Good episode. I have lost 5 family members this year, all believers in Christianity, and i pray for them, and May God grant mercy on them and all my family here on earth. Sad
It should be called "that all may be saved". At least then the title of the book would hold to a soteriological truth. Instead it has the very unfortunate title "that all shall be saved".
I missed it. Hell/Hades is essentially the grave with the caves from Enoch, but where do those who die in this age before Hades is thrown into the lake of fire go?
While no one specific is said to be in Gehenna by the church, when Christ says "there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth" doesnt this imply at least some people will be in Gehenna? Therefore though Gods desire for all men is heaven, this seems to imply there will be some who dont opt for this offer
There's no implication in Christ's words, because that was not a prophecy, but a warning about an end dependent on certain conditions. It's like the warning of the scientists about the climate change: if we don't stop destroying and polluting the planet, there will be terrible disasters, destruction, suffering and even global scale extinction of most species of animals, including humans (on this matter, we can see Rev 11: 18).
What do people think of atemporal fall? DBH and like minded universalists talk about it often but I don’t understand why there is a strong link, is it just because they all admire Sergei Bulgokov?
You're going to hell for eternity for wanting all of creation to be saved! Lol! I get it tho we cant teach heresy i know but can we hope and pray for it? Or is that not allowed?
Correct me if I misunderstood, but didn't you argue against annihilationism on the basis of going from existence to non-existence not actually been seen in the real world? Well, infinity hasn't been seen either. Everlasting suffering has virtually no practical meaning in that sense, it has never and will never be seen (in the sense that we cannot even conceptualize eternality as anything else than a really long time). I get that you try to touch on that, but didn't hear any actual symmetry breaking explanation. That being said, thank you that you are being fair about what aionios (and aeternus for that matter) mean (i.e. of the age, or pertaining to the age). I don't see two separate ages though. I see one age, which to me is actually a finite thing. As for the end of the Torah, well, God explains how the Law isn't arbitrary. It's basically how He's laid out the universe. Don't see how that has anything to do with endlessness. It is in fact "super clear", to quote you, that following the covenant is its own reward. Heaven isn't some riches after suffering under arbitrary commands. Heaven is, in fact, those very commands willingly enacted. And the penalties of the new covenant are obviously more severe, but they are severe *here*, as the new covenant is greater, so are the penalties not by arbitrariness but by nature. The fall from 1000 to 0 is more severe than from 10 to 0, even though 0 is still the lower bound. As for God not forcing His love on people... This is really one of the most bizarre takes, and I hear it everywhere, but it really makes no sense. If I save my child from the coming traffic, though they willingly step on the road without looking, am I being unloving? Christ going to find the lost sheep, and turning the house over for the lost coin... should be unloving then. It really takes a few parallels to understand that love has nothing to do with respecting someone's free will, if that free will destroys them. Go ask any former addict about that. P.S. I know zero people who think that hell is some kind of payment for earthly wrongs. The idea isn't that you get punished into changing your mind, but that your fighting against God is its very own punishment. Just like pain is its own punishment for touching the stove, or a lifetime of paralysis is its own punishment for carelessly climbing trees or running into traffic. I know people who resented their parents for actually being good parents and decent people, since the child somehow fails a self-imposed standard, because they misunderstand their parents. Later they come to realize that they were punishing themselves all along and grew to understand the profound love of their parents. To see punishment in hell as anything different seems kind of nonsensical. Who says that God is tormenting people into repentance? I haven't heard that from a single universalist. No one says that God subjects people to torture via His own love either. It is the person's flawed perception and ignorance. I seriously don't see how you guys miss the parallels between sheep (dumb animals) and people, or children (again, incapable of complete understanding). I never asked to have a fallen nature. I want it taken away, that's my free will, right? I don't want to be an addict, a glutton, a liar, and a cheat. Yet I lie, I get addicted, I overeat. Am I in any way free? Of course not. So the free will defence of some kind of eternal torment (ECT or not) or something simply doesn't work. Also I have no idea what it means that God is completely free. How does the concept of freedom even make sense when talking about God? God isn't free to sin, is He? I'd argue that's a nonsensical question. But so would be the other one. Love isn't free to be something that isn't Love. Also, the idea that repentance is to be driven by the fear of hell, is repulsive. I don't want my wife to repent of her hurting me out of fear of being punished, or of being in pain, or whatever.
I'm only going to address a couple of things, as there's a lot hinging on the misunderstanding of them. 1: "As for God not forcing His love on people... This is really one of the most bizarre takes, and I hear it everywhere, but it really makes no sense. If I save my child from the coming traffic, though they willingly step on the road without looking, am I being unloving? Christ going to find the lost sheep, and turning the house over for the lost coin... should be unloving then." First of all, I'd recommend looking into who those "lost sheep" represent and what "the lost coin" represents in those parables, as it appears it's not what you think. You're not really giving a good example here that fits the narrative, at all, especially then applying your inappropriate example and equating it to Christ and his parables, as if it's a clear comparison, when it's not even remotely close. You're equating an unknowing, premature being (a child) being saved by his caretaker to the love of God being forced upon someone and these are not comparable, which goes to show that you're not understanding the premise. The entire premise is the fact that you (and every one of us, for that matter) have a CHOICE that you make (which means that you're capable of making a choice, have sufficient knowledge to make a choice and are culpable for your choice, so you're definitely not on a child-like level), it's not "mistakenly running into the street and being saved by X", it's "willingly living in rebellion despite the loving efforts of X". You're mentioning addicts so let me try and put in a way you'll probably get it - you seem to miss the fact that, at the end of the day, the only one that actually is responsible for the "salvation" (in quotes as I don't mean the actual salvation of his soul, but simply to the turning away from his addiction) of the addict is the addict himself - No amount of external effort or love will ever change an addict, unless the addict realizes what's going on and WILLINGLY goes through the necessary journey to being clean and remaining clean, whatever that might be in his individual case. You can be the catalyst that causes the addict to REALIZE what's happening and be an instrument of God for his salvation, but in the end, you cannot force the proper change, you can only take the necessary actions that you think will help and pray the addict eventually comes to his senses. You can take his drugs away, you can forcibly put him in rehab, but you cannot stop him from going back to his ways as soon as that is possible and continuing on the path of destruction, despite everyone around telling him that and despite the fact that most-likely, he himself is already aware of that. So, with that being said and the example at hand, do you think it would be the "loving" thing to do to lock him in rehab forever? Or does there come a point in time where he has a choice to make for himself, despite your best efforts? Is that then a person who is "blameless" and "unknowing" as you tried to put it in your example? Or is that someone who is "willingly in rebellion"? I hope this helps put things into the proper perspective, as the example you tried to equate is really just a "I'm blameless and unknowing" when it's actually "I know enough and I am culpable for my actions" - In fact, that's what the Bible is clearly teaching, none of us are blameless or unknowing, after a certain point of maturity (Jesus being the sole exception to the blameless part, as He is the only one who lived a life of perfect obedience and is the exemplar we strive to follow). So, God being loving, yet leaving rebellious and unrepentant people to their ways, after doing everything in His power to guide them back to the truth without completely imposing His will and overriding theirs (which would be the tyrannical thing to do, if you think about it for a second), is absolutely the natural result and in no way in odds with Gods' character or with what Love is or a "bizarre" take. I see how this is a problem for you due to point 2, which to me is the actual bizarre take. 2: "I never asked to have a fallen nature. I want it taken away, that's my free will, right? I don't want to be an addict, a glutton, a liar, and a cheat. Yet I lie, I get addicted, I overeat. Am I in any way free? Of course not. So the free will defence of some kind of eternal torment (ECT or not) or something simply doesn't work." Yes, and? What are you going to do about it? Complain? Or act all powerless and blameless again? That's like the "I didn't ask to be born" complains from kids going through puberty. If you don't believe in free will, then there's really no reason to even do anything in life, ever. Of course the defense doesn't work when you deny the entire premise, lol. A premise, by the way, which is a core biblical teaching and can be seen all the way back in Genesis and throughout the entire Bible, so at this point, why even argue anything at all, if free will doesn't exist and you're not in any way free? Why watch this podcast, at all? Why would anyone ever be punished OR rewarded for that matter, if no one was ever capable of making any sort of tangible free choice about anything? Neither heaven nor hell/the lake of fire make any sense if that's what you believe. As written above, nothing really makes sense if that's what you believe. The entire comment screams calvinistic confusion to me, which is the natural result of being under that viewpoint or being heavily influenced by it, so I kind of get it.
@@Lessonius Hey, thank you for your response! My comparison between the love of God to that of the love of parents, is exactly that we cannot talk about God forcing His love onto someone. This, as a concept, is nonsensical. I'd go as far as saying that nowhere in the Bible has this ever been a concern. But what has been? We are, in fact, compared to children over and over. We are compared to dumb animals, to fools, to sick folks, to slaves, to captives, etc. We are in that addiction-ridden fallen condition, where we are not all that free. Sure, even a slave and an animal have some freedom, but how much exactly? This isn't a calvinist take in my opinion. I am also not saying that we do not have a choice. Do we have responsibility for our current condition? Sure. But how much can we do outside of Christ? Many saints belabor the fact that it is all Christ's doing, not theirs. St. Anthony fights demons by crying out about his weakness. Not to mention the story of the drunk monk that St. Paisios told. Again, fighting... That matters. It matters that we struggle. But I also see a lot of people damaged so much, that if God doesn't heal them, there ain't no way for them to do anything about it. Sheep are... well, sheep. Regardless of whom Christ was talking about, Christ went out of His way to go pick up the dumb-ish animal and bring it back. It doesn't matter who this is talking about, because the fact remains that some free will got the sheep in trouble, and it got out of it not by its free will. While I can talk a lot about addiction, it's a problem that you either get, or you don't. If you've been there, you know. Just as the demoniac folks weren't throwing themselves into fire, because they were super free. As for love not changing the addict. Well... I beg to differ. Not only does love change them, it seems to be the only thing that can do that. Addicts that break free without love soon find themselves in another addiction. Maybe this time it's just an obsession, and it seems healthier, but it is addiction nonetheless. I know a few who went from drugs to super healthy eating. The second ultimately became their obsession. Not great either. By the way, you can change the word "addict" with "demoniac" and go at it again in your addiction paragraph. People are captives, they need to be set free. God does that. Now, I'm not saying all addicts will be helped like that. Some of Christ's followers could not drive out all demons. But I am saying that sin is its own addiction, of which we need to be free. And yes, some addicts and sinners are beyond our help. They are "obstinate". But when I look at them, I don't feel "God will rightfully judge them", I pray "God have mercy on us, sinners". Regardless, I never claimed that I am blameless and unknowing. I only claim what the saints claim - without Christ, we are incapable of anything. And it will by no means feel somehow unjust if God saves people post-mortem. If you are Orthodox, then I want to remind you that the Theotokos lived a sinless life as well, but not of her own accord. On your other point: "Yes, and? What are you going to do about it? Complain? Or act all powerless and blameless again? That's like the "I didn't ask to be born" complains from kids going through puberty. " That doesn't answer the question though. You seem to think I don't believe in free will, which is not true. I am only asking, if it is about free will, why not respect my free will to have my free will aligned with God's will? "Why would anyone ever be punished OR rewarded for that matter, if no one was ever capable of making any sort of tangible free choice about anything? Neither heaven nor hell/the lake of fire make any sense if that's what you believe." Sin is its own punishment. Following Christ - its own reward. If someone pushes me, and I break my arm, it still hurts, regardless of fault. Me being a sinner is hurtful to my own self. Me following Christ is healing. Now if you think my view doesn't make sense, wait untill you hear that I do believe that universalism, annihilationism, and eternal torment are all true, in their own sense. :D Make of that what you will.
