toothless hell, part 2
In the previous post I said that we can’t jettison the idea of hell from evangelical theology, because it is – par excellence - the doctrine that guarantees human freedom. If you have freedom to reject God, you’re pretty darn free. Even if nobody does actually end up rejecting God, the option has to be there; otherwise God’s plan to open up eternal paradise to folk like you and me is mechanistic. To the extent that something chugs towards inevitable conclusions, it is, or is part of, a machine. The possibility of hell is terrifying and disturbing; but it is also the guarantee that we are neither machines, nor part of a machine.
There is something charmingly naïve about Christianity’s claim that God’s plan is to get us into a spacious paradise where we will be happy ever after. It seems naïve and charming because it reminds us of fairy stories and folk tales; in other words, it reminds us of the enduring dreams and hopes of humankind. But the great drama of being human resides in a particular twist in our fairy tale: we are not fit to enter paradise, and must pass through some momentous change, a change that involves death and reawakening.
When I say that we are not fit to enter paradise, I don’t mean that we’re disgusting sinners too worthless to merit God’s favour, or such unpleasantness. I mean that if God took us as we are and dressed us in imperishable bodies and let us into the heaven he has prepared for us, we wouldn’t enjoy it. It is possible we would hate it. An eternity of trying to be maximally good and loving and worshipful would be hell, even if the backdrop to one’s efforts was the New Jerusalem. And yet an eternity of goodness, love and worship is what God knows would make us happiest, though you wouldn’t know it to look at Raphael’s bored cherubs.
If such a heaven doesn’t sound to your tastes… then welcome to the reason why we’re not naturally fit for paradise.
The God of the Judeo-Christian tradition makes us an offer we can refuse. He offers to make us new, to give us a new spirit, to place a new heart at the centre of our being, so that we are spontaneously moved to be effortlessly and joyously good, loving and worshipful. On the plus side, we will enjoy eternal bliss. On the minus side: we will have to give ourselves up and be remade. Our old self will diminish, and the new self will grow; the two natures will run side-by-side in this lifetime, like relay runners during the passing of the baton; we will pass the baton of our personality from the old nature to the new (though Lord knows our old nature doesn’t want to let go) - which is to say that we will stop identifying with the old, and start identifying with the new. The old nature will slow to a halt, and the new nature will run towards the prize.
All well and good: we are not expected to run into heaven on the spiritual feet with which we were born; we are given a new nature whose feet are fleeter, to whom we must pass the baton of our personalities. Indeed, we are told by the apostle Paul to count the old self as ‘dead’ – to recognise that its race is run – and to identify with the homuncular new sprinter that has been planted in us, and who is growing imperceptibly with the Holy Spirit's nursing. But relinquishing oneself, giving oneself up, is not easy; and the doctrine of hell tells us that it is not mandatory.
Buddhism recognises that one’s attachment to the illusory, transient self (not to mention all the ‘stuff’ that this self enjoys) keeps one chained, life after life, incarnation after incarnation, to a universe of pain. Christianity sees the personality as a real thing and not an illusion – it as something that God, the complex unity that is the Trinity, himself possesses. How much harder it is to give up a self that is as real as God! We should not think it certain that everyone will want to do it, even if the alternative is banishment from paradise.
I’ll return in the next post to the question of whether anyone actually would prefer to cling to their old self for eternity rather than be made anew, even if their clinging is performed in the ‘outer darkness’. But I’d like to quickly address the question of why - if some people might, in theory, cling to their old selves and refuse heaven - God can’t or won’t simply blot those who reject him out of existence, rather than sentence them to an eternity of alienation from him. In other words, why do we need to even ask whether anyone would prefer hell over relinquishment of self? Would it not be more moral of God to make us choose between heaven and annihilation?
Well, I don’t believe that Christians can adopt annihilationism. It all comes back to the terrible freedom that belongs to creatures created in God’s image. What if it is we who choose to exist eternally? I simply can’t discount that possibility. Maybe the damned choose perpetual existence - and God honours their choice. If hell is the consequence of my refusal to relinquish my old self, then why would I, having been alienated from God, relinquish the self for love of which I’d rejected paradise? And if God would allow me to choose not to surrender my old self to heaven, why wouldn’t he allow me to refuse to be snuffed out? Christianity insists that we need to pass through a sort of ‘annihilation’ just to get to heaven – as Paul says in his second letter to Corinth, ‘If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old is gone, the new has come.’ If I’d choose not to surrender my old self to gain eternal joy, why in hell would I surrender it to annihilation? If I’d surrender myself to annihilation, I’d might as well surrender myself to paradise.
Maybe, when God calls us back from death to face judgement and live eternally, it will be because that’s what we all want: existence over nothingness, at any cost. One might argue that some people would choose nothingness over existence - but I'll say it again: if they are willing to relinquish themselves to nothingness, why would they not relinquish themselves to the rebirth that would fit them for paradise?
