How can God justify
sending finite sinners to infinite punishment in hell especially those
who have never heard about Jesus' sacrifice and resurrection? Why
wouldn't God just let them cease to exist instead of experiencing
eternal punishment?
Response:God offers us the free gift or Eternal Life is life in perfect loving union with God. No-one deserves this and it is not compulsory.
Because this is an infinite good which surpasses our understanding, to miss this is necessarily and infinite loss. This is what "eternal punishment" seems to mean.
It has always been Christian teaching that those who have never heard about Jesus are not beyond God's loving redemption. Exactly how this all works is of course a mystery - we don't even know what makes up 97% of the mass of the Universe and there is no reason why we should know how God works beyond time.
John Polkinghorne died on 9 March 2021. May he rest in peace, and rise in GLORY!
Showing posts with label Universalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Universalism. Show all posts
Sunday, 7 October 2012
Sunday, 27 February 2011
judgment and the resulting existence or nonexistence after death
My question concerns judgment and the resulting existence or nonexistence after death, in particular the necessity, in Christian doctrine as I understand it, for the occurrance of faith, or commitment to God/Christ, or acceptance of/ belief in salvation within a particular person's mind (and of less importance, actions) to determine whether his soul unites with God/’goes to heaven’ or not. How does a frame of mind (eg. Belief/non belief) determine the material (or immaterial) placement of a soul after death? I am assuming here that we are 'not justifid by works' but 'by faith'. If the Creator and creation are one, and God re-unites with his creation, then everything/everyone must by definition be included as part of that unity. If everything is not included , then once this (partial?) unity has occurred within or with God and his created universe, where is there room for all the rest (ie non believers, etc)? If they are included, what do we make of God’s judgment as described in the New Testament by ‘separation’?
We discuss universalism in Questions of Truth. Loving union with God cannot be compulsory, but equally God will save everyone He can – and that is presumably quite a lot!
We discuss universalism in Questions of Truth. Loving union with God cannot be compulsory, but equally God will save everyone He can – and that is presumably quite a lot!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)