@@atanas-nikolov A child remains a child to a parent, regardless of age, I think that's pretty straight-forward - Do not confuse the fact that the scriptures address us as children and such to mean that we've got no responsibility or ability to act and be culpable for our actions or again, that we're not free to do as we decide to. Sheep are by no means dumb animals, there's a reason sheep and goats are contrasted by our Lord - It's because sheep are obedient, beneficial, they contribute to their owners by providing both wool and milk (that can be made to different other things, like clothes, cheese, etc.), they live in packs, obey their shepherds and recognize their voice and their voice only. Goats in comparison are the animals which provide very little, they're disobedient and self-driven. That's why I said you should look into what the parables are actually saying, because you're not getting what the Lord is trying to convey and responding by saying "I don't care what the parables mean and who they're talking about" whilst self-imposing meaning is frankly dubious. You're mentioning Saints, but you don't care to know what the Lord Himself means? "As for love not changing the addict." - That's not what I said. I said that no amount can UNWILLINGLY change the addict, the addict still is the one who needs to respond to said love, you're twisting my words quite strongly there. "While I can talk a lot about addiction, it's a problem that you either get, or you don't. If you've been there, you know. Just as the demoniac folks weren't throwing themselves into fire, because they were super free." Yeah, because we all get demonized/addicted "by accident" ... You're looking at the consequences and completely ignoring the cause - a choice or multiple choices that led there, just like how you have to CHOOSE CHRIST. The exact same can be said when looking at the consequences of being a Saint, but for some reason we're ignoring that, because that's the beneficial version? It's a choice that led them there, just like it's a choice that led the demoniac/addict/etc. there and in some cases, it could've been a choice done by his/her ancestors or family members which affects them too, due to the nature of "making deals with the devil", but demonology is a different topic that doesn't need to be discussed now. "If you are Orthodox, then I want to remind you that the Theotokos lived a sinless life as well, but not of her own accord." - Not of her own accord? So God overrode her free will? She wasn't the one who chose to live in accordance to the grace given to her and keep herself pure? She didn't willingly consent to being the Mother of God when St. Gabriel came? She didn't struggle to live that kind of life? That's what you're implying. This is a great place to bring up the fact that the Theotokos is directly contrasted to Eve. Eve could've rejected the serpent. St. Mary could've rejected St. Gabriel. Eve chose rebellion. St. Mary chose obedience. Both had free will, both had external influence of Angels and both went in different directions, none of them were forced to choose what they did and both bore the consequences of their choice. "Regardless, I never claimed that I am blameless and unknowing. I only claim what the saints claim - without Christ, we are incapable of anything. And it will by no means feel somehow unjust if God saves people post-mortem." - Anything at all? Or anything in the sense of anything beneficial/salvific? Obviously, there's a nuance there, as we both know all of us are capable of many things, even without Christ. What those things are in the scale of "good/bad" is a different question and that's what the Saints mean, again it seems like misunderstanding what is being said. The gospel was preached to all the dead during the harrowing of Hades, how those dead respond to it is up to them or did Jesus force them to obey Him? Scripture tells us that everyone will be judged justly and that everyone will have had a choice to know Christ or not. The intricacies on how that exactly works is not made known to us nor do we need to know, but according to what is written, no one ends up in Heaven/the new Earth or in Hell/the lake "by mistake" or "on accident", that much is made very, very clear. So any attempt to take away our agency and responsibility is in direct opposition to scripture, despite what will is behind it. "That doesn't answer the question though. You seem to think I don't believe in free will, which is not true. I am only asking, if it is about free will, why not respect my free will to have my free will aligned with God's will?" And who/what makes you think that isn't happening? Do we forget there's an enemy in play too? Almost everything you initially wrote goes to show that you indeed do not believe in free will or in some sort of calvinistic version of free will, which doesn't end up being free in any real sense of the word. Your will is directly linked to your actions - enacting your will is an action. As was talked about in this podcast, repentance is directly linked to actions - actions that should be aligned to reversing/compensating for your previous actions that had negative impact to you and everyone around you. Once you're dead, your ability to act upon the world, upon yourself and upon those around you changes and is no longer the same, hence why post-mortem personal repentance is not possible, among other reasons that might also be in play as we simply do not have enough info about what being dead entails in detail. You want people to repent post-mortem? Pray for them. Repent for them. Go and do what they weren't able to while they were still here.
52:15 Indeed, I'm waiting for the flood episode. The flood account troubled me a lot lately, and still troubles me, since Jesus Himself mentioned it, and it's pretty certain that He was reffering to a real thing, not to a parable or a story. But there's no evidence that there was a global flood, but rather evidence for the contrary, like the distribution of minerals in the earth layers. And, since Jesus was not just a man, but God, we can't say that He had a some sort of ancient perspective or way of thinking, but His knowledge was absolute, actual and factual. And we also can't say that he played the ancient way of thinking, because that would imply a duplicitous thinking. This, of course, puts very seriously the problem of the inerrancy and reliability of the gospels and Scriptures. BTW, not even the local flood theory would solve the problem of the biblical details of the account, for geographical and hydrological reasons. So, I would like and appreciate to hear a comprehensive explanation and to have some answers to this matter.
Saying “the purgative view of universal salvation is a cop-out ripped from Roman Catholicism” is ridiculous if you know what the most prominent proponents of universal reconciliation taught throughout Church history, especially in the East. St Gregory (through his sister Macrina) in on the soul and resurrection even talks about purgation in the afterlife being proportionate to the sins of this life. “That, said the Teacher, is my meaning; and also that the agony will be measured by the amount of evil there is in each individual. For it would not be reasonable to think that the man who has remained so long as we have supposed in evil known to be forbidden, and the man who has fallen only into moderate sins, should be tortured to the same amount in the judgment upon their vicious habit; but according to the quantity of material will be the longer or shorter time that that agonizing flame will be burning; that is, as long as there is fuel to feed it. In the case of the man who has acquired a heavy weight of material, the consuming fire must necessarily be very searching; but where that which the fire has to feed upon has spread less far, there the penetrating fierceness of the punishment is mitigated, so far as the subject itself, in the amount of its evil, is diminished. In any and every case evil must be removed out of existence, so that, as we said above, the absolutely non-existent should cease to be at all. Since it is not in its nature that evil should exist outside the will, does it not follow that when it shall be that every will rests in God, evil will be reduced to complete annihilation, owing to no receptacle being left for it?” From On the Soul and Resurrection. You can accuse me of too fiercely latching onto St Gregory of Nyssa, but before you accuse me of quote mining, just read the whole text. The context only helps. This also goes to show that the whole “western theology is the root of all evil” schtick is unsustainable if you look through the evidence. If you look to the west and the east, thinkers in both camps of any amount of subtlety will tell you that the afterlife is beyond time as we know it (chronos), but both will use time and location to elucidate what the afterlife may be like to the best of our partial understanding.
2:07 Eternal Condemnation, what is it? 2:38 Can’t we just pick and choose what we believe? 3:32 Orthadoxia. Right Perspective. Right viewpoint. 4:15 2-3 conflicting opinions cannot all be correct. 5:10 This isn’t really a hard question. There is no real ambiguity here. 6:15 Ambiguity. 6:43 “Going to Hell” to a fire 🔥 😈 and fry 🍟 is not the correct understanding of Christian Hell. 7:57 ⚠This podcast includes Sarcasm. 😄 8:57 Goal: Present The Apostolic Teaching on Hell • Some disagreements are substantial • But you have to actually respond to the content being presented. *Hades and Hell* 10:10 Hades and Hell Hades comes out of Greek language. The Underworld. Hell out of the Germanic languages. 11:09 Modern-English Hell means 😈🔥 Devil Fire Torture Place. Kind of Pagan. 12:42 John Milton’s view of Hell is not orthodox. *Hades* 13:05 Hades. “Place.” 14:03 Full of bodiless humans. 14:39 Pascha Hymnography. 17:54 16:56 No Body Remains In The Grave. 18:26 Hades as place, Hades as experience, Intermediate State. 19:50 Paradise and Hades. As an experience or a state [of being.] 21:50 Literal and Material are not synonyms. *Repentance* 23:09 Body and Soul = capable of repentance 23:51 Only a Soul without Body = incapable of repenting. 25:27 26:27 Faith and Works. Faith Without Works. 29:00 Watered down to feelings. 29:54 Empathy done wrong. 30:48 Actually doing things. Not just general good feelings. 31:57 Really Intentionally doing something. 32:54 “am i really?…” worrying. 33:39 A Documentary _The Wolf and The Cross_ ☦ 34:57 Epiphenomenal. 35:51 Not about how you feel. 37:27 Western Christen misunderstanding of Repentance. 39:44 Sin, 💔 Repentance ❤🩹 42:03 🙏🏼Apology on one’s behalf. *Hades* 45:44 Hades. *The Lake of Fire* 🌊🔥 55:54 Lava Pits, Flames, Tridents. 🔱 57:58 Not found in The Old Testament _per se_ 59:07 Daniel 7, Book 📖 of Enoch 1:00:08 Revelation of St John and St Matthew’s Gospel. 1:07:03 Dragging Someone Down With You is NOT Winning. 1:07:47 Fire Imagery, Suffering. The Fire That Comes From God. 1:08:20 Wicked in The Presence of God's Holiness. 1:08:53 Confirmed in Their Wickedness. 1:09:56 "Gehenna." = Eternal Condemnation used by some Church Fathers. *Outer Darkness, Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth* 1:11:49 Outer Darkness. 1:12:28 Matthew 8:12, 22:13, 25:30. 1:13:07 Grinding your teeth. Madness. Foaming at The Mouth. 1:14:01 Job said his enemies gnashed their teeth against him. 1:14:54 Different languages, incompatible images. Darkness and Fire contradict. 1:15:53 We can't understand what that would be like, but we have the example of darkness in a cave. 1:17:13 Terror and Madness. *Eternal Death, The 2nd Death* 1:17:47 Eternal Death. 1:18:05 Revelation 2:11, 20:6-14, 21:8. 1:18:47 "Annihilationism" there are problems with this idea. 1:19:23 St John of Damascus _Fount of Wisdom._ 1:20:31 Everyone is Bodily Resurrected. God is Everywhere Present. 1:21:21 There are 0 examples of Annihilation. 0 Examples of ceasing to exist. 1:22:36 The Ancient opposite of Being is Chaos. *Eternity* 1:24:05 Eternal, Endless Succession of Moments. 1:24:56 Eternal Life and Eternal Death, Ultimate. 1:27:23 This isn't really complicated. This is simple. Taught through The Scriptures. *Love and Action* 1:27:56 Deuteronomy 30. Serve God and Live. Serve false gods and perish. 1:29:23 The Book of Hebrews. 1:29:43 If You Love Me, Keep My Commandments. *Love is Not Feelings, Love is displayed through Actions* 1:30:11 Loving God, Keeping God's Commandments. Love is NOT Feelings, Love IS ACTIONS. 1:31:18 Choice, Continually. Not Intellectually, not on one day and no others. Faithfulness in Life. A Decision constituted by a thousand smaller decisions. 1:32:38 God does NOT force His Love on people. _Problems today_ 1:34:32 _From Object To Icon_ , How to Stop Objectifying Others. 1:36:13 "You can do what you want." 2ND HALF Of The Lord Of Spirits Podcast. 1:37:00 If you are Universalist and don't want to hear a critique of Universalism, you may not want to listen to what comes next. 1:38:47 The Hope of Someone's Salvation does not have to be founded on Heretical Teaching. *Universalism* 1:40:07 Holding Universalism has consequences for the person who holds it. 1:41:27 "That All may be saved." it's one of the worst books Stephen De Young has read. 1:42:41 It knocks down strawmen. 1:43:34 People who believe some form of Apoconostasis. All Humans will be reconciled to God in The Age To Come. 1:44:54 Universalism is the belief that all humans will receive Eternal Life in The Age To Come. 1:45:09 Origen took this to an extreme point. Origen was condemned at The 5th Ecumenical Council. 1:47:12 The Church enshrines The Ecumenical Councils in Hymnography. 1:48:28 To posit this idea, you have to say The Spirit was not watching over The Orthodox Church for centuries. 1:49:38 A Massive Methodological Problem. 1:50:52 These Universalist folks are making a Protestant Argument. 1:15:18 The Infallible Bible. 1:52:05 The Authority. 1:53:19 Orthodox Tradition and Holy Scripture and Ecumenical Councils. 1:55:34 Origen was condemned on Universalism. 1:58:20 (People online can pull up quotes and falsely pin a belief to someone who never actually held that belief. People shouldn't do that, that's disingenuous.) 2:00:15 Praying for all of creation is not equate-able to being a Universalist. 2:01:02 Love For Enemy, in spite of lack of repentance. 2:01:45 That's Hope, not Universalism. 2:02:11 Hoping everyone to be saved is not the same as stating as fact that all will be saved. 2:03:39 Holding to Universalism and Apoconostasis is Calvinist. 2:06:46 Standard of Justice. Subjecting God to Necessity. *A Dirty Secret in Liberal Theology* 2:08:37 Liberal Theology is Marcionite. 2:10:12 The God of The Old Testament being claimed to be a Pagan, deficient god. 2:11:05 Replacing Old Testament God with European Greek Plato's god.