C.S. Lewis suggested – I think it was in The Great Divorce – that the gates of hell are ‘locked on the inside’. Its residents can leave whenever they want to. But given that leaving hell would mean relinquishing the self they love and cling to, they might of course just as easily spend eternity putting off their departure till tomorrow – or the day after, or the day after... After all, once one opens hell’s door and abandons the outer darkness, one’s beloved old self will vanish forever. Why not embrace it for just one more moment, one more week (if there be weeks in hell)? Better to be me in hell than some new creation in heaven… And so it goes.
Recently I was speaking to someone who has been promising for many years to write a novel as soon as circumstances permit. She has many wonderful ideas for this novel. But the thing is, circumstances never seem to permit; the goalposts always move. Here’s what she said to me recently: ‘I’ve been acting like I’ve been putting off writing a book, but lately I’ve discovered something: I’ve already decided I’ll never do it.’ Because it always seemed to her that tomorrow might bring circumstances in which she’d write her book, she thought that the question of her writing a novel was an open one. But it wasn’t. In the back of her mind she’d already closed it.
I thought this was very honest of her, and that her admission evinced an admirable level of self-understanding. I also thought: how many of us think we are putting things off, when really we have decided we will never do them? How many eternal decisions have I made, without knowing it?
How many of us might have already made the decision never to relinquish who we are? Oh, we’d never admit that we have made an eternal decision one way or another; we think we’re keeping our options open. But perhaps we don’t even know we’ve made the decision. There’s only one way to be absolutely sure that we haven't made it, and that is to hold up our selves, right now, before a God we may or may not believe in, and say to him: If you’re real and the Prophet Ezekiel is right and you can give me a new spirit to replace my old one, a self that you can one day usher into paradise, and no money has to change hands, then look, I’ll take it. If these Christians are right and you want to phase me out until I’m nothing, and phase in a new me, a me who wouldn’t find heaven an interminable chore, then I’m up for it.
If that doesn’t appeal to you, or if you find yourself unable to frame the prayer, or if you find all this pushy and offensive, fine. As long as you realise that you may have already made an eternal choice. Who knows?
We can’t discount the possibility.
Coming up: a very short and amateurish play.
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Since your old self dies as well, the promise of eternal life would not really apply to the person making the decision - merely the new person reaping the benefits of it without having been able to make the decision to do so.
That being said, my own argument has a problem - we change constantly. I am not quite the same person I was 6 months ago - I imagine that neither are you. I've made choices months or years ago as a "former me" that the "current me" benefits from. We make those choices all the time - it is the choices that we make that change us. To some extent, we are perpetually remodeled through the simple process of existing. By learning, we change.
This is a really interesting one. You've given me a bit to chew on. :-)
I hope you'll go into a bit more detail on the destruction and rebirth process. To what extent is your old self destroyed? At this moment, you are conscious - will this consciousness that is you exist in the new guy who goes to Heaven?
What is the difference between this destruction to which you allude, and the one that we experience constantly as we grow and change?
People are of course free to do as they wish -- people rarely have guns to their heads with someone saying to honor your mother and father or else. In my mind's eye, people are a lot like inmates in a minimum security prison. The prisoners can do pretty much as they want within the confines of the wire -- hit the weights or go to the library or whatever -- they can even decide which pair of socks to wear in the morning. But they cannot decide to go the McDonald's downtown. Imagine that prison being our character. An honest man/woman may break with honorable behavior, but usually this is the exception and not the rule. In the same way, we have the freedom to act within the boundaries of our characters.
We are all prisoners of our character -- and pleasing God is beyond the wire. We are free -- to understand our limitations. A man has got to know his limitations...
Hi Sheri. You've pointed out a problem I always had with the idea of reincarnation: how exactly are 'my' other incarnations 'me'? If the personality is illusory and the only thing that 'my' incarnations share is some amnesiac life-spark, why not just call the incarnations different people? After all, we're all formed from recycled materials. Just because I've breathed air that once inflated Shakespeare's lungs, that doesn't mean there's a continuity of identity between me and the bard. Nothing I could put on a CV, anyway.
I think, though, that Jewish and Christian spirituality answers just this problem of how there can be a continuity of identity between who we are (ie people who must observe the law because we don't have God's Torah planted within us, or 'written upon [our] hearts', as Jeremiah has it), and an eternal future self who is spontaneously moved to fulfill God's will. We cannot develop to the point where we have a spontaneously righteous spirit in us, and so we need to be radically changed - but as you've said, this raises the problem of how the new version of us will relate to the old. The answer, I think, lies in the biblical image idea of grafting. Just as Jason's ship in the old paradox, rebuilt plank by plank until every plank is replaced, can arrive home with none of its planks the same and yet somehow be the same ship - and just as the human body can periodically replace its cells and yet still be the 'same' body - so can we, if a new nature is 'grafted' onto the old, continue to be the same person, yet arrive in heaven 100% changed. the old is gradually phased out and the new phased in, and the continuity of identity is preserved throughout.
