Partial Universalism?

[liamconnor]

Does Paul believe that every single Jew will eventually be saved, both past, future (from his perspective) and present?


26 And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, "The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob"; (Rom 11:26 ESV)

[Anomaly]

[Replying to post 50 by onewithhim]

[Replying to post 48 by Anomaly]

My point has been that the other two choices besides annihilation DO NOT have supporting scriptures to back them up. That is what I keep trying to get across. And if you paid attention to the arguments that have been going on in those threads concerning "Hell," you would see that not all three ideas of man's destiny are feasible. There is only one, and I think you know which one it is.

In the interest of trying to salvage this discussion, let's assume for the moment that you are correct, that you and other Annihilationists here have adequately refuted all the standard arguments thrown at you.

The argument I make in post #38 is not a standard argument. It shows logically that neither the eternal hell or Annihilationist doctrines can be correct; only the Universalist can be correct. Your repeated parroting that you've defeated all comers is simply not true: you have not responded to my arguments, and my arguments are different than the standard Universalist arguments.

Once again, here's what neither you nor any other Annihilationist have responded to:

THE STORY
Informed by God that He was going to Sodom to investigate and, if necessary, destroy the evil city, Abraham quickly struck up a conversation with his Creator. His nephew Lot and family lived there, and Abraham doubtless had concerns about his kin being destroyed with all others in the city. Thus he began his famous conversation with God on the road to Sodom in Gen 18 by Abraham's query in v. 23, “….’Wilt Thou indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?’�

Beginning here and running to the end of this chapter, God establishes here not only an inviolable principle concerning the perfection of His justice, but also the first of His twofold framework of the process of salvation so fundamentally and harmoniously woven into both testaments of the Bible it’s hard to see how its significance has been overlooked. This principle is elaborated in vv. 24-25, where Abraham asks:

"Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; wilt Thou indeed sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from Thee to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from Thee! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?"

The well known conversation then continues, ending with God’s promise to not destroy Sodom if even only a few righteous were found there.

THE ARUGMENT
It seems reasonable to claim that one supervising attribute of God governs all His others: perfection. We might properly assert that God is just, loving, merciful, faithful, etc., but if He is imperfect in any of these, He is not God as we understand Him to have revealed Himself in Scripture. Abraham, it seems, recognized this truth when he exclaimed, “Far be it from thee to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and wicked are treated alike….Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?� Abraham recognized that for God to destroy even an iota of good was an unthinkable abomination, a wholly illogical and improper idea—a violation of His perfection. In the exchange, then, this spiritual rule is established:

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

This principle sets the stage for understanding the allegorical structure God uses in Scripture for His plan of the salvation and restoration of all. Multiple passages in the Bible are structured in this “one and many� organization. In the material realm the body is a single entity composed of an estimated 32 trillion cells. The principle elaborated in metaphor in Genesis 18 is a division not of matter, but of value. Thus, God uses the “one and many� convention to highlight a form of spiritual mechanics, reducing the value elements within individuals to good and bad, or, more technically, true and false. From this fundamental concept, goats and sheep (Mat 25), wheat and tares (Mat 13), good branches and bad (Jn 15) and similar patterns in multiple verses are all similar metaphors that build on the Genesis 18 principle.

Both the doctrines of eternal hell and Annihilationism violate God’s perfection and cannot be true.

In the concept of eternal hell God has removed from Himself for all eternity whole individuals in whom certainly some good exists. (The nature of falsity or evil logically renders the notion of a wholly false person impossible.)

Annihilationism is also incoherent as it has God allowing death of body and spirit to occur in countless humans in whom, again, some good is certainly present--violating the perfection of His promise to not destroy a whole in which good exists.

Only Universalism—in which God destroys only the false within the soul (death) while causing that destroyed value to be restored (resurrection) to a true state, thus restoring every soul to perfection—does not violate the perfection of His justice.

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 51 by Anomaly]

Adamic death will one day be removed so God's justice for mankind has not been violated; there is going to be a resurrection of both the righteousness and those redeemably unrighteuos.

All will be put in order in God's due time without the need to twist scripture with this partial universalism nonsense.