On a religious level, as Christians, does the Lord forgive us for our personalities as well as our actual sins, or just our sins? And are we therefore required to forgive other men for their personalities? Or just their actual sins against us?
It’s great how you predicted people complaining that all that’s said is just your opinion and how this is apparently a non argument. People will say that because this whole thing literally is your opinion, unless you have some divine, infallible wisdom. You have given your (flawed) impression of the tradition and to suggest that this is non negotiable demonstrates your lack of concern for objective Truth. Especially considering there are accomplished theologians and Fr’s of the church who whole heartedly disagree with you. I’m not necessarily saying their position is corect on all matters either, but you have to surely understand that your opinion isn’t Truth. This is further evidenced by your sheer inability to provide historically and theologically accurate information through the entirety of this 3hr podcast. You suggest that the nuances of apocatastasis don’t matter, that this is just a ridiculous tactic by universalists to say that “ my form of universalism wasn’t condemned”. Either you are unable to determine the significance of the differences in the condemned doctrine or you’re deliberately disingenuous. The absolute critical thing you didn’t mention is that the doctrine that was condemned was the isochristoi doctrine, which has some overlap with apocatastasis, sure, but it’s not the same at all and you surely know that. The mainstream understanding of apocatastasis does not invoke the belief of the pre existence of souls which is the actual heresy that was condemned. We could debate on the details of Origen’s anathema and how this was clearly an error in that the doctrines for which he was anathematised were not even his…but that would take up too much space. Your take on St Gregory or Nysa is outside of the mainstream, scholarly understanding of his theology. There is an absolute consensus amongst Gregory scholars that he was a universalist. As you would say…this isn’t debatable (despite your best efforts). Your take on the “necessity” of God to save, or to do anything, which is the main body of your theological argument, is completely misunderstood and misrepresented. This is not an intracalvinistic dospute concerning the parameters by which God is retrained to undertake predetermined tasks. The idea of necessity is through an Orthodox understanding of what and who God is. God is not good, nor loving, nor merciful, nor truthful. God is Goodness, Love, Mercy and Truth in their fullest definitive forms. The idea of necessity is that this is the only option possible for God as understood in the Orthodox Church. It’s not that God is strong armed into this position, but simply that based on our understanding of God (whether platonic or not….as you have said, we align with the truth past down through the church), this is the only outcome that makes sense unless God is not who we believe him to be. I feel like you don’t understand Hart’s argument at all. Further to this, you seem to have a Western understanding of Grace which of course influences your understanding of apocatastasis and salvation . I could go on as there is 3 hours worth of material to critique, but il stop for now.
There was too much in this episode to critique given the (valuable) time it would take. You're absolutely correct in your assessment of the 'podfathers' summarily dismissing real and serious scholarship about Origen, St. Gregory Nyssa, and the 5th Ecumenical Council. Their attitude in this episode is more 'lobotomized fundamentalism' than honest reasoning and real engagement with the Fathers (and Scripture for that matter).
@@stephenbrannen absolutely agree. On another note, I also find it incredibly distasteful to hear an orthodox priest speak in such an authoritative manner, devoid of humility or compassion in a public forum. This is yet another example of “reformed orthodoxy” at its best.
@@UniversalSalvation-m1t I went into the podcast with a pretty high opinion of fr. De Young, which is why I'm pained to say this is one of the worst takes against apokatastasis I've heard in a while. Strawmen upon strawmen of positions virtually no one holds. And the arrogance... Man, it was tough to listen to. I've responded to some of the points fr. De Young makes, but I doubt he'd care.
DBH really got slammed more than any individual I have ever heard being slammed on LOS. It really was a DBH hate fest and sounded too much of a personal attack.
I mean... have you ever listened to DBH talk about people who hold to different theological opinions than he does, by chance? I honestly think DBH brings a lot of the animosity on himself by how personal he gets towards his opponents, attacking not only the theological opinions of people he disagrees with but their character, their intelligence, and their sense of morality as well. Fr. Stephen didn't go that far. I mean yeah he criticized the academic intellectual class that DBH is a part of, but that isn't unique to only one individual.
@@harrygarris6921 yes but DBH isn’t an ordained priest. I don’t think it’s too much to expect that an Orthodox priest present himself and represent his position with more pious humility as opposed to aggressive, inconsiderate pridefulness. Especially when that position is based on a total misunderstanding of the position in the first place.
I've benefited greatly from this podcast and the work of Fr. De Young and Fr. Damick, but I have to say the discussion of universalism and Hart's book here were greatly disappointing. The philosophical/theological arguments against universalism were extraordinarily simplistic, and often fallacious ('guilt by association with Calvinism' arguments, confusing extrinsically imposed necessity with necessity that flows from God's nature, etc.). And while I definitely disagree with many of Hart's views (syncretism, acceptance of questionable critical-textual scholarship, etc.), the imputation of anti-semitism to him or the arguments of his book was deeply uncharitable and slanderous. One might as well say the greatest Jewish intellectual of antiquity, Philo of Alexandria, was 'anti-semitic' because of his heavy allegorization of the OT text largely influenced by Platonic thought. Let's all try to do better in this discourse, on both sides.
1). ('guilt by association with Calvinism' arguments, confusing extrinsically imposed necessity with necessity that flows from God's nature, etc.) The irony here is that you object to association with Calvinism, then literally repeat the distinction Calvinists use to defend themselves on this very point when it comes to penal substitution, etc. On several episodes, I've pointedly critiqued these arguments as made by Calvinists. When DBH makes the same argument in favor of universalism, I'm not supposed to critique it? Or I'm not supposed to point out that he's making the same error they are? 2) Having read extensively in the works of Philo of Alexandria, I can assure you that at no point does Philo call the God of the Hebrew Bible a monster, immoral, evil, or a tribal fetish. I can also assure you that he never denies that that God, the one he worshipped, exists. So you've chosen a pretty bad counter-example. I don't know DBH personally, I would assume that he at least doesn't consider himself to be an anti-Semite, but he is following, and publishing in, a theological tradition that runs through 18th and 19th century Germany which holds pre-suppositions that are deeply anti-semitic. Every word he says about the "Old Testament God" he is saying about the God worshipped and loved by Jewish people, after all, and worshipped by Christianity since the beginning. This is why his critique of the "Old Testament God" bleeds over into a belittling, if not outright condemnation of the Church Fathers. In the end, I was far kinder and more careful with him than he ever is with anyone, including great saints of the Church to which he occasionally still claims to belong.
Hi Fr. De Young, Thank you for your thoughtful and thorough reply to my comment. A few thoughts in reply: 1) I'm not sure what you mean in relating the extrinsic/intrinsic necessity distinction to penal substitution specifically. Can you clarify? My purpose in pointing to this vital distinction was simply this: Every Christian, Calvinist or not, must accept that in *some* sense God's nature necessitates (intrinsically, not extrinsically) that He act in certain ways, and not others. God of necessity, for ex., could never command rape. Not because there's some extrinsic law or criterion beyond God that constrains Him in this way, but simply because God is The Good Itself. Similarly, simply because of Who God Is, He cannot fail to fulfill His promises. When universalists claim God "of necessity" saves all, this is the sense in which it is generally meant: that simply because of Who God Is, in relation to who we are as beings who cannot find our rest until we rest in Him, the salvation of all is inevitable. This is *not* the sense of 'necessity' that implies God is compelled by some extrinsic criterion or law. Now, you may still disagree with this particular claim. All I'm saying is that it's not an inherently 'Calvinistic' claim, and associating it therewith I think just diverts from what the real, fundamental issues at stake are. 2) I trust you're correct about Philo here. I've read much of him, but I'm sure not as much as you have. My point in bringing up Philo was this: He, like many Church Fathers after him, finds certain passages of Scripture unworthy of God *if read in a woodenly literal way* (God 'coming down' to see what humanity is upto with their Babel project, walking in the Garden, having a fit of drunken rage, etc.). I disagree with how Hart expresses this point, but I do think he's really just observing the same thing: We would all say, for ex., that it's unworthy of God, and He'd be a merely pagan and morally compromised deity, if He really repented, had burning hot rage, had to be reminded of His promises, and other anthropomorphic and anthropopathic properties attributed to Him in Scripture. A Supreme God who *literally* has these properties does not exist. But the God who is portrayed in Scripture via these human condescensions does indeed exist (I assume Hart would agree, but I can't speak for him of course --- and again, I wouldn't want to defend everything he says). 3) I see what you're saying, but I think it's a stretch to say "X is influenced by scholars who had certain anti-semitic views and motivations" implies "the arguments/views of X are inherently anti-semitic." It's also painting with a broad brush to say that "Jewish people" as such understand their Scriptures, and worship God, in a way dependent on thinking God is never portrayed in ways unworthy of Him at the purely literal level. At any rate, I do very much appreciate your response here, and I sincerely love and thank you for all the great work you're doing through this podcast and in other ways ("Religion of the Apostles" was excellent!).