As for the new self having no choice - there's a sense in which the new self embodies the choice made by the old; or you could say that the moment of choice is what the two selves have in common. But I'm using the term 'self' way too vaguely; to explore issues of choice we need sharper terminology. In reality there's the fundamental 'I' or subjective POV, and there's the self qua personality, in which the 'I' is embedded. Jewish / Christian thought doesn't really allow for the existence of a disembodied POV that's not embedded in a personality - we see the person in organic terms. If I read Paul right, the subjective 'I' transfers its sense of identification from the old personality to the new, and the old personality is phased out. The 'I' thus gradually takes possession of a new personality, without having to be 'disembodied' during the disintegration of the old. The freedom of the 'I' is carried from the old person to the new. Both Jesus and Paul map out this process in some detail, but I'm not doing it justice at all.
Jesus implied that Ezekiel's heart transplant is a gradual affair; the new heart or spirit is planted in us like a seed, and grows imperceptibly. It's instructive that Jesus tells us to pray, 'Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,' since in heaven God's will is not done grudgingly, painfully, or out of fear - Jesus is urging us see the 'heart transplant' not as some eschatalogical event, but as a here-and-now supernatural possibility for which we should pray. At the very least, it's an interesting unpacking of Ezekiel's 'new heart' theology.
Sorry - brevity problems.
Got Brad Hirschfield's book, btw - it's WONDERFUL. Will post a review in the future.
On the contrary, I'm fine with the term 'total depravity'; I'm just not sure that Christian doctrines should sound so similar to top-shelf DVD titles :)
No disagreement so far; I'm with you on the limitations of the will and our inability to please God. Even if we were free to do what we want, I think Schopenhauer's claim would still stand - We are free to do what we want, but not free to want what we want.
The bondage of the will is precisely why, even given unlimited time, we could never perfect ourselves. Here Nietzsche is a helpful ally of Christian theology, in his claim that what we see as our 'morality' in fact springs from hidden selfish motives, resentment, and timidity. Thus we can never rise above the level of our selfishness. We are doomed to purchase virtues with ill-gotten psychological gains. We're not free to choose real goodness, because we bring selfish motives to the decision-making table.
(I'm not sure exactly what a 'decision-making table' is. Will check on ebay.)
Where I think we might disagree is on the old issue of whether we are free to repent or to reject God. I think we are free, but I'll be the first to admit that biblical teaching on election is a major stumbling block here. I'm positive, though, that the idea that human freedom diminishes God's sovereignty is the worst idea in all theology, and also that I don't know how to make sense of the doctrine of hell if we deny that humans are free to reject God. Anyway, you and I both know the arguments on each side, and we know that there are troops languishing interminably in the trenches of both armies, so it'd be fruitless to rehash them here; we might be able to bring something new to the debate, though.
That being said, I can conceptualize reincarnation as the same consciousness implanted into different bodies and different situations - and going through the normal changes that we go through with life. While I don't believe in reincarnation, the idea makes some sense, because it still imagines that some intangible part of the self is constant. It is the life situation that changes, like a person trying on a new suit or a child playing pretend.
Elie Wiesel said in an interview once, "it is the child in me that is a Chassid." While we do grow and change, we also have all of our former self with us as well. I've done and said things in the past that I would not consider now - but those things are with me, and part of me. So, to some extent, what I'd call the soul retains some continuity even while changing. I am not the same person that I was in the past - but the old selves are not discarded either. They are building blocks of the new person. I could argue perhaps even that the most evil things I've done or said in my life are necessary parts of the person who would not do or say those things today. It is the extremist in me that helps create the moderate. It is the elitist that shapes the pluralist.
The idea of a new nature being grafted onto the old makes sense to me - as this is exactly what happens during the processes of learning and growth. It is the idea of the old self being discarded that I can't fathom, even if it occurs slowly.
I also thought of another question last night after I had signed off. That is the matter of making the choice of where to spend Eternity. Obviously, in this life, people make the choice not to be Christians all the time. If Christianity is the only way to Heaven, then in order for Hell to be empty, the choice would have to be available after death - the person would have to be aware of its availability - and the information would have to be presented in such a way that Heaven was the only logical option. So then, the doctrines of salvation through the cross would not be an article of faith - the proof would be inescapable. If that's the case, why become a Christian on Earth? Why not allow that a just God will fill in all of the blanks at some point in the future, and then let us decide our fates?
Re: Rabbi Hirschfield's book - heheh, now you see why I recommend that book to everyone. :-) It's one of those that you read three or four times before you've truly read it.
I have just been thinking of some passages of Scripture which would apply:
2 Corinthians 5:3-9 NIV (from Paul's letter to the Corinthians)
For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it.
And one more regarding the old and new man within:
Romans 7:21-25 NIV
When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
Thanks be to God-through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Thanks for the link - excellent lyrics!
My problems with reincarnation are no doubt rooted in my oh-so-western feeling that my personality is inseparable from what I am, not just a mask I wear. I suppose that's a typically 'Christian' feeling, rooted in years of squabbling over the doctrine of the Trinity - which is essentially a doctrine about the ontology of personality.