[tam]

Peace to you Anomoly (and JP),

Once again, here's what neither you nor any other Annihilationist have responded to:

I have not responded because it is not wrong to hope that all men will turn and be saved. Who doesn't hope for something like that? But what of those who refuse? Who literally refuse to humble themselves, who would TAKE what does not belong to them (the tree of life), even if it means harming the innocent and peaceful, instead of humbling themselves before God and ASKING.


It is not against God's perfection that He has given men every opportunity to show mercy, to turn, to repent, etc. More opportunities than many even understand. But if some still refuse, then how is that on Him?

It would be unjust to suggest that God is somehow unrighteous, because of what the unrighteous choose.


**

To S/G... you have broken down the story so that the people no longer represent people and only represent good and bad parts IN a person, yes? But that is not what the story IS, and the city was indeed destroyed, the wicked PEOPLE in the city destroyed with her. God did bring out the righteous - He will not destroy the righteous with the wicked (hence, the weeds are not uprooted until the harvest, since some of the wheat might accidentally be uprooted as well).

And yes, for the sake of a certain amount of righteous in that city, he was going to spare the whole place. For the sake of the righteous people. But he did not find even that least amount, and so He drew Lot (and those who belonged to Lot) out.


**

In the Kingdom are:

Christ, the Bride (all who belong to Christ), all of Israel (some as part of the Bride, if they are in Christ, and some who simply enter the Kingdom on the basis of the promises made to Abraham), the sheep (from the sheep and the goats parable; who are not Christian but who have done good to Christ, unknowingly, doing good to even a least one of His brothers), and all those who are resurrected at the resurrection of the dead, who are resurrected to life, rather than to judgment and the second death.


God of course may have mercy upon whom He chooses. As Christ said, if you show mercy, mercy will be shown you.



Peace to you and to your loved ones,
your servant and a slave of Christ,
tammy

[Anomaly]

[Replying to post 51 by Anomaly]

Adamic death will one day be removed so God's justice for mankind has not been violated; there is going to be a resurrection of both the righteousness and those redeemably unrighteuos.

All will be put in order in God's due time without the need to twist scripture with this partial universalism nonsense.

Thanks for sharing your opinion JW. Do you have a reasoned reply to my last post or is sharing opinions the extent of your response?

[Anomaly]

[Replying to post 53 by tam]

...you have broken down the story so that the people no longer represent people and only represent good and bad parts IN a person, yes? But that is not what the story IS, and the city was indeed destroyed, the wicked PEOPLE in the city destroyed with her. God did bring out the righteous - He will not destroy the righteous with the wicked (hence, the weeds are not uprooted until the harvest, since some of the wheat might accidentally be uprooted as well).

Hello tam,

You're correct that the story is broken down to the level of metaphor. But did I break the story down to metaphor or did God who inspired His word place it there? I gently suggest the latter. I didn't make any of Genesis 18 up. It's right there for all to see. He showed this fundamental structure to the ancient Greek thinkers, they framed this concept as the problem of the one and the many. Example: is a human being a single thing or a big collection of parts? We're each made up of trillions of cells, yet think of ourselves as one person. This concept is also used in philosophy, called reductionism--reducing a complex thing to its parts to better understand it. In the Bible, God uses a "spiritual reductionism" to show us who and how He saves by dealing with good and bad parts within individual souls.

Yes, the city was destroyed, but open your eyes to the important features of the narrative. You're looking at the trees and claiming there's no forest. The lesson lies in what God did before destroying the city. He removed the parts that were righteous and destroyed only the unrighteous. It's a metaphor representing the first part of the Bible's twofold salvation, death and resurrection. God orchestrated much--perhaps most or even all--of the Bible in metaphor.

William James once wrote [I'm paraphrasing] that individual paints in pots were just so much saleable matter, but spread across a canvas in certain ways they performed a spiritual function. That spiritual function of course was that something quite different than mere paints resulted: a picture, a sum which was much more than its parts. In the same way God uses people, settings in time and space and circumstances [His paints] within the setting of this reality [His canvas] to teach us about Him and His ways, to teach spiritual principles.