@@benjamincook711 I agree this was a rare miss for what otherwise is an excellent podcast. I don't get what's so complicated about these questions. Universalists aren't trying to "judge God" or impose an extrinsic necessity on Him; they're just trying to understand what it means to say "God is The Good, God is Justice, God is Mercy, God is omnipotent, God is Father, etc" in the context of eschatology. Fr. De Young seemed sympathetic, if a bit condescending, towards people who honestly cannot reconcile the possibility of a loved one's eternal condemnation with an all loving God, so I don't get why a more intellectual version of that intuition deserves so much disdain.
@@chewdog91 Agreed. Even if one is not confident in the salvation of all at the end of the day, surely the only Christlike attitude to the question is that of St. Silouan when replying to the hermit who expressed joy the damned would get their just deserts: "Love could not bear that, we must pray for all."
Ironically, your presuppositions about the absolute deliberate freedom of God are what lead to Calvinists arriving at the logical conclusion of double-predestination in the first place. Calvinism didn’t receive its presuppositions from universalism because universalism, and more importantly the emphasis of natural will over deliberative will, was essentially dead in the water that Calvinism festered in. Calvinism rather knew the God that is a deliberating sovereign, which combined with His omniscience, lead them to understandably conclude that we are not ultimately free to choose our final destiny. You’ll likely say that a “God who is a deliberating sovereign” is a caricature of your position, but please tell me the meaningful distinction between that and the God who is “free to choose the fates of every person amongst a number of options, some blissful some tormenting.” The pre-modern conception of freedom is completely consonant with God freely while also necessarily uniting all things to Him in reconciliation. Here’s DBH on that point in particular: th-cam.com/video/Nn29FA2aUyE/w-d-xo.html
Because God would not know the final outcomes of His creatures and wouldn’t be omniscient. The reason that Fr DeYoung is equating arguments for the necessity of universal reconciliation with Calvinism is because he believes that for God and man to be free, we must have the ability to choose between as many options as possible, for God an infinite amount of options. This is what some have called voluntarism. If voluntarism is true then God is either: omniscient and sovereign, thus the freedom of man is limited ie. Calvinism, or man is free and God is a finite agent in some way, being either not omniscient or not omnipotent. (Thomists tried to solve this dilemma as it arose but could only come up with the meaningless distinction of efficacious vs sufficient grace) The Calvinists tried to rescue the voluntarist model of freedom by affirming double-predestination. But the very issue is voluntarism. Reading the theological works of first-millennium Church fathers will tell you as much. To solve the issue of God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and the freedom of both God and man, we don’t have to remove one from the equation. We have to modify our model of freedom, and we need only look back to the antique Church theologians to do so. God is omniscient and omnipotent, but His omnipotence does not allow Him to do things outside of His nature. The obvious example is the village atheist dilemma “can God create a rock so big He cannot lift it?” Essentially “can God do something that is impossible for God to do?” The fact that He cannot doesn’t limit His freedom because His freedom is not determined by an unlimited set of options. Deliberation is a function of finite agency. In the case of the hypothetical, God is bound by His nature according to the laws of logic, but there are other ways that God is bound by His nature. God is Love, Truth, Goodness, not because He chooses to be. God could not be other than those things because that is His nature. It does not limit His freedom that he cannot be evil. On the level of God, free choice and acting according to one’s nature become synonymous, and for the universalist, the same will be true for all people. To get from that to confident universalism takes a few more arguments, but we can at least acknowledge that it is no more Calvinist than pop Orthodoxy and its voluntarist presuppositions.
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![Lord of Spirits - A Land of Giants [Ep. 7]](/img/tr.png)
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Good episode. I have lost 5 family members this year, all believers in Christianity, and i pray for them, and May God grant mercy on them and all my family here on earth. Sad
Sorry for your loss
This was a really good episode. Thanks podfather's! ☦️
@@TheTransfiguredLife lol 👍👍
Closed captions for this podcast are hilarious: Avocado Sauces, Avocado Stasis .....
"where do bad folks go when they die, they don't go to heaven where the angels fly, they go to a lake of fire and fry..." - Nirvana
Written by The Meat Puppets though
The fact that you actually think the book is called "That all may be saved" speaks volumes about your knowledge of the topic...
It should be called "that all may be saved". At least then the title of the book would hold to a soteriological truth. Instead it has the very unfortunate title "that all shall be saved".
Well, that's the arguent of someone that doesn't have a real argument.
It’s a pretty minor and inconsequential mistake
2:21:07 well now I have to ask: did he pre-order MK1 and is he excited to play it tomorrow?
And what's gonna be his main?
God is all merciful, we should not be living our lives according to a withered leaf of a dead tree.
I missed it. Hell/Hades is essentially the grave with the caves from Enoch, but where do those who die in this age before Hades is thrown into the lake of fire go?
Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeesh 28:42 🥵🥵🥵🥵🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 as someone raised in a Southern Baptist church this is so spot on
While no one specific is said to be in Gehenna by the church, when Christ says "there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth" doesnt this imply at least some people will be in Gehenna? Therefore though Gods desire for all men is heaven, this seems to imply there will be some who dont opt for this offer
There's no implication in Christ's words, because that was not a prophecy, but a warning about an end dependent on certain conditions. It's like the warning of the scientists about the climate change: if we don't stop destroying and polluting the planet, there will be terrible disasters, destruction, suffering and even global scale extinction of most species of animals, including humans (on this matter, we can see Rev 11: 18).
26:00 🤯🔥🔥🔥
2:51:40 - 2:58:40
What do people think of atemporal fall? DBH and like minded universalists talk about it often but I don’t understand why there is a strong link, is it just because they all admire Sergei Bulgokov?
When one is baptized 1 receives the seal of the Holy
You're going to hell for eternity for wanting all of creation to be saved! Lol! I get it tho we cant teach heresy i know but can we hope and pray for it? Or is that not allowed?
Correct me if I misunderstood, but didn't you argue against annihilationism on the basis of going from existence to non-existence not actually been seen in the real world? Well, infinity hasn't been seen either. Everlasting suffering has virtually no practical meaning in that sense, it has never and will never be seen (in the sense that we cannot even conceptualize eternality as anything else than a really long time).
I get that you try to touch on that, but didn't hear any actual symmetry breaking explanation.
That being said, thank you that you are being fair about what aionios (and aeternus for that matter) mean (i.e. of the age, or pertaining to the age). I don't see two separate ages though. I see one age, which to me is actually a finite thing.
As for the end of the Torah, well, God explains how the Law isn't arbitrary. It's basically how He's laid out the universe. Don't see how that has anything to do with endlessness.
It is in fact "super clear", to quote you, that following the covenant is its own reward. Heaven isn't some riches after suffering under arbitrary commands. Heaven is, in fact, those very commands willingly enacted. And the penalties of the new covenant are obviously more severe, but they are severe *here*, as the new covenant is greater, so are the penalties not by arbitrariness but by nature. The fall from 1000 to 0 is more severe than from 10 to 0, even though 0 is still the lower bound.
As for God not forcing His love on people... This is really one of the most bizarre takes, and I hear it everywhere, but it really makes no sense. If I save my child from the coming traffic, though they willingly step on the road without looking, am I being unloving? Christ going to find the lost sheep, and turning the house over for the lost coin... should be unloving then.
It really takes a few parallels to understand that love has nothing to do with respecting someone's free will, if that free will destroys them. Go ask any former addict about that.
P.S. I know zero people who think that hell is some kind of payment for earthly wrongs. The idea isn't that you get punished into changing your mind, but that your fighting against God is its very own punishment. Just like pain is its own punishment for touching the stove, or a lifetime of paralysis is its own punishment for carelessly climbing trees or running into traffic.
I know people who resented their parents for actually being good parents and decent people, since the child somehow fails a self-imposed standard, because they misunderstand their parents. Later they come to realize that they were punishing themselves all along and grew to understand the profound love of their parents. To see punishment in hell as anything different seems kind of nonsensical.
Who says that God is tormenting people into repentance? I haven't heard that from a single universalist. No one says that God subjects people to torture via His own love either. It is the person's flawed perception and ignorance. I seriously don't see how you guys miss the parallels between sheep (dumb animals) and people, or children (again, incapable of complete understanding).
I never asked to have a fallen nature. I want it taken away, that's my free will, right? I don't want to be an addict, a glutton, a liar, and a cheat. Yet I lie, I get addicted, I overeat. Am I in any way free? Of course not. So the free will defence of some kind of eternal torment (ECT or not) or something simply doesn't work.
Also I have no idea what it means that God is completely free. How does the concept of freedom even make sense when talking about God? God isn't free to sin, is He? I'd argue that's a nonsensical question. But so would be the other one. Love isn't free to be something that isn't Love.
Also, the idea that repentance is to be driven by the fear of hell, is repulsive. I don't want my wife to repent of her hurting me out of fear of being punished, or of being in pain, or whatever.
I'm only going to address a couple of things, as there's a lot hinging on the misunderstanding of them.
1: "As for God not forcing His love on people... This is really one of the most bizarre takes, and I hear it everywhere, but it really makes no sense. If I save my child from the coming traffic, though they willingly step on the road without looking, am I being unloving? Christ going to find the lost sheep, and turning the house over for the lost coin... should be unloving then."
First of all, I'd recommend looking into who those "lost sheep" represent and what "the lost coin" represents in those parables, as it appears it's not what you think.
You're not really giving a good example here that fits the narrative, at all, especially then applying your inappropriate example and equating it to Christ and his parables, as if it's a clear comparison, when it's not even remotely close. You're equating an unknowing, premature being (a child) being saved by his caretaker to the love of God being forced upon someone and these are not comparable, which goes to show that you're not understanding the premise. The entire premise is the fact that you (and every one of us, for that matter) have a CHOICE that you make (which means that you're capable of making a choice, have sufficient knowledge to make a choice and are culpable for your choice, so you're definitely not on a child-like level), it's not "mistakenly running into the street and being saved by X", it's "willingly living in rebellion despite the loving efforts of X".