I was struck by what you said about evil things said or done, and how it 'is the extremist in me that helps create the moderate. It is the elitist that shapes the pluralist'. That has a loud ring of truth about it, and I'll be pondering it. I think that the grafting of new onto old is precisely what enables us to retain everything about ourselves, the bad stuff as well as the good; the continuity is not broken, and so in heaven we will still be able to look back and think, 'I'm the same person who once slammed my sister's arm in the fridge.' The discarding of the old self just means that the new self wouldn't slam his sister's door in a fridge, because he has within him a heart that wouldn't move him that way. It means that you are now a 'person who would not do or say those things today,' as you put it. Nevertheless, there is a continuity of identity and consciousness between the person who once did 'those things', and the later one who would not.
Basically, it seems to me that the grafting of a new self onto the old means that we will become new people almost even knowing it; we'll always feel like ourselves, but when we reach heaven we'll look back and think: 'I'm the same person, but now I would never do all those things I used to do.'
I don't remotely think that we have to consciously 'accept Jesus' in this life in order to be saved. Moreover, I find the idea unbiblical. If the gospel is a true proposition, then I think that after death many people will discover that they 'accepted Jesus' without knowing it. I don't think for a minute that those who throw themselves on God's mercy in this life will be cast from his presence in the next life because their theology was inadequate. That's a morally obscene idea. God will indeed 'fill in the gaps' - but those gaps will be gaps in our self-knowledge. What if, at the resurrection, we don't get another chance to decide, but, rather, find out what we've already decided?
If that's the case, it seems to me that the one way to know for sure that we are willing to relinquish our 'heart of stone' and receive a 'heart of flesh' is to ask for it rather than wait. I'm sure this asking can take many forms - even inchoate cries.
The 'penitent' thief on the cross has never seemed particularly penitent to me. He neither expected salvation nor asked for it; quite the opposite - he believed he would end up outside the kingdom. All he did was agree that God's judgment on him was right. But for Jesus, that was enough: 'Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.' To an atheist he might well say: 'I'm the one you always wished existed, but couldn't believe in. Sorry I couldn't let you know sooner. Come on in.'
To agree or disagree that Jesus is God incarnate is for many people primarily an intellectual matter; to long for a 'new spirit' that spontaneously loves God and neighbour is an existential matter.
There actually is only one, inevitable conclusion, and it is not pretty. I am not amazed about the doctrine of heaven and hell as much as i am amazed that anyone makes it to heaven....
I put up a bit of what i'm talking about on my blog today...
PS Have you read an author by the name of Cappon? I'd recommend his Parables of Judgment, Parables of Grace, & Parables of Judgment. He is the closest thing to an orthodox inclusivist that i have ever read.
Peace.
Maybe that is Hell - you are stuck in Heaven with no way out [1].
What if we applied your "God.exe" idea to this? If the ineffable soul were more like a program [2] that runs on many platforms and produces similar results, but can be ported from an older model to a newer one by the Programmer. If we introduce the concept of Life [3,4] and apply a few strange attractors [5], then we can have all sorts of interesting results, including free will (or at least the simulation thereof [6]).
The same reasoning may be applied to any religion that separates the soul from the body [7].
John
[1] Wait - didn't Satre already do that one?
[2] A literal ghost in the machine, as opposed to the more common metaphorical ones.
[3] No, not the cereal.
[4] Not the board game, either!
[5] Why are you looking at me like that?
[6] This is actually a central question in AI: When does a program cease to be "merely" a program and begin to be an entity in its own right?
[7] Note that there is a subtle difference between separating the soul from the body and separating the mind from the body. Roman Catholics hold that even in cases of brain death, the soul remains. Honestly, in that case, my feeling is that I'd rather fly free, but they disagree.
I'm not sure that it solves the problem though. Let's pretend that we get some great piece of AI software that is so advanced as to actually become an entity. So I have the beta version on machine A, and I copy all of the source code over to machine B and run immortal_soul.exe. Is this entity on machine B really the same as the one on machine A? What if I do not remove the source code from machine A before I install the entity to machine B? Do we have 2 of the same entity, or merely two separate, but identical twins? I suppose the core issue here is one of what exactly defines the self. What can be changed before we are no longer ourselves?
Now I'm sure that death threat guy has said the sinner's prayer. He may very well have meant it. But an eternity trapped with the likes of that would be Hell, even in the midst of Heaven. There are some people for whom Hell is wherever they are. [1]
I have an idea of how you're going to answer this, but I wanted to give you the space to elaborate here, since it is relevant to the issue: what is the choice made by violent extremists who have said this sinner's prayer, and are violent extremists in the name of God? Have they accepted Jesus because they said the prayer, or rejected him because they reject his teachings?
[1] This actually raises another question - what would be Heaven for an extremist? If they have nothing to kill or be killed over - no enemy to attack, how can they find joy?
Excellent. These are inexhaustible passages. Paul was incredibly aware of the dynamics of the relationship between old and new within a person.
Nick: The 'penitent' thief on the cross has never seemed particularly penitent to me. He neither expected salvation nor asked for it; quite the opposite - he believed he would end up outside the kingdom.
