-Review Videos could be an excellent way for God (as The Master Teacher) to help you learn more from your Life-Experiences and also your Afterlife-Experiences. / Of course, by "you" I mean “us” who maybe... will include (although with some differences) both the saved-in-Life and unsaved-in-Life.
how and when? stages of Afterlife: Almost certainly... God will give us a wide variety of exciting experiences in Afterlife. Maybe... during the Early Stages there will be a strong emphasis on learning from Life. But this learning from the past probably will become less emphasized in Later Stages, compared with other kinds of experience.
how? by experiencing with super-abilities: IF life-review videos will be used, probably... God will give each person multiple super-abilities — like more empathy (perhaps enhanced by an ability to view events from the perspectives of others, to know what they were thinking-and-feeling), more compassion & self-responsibility (leading to sorrowful repentance with a desire to apologize and change), plus improved senses (of seeing, hearing,...) and processing power and more — to make our re-experiencing of events more intense. These super-abilities would magnify our feelings-and-thoughts of joy (for good things that happened to us, plus the good joy-causing things we did) and sorrow (for bad things that happened to us, plus the bad sorrow-causing things we did and the good joy-causing things we could have done but didn't do), with all of our responses helping to produce beneficial transformations (personal & interpersonal) so God can correct-and-heal all persons & all relationships. { here I say "joy-causing" and "sorrow-causing" but each of us is responsible for how we respond to events* – with joy or sorrow, and in other ways – so “influencing” is more accurate than “causing” } {* when we consistently choose to be personally response-able, we're using Habit 1 in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People}
how? by experiencing Super-Reality: if God uses Videos, certainly they will be done well to produce a high-tech Super Reality that is like humanity's relatively low-tech virtual reality, but much better. This high quality, along with the super-abilities given to each person, will cause the experiencing to be more intense than our experiencing in Life, making it more effective for transformative learning, for becoming more sanctified and/or more mature.
how? by learning more with divine help: During the entire process-of-Afterlife, including videos, God will provide divine guiding-and-empowering by Holy Spirit through His intimate spiritual connections with each person, for the purpose of helping them learn more from their Afterlife-experiences of re-experiencing Life. God will provide conviction that leads to sorrowful repentance – so each person (now with a freed will) wants their own sinful nature to be purified – because they have an authentic desire to let God radically transform them; they want to fully cooperate with His purifying destruction of their sinful nature. They will want to be radically transformed so they become totally sanctified (totally healthy as a whole person in their feelings-and-thoughts/actions), so they become the righteous person that God always wanted them to be, and is now helping them to be.
how? being corrected-and-healed with divine help: When a person is corrected by God, the purifying destruction will be a spiritual surgery that (analogous to physical surgery) produces painful wounds. In order to produce a spiritually healthy person, these wounds must be healed, so the Holy Spirit's overall work (during the radical transformations that sanctify a person) will be His correction-plus-healing. [more]
what? forgiving and being forgiven: Currently in Life, every person is a victim and/or an victimizer in many situations, so each of us needs to forgive (as a victim) and be forgiven (as an victimizer). Jesus strongly emphasized the importance of forgivings-by-us because forgiving-by-us is necessary for producing reconciliations that are “horizontal” (between people) and “vertical” (between people and God).
what and how? by mutual viewings: Maybe... these needs (to forgive and be forgiven) would be satisfied more effectively if God uses Mutual Viewings (MV's) to promote forgivings. How? In a system of “mutually shared experiences” using MV's, videos of some Life-situations* will be simultaneously viewed by the main people who were involved in the situation as a victim and/or victimizer, or an improver who did beneficial actions, or in other ways. During an MV, all people will be re-experiencing what did happen (during Life) and also experiencing what now is happening (during Afterlife), from their own perspective and from the perspectives of others. They also can communicate verbally by speaking & hearing, because God will give everyone physical bodies in The General Resurrection of all people. This powerfully shared re-experiencing (of past Life-events) plus experiencing (of present Afterlife-reality) will help every person know the suffering-in-Life of our victims, and the suffering-in-Afterlife of our victimizers who now are feeling painful sorrow in their thinking & feeling, leading them to genuinely apologize (saying “I'm sorry”) and repent (deciding “I won't do it again”). Experiencing the thoughts-and-feelings of other people will produce mutual empathies & mutual compassions. Each person will know the sorrowful repenting-in-Afterlife of all the victimizers who hurt them during Life. In these ways the mutually-experienced videos will help everyone forgive everyone, so all will be emotionally healed and spiritually healed, to produce a Total Reconciling of all people with each other and with God, helping all people to fully love each other and fully love God.
* I say "some" because IF God uses videos, almost certainly... He will be wisely selective by showing only some life-events, and including only some people in mutual viewings. And some videos will be “private showing” for only one person. God could just ignore the excluded events & people, or He could give personally customized executive summaries to each person, with only the information they need so they can make progress toward becoming fully restored, personally and interpersonally. [more]
how? with God's super-powers: If... God uses Life-Review Videos to help people learn from their experiences in Life, producing this Super-Reality would require (using analogy with human technologies) an immense amount of memory and processing power. It also would require a control of time-and-space that is far beyond our ability to understand, plus a knowledge of each person's privately silent thinking-and-feeling. All of this might be possible because God is omniscient & omnipotent so He knows all & can do all. / I say "this might be possible" because maybe... God's omniscience shows him that Videos are impossible (or impractical) due to the characteristics of space-and-time, despite His omnipotence. Or maybe God will decide to not use Videos, because (with omniscient evaluating) He thinks Videos will not be an effective way to sanctify people, or for another reason.
how? with human super-abilities: A person who is experiencing videos would also need immense memory and processing power; these would be some of the super-abilities given by God. The experiencing would be especially complex if there is Mutual Viewing of videos. You can imagine the complexity of Mutual Viewing by thinking about the two times (past Life & current Afterlife) and multiple Points of View (by you & by others) outlined here:
imagine the... |
re-experiencing during videos: |
experiencing during videos: |
experiencing by you,
during Afterlife, from
many Points-of-View,
from your own POV,
plus POVs of others. |
of a past Life-event, including
details of the situation-contexts,
what you were thinking/feeling,
and also, for the same Life-event,
what they were thinking/feeling. |
of the current Afterlife-reality,
of your own thinking/feeling,
and their thinking/feeling that
is happening now in Afterlife. |
what and how? mutual viewings for saved-and-unsaved: I think "Life is important" and "the main purpose of your Life is learning how to improve your loving of God & people" and "God wants you to continue learning in Afterlife" in ways that maybe include Life-Review Videos being viewed by "people who were unsaved-in-Life and... were saved-in-Life." IF God will want saved people to learn more from Life – so they can become more spiritually mature – by viewing Videos, this could happen while unsaved people are in UR-Hell or FA-Hell, or EM-Hell. But if God will cause FA, and if saved people will watch videos, will their Mutual Viewings include unsaved people, during the time period before the unsaved are annihilated?
• If “no” would their absence hinder the Total Restoration (with full emotional-and-spiritual maturity) of saved persons by hindering a Total Reconciliation of Relationships?
• If “yes” will God overcome the geographic challenge of Mutual Viewings that include saved people (in His Heaven-Kingdom) and unsaved people (temporarily in The Lake of Fire before they are killed with FA) by running cosmically-remote “Zoom Meetings”? (this could be possible because God is The Master of Space-and-Time)
• If “yes” and watching videos leads an unsaved person to forgive others & repent for their offenses, and they believe, God could say “you now repent-and-believe so I will justify you, and you now are cooperating with My process of purifying because you want to become sanctified, so eventually I will save you.” Or... will God still annihilate this person, after they have repented-and-believed, and have made significant progress in their journey toward total sanctification? if yes, does His rejection of their believing-and-repenting seem like an effective way to produce maximum righteous justice and joy? if yes, would God be giving free will during Life (when they unwisely “said no to God” with a will that was enslaved to sin) and removing free will during Afterlife (when they wisely are “saying yes to God” with a will that has been freed from sin)?
what and how? maturing after sanctification: Will saved people use Videos? Maybe. At the end of Life, a saved person is just partially sanctified. In Afterlife they will become totally sanctified, but how? Will this happen instantly or gradually, and will they be a passive receiver or active participator, and will they suffer? The Bible doesn't answer these questions with certainty, and the mainstream “answers” differ in major traditions, in Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, so there is uncertainty. "The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines purgatory as a 'purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven,' which is experienced by those 'who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified'." Almost all theologians – in all traditions, ranging from conservative to liberal – agree that every saved-in-Life Christian is "imperfectly purified" when they die, so (logically) every Christian will need "purification" to achieve holiness. But in Catholicism, "imperfectly purified" is defined narrowly so some Christians will avoid Catholic Purgatory. By contrast, among Protestants a popular claim is that God will cause all Christians to be resurrected with “glorification” that includes total sanctification (instantly, passively) and immortality with specially designed bodies-and-minds. If this happens and saved people already are sanctified, will God still have reasons for them to use Life-Review Videos, with Solo Viewing and Mutual Viewing? I think “yes” if He wants Christians to learn more from our experiences in Life & in Afterlife and to continue growing in maturity, emotionally and spiritually, because if we won't watch videos we'll lose valuable opportunities to learn from Life during Afterlife.
When we ask “who will do Mutual Viewings?” and consider the possible exclusions of unsaved people (if they have been killed with FA) or saved people (if God decides they won't watch) there are 8 possibilities.
what? suffering in Hell: When describing Hell, Jesus says "there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" and He warns us to avoid sinning now – "it is better for you to lose one part of your body [but not literally] than for your whole body [including hand, foot, and eye] to be thrown into hell" – because if we reduce our sinning this is better for us now in Life, and it will be MUCH better for us later in Afterlife.
what? sowing and reaping: Basically, the more a person sinned in Life, the more they will suffer in Afterlife, when Jesus "will judge [and "repay"] all people according to their deeds" because "God is not mocked, for whatever a person sows, this he will also reap," so more sinning now ➞ more suffering later. These judicial actions in Afterlife – when Jesus will "judge" and "repay all people" for their "deeds" – will be retributive justice.
what and how? retributive and restorative: Some Christians claim that in Hell, justice must be either retributive or restorative, but not both. This overly-rigid claim is too limiting. In Afterlife, divine Hell-justice could be only retributive (with EM or FA) or (with UR) both retributive and restorative. Instead of limiting our thinking with either-or claims, we should remain open to the possibility that God will use both-and to achieve His goals for divine justice. We should not be naive by denying the biblical reality of retribution, because “sowing now leads to reaping later” so claiming God is a never-retributive “gentle bunny” is not justified. And we should not be rigid by insisting that retribution must mean non-restoration. Instead, divine actions can be retributive and also have a restorative function with actions done for the purpose of producing restoration.