You're mentioning addicts so let me try and put in a way you'll probably get it - you seem to miss the fact that, at the end of the day, the only one that actually is responsible for the "salvation" (in quotes as I don't mean the actual salvation of his soul, but simply to the turning away from his addiction) of the addict is the addict himself - No amount of external effort or love will ever change an addict, unless the addict realizes what's going on and WILLINGLY goes through the necessary journey to being clean and remaining clean, whatever that might be in his individual case. You can be the catalyst that causes the addict to REALIZE what's happening and be an instrument of God for his salvation, but in the end, you cannot force the proper change, you can only take the necessary actions that you think will help and pray the addict eventually comes to his senses. You can take his drugs away, you can forcibly put him in rehab, but you cannot stop him from going back to his ways as soon as that is possible and continuing on the path of destruction, despite everyone around telling him that and despite the fact that most-likely, he himself is already aware of that.
So, with that being said and the example at hand, do you think it would be the "loving" thing to do to lock him in rehab forever? Or does there come a point in time where he has a choice to make for himself, despite your best efforts? Is that then a person who is "blameless" and "unknowing" as you tried to put it in your example? Or is that someone who is "willingly in rebellion"?
I hope this helps put things into the proper perspective, as the example you tried to equate is really just a "I'm blameless and unknowing" when it's actually "I know enough and I am culpable for my actions" - In fact, that's what the Bible is clearly teaching, none of us are blameless or unknowing, after a certain point of maturity (Jesus being the sole exception to the blameless part, as He is the only one who lived a life of perfect obedience and is the exemplar we strive to follow). So, God being loving, yet leaving rebellious and unrepentant people to their ways, after doing everything in His power to guide them back to the truth without completely imposing His will and overriding theirs (which would be the tyrannical thing to do, if you think about it for a second), is absolutely the natural result and in no way in odds with Gods' character or with what Love is or a "bizarre" take. I see how this is a problem for you due to point 2, which to me is the actual bizarre take.
2: "I never asked to have a fallen nature. I want it taken away, that's my free will, right? I don't want to be an addict, a glutton, a liar, and a cheat. Yet I lie, I get addicted, I overeat. Am I in any way free? Of course not. So the free will defence of some kind of eternal torment (ECT or not) or something simply doesn't work."
Yes, and? What are you going to do about it? Complain? Or act all powerless and blameless again? That's like the "I didn't ask to be born" complains from kids going through puberty.
If you don't believe in free will, then there's really no reason to even do anything in life, ever. Of course the defense doesn't work when you deny the entire premise, lol. A premise, by the way, which is a core biblical teaching and can be seen all the way back in Genesis and throughout the entire Bible, so at this point, why even argue anything at all, if free will doesn't exist and you're not in any way free? Why watch this podcast, at all? Why would anyone ever be punished OR rewarded for that matter, if no one was ever capable of making any sort of tangible free choice about anything? Neither heaven nor hell/the lake of fire make any sense if that's what you believe. As written above, nothing really makes sense if that's what you believe.
The entire comment screams calvinistic confusion to me, which is the natural result of being under that viewpoint or being heavily influenced by it, so I kind of get it.
@@Lessonius Hey, thank you for your response!
My comparison between the love of God to that of the love of parents, is exactly that we cannot talk about God forcing His love onto someone. This, as a concept, is nonsensical. I'd go as far as saying that nowhere in the Bible has this ever been a concern. But what has been? We are, in fact, compared to children over and over. We are compared to dumb animals, to fools, to sick folks, to slaves, to captives, etc. We are in that addiction-ridden fallen condition, where we are not all that free. Sure, even a slave and an animal have some freedom, but how much exactly? This isn't a calvinist take in my opinion.
I am also not saying that we do not have a choice. Do we have responsibility for our current condition? Sure. But how much can we do outside of Christ? Many saints belabor the fact that it is all Christ's doing, not theirs. St. Anthony fights demons by crying out about his weakness. Not to mention the story of the drunk monk that St. Paisios told.
Again, fighting... That matters. It matters that we struggle. But I also see a lot of people damaged so much, that if God doesn't heal them, there ain't no way for them to do anything about it.
Sheep are... well, sheep. Regardless of whom Christ was talking about, Christ went out of His way to go pick up the dumb-ish animal and bring it back. It doesn't matter who this is talking about, because the fact remains that some free will got the sheep in trouble, and it got out of it not by its free will.
While I can talk a lot about addiction, it's a problem that you either get, or you don't. If you've been there, you know. Just as the demoniac folks weren't throwing themselves into fire, because they were super free.
As for love not changing the addict. Well... I beg to differ. Not only does love change them, it seems to be the only thing that can do that. Addicts that break free without love soon find themselves in another addiction. Maybe this time it's just an obsession, and it seems healthier, but it is addiction nonetheless. I know a few who went from drugs to super healthy eating. The second ultimately became their obsession. Not great either.
By the way, you can change the word "addict" with "demoniac" and go at it again in your addiction paragraph. People are captives, they need to be set free. God does that.
Now, I'm not saying all addicts will be helped like that. Some of Christ's followers could not drive out all demons. But I am saying that sin is its own addiction, of which we need to be free. And yes, some addicts and sinners are beyond our help. They are "obstinate". But when I look at them, I don't feel "God will rightfully judge them", I pray "God have mercy on us, sinners".
Regardless, I never claimed that I am blameless and unknowing. I only claim what the saints claim - without Christ, we are incapable of anything. And it will by no means feel somehow unjust if God saves people post-mortem.
If you are Orthodox, then I want to remind you that the Theotokos lived a sinless life as well, but not of her own accord.
On your other point:
"Yes, and? What are you going to do about it? Complain? Or act all powerless and blameless again? That's like the "I didn't ask to be born" complains from kids going through puberty. "
That doesn't answer the question though. You seem to think I don't believe in free will, which is not true. I am only asking, if it is about free will, why not respect my free will to have my free will aligned with God's will?
"Why would anyone ever be punished OR rewarded for that matter, if no one was ever capable of making any sort of tangible free choice about anything? Neither heaven nor hell/the lake of fire make any sense if that's what you believe."
Sin is its own punishment. Following Christ - its own reward. If someone pushes me, and I break my arm, it still hurts, regardless of fault. Me being a sinner is hurtful to my own self. Me following Christ is healing.
Now if you think my view doesn't make sense, wait untill you hear that I do believe that universalism, annihilationism, and eternal torment are all true, in their own sense. :D Make of that what you will.
@@atanas-nikolov A child remains a child to a parent, regardless of age, I think that's pretty straight-forward - Do not confuse the fact that the scriptures address us as children and such to mean that we've got no responsibility or ability to act and be culpable for our actions or again, that we're not free to do as we decide to.
Sheep are by no means dumb animals, there's a reason sheep and goats are contrasted by our Lord - It's because sheep are obedient, beneficial, they contribute to their owners by providing both wool and milk (that can be made to different other things, like clothes, cheese, etc.), they live in packs, obey their shepherds and recognize their voice and their voice only. Goats in comparison are the animals which provide very little, they're disobedient and self-driven. That's why I said you should look into what the parables are actually saying, because you're not getting what the Lord is trying to convey and responding by saying "I don't care what the parables mean and who they're talking about" whilst self-imposing meaning is frankly dubious. You're mentioning Saints, but you don't care to know what the Lord Himself means?
"As for love not changing the addict." - That's not what I said. I said that no amount can UNWILLINGLY change the addict, the addict still is the one who needs to respond to said love, you're twisting my words quite strongly there.
"While I can talk a lot about addiction, it's a problem that you either get, or you don't. If you've been there, you know. Just as the demoniac folks weren't throwing themselves into fire, because they were super free."
Yeah, because we all get demonized/addicted "by accident" ... You're looking at the consequences and completely ignoring the cause - a choice or multiple choices that led there, just like how you have to CHOOSE CHRIST. The exact same can be said when looking at the consequences of being a Saint, but for some reason we're ignoring that, because that's the beneficial version? It's a choice that led them there, just like it's a choice that led the demoniac/addict/etc. there and in some cases, it could've been a choice done by his/her ancestors or family members which affects them too, due to the nature of "making deals with the devil", but demonology is a different topic that doesn't need to be discussed now.
"If you are Orthodox, then I want to remind you that the Theotokos lived a sinless life as well, but not of her own accord." - Not of her own accord? So God overrode her free will? She wasn't the one who chose to live in accordance to the grace given to her and keep herself pure? She didn't willingly consent to being the Mother of God when St. Gabriel came? She didn't struggle to live that kind of life? That's what you're implying.
This is a great place to bring up the fact that the Theotokos is directly contrasted to Eve.
Eve could've rejected the serpent. St. Mary could've rejected St. Gabriel.
Eve chose rebellion. St. Mary chose obedience. Both had free will, both had external influence of Angels and both went in different directions, none of them were forced to choose what they did and both bore the consequences of their choice.
"Regardless, I never claimed that I am blameless and unknowing. I only claim what the saints claim - without Christ, we are incapable of anything. And it will by no means feel somehow unjust if God saves people post-mortem." -
Anything at all? Or anything in the sense of anything beneficial/salvific? Obviously, there's a nuance there, as we both know all of us are capable of many things, even without Christ. What those things are in the scale of "good/bad" is a different question and that's what the Saints mean, again it seems like misunderstanding what is being said. The gospel was preached to all the dead during the harrowing of Hades, how those dead respond to it is up to them or did Jesus force them to obey Him?
Scripture tells us that everyone will be judged justly and that everyone will have had a choice to know Christ or not. The intricacies on how that exactly works is not made known to us nor do we need to know, but according to what is written, no one ends up in Heaven/the new Earth or in Hell/the lake "by mistake" or "on accident", that much is made very, very clear. So any attempt to take away our agency and responsibility is in direct opposition to scripture, despite what will is behind it.
"That doesn't answer the question though. You seem to think I don't believe in free will, which is not true. I am only asking, if it is about free will, why not respect my free will to have my free will aligned with God's will?"
And who/what makes you think that isn't happening? Do we forget there's an enemy in play too?
Almost everything you initially wrote goes to show that you indeed do not believe in free will or in some sort of calvinistic version of free will, which doesn't end up being free in any real sense of the word. Your will is directly linked to your actions - enacting your will is an action. As was talked about in this podcast, repentance is directly linked to actions - actions that should be aligned to reversing/compensating for your previous actions that had negative impact to you and everyone around you. Once you're dead, your ability to act upon the world, upon yourself and upon those around you changes and is no longer the same, hence why post-mortem personal repentance is not possible, among other reasons that might also be in play as we simply do not have enough info about what being dead entails in detail.
You want people to repent post-mortem? Pray for them. Repent for them. Go and do what they weren't able to while they were still here.
52:15 Indeed, I'm waiting for the flood episode. The flood account troubled me a lot lately, and still troubles me, since Jesus Himself mentioned it, and it's pretty certain that He was reffering to a real thing, not to a parable or a story. But there's no evidence that there was a global flood, but rather evidence for the contrary, like the distribution of minerals in the earth layers. And, since Jesus was not just a man, but God, we can't say that He had a some sort of ancient perspective or way of thinking, but His knowledge was absolute, actual and factual. And we also can't say that he played the ancient way of thinking, because that would imply a duplicitous thinking. This, of course, puts very seriously the problem of the inerrancy and reliability of the gospels and Scriptures.