I disagree with you here. The thief had both elements needed for salvation. He acknowledged his sin and he believed that Jesus was the Messiah who would have a kingdom as He claimed. Remember that Jesus was crucified because He claimed to be God.
Luke 23:41-42
"...And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong." Then he said to Jesus, "Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom."
1 John 3:2-3 NKJV
Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.
1 Corinthians 13:12 NKJV
For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known
Ah, the inexhaustible human need to explain spiritual realities with a relevant metaphore...<sigh>...moving on:
Christianityintheraw: I do not believe we are free -- our "freedom" is just enough to land us into some very deep shit.
This is one of the bits of Reformed Theology that I have a serious problem with. The thinking generally goes like this: God is a completely soverign, micro-manager and nothing on this earth happens or has happened or will happen that violates His Soverign Will. Which means that God is fully responsible for 9/11, the Columbine HS masacre, AIDS, hunger, war...In this worldview, it's not human freedom, but God's Soverign Will that lands us in deep shit...because the shit is pretty deep.
Nick: The 'penitent' thief on the cross has never seemed particularly penitent to me. He neither expected salvation nor asked for it; quite the opposite - he believed he would end up outside the kingdom.
I have to agree with lovetheword on this point. The thief verbally acknowledged his culpability (sin) and in reffering to Jesus' 'kingdom' and calling him 'Lord' acknowledged that he was more than just an insurgent (as the Romans thought) or a heretic (as the Jews thought) or an innocent guy (as most Universalists think)...He may not have realized it at the time but he did fulfill the minimum requirement for Kingdom citizenship at the 11th hour...In fact, I think that his belief that he would end up outside Jesus' kingdom is a sign of his penitance (remember that Jews of the 1st century believed that their ticket to Paradise was good behavior and rule keeping). Jesus (in true form) dances all over these presuppositions with his awesomw grace and welcomes him into the Kingdom.
Paul makes a more direct statement of the irreducible minimum for salvation in his answer to the Phillipian jailer's question, "What do I do to be saved?" which was "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved - you and your whole household." (Acts 16:30-31)...Paul (at least) and Luke (who included it in his documentation of the events) seemed convinced that belief in Jesus is essential. Oops...Paul for got to mention repenting of your sins.
Leave it to me to come in and offend all of the systematic theologians in the conversation. I highly recomment Walter Kaiser's book, "Toward an Exegetical Theology." He gives credibility to yahoos like me with an anti-systematic bias.
I was sure I'd come across Robert Capon, so I googled him and found the 3 volume book of parables on google reader. That'll do me while waiting for Hondo (after I finish the excellent book Sheri recommended).Will have to get hold of a hard copy, too, because it's completely, completely wonderful. Thanks for the tip-off.
I worry about getting into debates about free will because I don't have a workable definition of free will. I don't have anything close. Entering a debate about free will without a workable definition is like turning up at a tennis match and saying, 'I don't have a racquet - mind if I use my hand?'
For me, free will is what I exercise when I'm trying to do one last push-up (that'll be push-up number four) and all of my inclinations are militating against it. I know there's a difference between the decision I'm making to do another push up, and the thing I do when I react automatically because a bee has flown into my tee shirt. But I can't define it.
I can see how this kind of 'freedom' might have evolved. The more complex a creature, the more instincts press upon it, and at some point these impulses will be contradictory and some kind of faculty of arbitration will be needed in order to prevent (possibly fatal) inertia. Take a dog chasing another dog away from its territory. The protection-of-territory instinct makes the pursuer very aggressive, which can often scare off the intruder. But the further the pursuer gets from the centre of its territory, the lower its aggression-level gets; and as the other dog gets close to its own territory, its own aggression becomes kindled. At some point in the proceedings, aggression levels are equal and a 'decision' has to be made, because there's no dominant instinct. There's a stand-off. It's interesting that in higher mammals, the one who backs down shows shame - which implies some kind of acceptance of responsibility for action. Possibly.
As I've said over at your blog, there's a sense in which God 'does' everything - that is, we can't 'create' any circumstance, because we are not reality's creator or sustainer. Moreover, God knows everything, and so his creation of what are, for us, future events indubitably has the character of an absolute decree. You can't get away from that - which is why you're right (on your blog) to talk about things being set in stone. But within the sphere of this absolute sovereignty, the sovereignty of a being on whom everyone and everything depends for its existence, there's scope for anything to happen, including freedom. That's a mystery that, as far as I know, Lutherans are happiest to leave a mystery, so I guess I'm a bit Lutheran on this score. Nevertheless, Calvinism is right to insist on absolute sovereignty.
I'll agree, though, that our freedom can't lift us out of 'deep shit'. Our good deeds are filthy rags: they're shot through with selfishness and egoism. (I still think they're pretty beautiful filthy rags, though, and I'm pretty sure Calvin agreed.) The freedom to accept God, though, is, in a sense, the freedom to accept that we don't have the freedom to be truly good; it's a free surrender of the illusion of freedom. So perhaps it's a special case.