why? two meanings of retribution – with and without vengeance: Many definitions of retribution are fairly neutral (regarding vengeance), describing retribution as "that which is given in repayment or compensation; return suitable to the merits" or "a justly deserved penalty" or "punishment administered in return for a wrong committed" or "the act of correcting for your wrongdoing" or "theology - punishment or reward distributed in a future life based on performance in this one." But other definitions emphasize vengeance: "punishment inflicted in the spirit of... personal vengeance" or, theologically, "the act of taking revenge (harming someone in retaliation for something harmful that they have done) especially in the next life," so synonyms of retribution include "vengeance, retaliation" and also neutral "repayment, payment." The two meanings – fairly neutral, or emphasizing vengeance – are very different, and both are very common. This causes confusion. And the imprecision-of-meaning allows retribution to be used as a “word weapon” in arguments for all views, for only-retributive (EM, FA) or retributive-and-restorative (UR). A person's “perceived meaning” – in the amount of revenge assumed by the perceiver – will be influenced by their views of God and Afterlife. I think a "neutral" meaning is compatible with what the Bible tells us about God's character and His divine justice, especially when we place retribution in the context of retributive justice that might be retributive-and-restorative justice. God tells us that the suffering we cause in Life (by our sinning), we will reap in Afterlife (with our suffering); but this retribution won't be simple vengeance. I think (as described in Wikipedia) "retribution is different from revenge because retributive justice is directed only at wrongs, has inherent limits, is not personal and involves no pleasure at the suffering of others." And even though some aspects of God's judicial “reaping actions” will be retributive (with sin-sowing leading to pain-reaping), hopefully God's main functional purpose will be restorative, to restore all persons & all relationships. {more about meanings and "moral outrage or personal vengeance"} / iou – The concepts of justice (retributive and/or restorative) are deep & complex, are intensely debated, and of course I'm still learning, so this section (about justice and suffering) will continue being developed & revised, in late-February and beyond.
how? different amounts of suffering: The Bible describes different sufferings that depend on our sinning and God's persuading and God's gifting. If more sinning in Life, more suffering in Afterlife, with sowing-and-reaping. If God is more persuasive in Life, a person has more accountability-responsibility for “saying yes” in Life, and more suffering in Afterlife. And if God gives more to a person (with better abilities & opportunities), He will expect more from them when asking “what did you do with the Life I gave you?” / We can understand how God could produce different sufferings with UR-Hell, and with EM-Hell (with endless Infinite Misery that is moderately painful or extremely painful), but not with FA-Hell (except in a weak way that leads us to ask “why bother doing it?” because memories will be lost... like tears in rain). / In pUR-Hell, probably... a major source of retributive “sowing and reaping” pain will be a person's intensely-sorrowful repentance, with an intrinsic cause-effect relationship between suffering caused (in Life) and suffering received (in Afterlife). It would be consequential justice, with sinning (in Life) causing consequences of suffering (in Afterlife). What a person is now sowing, they later will reap. This personally-customized proportionality seems fair; if a person does more sinning-in-Life that causes more suffering-in-Life for others, then more suffering-in-Afterlife will be received by the person. These differences in repentance-suffering (intrinsically-and-fairly correlated with different amounts of sinning) – plus differences in other kinds of suffering – will produce different amounts of overall suffering.
how? sources of suffering: If God uses purgatorial UR-Hell to purify unsaved people, there might be many sources of painful suffering. It's "might" because we don't know what will happen, so we can only speculate. Certainly... the strange new world of UR-Hell would cause experiences that are intense and unpleasant, leading to powerful thoughts & emotions. Maybe for awhile God will allow (or cause) incorrect thinking about the final outcome – so a person is expecting to get a bad result (with FA or EM) instead of a good result (with UR) – and this causes severe anxiety that is psychologically painful. And maybe there will be unpleasant physical sensations. The entire experience (including the ways a person responds) might be spectacularly extra-ordinary, amazingly alarming, intensely powerful and real. / Maybe... a major source of suffering will be painfully-sorrowful repenting. Maybe this will be stimulated by intense re-experiencing with Life-Review Videos when a sinful person is forced – by being confronted with the undeniable reality of what they did in Life – to acknowledge that their bad actions (or failure to do good actions) caused other people to have significant painful suffering during Life. We tend to underestimate this kind of pain, because most of us rarely do super-sorrowful repenting now in Life. And in Afterlife the suffering would be much greater if God creates a vivid SuperReality and gives people super-abilities that make their sorrow more intense & painful. This repenting will be a key part of God "skillfully using Holy Spirit surgery to remove the sinful character that prevents the person from fully loving Him and fully loving people, so [after surgery] they become healthy personally & interpersonally, they become purified." And suffering also will occur in other ways that are difficult for us to imagine.
how and what? journeys leading to the arrival: No matter how much painful suffering happened in Life and Afterlife – and we can only speculate about the types & intensities & durations of suffering in The Judgment and UR-Hell – eventually an unsaved person will honestly say “my journeys were good (despite the pain) because they helped me learn and led me to The Arrival (in God's Heaven-Kingdom, being fully restored and having Eternal Joy)” and “I thank God for everything He did.”
what and how? the ends {what} justify the means {how}: Is it rational to claim that “the means are justified by the ends?” For people, sometimes. But for God, always. If God will use a UR-Hell {how} where people suffer, we can be certain that His divine means (with some suffering) will be justified by His divine ends {what} of achieving righteous justice in the best possible Final State. A rational theodicy – trying to answer the tough question, “if God is all-powerful and all-good, why does evil exist?” – claims that "an all-powerful, all-good God can allow evil in order to obtain the greater, eternal good." When this essential theodicy-principle is applied to Afterlife, we can say that an all-good God could produce temporary suffering (in UR-Hell) so He can produce a greater permanent good with UR, so after He produces the best possible ending every person will say “everything done by God was good, and I'm joyfully thankful for everything He did.” [theodicy]
how and why? choosing a process with pain: If God wants to restore unsaved people in Afterlife, how will He do it? Probably... by using a purgatorial UR-Hell that is painful yet productive, to change people with education-and-correction, to justify-and-sanctify them (to save them), to transform them so they become sinlessly righteous. IF God will do this, we can ask “why will He choose this process-with-pain instead of a process-without-pain?” I think there is a functional reason:
what and how? only pain that is necessary: During the process of UR-Hell {how}, I think God will not cause any more suffering than is necessary, i.e. not more than is needed to be most effective in producing the results He wants {what}. God will not cause pain, just to cause pain. Instead the pain will be a “side effect” of the experiences that are necessary to purify a person with His divine fire so their sin is eliminated, so they become totally sanctified and they can participate in His Kingdom.
why? the purpose of pain: In pUR-Hell the pain has no "purpose" if the painful suffering is a necessary by-product of the process that God will use to achieve His goals – to sanctify all persons & heal all relationships – because God's purpose will be to sanctify & heal, not to cause pain. {and here is an important non-purpose: a person cannot earn their salvation by their suffering, in Life or Afterlife}
how? suffering by saved people? Will saved people suffer in Afterlife? This depends on the process that God will use to sanctify the saved-in-Life, and mainstream doctrines about this process differ in the major traditions, in Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant. Catholics say Yes (but only for some), and most Protestants say No (for all). Among the reasons for “no” are because maybe...* God will instantly sanctify all Christians when we are resurrected, so we won't require any of the painful “spiritual surgery” that God will use if He sanctifies unsaved people in pUR-Hell; this absence of pain might be described as "the one who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death" in The Lake of Fire where unsaved people will be purified if God produces UR. A saved person "will not be hurt," but how will this happen? • IF a saved-in-Life person won't be sanctified instantly (and passively), God could use a sanctification process that includes spiritual surgery (to remove sinful character) but He will do this in a way that doesn't "hurt" them. Or maybe "will not be hurt" means “not damaged” rather than “feeling no pain.” • IF this person will be sanctified instantly, so they don't need any more sanctification, maybe... they will not be given any special experiences (e.g. watching Life-Review Videos) to help them learn from Life; or they will watch videos (maybe with a sharing of experiences that includes unsaved people) for the purpose of learning more so they can become more mature, and they will sorrowfully repent for their sins-during-Life, but God will protect them (with spiritual comforting,...) so they won't be "hurt" by their sorrows; and there are other possibilities. {* it's "maybe" because we have "reasons for no" but also reasons to wonder}
how? a Wonderful Life Principle: If God will cause FA (or EM), and if the Total Restoration (of saved people) includes “everyone forgiving everyone” to help heal all relationships, will this be possible if most people will be annihilated? Maybe not. Why? For each person, a Total Restoration would include corrections-and-healings that are internal-personal (to heal their own thinking & feeling) and external-interpersonal (to heal their relationships with every other person). As explained in my favorite movie, It's a Wonderful Life, "Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around, he leaves an awful hole." If any person "isn't around" for Mutual Viewings — because God has killed them (with FA) or is exiling them (with EM), or they're already totally-sanctified and God decides “you don't need these experiences” — they won't see-hear-feel Mutual Videos, and won't be part of a universal repenting & mutual forgiving. Their absence "leaves an awful hole" that will eliminate the deep reconciliations that would occur when during Mutual Viewings they forgive (as a victim) and (as an victimizer) are forgiven. Thus, with FA the complex web of interpersonal interactions might not be fully healed in a Total Reconciling of everyone with everyone. In fact, for any individual (let's call him Joe) there might not be a Total Restoration – including internal-personal and also external-interpersonal (with a healing of all relationships) – because Joe had interpersonal interactions with unsaved people who (with FA) will be gone forever, and their absence might hinder a healing of Joe's relationships with them. / justifiable humility: I say "might not" (instead of “will not”) and "might hinder a healing" (not “might prevent a healing”) because God could produce Total Reconciliations in other ways. But IF Mutual Viewings – with re-experiencings of major Life-Events being shared by all major participants – are an effective way to produce reconciliations (by promoting mutual empathies, compassions, and forgivings), this powerful tool will be less effective if some "major participants" are missing due to FA.
But a related problem is more difficult to understand, and much more troubling to consider, when we ask...
how – with an Eternal Joy Question:
During their Life a saved person will love some unsaved persons. If in God's final Heaven-Kingdom these unsaved people are missing – due to being killed with FA, or exiled with EM – will their absence diminish the Eternal Joyfulness of a saved person who loved them? This is a tough question for FA-with-death and (especially) for EM-with-torment. I don't think any of the answers are satisfactory.
Yes, it's possible that God might cause a saved person to have a change of attitude so they won't love any of the previously-loved unsaved persons, because their sanctified mind-and-heart will agree with God that unsaved persons deserve their damnation, but... is this loss of love how “loving our neighbors” will be “improved” by total sanctification? A less-common answer is that the saved won't remember any of our previously-loved unsaved, so we won't “miss them” and we won't be thinking about their death or misery, but... would a loss of memories decrease our “whole-person quality in Afterlife” and the value of Life? {will God produce Eternal Joy by causing a loss of love or by swiss-cheesing our memories?}
Or a defender of damnation (with FA or EM) can just say “God has promised the WHAT of producing joy – 'He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there will be no more death, sadness, crying, or pain' – and even if we don't know HOW God will stop mourning (stop sadness & crying) for missing persons, we know that He can do this and will do it.” I think this response-of-faith is more reasonable, compared with attempts to explain HOW by proposing a loss of love, or loss of memories.
But is the lack of satisfactory how-explanation an indication that God won't cause FA or EM? Of course it's possible for God to produce the WHAT (of joy without mourning) if He causes FA or EM, even though it's difficult for us to understand HOW He could do this. But it's easy to understand if God will produce the best possible ending with Universal Restoration, because we'll be able to continue loving (in Afterlife) everyone we were loving (in Life).
how? universal salvation and free will: Universal Restoration proposes that in Afterlife unsaved people can be saved IF they believe-and-repent, and all will believe-and-repent, so God will save all. But if people have free will, how can we be certain (or even confident) that "ALL will believe-and-repent"? Here are four possible responses:
• maybe God has told us (in the Bible) that He will save all people. We can simply accept this WHAT, without knowing HOW God will do it.