BTW, not even the local flood theory would solve the problem of the biblical details of the account, for geographical and hydrological reasons.
So, I would like and appreciate to hear a comprehensive explanation and to have some answers to this matter.
Saying “the purgative view of universal salvation is a cop-out ripped from Roman Catholicism” is ridiculous if you know what the most prominent proponents of universal reconciliation taught throughout Church history, especially in the East.
St Gregory (through his sister Macrina) in on the soul and resurrection even talks about purgation in the afterlife being proportionate to the sins of this life.
“That, said the Teacher, is my meaning; and also that the agony will be measured by the amount of evil there is in each individual. For it would not be reasonable to think that the man who has remained so long as we have supposed in evil known to be forbidden, and the man who has fallen only into moderate sins, should be tortured to the same amount in the judgment upon their vicious habit; but according to the quantity of material will be the longer or shorter time that that agonizing flame will be burning; that is, as long as there is fuel to feed it. In the case of the man who has acquired a heavy weight of material, the consuming fire must necessarily be very searching; but where that which the fire has to feed upon has spread less far, there the penetrating fierceness of the punishment is mitigated, so far as the subject itself, in the amount of its evil, is diminished. In any and every case evil must be removed out of existence, so that, as we said above, the absolutely non-existent should cease to be at all. Since it is not in its nature that evil should exist outside the will, does it not follow that when it shall be that every will rests in God, evil will be reduced to complete annihilation, owing to no receptacle being left for it?”
From On the Soul and Resurrection.
You can accuse me of too fiercely latching onto St Gregory of Nyssa, but before you accuse me of quote mining, just read the whole text. The context only helps.
This also goes to show that the whole “western theology is the root of all evil” schtick is unsustainable if you look through the evidence. If you look to the west and the east, thinkers in both camps of any amount of subtlety will tell you that the afterlife is beyond time as we know it (chronos), but both will use time and location to elucidate what the afterlife may be like to the best of our partial understanding.
2:07 Eternal Condemnation, what is it?
2:38 Can’t we just pick and choose what we believe?
3:32 Orthadoxia. Right Perspective. Right viewpoint.
4:15 2-3 conflicting opinions cannot all be correct.
5:10 This isn’t really a hard question. There is no real ambiguity here.
6:15 Ambiguity.
6:43 “Going to Hell” to a fire 🔥 😈 and fry 🍟 is not the correct understanding of Christian Hell.
7:57 ⚠This podcast includes Sarcasm. 😄
8:57 Goal: Present The Apostolic Teaching on Hell
• Some disagreements are substantial
• But you have to actually respond to the content being presented.
*Hades and Hell*
10:10 Hades and Hell
Hades comes out of Greek language. The Underworld.
Hell out of the Germanic languages.
11:09 Modern-English Hell means 😈🔥 Devil Fire Torture Place. Kind of Pagan.
12:42 John Milton’s view of Hell is not orthodox.
*Hades*
13:05 Hades. “Place.”
14:03 Full of bodiless humans.
14:39 Pascha Hymnography. 17:54
16:56 No Body Remains In The Grave.
18:26 Hades as place, Hades as experience, Intermediate State.
19:50 Paradise and Hades. As an experience or a state [of being.]
21:50 Literal and Material are not synonyms.
*Repentance*
23:09 Body and Soul = capable of repentance
23:51 Only a Soul without Body = incapable of repenting.
25:27
26:27 Faith and Works. Faith Without Works.
29:00 Watered down to feelings.
29:54 Empathy done wrong.
30:48 Actually doing things. Not just general good feelings.
31:57 Really Intentionally doing something.
32:54 “am i really?…” worrying.
33:39 A Documentary _The Wolf and The Cross_ ☦
34:57 Epiphenomenal.
35:51 Not about how you feel.
37:27 Western Christen misunderstanding of Repentance.
39:44 Sin, 💔 Repentance ❤🩹
42:03 🙏🏼Apology on one’s behalf.
*Hades*
45:44 Hades.
*The Lake of Fire* 🌊🔥
55:54 Lava Pits, Flames, Tridents. 🔱
57:58 Not found in The Old Testament _per se_
59:07 Daniel 7, Book 📖 of Enoch
1:00:08 Revelation of St John and St Matthew’s Gospel.
1:07:03 Dragging Someone Down With You is NOT Winning.
1:07:47 Fire Imagery, Suffering. The Fire That Comes From God.
1:08:20 Wicked in The Presence of God's Holiness.
1:08:53 Confirmed in Their Wickedness.
1:09:56 "Gehenna." = Eternal Condemnation used by some Church Fathers.
*Outer Darkness, Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth*
1:11:49 Outer Darkness.
1:12:28 Matthew 8:12, 22:13, 25:30.
1:13:07 Grinding your teeth. Madness. Foaming at The Mouth.
1:14:01 Job said his enemies gnashed their teeth against him.
1:14:54 Different languages, incompatible images. Darkness and Fire contradict.
1:15:53 We can't understand what that would be like, but we have the example of darkness in a cave.
1:17:13 Terror and Madness.
*Eternal Death, The 2nd Death*
1:17:47 Eternal Death.
1:18:05 Revelation 2:11, 20:6-14, 21:8.
1:18:47 "Annihilationism" there are problems with this idea.
1:19:23 St John of Damascus _Fount of Wisdom._
1:20:31 Everyone is Bodily Resurrected. God is Everywhere Present.
1:21:21 There are 0 examples of Annihilation. 0 Examples of ceasing to exist.
1:22:36 The Ancient opposite of Being is Chaos.
*Eternity*
1:24:05 Eternal, Endless Succession of Moments.
1:24:56 Eternal Life and Eternal Death, Ultimate.
1:27:23 This isn't really complicated. This is simple. Taught through The Scriptures.
*Love and Action*
1:27:56 Deuteronomy 30. Serve God and Live. Serve false gods and perish.
1:29:23 The Book of Hebrews.
1:29:43 If You Love Me, Keep My Commandments.
*Love is Not Feelings, Love is displayed through Actions*
1:30:11 Loving God, Keeping God's Commandments. Love is NOT Feelings, Love IS ACTIONS.
1:31:18 Choice, Continually. Not Intellectually, not on one day and no others. Faithfulness in Life. A Decision constituted by a thousand smaller decisions.
1:32:38 God does NOT force His Love on people.
_Problems today_
1:34:32 _From Object To Icon_ , How to Stop Objectifying Others.
1:36:13 "You can do what you want."
2ND HALF Of The Lord Of Spirits Podcast.
1:37:00 If you are Universalist and don't want to hear a critique of Universalism, you may not want to listen to what comes next.
1:38:47 The Hope of Someone's Salvation does not have to be founded on Heretical Teaching.
*Universalism*
1:40:07 Holding Universalism has consequences for the person who holds it.
1:41:27 "That All may be saved." it's one of the worst books Stephen De Young has read.
1:42:41 It knocks down strawmen.
1:43:34 People who believe some form of Apoconostasis. All Humans will be reconciled to God in The Age To Come.
1:44:54 Universalism is the belief that all humans will receive Eternal Life in The Age To Come.
1:45:09 Origen took this to an extreme point. Origen was condemned at The 5th Ecumenical Council.
1:47:12 The Church enshrines The Ecumenical Councils in Hymnography.
1:48:28 To posit this idea, you have to say The Spirit was not watching over The Orthodox Church for centuries.
1:49:38 A Massive Methodological Problem.
1:50:52 These Universalist folks are making a Protestant Argument.
1:15:18 The Infallible Bible.
1:52:05 The Authority.
1:53:19 Orthodox Tradition and Holy Scripture and Ecumenical Councils.
1:55:34 Origen was condemned on Universalism.
1:58:20 (People online can pull up quotes and falsely pin a belief to someone who never actually held that belief. People shouldn't do that, that's disingenuous.)
2:00:15 Praying for all of creation is not equate-able to being a Universalist.
2:01:02 Love For Enemy, in spite of lack of repentance.
2:01:45 That's Hope, not Universalism.
2:02:11 Hoping everyone to be saved is not the same as stating as fact that all will be saved.
2:03:39 Holding to Universalism and Apoconostasis is Calvinist.
2:06:46 Standard of Justice. Subjecting God to Necessity.
*A Dirty Secret in Liberal Theology*
2:08:37 Liberal Theology is Marcionite.
2:10:12 The God of The Old Testament being claimed to be a Pagan, deficient god.
2:11:05 Replacing Old Testament God with European Greek Plato's god.
Apokatamole
On a religious level, as Christians, does the Lord forgive us for our personalities as well as our actual sins, or just our sins? And are we therefore required to forgive other men for their personalities? Or just their actual sins against us?
Huh?
It’s great how you predicted people complaining that all that’s said is just your opinion and how this is apparently a non argument. People will say that because this whole thing literally is your opinion, unless you have some divine, infallible wisdom. You have given your (flawed) impression of the tradition and to suggest that this is non negotiable demonstrates your lack of concern for objective Truth. Especially considering there are accomplished theologians and Fr’s of the church who whole heartedly disagree with you. I’m not necessarily saying their position is corect on all matters either, but you have to surely understand that your opinion isn’t Truth. This is further evidenced by your sheer inability to provide historically and theologically accurate information through the entirety of this 3hr podcast. You suggest that the nuances of apocatastasis don’t matter, that this is just a ridiculous tactic by universalists to say that “ my form of universalism wasn’t condemned”. Either you are unable to determine the significance of the differences in the condemned doctrine or you’re deliberately disingenuous. The absolute critical thing you didn’t mention is that the doctrine that was condemned was the isochristoi doctrine, which has some overlap with apocatastasis, sure, but it’s not the same at all and you surely know that. The mainstream understanding of apocatastasis does not invoke the belief of the pre existence of souls which is the actual heresy that was condemned. We could debate on the details of Origen’s anathema and how this was clearly an error in that the doctrines for which he was anathematised were not even his…but that would take up too much space. Your take on St Gregory or Nysa is outside of the mainstream, scholarly understanding of his theology. There is an absolute consensus amongst Gregory scholars that he was a universalist. As you would say…this isn’t debatable (despite your best efforts). Your take on the “necessity” of God to save, or to do anything, which is the main body of your theological argument, is completely misunderstood and misrepresented. This is not an intracalvinistic dospute concerning the parameters by which God is retrained to undertake predetermined tasks. The idea of necessity is through an Orthodox understanding of what and who God is. God is not good, nor loving, nor merciful, nor truthful. God is Goodness, Love, Mercy and Truth in their fullest definitive forms. The idea of necessity is that this is the only option possible for God as understood in the Orthodox Church. It’s not that God is strong armed into this position, but simply that based on our understanding of God (whether platonic or not….as you have said, we align with the truth past down through the church), this is the only outcome that makes sense unless God is not who we believe him to be. I feel like you don’t understand Hart’s argument at all. Further to this, you seem to have a Western understanding of Grace which of course influences your understanding of apocatastasis and salvation . I could go on as there is 3 hours worth of material to critique, but il stop for now.
