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Universalism As an attribute of God
Posted on: April 18, 2007 - 7:18pm
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Universalism As an attribute of God
What do you all think of this folks. Is it fair to say that universalism represent the true nature of God? How does Free Will Plays into this as well.
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Sorry to have missed this. Not sure what you mean by universalism...
To me, there's no way to provide a nature for something defined contra nature. To have a nature is to be part of nature. This is not a fallacy of equivocation as some mistakenly believe; (in fact ,it's a restatement of the axiom of identity) it an error to believe that 'having a nature' and 'being a part of nature' can be distinct concepts in the first place.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
I think it's the belief that everyone makes it to heaven eventually.
I used to accept it as a solution to the problem of evil, that everything all works out in the end. However, it doesn't explain why all the suffering is necessay to get there, and although God's plan might be beyond our understanding, why call him/his creation perfect if it doesn't match our idea of perfect, if we can imagine a way that it could've been better?
That challenge and suffering lead to a greater joy when it is overcome seems to make sense, but only in the context of our imperfect world where our options were limited. If it was possible to make that greater joy without the pains of the build-up then why not just go straight to it?
Our conceptions of good, bad, imperfect and perfect all seem to lose sense outside of their natural/realworld context.
it would seem that the concept of universalism would directly contradict the script of the rapture, and many other references in the bible. how can "all people eventually be saved" when god himself supposed killed, rather than "compassionately spared", millions of sinners? the supposed existence of a "hell" would seem to say that the idea of universalism has already failed.
www.derekneibarger.com http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=djneibarger "all postures of submission and surrender should be part of our prehistory." -christopher hitchens
Universalists obviously reject hell.
I don't think that they don't believe the Bible to be literal truth and possibly not even the only truth. It's a moderate's belief rather than a fundies.
Ps. Your avatar looks sinister! :s
Well, universalism certainly makes more sense if your god claims to be all-loving. The Christian doctrine is really more one of jealous god.
But it kind of defeats the purpose of heaven and hell. Heaven and hell are meant like carrot and stick. Follow Jesus and you get the carrot, if you don't you get the stick. Churches don't like universalism, because well, it means to give up Pascal's Wager as an "argument" to believe.