• maybe God will sovereignly use His total power, so His choices (not free choices by humans) will determine who is saved, and if God wants to save every person, He will cause this to happen. {situational free will: even if God lets us freely choose in most life-situations, maybe – due to the immense importance of salvation – God “decides salvation for us” and He always decides “yes” and this eventually becomes actualized for every person, at some point in their Life or Afterlife.}
• or maybe UR will happen with free-choice decisions of “yes” by every person. But HOW can God save all people if He allows free will for all, so during Afterlife any unsaved person can freely decide to continue not-believing or not-repenting? God has the ability to save each person because He knows all and can do all, is omniscient and omnipotent. God knows how to be strongly persuasive in Afterlife (even if He chose to avoid being strongly persuasive in Life) by providing stronger evidence (in stronger ways) and giving people a freed will – to replace the semi-free will we have during Life (that isn't fully-free because it's enslaved by sin, spiritually insane), by transforming them (with education-and-correction in pUR-Hell) until they have a better decision-making perspective, with a freed will (that has been freed from its slavery to sin) – so they are able to make a wise decision by believing-and-repenting, and they wisely decide “yes” at some point.* God has unlimited knowledge (of each person) and skill (in using His knowledge); He knows how to give personally-customized experiences that will persuade a particular person so they will believe and will freely choose to repent. The inevitable result (that this person WILL be saved) is analogous to a chess match between a master and novice; the chess master WILL win, due to having superior knowledge-and-skill, even though the novice is freely choosing their own moves, is not being controlled by the master player. {but... is conversion a “free choice” if it's motivated by fear of Infinite Misery? analogy with gunpoint robbery} {UR could be produced by divine sovereignty or human free will – knowledge-and-skill in salvation & chess} / * Imagine that God is planning to annihilate an unsaved person, but first He has them watch Life-Review Videos (why?) and during their watching the person repents (for their sinful offenses during Life) and believes. If their repenting-and-believing is rejected by God (and He annihilates them anyway), did He give free will during Life (when they unwisely “said no to God” with a will that was enslaved to sin) but remove free will during Afterlife (when they wisely are “saying yes to God” with a will that has been freed from sin)? / In courts the verdict occasionally (in 1/400 criminal cases in USA) is not guilty by reason of insanity.
This argument for how “God will get what He wants, even though He won't save everyone” seems biblically-logical, although it's rejected by Calvinists (for reasons that are biblical & logical) and also by UR-Christians who claim that God will not allow a result of eternally lasting misery (or death) to be determined by foolish decisions made by people during Life when their “free will” isn't truly free because it's enslaved by sin, is spiritually insane; instead, UR proposes that God will transform unsaved sinners in UR-Hell so (instead of a will that is un-free, enslaved, insane, as in Life)* they eventually will have a freed will that no longer is enslaved to sin, so it's truly free and they can make a wise freed-will decision. -- https://billygraham.org/answers/god-created-us-for-one-reason?ri=wc
• or maybe God will save some people who were unsaved during Life, but not all, to produce semi-Universal Restoration (semi-UR) that is a “hybrid” combination of UR-and-FA or UR-and-EM, with UR (for those who are saved) plus FA or EM (for those who pay their own sin-penalty of death).
We see a fictional semi-UR in The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, but with stronger persuading & freeing-of-wills by God this could become total-UR. {iou – soon, maybe in Summer 2025, I'll write more about this, and will provide links to authors who have useful insights about Lewis-and-UR & George MacDonald.}
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My Relationships — with God and
with people (unbelievers & believers)
my relationship with God
When I think – with appropriate humility (not too little, not too much) – about basic justice and the character of God, here are my responses with each view:
if I try to imagine – contrary to what I believe – that God will cause the infinite suffering of Eternal Misery, the horror of EM makes it very difficult for me to imagine being able to fully love God (with my whole mind & heart),* but...
when I imagine the mercy of FA, it's easier to fully love God, and...
when I imagine the grace of UR, it's easiest to fully love God, and to proudly praise “what God will do FOR unbelievers in UR-Hell” by sin-purifying each person, and producing restorative justice when everyone forgives everyone, so all persons & all relationships will be healed in the best possible ending and every person will say “God is lovingly good, and everything He did was good.”
* This is how I feel, but another person may be able to think God will cause EM and fully love God. And they can sincerely intend to be God-honoring in their defending of EM.
my relationships with unbelievers
It's more difficult to eagerly share The Gospel when I must argue against the common assumption that The Good News is a strange mixture that includes Good News (of God loving all people now, and giving some Eternal Joy) plus Bad News (of God hating some people later, and causing Eternal Misery). By contrast, thinking “God will produce Universal Restoration” leads to better us-and-us feelings instead of feeling us-and-them or even us-versus-them. {a distinction: it's “us and us” as fellow humans who share most experiences of life, but not as fellow Christians who join together in worshiping God.} / In one of my favorite videos, Robin Parry explains The Practical Theology of UR that includes his
God's relationship with unbelievers: God loves each person, is interacting with every unbeliever during Life, is “doing things” that affect their Life and their Afterlife. If God will produce UR and the now-unsaved become later-saved, everything He does with them now will be preserved forever. Christians have a theistic worldview, so we should recognize (in all of our thinking) that God is constantly interacting with everything and everyone, including unbelievers. This awareness will affect the way we view current un-believers — who might be pre-believers (if EM or FA), or certainly are pre-believers (if UR) and thus will be followers of Christ in the future, along with us — and this perspective should improve our own interactions & relationships with them now.
our relationship with unbelievers: Here, "our" means us-and-God, i.e. Christians-and-God, e.g. me-and-God, you-and-God,... in the complex web of relationships that involve all of us and God. Christians are theists who believe that God "is interacting with every unbeliever," is working in their life. You and I can work in the lives of some unbelievers. Of course, our work will be more effective when we cooperate with what God is doing in the life of an unbeliever. One way to improve this cooperation is described by Robin Parry in his video about Practical Theology: "if you think that death is a point of no return, then the pressure is really on you, [but a perspective of Universal Salvation] removes some of that pressure [and then] my job is to help this person move closer toward God, wherever they're at. I have the freedom to try and discern what the spirit is doing, where the spirit is working in the life of this person, and help that person move further, closer towards God, without feeling the pressure that I have to get them all the way. It's the freedom to be discerning and a bit more sensitive to people. You can sort of guide people at their own speed, but you have to be listening and paying attention to what God is doing in their life." {here, Robin was talking about end-of-Life interactions, but similar principles are useful for anytime-in-Life / note: to make the description flow more smoothly, I've removed some words from this quotation, without inserting ...'s in the gaps, but this hasn't changed the meaning.}
my relationships with believers,
in the narrow area of life involving views of hell.
How do I feel? I'm disappointed by Christians who (in the past) made Eternal Misery “the traditional belief” – despite its biblical weakness – and now (in the present) continue to support this choice. How? In the church (the community of believers) there are strong pressures to conform, to avoid challenging the common assuming of EM. And I'm sad because when fellow Christians say “God will cause Eternal Misery for most of the people He created” I think they are saying untrue-and-harmful things about the character of God and this makes it more difficult for people to trust God, thus hindering our evangelism and our discipleship. I feel disappointed and sad.
How do they feel? So far my own sharing-of-ideas with fellow Christians (individually and in small groups) has been very limited, but has gone well. Their responses have been gracious and loving. But I'm still being cautious, moving slowly. And based on what I've read about the experience of others who have challenged EM, the responses by fellow Christians are sometimes moderately hostile personally (but can be very hostile professionally) toward a person proposing FA, and generally are more hostile toward a person proposing UR, or even describing it as a biblically-plausible possibility.
two traditions: One didn't happen, another did. We can imagine a history in which very few people now believe EM. In this cultural context – that assumes “God will not cause Eternal Misery” – it would be difficult to claim “our loving Father will cause Eternal Misery.” Unfortunately, in the current reality our cultural tradition is to believe EM, and this often produces pressure to affirm a “traditional” doctrine of EM.
influence by tradition: Sometimes our thoughts-and-actions are influenced by the powerful inertia of tradition, by the psychology-and-sociology of conformity. How? All people (including Christians) want to avoid conflicts that are internal and external, are personal and interpersonal. We want to avoid the personal internal conflict that occurs when we hear a claim that “you have wrong beliefs” or “your church (and beloved pastor) has been wrong in its beliefs,” because these challenges produce unpleasant feelings (cognitive dissonance) in our minds & hearts. And we want to avoid the interpersonal external conflict that would occur if we resist the strong pressures to conform, to continue believing the culturally-accepted assumption of Eternal Misery. { iou - later I'll write a paragraph with more details about our evaluations-of-views being influenced by non-biblical factors (like those summarized above), by internal conflicts due to cognitive dissonance, and external conflicts due to pressures that produce reasons for caution }
respectful discussions: Christians who believe the Bible should resist external pressures. We should, like noble Bereans, study the Bible to learn what it teaches about hell, and respectfully discuss what we find, with Christian love. When we're discussing with mutual respect, useful principles are "in essentials unity, in non-essentials diversity, in all things charity." Leaders of the early church asked “is any doctrine-of-hell essential (because it's taught with certainty and is necessary for orthodoxy)” and they decided “no” so they didn't include any view in their major doctrinal statements, the Apostles' Creed & Nicene Creed. By contrast, currently a few pro-EM extremists try to intimidate others by labeling anti-EM a “heresy” but this “one-word argument” isn't respectful and isn't biblical.
defending EM and criticizing EM
All of us should agree that Bible-believing Christians can – with appropriate humility (not too little, not too much) – either defend EM-doctrine or criticize EM-doctrine. One reason is the logic of “IF and thus BECAUSE” plus...
our IF-split: When we're trying to imagine the character of God IF He will cause EM, some devout Bible-believing Christians think “YES, this IF will happen,” but others think “NO, this IF won't happen.” After a person has decided YES or NO, they now are thinking that either “BECAUSE God will cause EM, ” or “BECAUSE God won't cause EM, ” and each fills the blank in a way that will honor God. Here is the simple process of logical thinking for each God-loving Christian:
I think that
BECAUSE God
will cause EM, |
I should show why God's causing-of-EM is good
in my effort to lovingly defend the character of God. |
I think that
BECAUSE God
won't cause EM, |
I should show why God is not a causer-of-EM
{ and one reason is that He is too good to cause EM }
in my effort to lovingly defend the character of God. |
Our understanding of this logic (IF-thus-BECAUSE) will make it easier for us to respect the God-honoring intentions of claims made by defenders of EM, and by critics of EM.
by defenders of EM: I think Christians who claim “God will cause Eternal Misery” are saying untrue-and-harmful things about God. And a slanderous statement is defined as saying something that is "both untrue and harmful to a reputation." But defenders of EM think their claim is true so I don't think they are being intentionally slanderous. Instead they are thinking that "BECAUSE God will cause EM" they "should show why God's causing-of-EM is good," so they have God-honoring intentions. They are not giving a general defense of intentionally causing long-term misery. They are only saying that, in this specific situation, “I trust God, so I have faith that BECAUSE God will do this, He must have justifiable reasons for doing it.”
by critics of EM: As explained in the table, I want to "defend the honor of God" by "showing (biblically) why God is not an EM-causer." I'm extremely confident that "God won't cause EM" for many reasons. The strongest reason is that in careful studies of relevant biblical texts, we see very strong support against EM, but very weak support for EM. In another kind of Bible-based evidence, we see a mis-match when we compare the biblically revealed character of the actual God (who is good) with the character of a hypothetical EM-Causing God (who would do bad actions). The hypothetical EM-Causing God is just a theory (invented by humans) about Actual God. I think it's a false theory, due to the extremely strong biblical evidence against EM. Therefore, when I criticize the actions of God IF He will cause EM, I think this IF won't happen, so I'm thinking "BECAUSE God won't cause EM" I can be free to criticize only the humanly-constructed false theory about God (not Actual God) so my intention is to honor God by showing that "God is not an EM-causer."