There was too much in this episode to critique given the (valuable) time it would take. You're absolutely correct in your assessment of the 'podfathers' summarily dismissing real and serious scholarship about Origen, St. Gregory Nyssa, and the 5th Ecumenical Council. Their attitude in this episode is more 'lobotomized fundamentalism' than honest reasoning and real engagement with the Fathers (and Scripture for that matter).
@@stephenbrannen absolutely agree. On another note, I also find it incredibly distasteful to hear an orthodox priest speak in such an authoritative manner, devoid of humility or compassion in a public forum. This is yet another example of “reformed orthodoxy” at its best.
@@UniversalSalvation-m1t I went into the podcast with a pretty high opinion of fr. De Young, which is why I'm pained to say this is one of the worst takes against apokatastasis I've heard in a while. Strawmen upon strawmen of positions virtually no one holds. And the arrogance... Man, it was tough to listen to. I've responded to some of the points fr. De Young makes, but I doubt he'd care.
DBH really got slammed more than any individual I have ever heard being slammed on LOS. It really was a DBH hate fest and sounded too much of a personal attack.
I mean... have you ever listened to DBH talk about people who hold to different theological opinions than he does, by chance? I honestly think DBH brings a lot of the animosity on himself by how personal he gets towards his opponents, attacking not only the theological opinions of people he disagrees with but their character, their intelligence, and their sense of morality as well. Fr. Stephen didn't go that far. I mean yeah he criticized the academic intellectual class that DBH is a part of, but that isn't unique to only one individual.
@@harrygarris6921 yes but DBH isn’t an ordained priest. I don’t think it’s too much to expect that an Orthodox priest present himself and represent his position with more pious humility as opposed to aggressive, inconsiderate pridefulness. Especially when that position is based on a total misunderstanding of the position in the first place.
I've benefited greatly from this podcast and the work of Fr. De Young and Fr. Damick, but I have to say the discussion of universalism and Hart's book here were greatly disappointing. The philosophical/theological arguments against universalism were extraordinarily simplistic, and often fallacious ('guilt by association with Calvinism' arguments, confusing extrinsically imposed necessity with necessity that flows from God's nature, etc.). And while I definitely disagree with many of Hart's views (syncretism, acceptance of questionable critical-textual scholarship, etc.), the imputation of anti-semitism to him or the arguments of his book was deeply uncharitable and slanderous. One might as well say the greatest Jewish intellectual of antiquity, Philo of Alexandria, was 'anti-semitic' because of his heavy allegorization of the OT text largely influenced by Platonic thought.
Let's all try to do better in this discourse, on both sides.
1). ('guilt by association with Calvinism' arguments, confusing extrinsically imposed necessity with necessity that flows from God's nature, etc.)
The irony here is that you object to association with Calvinism, then literally repeat the distinction Calvinists use to defend themselves on this very point when it comes to penal substitution, etc. On several episodes, I've pointedly critiqued these arguments as made by Calvinists. When DBH makes the same argument in favor of universalism, I'm not supposed to critique it? Or I'm not supposed to point out that he's making the same error they are?
2) Having read extensively in the works of Philo of Alexandria, I can assure you that at no point does Philo call the God of the Hebrew Bible a monster, immoral, evil, or a tribal fetish. I can also assure you that he never denies that that God, the one he worshipped, exists. So you've chosen a pretty bad counter-example. I don't know DBH personally, I would assume that he at least doesn't consider himself to be an anti-Semite, but he is following, and publishing in, a theological tradition that runs through 18th and 19th century Germany which holds pre-suppositions that are deeply anti-semitic. Every word he says about the "Old Testament God" he is saying about the God worshipped and loved by Jewish people, after all, and worshipped by Christianity since the beginning. This is why his critique of the "Old Testament God" bleeds over into a belittling, if not outright condemnation of the Church Fathers.
In the end, I was far kinder and more careful with him than he ever is with anyone, including great saints of the Church to which he occasionally still claims to belong.
Hi Fr. De Young,
Thank you for your thoughtful and thorough reply to my comment. A few thoughts in reply:
1) I'm not sure what you mean in relating the extrinsic/intrinsic necessity distinction to penal substitution specifically. Can you clarify? My purpose in pointing to this vital distinction was simply this: Every Christian, Calvinist or not, must accept that in *some* sense God's nature necessitates (intrinsically, not extrinsically) that He act in certain ways, and not others. God of necessity, for ex., could never command rape. Not because there's some extrinsic law or criterion beyond God that constrains Him in this way, but simply because God is The Good Itself. Similarly, simply because of Who God Is, He cannot fail to fulfill His promises. When universalists claim God "of necessity" saves all, this is the sense in which it is generally meant: that simply because of Who God Is, in relation to who we are as beings who cannot find our rest until we rest in Him, the salvation of all is inevitable. This is *not* the sense of 'necessity' that implies God is compelled by some extrinsic criterion or law. Now, you may still disagree with this particular claim. All I'm saying is that it's not an inherently 'Calvinistic' claim, and associating it therewith I think just diverts from what the real, fundamental issues at stake are.
2) I trust you're correct about Philo here. I've read much of him, but I'm sure not as much as you have. My point in bringing up Philo was this: He, like many Church Fathers after him, finds certain passages of Scripture unworthy of God *if read in a woodenly literal way* (God 'coming down' to see what humanity is upto with their Babel project, walking in the Garden, having a fit of drunken rage, etc.). I disagree with how Hart expresses this point, but I do think he's really just observing the same thing: We would all say, for ex., that it's unworthy of God, and He'd be a merely pagan and morally compromised deity, if He really repented, had burning hot rage, had to be reminded of His promises, and other anthropomorphic and anthropopathic properties attributed to Him in Scripture. A Supreme God who *literally* has these properties does not exist. But the God who is portrayed in Scripture via these human condescensions does indeed exist (I assume Hart would agree, but I can't speak for him of course --- and again, I wouldn't want to defend everything he says).
3) I see what you're saying, but I think it's a stretch to say "X is influenced by scholars who had certain anti-semitic views and motivations" implies "the arguments/views of X are inherently anti-semitic." It's also painting with a broad brush to say that "Jewish people" as such understand their Scriptures, and worship God, in a way dependent on thinking God is never portrayed in ways unworthy of Him at the purely literal level.
At any rate, I do very much appreciate your response here, and I sincerely love and thank you for all the great work you're doing through this podcast and in other ways ("Religion of the Apostles" was excellent!).
@@benjamincook711 I agree this was a rare miss for what otherwise is an excellent podcast.
I don't get what's so complicated about these questions. Universalists aren't trying to "judge God" or impose an extrinsic necessity on Him; they're just trying to understand what it means to say "God is The Good, God is Justice, God is Mercy, God is omnipotent, God is Father, etc" in the context of eschatology. Fr. De Young seemed sympathetic, if a bit condescending, towards people who honestly cannot reconcile the possibility of a loved one's eternal condemnation with an all loving God, so I don't get why a more intellectual version of that intuition deserves so much disdain.
@@chewdog91 Agreed. Even if one is not confident in the salvation of all at the end of the day, surely the only Christlike attitude to the question is that of St. Silouan when replying to the hermit who expressed joy the damned would get their just deserts: "Love could not bear that, we must pray for all."
@@benjamincook711 Who expressed any joy at damnation? That's a heck of an accusation.
Ironically, your presuppositions about the absolute deliberate freedom of God are what lead to Calvinists arriving at the logical conclusion of double-predestination in the first place. Calvinism didn’t receive its presuppositions from universalism because universalism, and more importantly the emphasis of natural will over deliberative will, was essentially dead in the water that Calvinism festered in. Calvinism rather knew the God that is a deliberating sovereign, which combined with His omniscience, lead them to understandably conclude that we are not ultimately free to choose our final destiny.
You’ll likely say that a “God who is a deliberating sovereign” is a caricature of your position, but please tell me the meaningful distinction between that and the God who is “free to choose the fates of every person amongst a number of options, some blissful some tormenting.”
The pre-modern conception of freedom is completely consonant with God freely while also necessarily uniting all things to Him in reconciliation.
Here’s DBH on that point in particular: th-cam.com/video/Nn29FA2aUyE/w-d-xo.html
Why is there no consideration of God being free to also allow his creation some freedom in their own right?
Because God would not know the final outcomes of His creatures and wouldn’t be omniscient.
The reason that Fr DeYoung is equating arguments for the necessity of universal reconciliation with Calvinism is because he believes that for God and man to be free, we must have the ability to choose between as many options as possible, for God an infinite amount of options. This is what some have called voluntarism. If voluntarism is true then God is either: omniscient and sovereign, thus the freedom of man is limited ie. Calvinism, or man is free and God is a finite agent in some way, being either not omniscient or not omnipotent. (Thomists tried to solve this dilemma as it arose but could only come up with the meaningless distinction of efficacious vs sufficient grace) The Calvinists tried to rescue the voluntarist model of freedom by affirming double-predestination. But the very issue is voluntarism. Reading the theological works of first-millennium Church fathers will tell you as much.
To solve the issue of God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and the freedom of both God and man, we don’t have to remove one from the equation. We have to modify our model of freedom, and we need only look back to the antique Church theologians to do so.
God is omniscient and omnipotent, but His omnipotence does not allow Him to do things outside of His nature.
The obvious example is the village atheist dilemma “can God create a rock so big He cannot lift it?” Essentially “can God do something that is impossible for God to do?”
The fact that He cannot doesn’t limit His freedom because His freedom is not determined by an unlimited set of options. Deliberation is a function of finite agency. In the case of the hypothetical, God is bound by His nature according to the laws of logic, but there are other ways that God is bound by His nature. God is Love, Truth, Goodness, not because He chooses to be. God could not be other than those things because that is His nature. It does not limit His freedom that he cannot be evil. On the level of God, free choice and acting according to one’s nature become synonymous, and for the universalist, the same will be true for all people.
To get from that to confident universalism takes a few more arguments, but we can at least acknowledge that it is no more Calvinist than pop Orthodoxy and its voluntarist presuppositions.