At any rate, we undoubtedly have some kind of freedom - or else for God to ask us or tell us to do anything would smack of deception. Should implies can . Nevertheless, God knows how we will respond to him, and our response is ultimately a reality that he alone, as the creator, 'makes,' and so it is not at all inaccurate to say that our free response to him is fixed or 'predestined'. Or even that our calling was irresistibly effectual. I'm not even sure that it's a paradox.
Am I making any sense? I plan on tackling TULIP at some point... Your Modified Calvinist input will be most helpful, methinks.
I'm smitten by this immortal_soul.exe idea / the debate thereon, even if I don't understand it at all. I looked up 'strange attractors' and... can you do another of your excellent nutshell summaries?
I do know that some astral projection fanatics talk about the consciousness in terms of a program that can be downloaded from the physical body to a subtle energy body.
That, as the philosphers have said, is a doozy [1]. What you are really asking is "What is the ding an sich that makes any given thing unique?" If there are two things that are completely identical in every way (conceivable or not), then how can we tell them apart? Are they unique in some ineffable way, or are they actually the same thing?
Many have said that it is the experiences that create the uniqueness. Though the two entities might be alike at the instant that they are created, their experiences immediately diverge in ways both large [2] and small [3]. If you keep the code in machine A while starting machine B, then the memory of entity A would be of being downloaded, whereas that of entity B would be of having been downloaded.
Personally, I think that we are coming very close to dancing on the head of pins with the angels [4]. The notion of "selfhood" is not well defined (for example - does an ameoba have "selfhood"? What about a cat? What about you? Where and how do you draw the line?) As we have no evidence, we must admit that all well-formed hypotheses are equally valid. And then have a beer.The best commonplace example of a strange attractor is probably a coin flip. Strange attractors are end states ("heads" or "tails") that are unknowable without perfect knowledge [5,6]. When a coin is flipped, which side it lands on depends on many inter-related variables (air currents, nail size, flip strength, etc.); worse, the interaction between the variables is not a simple relationship that can be written down as a straight-forward formula. Instead, it is a set of formulae that call on each other with varying strengths (e.g., air currents may be 2.3 times as important as nail length but only if the coin is held out from the body by more than 1/{length of the arm}). Thus, even though you know that the coin will land on one side, you don't know which side - and can't repeat the side except by doing the experiment many, many times.
In life, there are many strange attractors, from whether or not a given set of temperatures and pressures will cause rain to which atomic nucleus will decay. Put on a more personal level, there is the question of what I do after work. Do I go to the gym? To the store? Home to mow the lawn? Which decision I make is a strange attractor; the decision is based on many poorly defined variables [7].
To a certain extent, that is the reason for creating habits, IMHO. They tend to bias the throw so that some strange attractors are more attractive than others. If going to the gym has helped me to lose weight, then I may want to keep the streak alive. If reading the Bible has kept me out of the saloons [8], then I may want to do that more [9].
The problem with those folks is that most of the effects that they report (and those for NDE's as well) can be easily simulated/stimulated in a replicable fashion. Whether these are a "true" NDE's is one of those ineffable ding an sich questions. Though parsimony would suggest that anything that can be so simulated is probably not a true experience of the afterlife but rather a chemo-physiological reaction to certain stresses, ther eis nothing to rule it out [10].
John
[1] Perhaps not in those exact words, but close.
[3] The quantum state of the two is never the same. Even if the initial quantum states were identical (as in Einstein-Bose states), they would diverge.
[4] This was actually a debate as to the corporeal nature of supernatural beings, so it isn't quite as silly as it seems.
[5] This is why you never ask God to call a coin flip. You'll get "Heads, then tails, then tails again, then heads, then..."
[6] Professional mathematicians are advised to look away. I'm going to try to get through this without once mentioning non-linear PDE's and fractal dimensions.
[7] E.g., "What did I have for lunch?" If it was something high in protein, I'm probably hungry again, which means I'll want to go to the store. If it was something high in carbohydrates, I may feel energetic enough to work off some of my flab. "Who did I see on the way out?" If it was someone skinnier than I am [a], then I'll want to go to the gym. If it was someone who has a flowered dress on, I may want to go work on my yard. Etc...
[8] It hasn't.
[9] Or less, as the case may be.
[10] Mainly because scientists rely on parsimony to pare away improbabilities. We have a saying: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." If you claim that rain is caused by little elves with buckets, you have to show not just photos of the elves but also explain how all of the other, associated phenomena (clouds, winds, temperature variations) are also explained by your new evidence. It is this critical step that ID proponents keep falling over (well, that and their whole methodology makes no sense).
[a] I.e., 90% of the human race.
Nick said: I don't remotely think that we have to consciously 'accept Jesus' in this life in order to be saved. Moreover, I find the idea unbiblical. If the gospel is a true proposition, then I think that after death many people will discover that they 'accepted Jesus' without knowing it.
What possible Biblical evidence can you give for this?