Evangelism – Good News plus Bad News ?
With each view of Hell, what is The Whole News?
••• with all three views, we can proclaim The Good News that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your Life.
• with Eternal Misery (EM) we combine this Good News with the Bad News that God hates you and has a horrible plan for your Afterlife, if you're unsaved when you die. But even for people who think they are saved, belief in EM can produce grief when they're thinking-and-feeling empathy for the Infinite Misery of many people (most of the people created by God) who include many of the people they love. {is this combination of Good+Bad really Good News?}
• with Universal Restoration (UR) everything is truly Good News because we can explain how God will produce the best possible ending – Eternal Joy for everyone! – by transforming all persons & all relationships so we are free (mentally, emotionally, spiritually) with no sin, we are the way He always wanted us to be, so we can fully love other people and fully love God, can be fully alive with Eternal Joy. In this way, God will produce righteousness that is justice and ultimately each of us will say “God was wise, just, and good, in everything He did” and “I thank God for creating me.” This is Good News!
• with Final Annihilation (FA) it's Good News (for saved people) and Sad News (for the unsaved people who will be killed, and for everyone who loves them). FA isn't The Bad News of EM, but isn't The Good News of UR, it's just Sad News, with lives-and-memories "lost... like tears in rain. [more]"
[more about The Whole News of EM & UR & FA]
enthusiasm for evangelism: Are we less enthusiastic in proclaiming The Gospel if we – and usually the people we're talking with – think God will cause Eternal Misery (or even Final Annihilation), so instead of Good News it's actually Mixed News with Good News + Bad News?
praising God for Hell: Yes, we can enthusiastically praise God for everything He does, including what we believe He will do FOR people in UR-Hell. This praising can help us fully love God with our whole heart & whole mind – as commanded by Jesus – because God would do good things for people He is loving if He produces the best possible ending with UR-Hell. But it's more difficult to praise God because of what He will do TO people with FA-Hell (where He would kill them) or with EM-Hell (where He would force them to endure the Infinite Misery of Eternal Conscious Torment). [more]
hoping for Universal Restoration: Every person (especially Christians who are commanded by Jesus to fully “love our neighbors”) should hope – with all of our heart & mind, our feeling & thinking – that God will produce Universal Restoration, because it's the best possible ending. {if a person thinks the Bible teaches EM, they can humbly hope their conclusion is wrong}
the purpose of salvation: Are we mainly being saved from our slavery to sin? Or is the main benefit that God saves us from God because – if He doesn't save us – He will eternally torment us, causing Eternal Misery? Of course, defenders of EM say “both” but when a person is terrified by the threat of EM, they often will be mainly motivated by their fear of EM-Hell (of God harming them), not by their desire to be freed from sin, or by their love for God. {God hates sin and loves people, wants justice} [more]
total whole-person motives: When a person is continually deciding whether to “say YES” and live by faith in each moment, their total motivation combines many motivations, including...
• wanting better intrinsic Life-Process by getting more true joy (by more fully loving God & people) because they believe that God deserves to be loved-and-served, and that God can help them overcome their self-centered sinfulness so they can more effectively love-and-serve other people;
• wanting better extrinsic Afterlife-Results by getting joy in Heaven and avoiding misery in Hell.
Although I'm calling these motivations intrinsic (doing life-process) and extrinsic (receiving afterlife-results), all motives are internal because all contribute to how a person internally thinks about “getting what they want” in their whole life-and-afterlife as a whole person.
fear-motives versus love-motives: Both motives are biblically justifiable, but it's often "versus" because typically when fear-motives increase, love-motives decrease. Almost always, due to “the ways people think-and-feel” our fear-motives are highest with belief in EM, and love-motives are highest with belief in UR. { more about love-motives and fear-motives is illustrated by conversions due to rice bribes & gun threats - biblical fear of God and "there is no fear in love" - free will with misery-fear or gun-fear - proposing marriage with promises plus a threat - a “love me or I will hate you and hurt you” dilemma and..... (in my page for pre-believers) how I'm praising the actual character of God and criticizing an incorrect theory-about-God, Great is Thy Faithfulness (now & later, in pages 70 & 200), my empathy for what you're thinking & feeling, imagining Eternal Misery that never....... ends, promises plus a threat, the “love me or else” dilemma, fear and free will, What Hitler & Stalin Did compared with What Jesus Will Do IF EM (but He won't do EM - so the IF won't happen) }
motives for living as a dedicated disciple: Your life is God's gift for you. The way you live is your gift to God. By living as a disciple – dedicated to fully loving God & people, bringing glory to God – you will feel much better in Afterlife when He asks “what did you do with the life I gave you, with your abilities-and-opportunities?” and you hear Him say "Well done, good and faithful servant! ... Come and share your master’s happiness!" A follower of Jesus (a disciple) is motivated in many ways: by believing that God exists and is good (is worthy of worship and service); by love & fear & other motives; by viewing salvation mainly as being saved from sin or saved from hell; and more. When all motives are combined, basically you want to be a productive partner in The Kingdom of God now in Life and later in Afterlife. / The overall “blend of motives” varies from one Christian to another. And so do the ways that believing a view (EM, FA, UR) affects the discipleship of an individual and a community. But when all things are considered, I think that for most Christians, high love motives (easier with UR) are most effective in producing fully-lived discipleship.
practical effects for living: When we share The Good News, is it useful (for evangelism) and beneficial (for people) if we try to “cause maximum fear” by including a threat of Eternal Misery? Maybe not. But for many Christians, wanting to maintain motivation-by-fear is important, is a major factor in continuing to say “God will cause EM” because they worry that a non-Christian will think “I can believe later, in Afterlife” (with UR) or (with FA) “death wouldn't be so bad.” They think that our motivating with carrots-and-sticks will be much stronger if we threaten unbelievers with the terrifying “infinitely big stick” of Eternal Misery; they may even think the infinite stick is necessary for effective evangelism. But even though EM increases fear-motives to convert, it tends to decrease a non-Christian's belief in God, and decrease their love-motives, their ability to trust-and-love God, their desire to “say yes” and live for God. The overall result of these conflicing factors is complex – with each view (UR, FA, EM) having some positive effects on their thinking (and responding) but also some negative effects – and the overall effects will vary from one person to another. Although I think rational people should respond by “saying yes to God” now (asap), there will be a wide variation in how people actually do respond. [more]
practical effects for parents: When a loving parent imagines the "wide variation" in responses, they have concerns for "people" in general, but especially for their own children. If a child they love is released from a fear of EM-Hell, will they “run wild” and sin freely, making unwise decisions that will harm themselves, and harm others? Or will others “run wild” in ways that harm their children? These are possibilities, are reasons for concern by a loving mother or father. I understand why they're worried, have empathy for them, don't have a comforting “answer” to calm their anxieties, cannot guarantee that their children will not be harmed. Unfortunately, dangers for children (and adults) are part of “the package deal” of sin, are some of sin's many damaging effects on individuals and societies. Sigh.
Regarding all of these concerns – for non-Christians & children (above) and Christians (below) – I understand, have empathy, can give no guarantees; I can only repeat the fact that “each view (UR, FA, EM) has effects that are positive & negative on our thinking-and-responding,” plus my conclusion that the overall long-term effects will be better if we reject the horror of unbiblical EM and embrace the mercy of biblical FA or the beauty of biblical UR. And our goal is finding truth and proclaiming it, so we should try to determine what the Bible teaches by carefully studying it, and then we should proclaim this belief.
practical effects for evangelism: Above I examine possible effects on non-Christians if their fear of EM-Hell is reduced or eliminated. But this change also would affect Christians. A common concern is that we will be less eager (and less active) in sharing The Good News if we aren't motivated by our own fear that non-Christians will suffer the infinite misery of Eternal Misery if we don't persuade them to “say YES to God” before they die. But which hell-view is most effective for persuasion? Probably it isn't EM. There is a tradeoff, because even though EM increases fear-motives to convert, it often decreases belief (in God) and love-motives (to trust-and-love God, to “say yes”), and the overall effects vary from one non-Christian to another. And what about truth? I think EM is least likely to be true, to happen in Afterlife.
shifting from fear-motives to love-motives: If we shift our evangelistic emphasis from fear-based motives (especially the “fire escape” motivation of desparately wanting to avoid EM-Hell)* toward love-based motives, we'll need to develop more-persuasive explanations for why a non-Christian should say YES and live by faith – so they can live better – as a Christian disciple, a dedicated follower of Jesus. {* but I think teaching some fear-of-hell is justifiable and beneficial, so with these warnings plus praising God for what He will do in Hell a belief in UR could bring a return to “hellfire and brimstone” preaching!}
belief in EM versus belief in God: This doesn't have to be "versus" but it often is, because when a person logically evaluates four claims of EM – that God exists and is all-powerful and is all-good (these are biblical, are affirmed by EM, FA, UR) and will cause Eternal Misery (probably unbiblical, is rejected by UR, FA) – they find it difficult to accept all four claims. Most people think “God is good” and “God will cause Eternal Misery” don't fit together, because they think-and-feel (using the moral conscience given to them by God) that a good God would not cause the infinite misery of Eternal Misery. Therefore they logically conclude that “this God (who is good and causes EM) does not exist.”
evangelistic responsibilities: Christians should try to accurately describe what the Bible teaches, including the character & actions (past, present, future) of God. We should try to avoid giving false hope or causing false fear. We should try to avoid giving the false hope that would occur IF a person claims “UR will happen” if UR won't happen (in the reality of Afterlife); proponents of EM claim that avoiding this huge mistake is a reason to think we should maximize fear-motivation by claiming “EM will happen.” But we also should try to avoid causing the false fear that would occur IF a person claims “God will cause EM” if He won't do this; proponents of non-EM (of FA or UR) claim that avoiding this huge mistake (of saying untrue-and-harmful things about the character of God, leading many listeners to think “because God will cause EM, I cannot trust Him and love Him” or “I cannot believe God exists”) is a reason to think we should not try to maximize fear-motivation. Each "avoid" is important, but (due to biblical ambiguity) it's impossible to know which "if" (about Afterlife-reality) is correct, so we cannot know-with-certainty that we're avoiding either giving false hope or causing false fear. {why does biblical ambiguity and weak divine persuasion during Life plus a responsibility to “avoid false hope” provide logical support against EM, and for UR?} {claiming “FA will happen” would cause false hope if EM actually will happen, or it would cause false fear if UR will happen.} {what would be worse, FA or EM?}
avoiding the worst false fear: Should we tell people that “God won't cause Infinite Misery”? We have reasons for action (for “yes”) – to persuade people that God is good, so He can be trusted & loved – and also reasons for caution. But when all things are considered, the more I learn, the more it seems wise to avoid causing the worst fear (Eternal Misery) because I think EM is extremely unlikely and therefore EM is likely to be a false fear, so we should be...