You might have an argument if this was the only example in Scripture. But this same organization is found throughout both Testaments. Some examples are: the separation of sheep and goats (Mat 25), wheat and tares (Mat 13), good and bad branches (Jn 15) and good and bad figs (Jer 24) and good and rotten grapes (Isa 65:8). There are others. God distributed this metaphoric structure throughout all the Bible in multiple authors from different cultures, educations and walks of life and separated by centuries of time. No human mind could accomplish this.

[JehovahsWitness]

Thanks for sharing your opinion JW.

You are most welcome. I do like to share when I can. My reasoned response was in the post, feel free to address the points therein or not as you choose.

JW

[JehovahsWitness]

Only Universalism—in which God destroys only the false within the soul (death) while causing that destroyed value to be restored (resurrection) to a true state, thus restoring every soul to perfection—does not violate the perfection of His justice.

The word soul refers in scripture to the whole person or animal (a living breating being) or the life thereof. Death is the opposite of life, ie when the person (or animal) ceases to exist. A resurrection is when a person formerly dead returns to life (consciouse existence as a living being).

Since a soul is a physical flesh and blood entity (eg. a human being) unless you are refering to some medical procedure, the sentence "God destroys only the false within the soul (death)" is essentially meaningless dribble.. Yes false beliefs can be destroyed by reasoning with an individual (and cancer can be destroyed in a soul by radiotherapy) but God destroying "the false within the soul" doesn't mean anything.


Scripturally a ressurection doesn't guarantee perfection since, a number of people were resurrected in scripture and still died as a result of Adamic death (death that spread - was "inherited" - to all men through Adam). Thus proving they were not perfect. The word "resurrection" literally means a "standing up" as in a standing (back) up to life. If you fell down, standing up again doesn't in itself change anything. If you were running, for example, a race against Husain Bolt, and tripped but got back up, it wouldn't have made you a faster runner. In a similar way dying doesn't remove sin.

The only way to "destroy" Adamic sin is through the atonning value of Jesus' ransom sacrifice.


thus restoring every [obedient] soul to perfection

As explained, it is not a resurrection in itself that "restores souls to perfection". Every obedient person (soul: Hebrew Nephesh) will eventually be rewarded with perfect endless life. It is the above, and the above alone that "does not violate the perfection of His justice."

JW

[Anomaly]

[Replying to post 57 by JehovahsWitness]
Thanks for your response JW. I notice you still haven't addressed the specific argument I made in post 38 that both the Annihilationist and eternal hell doctrines are shown in Scripture to be logically incoherent as both violate the perfection of God's justice according to the principle He presents there.

Since a soul is a physical flesh and blood entity (eg. a human being) unless you are refering to some medical procedure, the sentence "God destroys only the false within the soul (death)" is essentially meaningless dribble.. Yes false beliefs can be destroyed by reasoning with an individual (and cancer can be destroyed in a soul by radiotherapy) but God destroying "the false within the soul" doesn't mean anything.

First, I use the word soul in theology board discussion in its most common general application, to indicate the immaterial portion of the human being. You seem to want to use a definition where soul = physical body. There are two ways of going about this:
1) we can agree on a definition of terms at the beginning of discussion and use them in a united context so we're on the same page, or,
2) I can use soul as it's most commonly used in religious discussion and you can continue to insist on only your definition in order to gain an imagined advantage, whereupon we'll talk past one another and create an arena in which no meaningful exchange of ideas can take place. You decide.

Second, your notion that, "...God destroying "the false within the soul" doesn't mean anything" is of course based on ignorance of what my actual beliefs entail. This approach--very common in theology message board dialog--is closed-minded, argumentative and reveals a lack of willingness to learn or "hear" anything your opponent has to say. If you wanted to have a forward-moving, honest discussion you would have queried me as to what I mean exactly by "falsity" within a soul instead of telling me it has no meaning. What you're actually saying is, "I have no interest in understanding your position so I'll reduce your ideas to rubble in order that my own belief system may stand unscathed."