Good points. Re the death threat types: if it's true that in order to get to heaven, the heart of stone must be taken away and a new heart installed - or, in Paul's terms, the old personality 'dies' and we become a 'new creation' - then accepting salvation simply means submitting to God's will to completely remake you on his terms. This fits with the reading of the Eden story according to which our naked forebears' crime was opting to live by their own terms. If this is the case, then the death threat type can get to heaven, sure - but s/he won't be the death threat type any more. Nothing of that person will remain. S/he'll be remade completely, just as Jason's ship is remade completely.
I'd say that until a person is willing to give themselves up for the sake of being remade on God's terms (see Jesus' eyebrow-raising teachings about being reborn, about selling everything to purchase the pearl of great price, about about hating your own life, mother, father, etc), then they're not, strictly speaking, converted. The sinner's prayer shouldn't just be a pledge to try harder; it's a declaration of moral bankruptcy, and a request for a new 'birth'.
I do think that it's possible for the 'old' personality to prevent the new from growing much in this lifetime. Paul calls this 'quenching the Spirit; and he talks about people who will be saved 'as through fire' (with scorchmarks on their coat-tails), their life's work burnt up as useless. To return to the relay runner analogy, a 'bad' Christian (think death threats) is one doesn't let their old personality release the baton. As the old runner tires, s/he slows down the new runner. Death finally cleaves away the old personality along with the body, but the new personality hasn't run very far. In biological terms, it enters heaven an infant.
Personally, I expect to get to heaven a squawling baby..
Yes - I was too glib here. I don't know exactly how penitent the thief was; we don't know if he was resigned to his fate, or whether he was hoping to change it. Either way, given that the thief acknowledged that Jesus is the messiah, the example was totally unsuitable for that particular discussion.
I agree, of course, that the thief met the requirements (not going to argue with Jesus there!) - but I'd like to note that I've encountered plenty of evangelicals who wouldn't count acknowledgement of sin and acknowledgement that Jesus is the Messiah as enough to be saved. They'd want to see actual penitence expressed - more than accepting that the judgement is just, and accepting punishment as just desserts, they'd want to see an actual cry for salvation. They'd want to see actual regret. Personally, I'd count 'remember me' as a request for salvation of sorts, but I've known people for whom that's not explicit enough.
What I was getting at is that Jesus doesn't ask us to jump through the procedural hoops that many churches would ask one to jump through.
Thanks for that, Tim. Walter Kaiser: that's another one to add to my growing recommended reading. Looks great.
He may not have realized it at the time but he did fulfill the minimum requirement for Kingdom citizenship at the 11th hour..
That's the important bit for me - he may not even have realised it. As for penitence, the thief's request isn't quite 'Lord have mercy on me, a sinner!' It's something much more low-key, and the reason I raised it is that it doesn't meet with many evangelical definitions of what would count as a proper, comprehensive repentance - but it was enough for Jesus. How many people will find themselves in paradise without having realised that they'd met the requirements? I think we can leave open the possibility that heaven will contain many such surprised thieves, without making it a dogma.
Will be tiptoeing through TULIP at some point in the near future, BTW...
This is a big topic, one I can't do justice to here, so I'll address it in a separate post shortly.
I don't see any biblical warrant for claiming that people who haven't heard, understood or found themselves able to honestly accept the propositions of Christian theology absolutely will not be found in heaven. And there are plenty of biblical reasons to oppose such dogmatism. As a matter of personal belief, I think there will be people in heaven who did not hear the gospel on earth, etc - but I simply can't say anything about how this would happen, other than that everyone who comes to the Father does so through Jesus.
Are you of the opinion that those who do not hear the gospel in this lifetime, for example, will spend eternity in hell?
The problem of self in this is kind of splitting hairs, but it can become important depending on how the matter is argued. If we say the self is changed, but still allow for continuity of the old self, then we have to inquire about the definition of self in order to ascertain what change is occurring exactly - to differentiate between modification and obliteration. That being said, if we say that the old self "dies" and the new self is his replacement, we're back to square 1 with the problems of free will and my replacement getting the benefits of my choice.
I apologize in advance if the tone comes across in any way other than cordial - that's not my intent. But I don't think these questions should be avoided because they are uncomfortable.
______________________________
Is the idea of vicarious atonement really all that good?
How many evil people have lived and died comfortably, while innocent people suffer? This is a question that the Psalmist asks repeatedly. The fact is that we don't often see justice on this plane of reality.
But if we say that the evil people say the right prayer once in their lives, then the dire consequence for the utter destruction that they have wrought in the world - even if they do so after saying this prayer - is that they are reborn as an infant in paradise? On the other hand, a good person who rejects vicarious atonement as unjust would be burned for eternity?
Death threat guy is evil, but there have been far more evil people who would have been "covered by the blood." I'm not going to Godwin this thread, but I will mention that unspeakable atrocities have been committed in this world in the last 2000 years, and some of them were in the name of Jesus, done by people who were "covered by the blood."[1] The idea that God would say to these people that they could enter eternal paradise with no consequence for their actions other than a quick soul-makeover because someone else took responsibility for their deeds is unconscionable.