challenging the cultural elephant: An ugly “elephant in the room” already exists. It's a belief that has grown into our culture, with strong roots. It won't disappear if Christians pretend to ignore it and remain silent. What is the cultural elephant? It's the common assumption that Christians claim “God will cause Eternal Misery,” and it will continue if we say nothing. This general assuming-of-EM can be an obstacle that hinders faith, when a person is trying to understand how The Good News really is good news. Instead it can seem like very bad news, because every person recognizes (by just using common sense) the logical strangeness of claiming “God loves people” and also “God will eternally torment most people.” We intuitively know that if God will cause Eternal Misery, He will be doing bad actions. A belief that “God will cause Infinite Misery” produces strong thoughts-and-feelings. The culturally-assumed belief that “God is an EM-Causer” strongly influences the ways people think-and-feel about God. It's an “elephant in the mind,” an ugly mental elephant that leads a person to ask “should I respect this EM-Causing God? can I trust Him? do I want to love Him?”
showing empathy for the mental elephant: Instead of ignoring this elephant in the mind, we can tell people that we understand how they feel. In my page for non-Christians one goal is "to let you know that I have empathy for what you're thinking & feeling, that I understand the rational reasons for your fear-and-disgust ... [because I agree with your gut-level instinct that] a divine causing of Eternal Misery would not be a lovingly good action." And a section for Christians explains why showing empathy for the mental elephant is a strong reason for action – to say “hey, let's do something about this elephant” – but also describes reasons for doing actions with caution and wisdom.
reasons for “saying YES to God” now: If you're an unbeliever who isn't terrified by the threat of Eternal Misery, why might you want to “say YES” now? What are the benefits? My page for non-Christians explains Why and What beginning with intrinsic life-process motives: "the main benefit is that you will have a closer relationship with God, letting you more fully experience the loving of God. He also will help you live better by supplying what you need (love, joy, wisdom, strength, courage,...)* in your daily living." Then I describe the extrinsic afterlife-results motives of wanting to gain positives (of Heaven) later, and avoid negatives (of UR-Hell, or FA-Hell or maybe even EM-Hell) later. And I conclude that "if you're a rational person who believes that God exists and He wants to give you salvation, you should respond by ‘saying YES to God’ now (asap) because your Life will be better now, and later your Afterlife will be better, so at all times (during Life & Afterlife) your living will be better." {* if Christians tell people that God "will help you live better," of course we should show this by actually living better, by loving better.}
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The Love Story of PSA
The Love Story of God: This page looks at one aspect of God's love, showing you that the Bible tells us “God won't cause Eternal Misery” so you can fully trust Him and fully love Him and “say YES to God” in your mind & heart (in your thinking & feeling) during your everyday living-by-faith. PSA is another aspect of God's love. IF God produces The Best Possible Ending with Universal Restoration, this would be a very loving action, so we can praise Him for The Love Story of Universal Restoration. IF. But God already has done PSA, so we don't have to wonder "IF". And we can praise Him for The Love Story of Penal Substitutionary Atonement because PSA is very loving; it's God's method of reconciling us with Him, and that's very good. In my thinking-and-feeling, more liking of PSA leads to more loving of God. But some proponents of UR are opponents of PSA; they seem to think that if people like PSA less, they will love God more. I strongly disagree with these critics, and this is my main motivation for writing this section, to explain why I disagree, why instead we should be praising God for PSA. {more about my motivations}
believing the biblical evidence: Most evangelical Christians think Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) is an essential part of God's plan to convert sin-and-death into salvation-and-life. I agree, because a logical evaluation of biblical evidence (in OT & NT) strongly supports a basic PSA claiming only that Christ was our Substitute and He paid our Penalty (for sins) to achieve Atonement and reconcile us with God. But a basic PSA that is biblical PSA (because the sin-penalty is death) can be distorted by adding unbiblical details, especially when PSA is influenced by a belief in Eternal Misery (and its unbiblical claim that the sin-penalty is infinite suffering). Therefore every Christian should be willing to say “I strongly support basic biblical PSA” even if they question some of the added details.
trusting the wisdom of God: Critics of PSA ask justifiable questions about some “details” that are added in common descriptions of PSA. But despite this, I think all Christians should believe basic biblical PSA. (and also Christus Victor) My feeling is that God wisely decided why-and-how to use PSA, He knows it will work properly, and (in the past, present, future) He causes it to work properly. When we consider everything God has done for us – with gracious salvation and in other ways – our simple bottom-line response should be to trust God, to trust that He has done what is best, and will continue doing what is best. We should humbly appreciate...
The Love Story of PSA: God wants us to know that His plan for salvation (by using PSA) was loving & good, so we will know-and-feel (in our minds-and-hearts) how much God loves us. By using PSA, God shows us that sin is very bad, and God is very loving. When we appreciate how God's using of PSA shows His love for us, we can more fully love God and trust Him, believing that what He has done (and is doing, and will do) is best, so we can like PSA and love God. {by contrast, harsh critics of PSA seem to think disliking PSA will lead to loving God, but I disagree.}
The Best Ending and PSA: God's use of retributive action in the past — with a penalty of death (that is merciful) in Genesis 3, and then the death of Jesus (for PSA, with self-sacrificial retribution by God on Himself with Jesus enthusiastically saying “this is what I want to do for the people I love”) — is an essential part of His plan to use restorative action in the present-and-future, with restoring for Christians now & later (if EM, FA, UR) and (if UR) for all others later.
The Worst Ending and PSA: A penalty of EM would not be satisfied by the Substitution of PSA, because of two mis-matchings when we compare The Crucifixion Experience (finite suffering with death) and an Eternal Misery Experience (infinite suffering without death). In this way, PSA provides evidence against EM and thus for UR-or-FA.
a little more: In the context of Conditional Immortality the Short Overview and Long Overview examine the mis-matchings between EM and PSA & Crucifixion-plus-Resurrection, and why we should combine PSA (especially regarding The Crucifixion) with Christus Victor (especially regarding The Resurrection).
a lot more: I think PSA is important. If you have questions about PSA — what it is (and isn't), why it's biblical, why most criticisms are unjustified if we define PSA in biblical ways — you can learn more in my page devoted to PSA where these ideas, and others, are examined in more depth.
God's penalty of merciful death
How can a penalty be merciful? {a hint: think about why answers of “yes” and “no” are both justifiable when we ask “if God annihilates unsaved sinners, would this be merciful?”} We can say “yes” because FA is merciful compared with EM, and “no” because FA is less merciful than UR. {iow, divine love in action is best with UR, less-loving with FA, and worst with EM.} / God wisely responded to sin by removing His supernatural protection (symbolized by His "tree of life") so natural process would lead to natural death. This was a severe penalty – because humans lost our God-sustained immortality – that also is merciful because it prevents people from living forever with sin, in sinful Eternal Misery. {and... God gives immortality in the way He wants} God can prevent sinful EM by causing either FA or UR.
sin-penalties are intrinsic and judicial: Genesis 3 tells us that because of sin, every human has two kinds of severe penalties, intrinsic and judicial: INTRINSIC penalties are consequences of sin, causing spiritual loss (a decrease in quality-of-relationship with God, described in verses 6-13) and relational injury (with interpersonal relationships damaged in many ways, as in the finger-pointing of 12-13) and physical suffering (with life becoming more difficult & less pleasant, in 16-19); and a divinely-decided JUDICIAL penalty of Death (declared in 22, actualized in 23-24) begins with Biological Death at the end of Life. Then most people have additional penalties in Afterlife: • If God causes cause FA, His JUDICIAL penalty of Death is actualized, with unsaved people losing their opportunity for Eternal Life with Joy; this is a huge loss, a very severe penalty. • Even if God causes UR to ultimately produce the best possible Final Result, before this all people will suffer the INTRINSIC consequences of sin during Life, and we die at the end of Life (after a fear of Death, followed by grieving among those who still are living), and in Afterlife unsaved people have beneficial-yet-unpleasant purifying experiences in purgatorial UR-Hell, so even with UR our sinning has brought severe penalties. But with either FA or UR, the experiences & results are merciful compared with EM that would force most people to suffer the INTRINSIC consequences-of-sin forever, because with EM the JUDICIAL penalty of Death is never enforced, instead sinners are forced to live forever, without any hope for a merciful Death that would end their misery.
CI would produce the best justice: Either FA or UR will be Conditional Immortality (CI) that produces the best justice (= righteousness) because CI eliminates sin, to produce righteousness and thus justice. By contrast, EM preserves sin (because it's not-CI) by causing unrighteous sinners – and their sinning – to exist forever; EM causes sinful unrighteousness that is injustice. With CI (but not with EM) all intrinsic consequences of sin – spiritual loss, relational injury, physical suffering – eventually are eliminated, because with CI (with FA or UR) only fully-sanctified sinless people are given immortality so they can remain alive with sinless Eternal Joy, loving each other and loving God. |
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Divine Justice
We should have appropriate humility – not too little, and not too much – when we're thinking about the character of God and His divine justice, starting with our thinking about...
basic justice: With each view, what is the overall change (for a person who was unsaved-in-Life) from Before Life to The Final Result of Afterlife?
the change proposed by |
before Life |
end of Afterlife |
I think the change is |
all views, for the saved |
nothing |
Eternal Joy |
WONDERFUL |
Universal Restoration |
nothing |
Eternal Joy |
WONDERFUL |
Final Annihilation |
nothing |
nothing |
FAIR yet SAD |
Eternal Misery |
nothing |
Eternal Misery |
UNFAIR and BAD |
questions about results: Do you also think the overall changes would be wonderful, wonderful, fair yet sad, unfair and bad? {one reason to think EM would be unfair-and-bad is that even though a person never asked to be born, they will experience infinite misery because God forced them to have Life and EM-Afterlife.} [more about Basic Justice]
questions about existence: If you could choose before birth, when you don't know “what your situation-in-Life will be,” would you decide to be born if you know that God will cause UR? if FA? if EM? {will you play The Game?}
questions about justice: Regarding our situations & experiences & results, is Life fair? No. How could God make Life-plus-Afterlife more fair? and make it better, make it the way it should be? {is life fair?}
righteousness is justice: How should it be? In Greek the word (dikaiosuné) that means righteousness — produced when things (people, situations, relationships,...) have been made right, the way they should be — also means justice. {in the NT this word usually is translated as righteousness in English, but as justice in other languages} Would the final state of Afterlife produce righteous justice with UR? (yes, after divine correcting of all people & all relationships in UR-Hell makes everything correct, makes it right, the way God always wanted it to be); or with FA? (yes, because all people who remain alive will be righteous, although some persons would be missing because they have been killed); or with EM? (no, because unrighteously-sinning people would be kept alive forever, so un-righteousness that is un-justice would be preserved forever, so God would be causing eternal injustice). [more about Righteous Justice]
producing righteous justice: My sections about Universal Restoration (when, what, how, why) describe how maybe... God will use UR-Hell to transform unsaved people with education-and-correction (to produce justification-and-sanctification that is salvation) so all persons and all relationships will become sinlessly righteous – will become restored so they are what God always wanted them to be – and His process will produce The Best (most righteous) Justice in The Best Possible Ending.