Just so you know, my theology is prefaced on a metaphysic that holds reality to be a duality: information and value. In other words, all that exists is fundamentally composed of just these two components. The reason I use an abstract "information" as the "thatness" of existence is because information is the only common denominator between material and immaterial existents I could find. I've been at this for over 20 years and am currently working on a thesis that the value component of existence produces the properties and relations that provide interactions between informational entities. I don't expect you to understand this unless you have an interest in metaphysics. Also generally don' t discuss these things on message boards but in the interest of attempting fruitful discussion I've provided this basic background to show there is a methodology behind what I post.

Bottom line, people are informational entities. In support of the spiritual principle God lays out in Gen 18, the soul, in common terminology--or spirit, if you wish to define soul as a physical entity--is value-fragmented. As the body is seen to possess many cells, the soul or spirit is also a multiplicity of value elements, either true or false. Just as cancer falsifies the physical body by denying it the perfection of health, the perfection of moral direction in a human is corrupted by the fragmental falsification of the soul or spirit. This understanding is based entirely on God's framework in Gen 18. He shows us His spiritual work in a way that corresponds to the the specific/multiple (one and many) principle in Gen 18, which He goes on to repeat metaphorically throughout the entire Bible.

The metaphor of Gen 18 specifically shows that God separates false elements from true--or unrighteous from righteous or evil from good, or whatever terms you're comfortable with--before destroying or annihilating false components in the first step of salvation (death; destruction). The second, as I mentioned in my last post, is rebirth. God not only destroys falsity in human essence, He restores each destroyed element to true...in other words, God lets us kill ourselves spiritually (and physically) with our choices, but stubbornly and lovingly goes to war against our falsity--His enemies (Isa 42:13). The literal only allows us to see persons as wholes, and all arguments about doctrine are based on this literal corruption. God shows us in figurative language that fairly shouts from the pages of Scripture at us that He deals with us as a multiplicity in order to restore and save the whole. This He applies to every soul; salvation is universal in scope, just as God's love, justice and forgiveness are. We just have to "hear" it.

Scripturally a ressurection doesn't guarantee perfection since, a number of people were resurrected in scripture and still died as a result of Adamic death (death that spread - was "inherited" - to all men through Adam). Thus proving they were not perfect. The word "resurrection" literally means a "standing up" as in a standing (back) up to life. If you fell down, standing up again doesn't in itself change anything. If you were running, for example, a race against Husain Bolt, and tripped but got back up, it wouldn't have made you a faster runner. In a similar way dying doesn't remove sin.

The only way to "destroy" Adamic sin is through the atonning value of Jesus' ransom sacrifice.


thus restoring every [obedient] soul to perfection

As explained, it is not a resurrection in itself that "restores souls to perfection". Every obedient person (soul: Hebrew Nephesh) will eventually be rewarded with perfect endless life. It is the above, and the above alone that "does not violate the perfection of His justice."

Reread the above. Trying to piece together doctrine from a literal reading of the Bible only allows one to build a doctrinal fortress whose mortar is sand, ready to fall. Your arguments don't make sense. A failure to understand the spiritual and allegorical meaning of death and resurrection leads to the sort of incoherence you display here my friend.

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 57 by JehovahsWitness]
Thanks for your response JW. I notice you still haven't addressed the specific argument I made in post 38 that both the Annihilationist and eternal hell doctrines are shown in Scripture to be logically incoherent...

No I didn't. What most people referto as "eternal hell doctrines are shown in Scripture" are nothing more than people repeating the doctrines of their churches, which are mostly lies. The bible does not present "hell" as anything more than the common grave of mankind. Not a place of eternal torture, so what the bible REALLY says about "hell" in no way negates anything i have posted.

God will judge every individual according to their deeds and see that before hand they are fully informed and educated as to their choices rewarding those that choose to be faithful with everlasting life and those that refuse with everlasting non-existence. There that covers #38!

JW

[JehovahsWitness]

First, I use the word soul in theology board discussion in its most common general application, to indicate the immaterial portion of the human being.

That's nice for you. It's not what the bible says a soul is. I have not interest in discussing greek philosopy, hindusim and I have no interest in Catholic beliefs, so unbiblical ideas of "immortal souls" is of no interest to me.

If you are interested in the biblical view feel free to consult my earlier posts.

JW

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