If I, as mere human, can see this as inherently unjust - am I to believe that God cannot?
[1] Please do not take this as a statement against Christians in general - it is not. It is a moral question about the justice of vicarious atonement. As such, it would not apply to someone who had not accepted that contract.
Nick said: Are you of the opinion that those who do not hear the gospel in this lifetime, for example, will spend eternity in hell?
I believe that God will reveal Himself to anyone who desires to know Him and that the only reason anyone will be saved is because of what Jesus did on the cross and in the ressurection in paying for their sin and declaring victory over death. How much they have to understand about the price Jesus paid (or would pay in the case of Old Testament believers) is not the issue. The issue is believing God. (Hebrews 11) The gospel is about faith from first to last as in Romans 1.
Romans 1:16-20 NIV
I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
This is such a big topic...
There are other models than substitutional atonement, but the idea of Jesus atoning for our sins is the one that is most rooted in his Jewish context - he's the spotless Lamb of God, the final sacrifice of the sacrificial system. I'd say it's the doctrine that least satisfies our desire to see evildoers punished, and best satisfies our desire to see the cycle of vengeance ended, which is what Jesus does by acting as the terminus of all punishment. The downside is that we have to accept that some will get off lightly. The upside is that all evil will be destroyed.
If, in heaven, everything that is evil about people has been destroyed, then punishment doesn't accomplish anything; and if God is happy to end evil rather than make evildoers suffer (as though their suffering does anything but satisfy the sense of justice of other humans), then that's his choice. Everything about Hitl.. sorry, Stalin will be utterly destroyed; and if by chance he converted on his deathbed, then that which passes into eternity will be born of God and therefore blameless. It will not have any share in his evil. Who am I to object, or to insist that everyone gets a fair punishment? God knows I wouldn't want that for myself. 'Judge not, that you might not be judged.' At some point we may have to forgive those who God forgives, or else reject God.
Having said all that, weren't we talking about eternal punishment? I'm sure that the process of cutting away the old self will involve great pain, as well as desperate misery for the suffering our old selves caused. The pain will be as great or small as the evil that the person did. If scumbags who are 'washed in the blood' manage to postpone this process of cutting-away in this life, they can't avoid it in the next: Paul calls it being saved 'as through fire'. Being saved as through fire sounds a lot like the Zoroastrian purgation by fire, or the period of purification you've talked about. Is a spell of purification a fair punishment for the crimes of Stalin? Probably not; but punishment isn't the main aim here. The main aim is to rid the universe of evil so we can start anew.
Finally, if these scumbags who are washed in the blood really have turned to God in genuine repentance, and yet remained scumbags, why are we not holding God to account? Either a) these people didn't really repent of sin (and just saying the 'sinner's prayer' doesn't necessarily signify anything), or b) they really did repent - and yet God let them carry on as they were without doing anything to change them.
Obviously, we can't know anybody else's soul; but the apostle John is clear enough on the issue: if anyone says he loves God and hates his brother, he is a liar.
Thus, evil doers can both be punished and redeemed, and the elect can leave behind the parts they never needed while celebrating the parts that brought them into bliss.
Just a thought; no actual research behind it, so feel free to ignore it.
John
[1] Which has probably been used by someone else, some other time - but it is new to me, now.
[2]
Yes, I'm changing the analogy to one of elements. Gold is especially appropriate here as it is rare, valuable, and does not chemically react with most other elements (this is why it stays shiny). It also has a high electrical conductivity, which makes it useful for electronic parts, many of which are sent overseas where the gold is refined out of them in a process that surely seems like torment to the condemned computers.
Well put - I agree in full.
..the only reason anyone will be saved is because of what Jesus did on the cross and in the ressurection in paying for their sin and declaring victory over death. How much they have to understand about the price Jesus paid (or would pay in the case of Old Testament believers) is not the issue. The issue is believing God. (Hebrews 11) The gospel is about faith from first to last.
Absolutely - that's why Abraham's faith could be credited to his as righteousness, even apart from knowledge of Jesus.
his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse
Yes; if explicit knowledge of the gospel was an absolute precondition for having saving faith, then those who don't hear it certainly would have an excuse. But Paul makes it clear that this isn't the case.
So the sheep and the goats are Jekylls and Hydes, eh? Like it. I'm not sure how a self can be split that way, but it's a good idea, and someone should definitely suggest it to God.
Sergei Bulgakov thinks that the division of (good) sheep from (evil) goats is a line that runs through all people, dividing the good from the bad in all of us, but I don't know whether he thinks that it divides us into two selves, one hideously evil (and probably quite happy in hell) the other perfectly pure (and, according to Susan Wolf, unspeakably boring).
...where the gold is refined out of them in a process that surely seems like torment to the condemned computers.
Ha!
Nick, I need a lesson on how to imbed a Scripture reference, such as your have done from Bible Gateway. I know how to place a link on my blog, but how do I include a specific reference within a post? I am quite new at this.
Charlotte