the character of God: The Bible teaches us that God is truly GREAT, because He is POWERFUL and also is GOOD, is JUST-and-LOVING. God wants justice (and He will produce it because “what we sow, we will reap” but He also forgives) and God is loving, so... in each view of Hell, how will God use Hell as part of His plan for producing the best Justice-with-Love? Genuine love is love-in-action that produces good results for the people we are loving: God's loving actions would do good for all people with UR (by purifying all persons and healing all relationships) but He wouldn't do good for people in FA-Hell or (especially) EM-Hell. I think the actions of God would be most loving (and also most just) if He produces Universal Restoration, and least loving if He causes the infinite suffering of Eternal Misery for most of the people He created. What do you think? Much more important, what does Jesus think? will God love His enemies? {or does God's love disappear when we die?}
tri-unity: Christians believe that God is tri-une, with three distinct persons (Father, Son, HolySpirit) existing as one unified being who is God — so when we ask “WWJD when He judges us? (i.e. What Will Jesus Do? will He cause EM, FA, or UR, to torment, kill, or heal?)” — we're asking “WWFD=WWSD=WWHD = WWGD.” { e.g. for The Love Story of PSA the crucifixion of Jesus was pre-planned by F,S,H with The Son enthusiastically agreeing “yes, let's do it, because I/we want to save the people that I/we love.” }
is God good? Should we view God as mainly as a powerful King or a good Father? We can imagine that a powerful God-as-King (or as Judge) could be satisfied by “giving them what they deserve” with Eternal Misery or Permanent Annihilation (by tormenting or killing His subjects). But it seems unlikely that a lovingly good God-as-Father would want to torment or kill His children, to cause these bad results for them. Instead a loving Father would want good results for each child (with healing Restoration) and for their relationships (with healing Reconciliations). Almost all human fathers (and mothers) want good results for their children; they would never produce permanent bad results with tormenting or killing. Should we also expect this kind of good love-in-action from our heavenly Father? Yes. Jesus-the-Son thought about – and sometimes talked about – His Father, and He encouraged us to think of God-as-Father, analogous to the best human father we know when he fully loves his children. But much better, because God is very good.
God is loving-and-powerful, yet we suffer:
From the Short Overview,
The Bible claims that God is all-loving (so He wants to prevent suffering) and is all-powerful (so He can do this), yet... we see a lot of suffering. This is The Problem of Evil, and when we try to understand why-and-how it's called a theodicy. The problem begins in Life, and a combination of Life-plus-Afterlife would be worst with EM, but best with UR. How? God can cause any Story-Ending that He wants, and if He produces UR this would be the best possible ending — with all persons restored, all relationships reconciled, with the greatest good (Eternal Joy) for the greatest number (for everyone) — and each person will say “when I look back on things from this perspective, I now realize that God's plan was good (for me & for others, in Life and Afterlife) despite our temporary suffering, and I thank God for creating me.” { the Longer Overview examines God as King-Judge and Father; producing the best justice-with-love by using UR or FA or EM; soul-making theodicy; and more. }
iou – during April 1-4 this section will improve, with the ideas becoming more developed and better organized. Below is the current unfinished state, as-is now:
A common argument from atheists is to claim “the biblical God cannot exist” due to The Logical Problem of Evil, because the Bible claims that... 1a) God is all-loving (is omnibenevolent) so we may think 1a') He should want to prevent suffering, and 1b) God is all-powerful (is omnipotent, can get what He wants) so we may think 1b') He should prevent all suffering, yet 2) suffering does exist with Moral Evil (due to human choices/actions) and Natural Evil (usually independent of humans). A theodicy tries to explain why-and-how God allows suffering. Most theodicies, including mine, accept the biblical claims (1a-1b, 2) but reject the human claims about “what God should want, and should do” in 1a'-and-1b', for various reasons. My reason is because I think our world – with frequent challenges along with some suffering (and much joy) – is useful for the Character Building that is wanted by God, that is a higher priority than His wanting to prevent suffering.
Instead of saying “the biblical God is impossible,” a claim that “the biblical God is improbable” is based on The Evidential Problem of Evil, when 1a' (claiming God "should want to prevent suffering") is modified to make a weaker claim (“...to reduce suffering”). This weaker claim is more difficult to reject, and the change (from prevent to reduce) makes theodicy questions much more complex. Here I won't analyze the numerous pro-and-con arguments, because thoroughness isn't my goal. And instead of aiming for certainty — trying to satisfy a hyper-critical demand to logically prove “this is the best of all possible worlds” — I'll merely try to show why it's plausible to believe that our world is wisely designed for Character Building so it has challenging situations, and sometimes these involve suffering.
WHAT is Character Building? If the ultimate goal of God is Universal Restoration, He will do Character Building (CB) that improves all people (with personal Restorations) so we will be able to improve all relationships (with interpersonal Reconciliations); these closely-related human improvings are the major part of achieving His Overall Goal of producing a Total Restoration-Reconciliation of everything in His creation, including all people and all relationships. / With FA or EM the Character Building would be similar for some people (but not all) and for some relationships (but not all). God would achieve a Total Restoration-Reconciliation for everything (with UR), or for everything that remains after His Annihilations (with FA); but (with EM) there would be only a Partial Restoration-Reconciliation, because God would be causing some sin (and sinners) to exist forever.
WHAT kind of Character is wanted by God? [[ iou – I'll describe this for now and later, in stages: e.g. now (in Life) courage is needed due to danger & thus fear, but later (eventually in Afterlife) all situations will be safe so courage won't be needed -- LOVE for God & all people, w good relationships -- {check Gal 5:22, fruits of spirit} ]]
HOW can God do Character Building? One method of CB would be analogous to "learning by doing" in the inquiry learning that occurs when a human teacher creates challenging situations — with gaps in conceptual knowledge (so students don't understand) and/or procedural knowledge (so they don't know what to do, or how) — that stimulate mental actions and/or physical actions, so students can think-do-learn. In a similar way, when we're living in a non-paradise world we must cope with a wide variety of challenging life-situations that are opportunities for educational experiences, and how we respond – in what we feel, think, decide, do – can lead to learning that is beneficial for Character Building, or is detrimental. / Although this method of "divine teaching" is somewhat speculative (i.e. it's rarely described explicitly in the Bible), it's consistent with what we do read throughout the Bible.
HOW can God do effective Character Building? Teaching with guided inquiry learning often is more effective than an unguided "hands-off, sink or swim" approach. God can guide everyone, but usually divine guidance is more effective when a follower of Christ (a disciple, a Christian with a theisic worldview) asks God for help,* and cooperates with God. How? When we pray for wisdom about decisions-and-actions (by asking "what should I do, or not do?"), God will help us get more experiences that are beneficial for CB (to improve Character) and fewer experiences that are detrimental for CB. Another kind of beneficial prayer is to ask "what do You want me to learn from this experience?" because God wants to help us learn more from our experiences. These two question-requests (for what to do, what to learn) are ways to use prayer for effective living as an essential part of living a theistic worldview.
HOW can suffering be useful for Character Building? The essential requirement for learning-by-doing is coping with challenges, not suffering. But even though suffering isn't required it's often a useful "side effect" because some challenging situations involve suffering that can increase a person's motivation to do wise actions that will help make things better, that help reduce the sufferings. Our motivation increases when the importance of our actions (or inactions) increase because there are significant consequences; sometimes these results involve suffering (by self and/or others) that can increase the character-virtues of empathy and compassion.
WHY might a world-with-suffering be necessary for Character Building? As described above, CB seems to require frequent challenges, and sometimes suffering is useful for CB, or is just an unintended side effect.
Maybe it's due to our lack of creative imagination, but I think most of us intuitively realize that many CB-stimulating challenges — along with compassionate responses to reduce the suffering of others — would be missing (or be less effective) in a zero-suffering paradise, if there was total safety , wit
no reasons for fear, to trust God and live by faith -- anxiety [even fear] and central challenge to trust and live by faith
everyone feeling secure -- not auto-loving robots, programmed to obey
empathy-motivating of compassion, for love-in-action to make things better (@PS, ws#obj) w decrease of negatives (pain, sufrg) and/or increase of positives. ---- not paradise (easy, comfy, safe, painless w only pleasure, joyful fun), not pets in zoo, w helicopter parents, bubble boy protections. euphoric drugs + virtual reality for pleasure-experiences, video game (easy? tough?) you cannot lose -- ---- often edu-and-correction isn't caused by suffering, instead it's learning from experience-during/after challenge, w gains in knowl-wisdom-courage-compassn(@ fruits of spirit, goals of God) -- in purgtrl UR-Hell essential purpose/goal is edu-and-correction, not caused by pain/suffering that is coincidental collateral damage; sometimes pain/suff (mental & emotional, maybe physical) is productive, but often unintentional yet allowed as part of CharBldg process) ---- for effective char-building, not world w pure pleasure (or even less pain? -
EDU-PHILSOPHIES -- intentional weed-out course to fail many so survival-of-fittest (salvation by MERIT) -- do repeatedly (w guidance & support) until learn (to level of mastery) --
Related to The Problem of Evil, we see The Problem of Hell when asking "if God is all-loving, why would He create an EM-Hell that causes eternal suffering and eternal sin?" instead of ending the suffering-and-sin with FA-Hell or UR-Hell?
When we consider Life-plus-Afterlife, it seems clear (to most people) that The Problem of Evil would be worst with EM (if God causes an infinite amount of additional suffering with Eternal Misery for many people) and would be best with UR (if God produces an infinite amount of additional blessings by giving Eternal Joy to all people). / An omnipotent God can produce The Story-Ending that He wants, so we ask "what ending does He want?" and "does He want the best possible ending?" and "if not, why not?"
I'm an educator who defines education as "learning from experience," and better education as "learning more from experience by getting more experiences (of the kinds that are educationally useful) and learning more from the experiences." What kinds of experiences are useful for Character Building? Most are the challenges-of-Life that require decisions based on our thinking & feeling (our thoughts & emotions, minds & hearts) sometimes cause suffering. These challenges wouldn't occur – or they would be less effective – in a "zero suffering" world, in a paradise where living is always easy, comfortable, safe, with no pain.
What happens when Life is supplemented by Afterlife, if God will produce Universal Restoration, because this page asks "what will happen in Hell, and why?"
Here are two foundational principles for living: in a Christian worldview,
• we know that God wants us to live by faith, to humbly trust Him in our thinking-and-feeling, so... we recognize that even though we currently don't know enough to say "this is how things are," God asks us to trust Him, so a key part of living a Judeo-Christian worldview is to trust God when responding to all situations in life. [[ iou – here I'll use a "tapestry" metaphor, with one side (what we see now) partially ugly, but the other side (from the perspective of God in the past-now-later, and us later) ]]
• understand-and-remember the empathetic "experience of suffering" chosen by God: In a Christian worldview, we believe that God decided to suffer with us – during the birth-life-death of Jesus – so we can know that He understands us (not just with omniscience but also with shared experiences) and this should make a big difference in how we should feel-and-think.
iou – A few of the following "scraps of rough ideas" might be used (after revising) in the section:
MEANS and ENDS -- [[ This topic is important, so – after major condensing & revising – this paragraph will be used.]] All plausible Bible-based [[biblically-plausible]] theodicies must claim "the means are justified by the ends" and this can be acceptable for two reasons. First, for people "means are justified by ends" sometimes — e.g. when currently-painful surgery produces future benefits, or wisely-delayed gratification (by evaluating present-means versus future-ends) brings benefits — but not always, as when a person's harmful actions are rationalized-defended by cla iming that there will be future benefits. Second, although it's often unjustifiable for partially-benevolent people, for a totally-benevolent God it's true that "His means are justified by the ends" IF the overall result is extremely beneficial, as it would be with UR. -- by improving people eventually so the benefit is ultimate (in Final State) instead of immediate (only in Life) although often-notalways; -- (this is the long-term Goal, even if with the short-term thinking of many people "it seems that God should want to prevent suffering" now in Life). ---- unequal experiences among people (not fair, use #binary for eg's) -- there will be some collateral damage due to interactions between numerous persons (each unique, with a wide variety of life-situations) so if there is optimizing (of experiences) for one person this may cause temporary non-optimizing (of experiences) for another person; / {a speculation: maybe... each person will learn from the combined Life-and-Afterlife experiences of many other people, perhaps all people. -- this would alleviate problem of "no experience" people in Heaven, eg aborted, miscarried, extreme imbeciles -- @ principles developed-described in #edu sections, eg with multi-perspective life-videos -- but eventually (in Afterlife, in His Final Kingdom) God will work out all details so there will be benefits for all individuals [w personal Restorations] and also for the community [w interpersonal Reconciliations]. Yes, because my claim is that becoming overall-beneficial eventually (not necessarily immediately, so patience is required and we should not expect satisfaction during life) plus collateral damage (with more-intense suffering for some), {greatest good for greatest number, ultimately -- good for people AND (because God is love, and love is best when it's love-in-action) for God.}}
{* Although humans do affect some Natural Evils, e.g. when man-made chemicals increase cancer rates or climate change. }
* Your worldview is your view of the world, used for living in the world. A person with a theistic worldview — who believes (unlike an atheist) that God exists, and (unlike a deist) that God actively “does things” in the world — can "live their worldview" by believing that when they ask God for help, He will help them live better and learn more. Along with most Christians, I think "what happens" depends on what we decide-and-do (using the free will given to us by God) and what God decides-and-does. God could do everything, but He chooses to self-limit Himself by doing less, so we can do more; in this view the level of divine action is somewhere between "do nothing" deism and "do everything" determinism. [[Also, usually God uses natural-appearing zzzz, but sometimes miraculous-appearing; God can be "active" in either, and is active in BIG events that affect salvation history - like the crucifixion of Jesus, and some events in our personal lives - but not in most events.]]
group improvisation, combining human actions (allowed by God because he wants to give us free will/agency) plus his actions / arranger? using? controls some? God over-rides some decisions about actions – i.e. He prevents some actions (or changes some results-of-actions, but not all -- MANY natural-appearing actions and occasional miraculous-appearing actions
God is sovereign, i.e. He always does what He wants, with His divine action and/or inaction (@ Steve Gregg, #2-Part2, my view is basically same as that of Steve Gregg, mostly because i independently arrived at the same view [partly from steve's teaching but also for many other reasons] partly because he has influenced my view, has helped shape my view, / Summarizing similar ideas, Leighton Flowers asks "Do you really believe that God is sovereign?" {11:30}, and at the beginning of "zzzz" from 2:29 to 12:40, and later from zzzz -- plus Steve Gregg in "The Sovereignty of God in Scripture" {1:32:43, but only 46:21 at a speed of 2.00x} or audio.
productive actions -- try to solve problems (ie try to make things better - for ourselves & for others - 2nd love others as ourselves - what do we want, how to get it? goals + strategies) -- attitudes to develop, habits, learning to love, "evils to oppose",
NATURAL Evils are due to predictable system of natural process [w many benefits], w God's actions (actual vs observable) along line from deism to determinism -- so we cannot be certain-100% about true view [that is truth because it matches actual reality] whether it's atheism-deism-theism w changes in balance of inactive vs active,
MORAL Evils due to free-will human actions w God wanting each of us to do good but allowing many evils although not all (He can over-ride in ways that are hidden or obvious, natural-appearing or miraculous-appearing)
SUFFERING is side-effect of important situations with "real consequences" for motivations
epistemic distance -- not having "proof" (i.e. having epistemic distance) can be useful for learning to live by faith; {what are differences between this and a "gun to the head" threat of EM?}
one benefit/result purpose/goal for living as a Christian (as a follower of Christ, a disciple) is because this lets God be more effective in helping us
all Judeo-Christians should humbly acknowledge mystery (as in the book of Job); For disciples of Christ, the essential attitude is trusting God. / Now we know only some (as in "seeing thru a glass dimly") but later, when looking backward, we'll know more and will understand more.
WHY do we need Character Building? -- because God didn't create us to be initially-perfect (as evidence, Eve & Adam failed their big test because they were created with vulnerabilities) -- we're not created to be automatically good, like pre-programmed robots w no free will, so when we do improve it's worth more (and is appreciated more) due to the value of struggle, of earning our knowledge and life-skills. ---- WHY -- not immed/auto w no input from person (= usual no-process glorfcn of non-UR sanctfn w unilateral non-process) ----
if God produces UR, His actions (that help produce our experiences) will be love-in-action that is universal because it produces benefits for every person and for the whole community. ---- But if instead of UR, God produces Annihilation the added value will decrease and maybe (depending on who is evaluating) might become negative; if God causes Eternal Misery it certainly would be negative. ---- worst, extremely negative divine morality (not positive love-in-action) of Calvinism-with-EM if Susan (who never asked to be born, never had a chance for salvn because before her birth God already had decided that her decision would be No) yet God keeps her alive-in-torment to cause EM for her.
choosing term? -- soul person character virtues -- making building constructing improving -- moral development -- character-building process, process of character building, process of building character
what -- for multiple intelligences that include personal (w Restorations) and interpersonal (w Reconciliations), virtues ---- char bldg is nec because (#cisouls1) God didn't make us perfect automatically, we have to improve w struggle thru experience (obs situ, think-decide-do over & over, learn from expers w edu-of-self & help w edu-of-others) -- what -- {our multiple intelligences include intrapersonal-intel and interpersonal-intel}
in APPENDIX, historical w Irenaeus - Gen 1-2 (initial image, eventual likeness) (bios Life, zoe Afterlife?), not all-perfect in Eden (because humans disobeyed and "fell") {me - capable but failed?}
divine persuasion: Why isn't God more “obvious” about His existence & activities? Maybe... one reason is because God uses uncertainty to challenge believers, to teach us valuable lessons about Life, helping us learn how to live by faith. But... how does a divine decision to be non-obvious affect a person who dies as an unsaved nonbeliever, but who might have “said yes” with stronger persuasion by God, if the evidence had been more obvious? i.e., in the Final Results of Afterlife, what are the differences (with UR, or FA, or EM) if during a person's Life “insufficient evidence ➞ saying no to God” instead of “sufficient evidence ➞ saying yes to God” ? IF God is being intentionally non-obvious (to teach lessons and/or for other reasons) and the results-for-nonbelievers would be most tragic with EM, why does this provide evidence against EM? {i.e. would you expect God to provide more evidence-during-Life if the ultimate results-for-unbelievers will be UR, or FA, or EM? [more]
imagining infinite misery: Take a few minutes (or a few hours, days, weeks,...) trying to vividly imagine an experience of eternal misery, with torment that never.......... ends. [deeper imaginings about length of time plus quality of life, re: what a person in EM-Hell might be thinking & feeling}
mercy killing: if God annihilates an unsaved person, would this be merciful? “yes” when FA is compared with EM, but “no” if FA is compared with UR; it's mercifully “yes” if Annihilation prevents Eternal Misery, but is a sad “no” if Annihilation prevents Eternal Joy. {does God “throw away” people? my small triage and God's Huge Triage} { will people-and-memories be lost... like tears in rain? [more] }
purposes for universal resurrection: Jesus tells us (John 5:28-29) that all humans, both saved & unsaved, will be bodily resurrected, and will be judged by Him. What are God's purposes for resurrecting people who were unsaved-in-Life? It's easy to see a noble purpose – to eventually produce The Best Possible Ending – if God will use pUR-Hell to restore all people & all relationships, to make resurrection a “win” for everyone. By contrast, although FA and EM propose a full restoring of some people {the saved-in-Life}, any restoring that's done for other people {the unsaved-in-Life} would provide no lasting benefits for these people because they will die (with FA) or will never escape from Hell (with EM). With FA or EM, resurrecting unsaved people would not be beneficial for them; it would not be love in action for them. And if God will cause EM, an unsaved person would be MUCH better off without their extremely-unbeneficial resurrection, so... why would God force them to live again and continue living forever? / What about benefits for the saved-in-Life? In the context of God commanding every Christian to "love your neighbor [including the unsaved] as you love yourself," would the resurrection of unsaved people offer any benefits for saved people who will know that most people (including many they loved) are missing from God's Kingdom? [some possible benefits with FA or EM]
fairness in Life-plus-Afterlife: When we consider the wide variations in human lives – in our abilities, situations, experiences, results – is Life fair? No. But our combinations of Life-plus-Afterlife could be more fair (and better) IF, in Afterlife, ? . How could God fill the blank to make it more fair, and better? will God want to do this? i.e. WWJD?) {how to make the combination most fair}
choosing to be born: If you could choose whether to be born, what would you decide if you knew that God will cause UR? if FA? if EM? For reasons that after deep thinking seem obvious, I would choose “yes yes no” with yes and yes (for UR and FA) but no (for EM). For UR it's eventually win & win for both saved & unsaved, with everyone getting Eternal Joy. With FA the results for saved & unsaved are a big win & no overall loss (with "from nothing to nothing") but with experiences in Life (that most people think are overall positive) and in Afterlife But for EM it's huge win & HUGE loss; in my personal values-based analysis of possible “reward vs risk” a reward of Eternal Joy is greatly outweighed by the risk of Eternal Misery. If you also think “no” with EM, and if you think God might cause EM (I don't), should the birth of a child be a reason for joyful celebration or sad mourning? Is your choice influenced by your estimates of the fraction of people who are not-saved in Life? / It's difficult to imagine how a person in EM-Hell – who knows that they (and many others) will be permanently suffering – could say “I thank God for creating me” and “I'm satisfied with what God gave me (and others) in Life & Afterlife,” although everyone will be thankful if instead God causes Universal Restoration. And if God causes Annihilation, the unsaved eventually won't be thinking anything during their second phase of Afterlife.
[[ iou – in late-February I'll write another paragraph, to answer these questions from the Short Overview. ]]
choosing for others: Considering the same logic, should you choose to have children – and when a child is born should we celebrate or mourn – if EM with most people damned? if FA or UR? / these questions are affected by additional questions: Do those who cannot choose responsibly during Life – babies & infants & children, imbeciles,... – later experience Eternal Joy or Eternal Misery, or neither? And what about persons who have an incomplete-and-inaccurate understanding of The Gospel, or negative interactions with Christians, or strong cultural-personal reasons for saying No?
do we have free will? During everyday life when we're feeling-thinking-doing, it seems that we have free will. But during Life our hearts-and-minds are strongly influenced by sin, so do we have free will? There is disagreement among Christians who are Protestants, with answers of “Yes (partially)” from Arminians, but “No” from Calvinists, and this leads to different answers when we ask...
does salvation require personal quality?
iou – I will revise the "personal quality" part of each overview (Mini, Short, Long) soon, during June 5-9.
What causes the difference between a person being saved or unsaved, with God either giving salvation or not giving salvation? Does a saved person receive their salvation due to their personal quality, because they have a good heart (wanting to love God) and (by making The Good Decision) a wise mind? And does an unsaved person receive their damnation because they have an evil heart and unwise mind? [[ iou – Soon, during June 5-9, I'll revise this introduction and will write the "deeper examination" below, and the answers proposed by Christian Calvinists, Christian Arminians, and Christian Universalists. This gray box has a rough outline — that will be condensed (a lot, although it still will be large) and revised (a lot) — of the main ideas that will be included:
my views are a mixture of Arminian (a lot) and Calvinistic (a little) to produce a result that probably is Universalistic (at least 90% probable); in terms of Bible-based logic a biblical UR agrees with Arminians (Arms) that God wants to save everyone, and with Calvinists (Calvs) that God gets what God wants, therefore logically concluding (by combining some-Arm with some-Calv) that God will save everyone with Universal Restoration. Here are some thoughts about
the TULIP of Calvinism (I'll often abbreviate it as Calv): Total Depravity (aka Total Inability), Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistable Grace, Perseverance of The Saints.
with Calvinism (Calv), here is the history of an unsaved-in-Life person (I'll call him Samuel) who in Afterlife is given Eternal Misery (EM) that's aka Eternal Torment or Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT): Sam didn't ask to be born (he had no choice) but God created him anyway; then during Life he never had a chance to decide "Yes for God" because he had Total Inability (the T of TULIP) so his "No" wasn't his fault (i.e. his decision wasn't due to any personal merit by having "a good heart and wise mind" - it's the C), instead the God-of-Calv decided "Sam will say No" and caused him to say No; then instead of just deciding "Sam wasn't saved-in-Life so I won't give him Eternal Joy" (as with the overall-neutral "dust to dust" of Final Annihilation), God decides "I will give him Eternal Misery" and to actualize this God resurrects Sam, gives him an immortal body-mind-soul and keeps him alive forever, and makes his existence so horrible that it's torment, is Eternal Torment, is ECT; even though Sam was Totally Incapable (the T) of "deciding Yes," God "decides No (for Sam)" but holds him morally responsible for not-deciding-Yes. / Does this seem fair? I think "no" but what do you think?
IF this personal history is true — because it corresponds with reality, so it correctly describes the historical past-present-future situations of Sam — THEN I think this history seems unfair, and it describes a God who has bad character, who is a sadistic immoral Monster-God because He inflicts pain on Sam, and on many other people with similar histories in Life-and-Afterlife. When saying this, I am not claiming that God is sadistically immoral, instead I'm criticizing a false humanly constructed theory-about-God , by criticizing the Calv-theory that I think is false; I'm thinking "the IF is incorrect" so I'm thinking "BECAUSE God won't cause EM, I can criticize an EM-causing God (who doesn't exist) without criticizing the actual God (who does exist).
here are two ways to make Calvinism less-horrible and less-false: • refuse to combine a logical "mere Calv" (that is compatible with all views, with EM, FA, UR) with EM, because in "overall histories of people" a Calv-with-EM (that is historically traditional, but not logically necessary) seems horribly sadistic, but Calv-with-FA is neutral, and Calv-with-UR is wonderful; in Calv-with-UR the predetermined "unconditional election by God" is temporary short-term (re: the functions a person will perform during Life) but God's decision for permanent long-term Afterlife is to convert all non-elect people (who thus were non-saved people) into saved people, and give them Eternal Life; this Calv-with-UR is consistent with considering the entire section in Romans 8:28-12:2, not focusing on just Chapter 9 (especially 9:1-24) that is a favorite mini-section used by Calvs to claim support for their theory, because we instead should include its grand conclusion in Romans 11:32 to 12:2 that provides strong support for UR. / Calvs use an unusual definition of sovereignty (defined as having "supreme power" with "freedom from external control"); the Calvinist website of GotQuestions.org correctly says "The fact that God is sovereign essentially means that He has the power, wisdom, and authority to do anything He chooses within His creation. Whether or not He actually exerts that level of control in any given circumstance is actually a completely different question. Often, the concept of divine sovereignty is oversimplified. We tend to assume that, if God is not directly, overtly, purposefully driving some event, then He is somehow not sovereign. The cartoon version of sovereignty depicts a God who must do anything that He can do, or else He is not truly sovereign. Of course, such a cartoonish view of God’s sovereignty is logically false." I agree, but Calvs often do state (or at least imply) that God is "sovereign" only if He does control everything He can control, therefore He controls everything, including all decisions-and-actions of every person, including every sinful thought & action, e.g. the attempted genocide by Hitler and the mass murders of serial killers, and all other sinful actions, beginning with the original sins of Eve-and-Adam. But if God causes all sinful thoughts-and-actions, then ___ and I'll let you fill the blank to show the negative implcations of this theological claim about God.
with Arminianism (Arm), God isn't able to "get what He wants" (as stated by some critics), instead He sovereignly chooses to "get less than what He wants (in one way, with Universal Salvation)" by "getting more of what He wants (in other ways)" because He wants to give people "free will" autonomy that is significant (although not total) in their decisions-and-actions. Becuse of this, although God could "get everything He wants" with direct control-of-everything (as in Calv), even more (i.e. with a higher priority) He wants to give people significant free will in their thinking-and-actions even though it's significant-not-total because He does maintain divine "veto power" and He will over-ride a person's free will in some important situations when this is necessary to get what He wants.
So far I haven't seen any biblically-logical responses by Arms when they're asked "what makes the difference between a person who is saved (e.g. Dave) and one who isn't saved (e.g. Sam)?" Instead they typically respond by answering a different question;* some details (about how they do this) are in another section. / A satisfactory answer-by-Arms would be to just agree that "yes, salvation does depend on personal merit that leads to personal decision, and that's OK, it's fair because the huge difference between fates (salvation vs damnation) SHOULD depend on the difference in people. / synergism and monergism: In Arminianism, salvation depends on what God does (with His gracious mercy, symbolized-and-actualized by the crucifixion of Jesus) PLUS what Dave does by making His Good Decision, or what Sam does by making His Bad Decision. This synergism-of-Arm (with salvation requiring action by God AND action by Dave) contrasts with the monergism-of-Calv (with salvation requiring only action by God, because the Yes-Decision was God's Decision, not Dave's Decision, because "God caused Dave (who had no free-will choice) to make His Good Decision-for-Yes, and God caused Sam (who had no free-will choice) to make His Bad Decision-for-No."
* For example, a useful summary in a video — skillfully made by Leighton Flowers (for his channel Soteriology 101, that is pro-Arminian & pro-Provisionism) with his comments plus clips from three other people, including Alan Parr & Mike Winger — is from 43:48 to 1:04:29; basically, Flowers (and Winger) are illogically claiming that because a Good Decision (due to personal quality) isn't sufficient for salvation, a Good Decision (due to personal quality) isn't necessary for salvation. Later I'll add more videos & pages, including one that critiques a video by Winger where he explains why to support one of his views (about why universal atonement doesn't lead to universal salvation) he makes claims that contradict claims he makes in the video by Flowers – i.e. he denies the Arm-fact that salvation requires a Good Decision (that usually is based on personal quality) — instead of just acknowledging the reality (if Arm is correct) of quality-requiring salvation.
with UR everyone needs faith (with belief-and-repentance) in order to experience salvation, but everyong already (starting with the paired crucifixion-and-resurrection, and earlier in divine planning) was justified for salvation, with God already having done everything necessary to save each of us.
[[ and there will be a few more ideas, especially with more about the logic of Arm-Calv-UR and how it's affected by considering "salvation that requires personal quality". ]] |
can binary results be fair? Can you imagine a way to achieve total justice if God will cause EM and there will be only two possible Final Results, either Eternal Joy or Eternal Misery? It's difficult to imagine how all results could be totally fair for everyone who dies unsaved, because their life-experiences have varied in such a wide variety of ways. I'm wondering what will God do with a person who...
dies young? is a moron?
was predestined for hell? or can choose (with free will – based on the quality of their heart-and-mind) but is “dealt a bad hand” in Life? (e.g. if due to “bad luck” they never hear The Gospel, or have unpleasant experiences with Christians, or become devoted to the dominant non-Christian religion in their family & culture, or...)
seems to be a saved believer, but then backslides and un-believes?
If salvation will depend on beliefs and/or actions that vary along a range, and there will be a “dividing line,” we can imagine a person whose beliefs-and-actions produce a “Life Score” of 70.0 and they are saved to Eternal Joy, but a person with 69.9 is damned to Eternal Misery. Even though their lives were almost identical, a tiny difference in their quality of living (70.0 vs 69.9) will cause an infinite difference in the results they receive from God. Would this be fair? If you think “no” maybe God also thinks “no” and this is a reason for Him to avoid binary judging. { faith & works: You can “adjust the balance” between beliefs & actions by giving each a “weighting value” between 0% and 100%, based on your view of salvation-criteria. }
justifiable humility: A sharp “dividing line” appears to be necessary, but of course we cannot know how God will make decisions about salvation-vs-damnation. For example, maybe instead of the Life Scores being 70.0 and 69.9, God will judge them to be 100.0 and 0.0. This "maybe" is why I began by asking “can you imagine a way to achieve total justice if...?” Maybe you can do this. But it's very difficult for me to imagine a way for binary justice to be satisfactory total justice, unless (and this is a way to imagine achieving justice)... God never actualizes an infinite sin-penalty of losing Eternal Joy (with FA) or getting Eternal Misery (with EM) because He produces UR. {but by considering basic justice I think FA would be fair, although sad} [more]
the generosity of God: How would you feel IF — as implied in parables about non-gracious attitudes by diligent all-day workers & a faithful older brother (who didn't like the generosity being graciously given to part-day workers & a prodigal younger brother) — God will be extremely generous? If a very evil sinner (who viciously harmed many people) repents on his deathbed, will God forgive him? {real-life examples} But if he doesn't repent before his end of Life, will God let him repent in Afterlife? If this man is educated-and-corrected in Afterlife to purify his evil heart & mind so he becomes a good person and he is saved, will you praise God for His generosity? Of course, all of us should say “yes” because we love our neighbors and we want them to be saved, so we hope for Universal Restoration. But... Jesus told these parables because people are complex, and there are extra-biblical psychological reasons for Christians to have “mixed feelings” that decrease our hoping for UR, and decrease our optimism that UR will happen. But despite these influences that can produce mixed feelings, each of us can try to genuinely-and-totally (fully with all of our heart & mind, our feeling & thinking) hope that what eventually happens will be...
The Best Possible Ending for God's Grand Story: This would occur after God has caused Universal Restoration so all persons & all relationships are fully restored, sinlessly righteous, and God has produced justice. How? In this Best Ending, God has produced justice by making everything right (the way it should be) by causing every person to become righteous (the way He always wanted us to be). These righteousness-producing transformations (of every person) will produce justice because righteousness is justice. In this Best Possible Final State – with the greatest good (Eternal Joy) for the greatest number (for everyone) – every person will look back (now with knowledge that is more complete) on everything that happened, and will say “I thank God for creating me, for giving me life. I'm totally satisfied with what God gave me (and all others) in Life & Afterlife. Everything done by God was good, and I'm joyfully thankful for everything.” |
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