CHRISTIAN universalism is NOT heresy - those who tell you so are LIARS and FALSE TEACHERS. If you have or know a congregation that disagrees, I will HAPPILY debate them and SO CAN YOU by copying and pasting this list:
Scriptural Evidence of the Victorious Gospel
1) Rev 21:3-6
2) 2 Cor 5: 13-21
3) 1 Cor 15:20-28;50-58
4) Acts 3:21; 3:17-26
5) 1 Tim 4:10-11
6) Rom 8:28-39
7) John 5:21-30; 12:44-47
8) Luke 13:23-30; 12:57-59
9) Luke 21:25-28; 33
10) Luke 15
11) Gen 12:3
12) John 8:31-37
13) John 9:5
14) John 15:16-27
15) John 12:23-33
16) Titus 2:11-15
17) Romans 5:12-21
18) Jonah 2:3-11
19) Hosea 6:6; 11:8-11
20) Matthew 17:11-12
21) Ezek 2:1-10; Mt 15:21-28
22) Matt 11:26-27; 20:28
23) 1 Tim 2:6-7
24) Mark 10:45
25) Gal 1:4; 2:20
26) Romans 14:7-9
27) Philippians 2:9-11
28) Luke 20:34-38
29) Hosea 2:25
30) Romans 11:15-24; 32-36
31) 1 Cor 3:15; 21-23
32) 1 Cor 4:5
33) 1 Tim 2:1-4; Matt 6:10
34) Zeph 3:8-20
35) Haggai 2:22-23
36) Zech 8:7-12
37) Mark 11:17; 56:7
38) Mark 9:49
39) Zech 3:1-10; Amos 4:11
40) Is 66:22-24
41) Lk 12:10; Mt 12:24-32; Mk 3:28-30
42) Is 65:25
43) Dn 7:13-14
44) Eph 1:10-14; 18-23
45) Is 37:20-21
46) Is 35:4-10
47) Eph 4:9-10
48) Luke 15:31-32
49) 2 Pt 3:9-13
50) John 17:2
51) Wis 19:21
52) Wis 17:14
53) Gal 3:6-9
54) Jer 34:15-17
55) Ezek 18:4; 32
56) Ezek 16:59-63; 33:11
57) Ezek 37:26-28
58) 1 Cor 13:4-13
59) Hosea 2:1;18;21-25
60) John 1
61) Romans 10:9-13;18
62) Wis 11:23-12:1
63) Wis 12:16
64) Psalm 145 (especially 8-21)
65) Wis 16:5-15
66) Gen 18:17-17-33
67) Ex 19:5
68) Ex 32:11-14
69) Ex 33:18-19
70) Lv 10:3
71) Lv 25:8-55
72) Lv 26:34-36
73) Lv 26:11-13
74) Romans 8:1; Eph 4:10; 1 Cor 1:30
75) 2 Cor 3:14-18
76) Nm 14:17-24
77) Nm 15:15;26-29
78) Dt 4:29-31
79) Dt 7:14-17
80) Dt 9:29
81) Dt 17:12-13
82) Dt 18:9-22
83) Dt 19:16-21
84) Dt 20:19-20
85) Dt 22:1-4
86) Dt 28:10
87) Dt 30:4-14;19-20
88) Dt 32 (esp. 36-43)
89) Romans 8:19-20
90) Romans 9:5-8
91) Gal 4:21-30(esp. 28)
92) Gal 3:29
93) Joshua 2:9-14;17-21
94) Josh 24:3-4
95) Judges 5:31
96) Judges 8:22-23
97) Judges 10:15-16
98) Judges 16:22;28-31
99) Ruth 1:16-17
100) Ruth 2:10-13;3:9-10
101) Ruth 4:14-22
102) 1 Sam 2:6
103) 1 Sam 2:35-36
104) 1 Sam 3:18
105) 1 Sam 14:21-23
106) 1 Sam 12:17-25
107) 1 Sam 17:45-47
108) 1 Sam 18:13-14
109) 1 Sam 30:24-25
110) Is 25:6-9
111) Romans 6:10
112) 1 Cor 5:5
113) Acts 2:38-39
114) 1 Tim 1:15
115) Tobit 13:2
116) Romans (THE WHOLE THING)
117) Col 1:15-29;3:1-4;11
118) Hebrews 9:27-28
119) Heb 8:8-12
120) Jer 31:33-34
121) 1 Thes 4:13-18
122) John 19:30
123) 2 Tim 4:16-18
124) Rev 20:12-14
125) 1 Cor 15:45-49
126) Phil 3:21
127) Eph 4:6
128) Is 45:22-25
129) John 3:16-17
130) Heb 7:25
131) 1 John 2:1-3
132) Rev 11:15
133) Eph 3
134) Philemon 14
135) John 6:35-40
136) Mt 16:16-19
137) Joel 3:1-5; Acts 2:17-21;39
138) John 16:33
139) 1 John 5:1-5;11-13
140) Is 29:22-24
141) 1 John 4:14;18;42
142) John 12:19
143) John 17:13-26
144) 1 Thes 1:10
145) Titus 3:5-7
146) 1 Peter 1:18-19
147) Mt 1:21
148) Romans 5:18-19 (already listed, but esp. these)
149) Ps 18:6-7
150) Ps 120:1
151) Ps 31:23
152) Ps 16:10-11
153) Ps 30:4
154) Ps 22:28-32
155) Lk 1:17
156) Ps 32:1
157) Zech 7:9-10
158) Zech 14:9
159) Micah 6:6-8
160) Micah 7:7-9
161) Is 40:3-5
162) Lk 2:29-32;3:6
163) John 3:35
164) Col 2:9-10;14-15;20
165) Lk 20:37-38
166) 1 Thes 5:9-11
167) Acts 10:42-43
168) 2 Cor 5:10
169) Is 49:18
170) Nm 23:9-10
171) Is 53:11-12
172) Jer 25:30-32
173) Mt 23:23
174) Mt 26:28
175) Joel 4:11-21
176) Rev 5:9-13
177) 1 John 5:19-21
178) Eph 1:18-23
179) Heb 1:1-4
180) Phil 1:21
181) 1 Thes 5:15
182) Jer 31:33-34
183) 1 Peter 2:10
184) Rev 19:13-16;11:15
185) Ps 19:5;8-15
186) Wis 9:1
187) Ps 94:18
188) Ps 86:5;15
189) Ps 146:7-10
190) Ps 103:8-9;11-13;17-18
191) Daniel 3
192) 1 Cor 8:6
193) John 12:47-50
194) Wis 7:29-30
195) 1 Thes 5:4-5
196) 1 John 2:8
197) Mt 24:14;27;30-31
198) Is 28:16;18
199) Acts 10:34-38; 15:9-11
200) Is 65:1-3
201) Wis 11-12
202) Is 41:4
203) Lk 10:22
204) 2 Mc 1:24-25
205) Ex 15:26
206) Dt 32:39
207) 2 Mc 6:12-31;7:23
208) Romans 9:15; 1 Tim 2:3-4
209) Ex 29:45-46
210) Ezek 37:25-28; 2 Cor 6:16
211) Luke 2:1-14 (esp. 10-11)
212) John 1:29
213) Luke 4:14-22
214) John 10:9-11
215) John 14:1-4
216) John 6:51
217) Is 25:6-9
218) Rev 1:18
219) Mt 28:17-20
220) Acts 1:8
221) John 14:16-18
222) Acts 2:32-33
223) John 15:4-5
224) Eph 3:14-19
225) Rev 1:13-17;2:4b-5a;10
226) Heb 13:8
227) Acts 17:29-32
228) Mt 11:28-29
229) 2 Cor 6:2
230) Rev 22:17
231) Is 40:26
232) Ps 115:3
233) Is 41:4;8-10
234) I Chr 29:10-13
235) Luke 1:37
236) Ps 106:8;45-46
237) 2 Pt 1:11;21
238) 1 Tim 3:16
239) 2 Cor 7:10
240) Mt 6:14
241) Eph 5:11-14
242) Ezek 36:26-28
243) 1 Cor 6:11
244) 2 Tim 1:9-12
245) Romans 8:16
246) Is 12:3
247) 1 Pt 1:8-9
248) 2 Thes 1:5-10
249) Lk 6:46-49
250) 2 Cor 3:9-11;2 Cor 2:10-11
251) Mt 10:32-33
252) Ps 23
253) Heb 2:14-15
254) I John 3:8
255) Acts 26:17-18
256) James 1:25;4:7-8
257) Romans 4:23-25
258) Heb 12:14
259) Ps 43:18-20
260) Is 66:2
261) 1 Pt 4:12-13
262) Romans 16:20
263) Is 43:2
264) 1 Cor 10:13
265) Nahum 1:12-13
266) 2 Cor 8:9
267) John 20:21-23
268) 1 John 5:13-15
269) 1 Pt 1:22-25
270) 1 Tim 1:5-7
271) John 15:11-12
272) John 16:22-23
273) John 14:6
274) John 4:24-26
275) John 14:27
276) 1 John 4:9
277) 1 John 4:15-17
278) 1 John 1:7; Heb 9:13-15
279) Heb 13:20-21
280) Heb 6:16-20
281) Acts 16:25-31
282) Lv 16:21
283) Nm 5:5-10
284) Neh 9:5-7
285) Neh 1:6-9
286) Ex 6:5-9
287) 2 Kgs 13:23
288) Rev 3:20-22
289) Ps 67:5-8
290) Ps 66:2-12
291) 1 Cor 2:5;13-16
292) Acts 4:12
293) Is 53:6;11
294) 2 Tim 3:15;4:1-2
295) Acts 20:32
296) Rev 17:14
297) Ps 130:3-4;8
298) 2 Chr 7:13-14
299) 2 Cor 4:11
300) Phil 2:13
301) Lamentations 3:22-24
302) Is 1:18
303) Is 55:1;3;6-13
304) Eph 3:16
305) Phil 4:13
306) Eph 4:5
307) 1 Cor 1:9
308) 1 John 1:3-4
309) 1 Cor 1:30-31
310) 1 Pt 4:7-11
311) Phil 2:15-16
312) 1 Pt 5
313) 1 Kgs 17:17-24
314) 1 Kgs 11:35-39
315) 1 Kgs 8:30;33-34
316) 1 Kgs 8:41-45;59-60
317) 1 Kgs 13:6
318) 2 Kgs 4:3-7;40-44
319) 2 Sam 7:6-17
320) 2 Sam 16:18
321) Job 42
322) 2 Thes 3:3
323) 2 Thes 1:11
324) 2 John 1-4
325) 3 John 1-6 (esp. 5)
326) Hab 3:2-3;13;18-19
327) Mal 3:2;6
328) Esther F:5-10
329) Esther A:8-10
330) 2 Sam 22:6-7;20
331) 2 Sam 23:3-5
332) 2 Sam 24:10
333) 2 Sam 24:14
334) Sir 2:18
335) Sir 15:15-17
336) Sir 16:28
337) Obadiah 17;21 (esp. 21)
338) Amos 9:14
339) Sir 24:8-9;19
340) Sir 36:22;37:25
341) Sir 29:16;34-35
342) Sir 40:11-12;17
343) Sir 42:15-16;18
344) Sir 43:27;33
345) Sir 48:5;11 (incl. 11b, extant only in Greek - “for we too shall certainly live”)
346) Sir 49:16 (“felix culpa” - Latin: “fortunate fault”)
347) Sir 51 (esp. 4-11)
348) Jonah 4
349) Mal 3:6-10
350) Mal 1:2
351) Mal 3:20;23-24
352) Song of Songs (Union of Christ to the Church; our souls)
353) Eccl 3:11-15;22
354) Eccl 7:8
355) Eccl 8:1;11-13
356) Prv 4:20-22
357) Prv 9:11
358) Prv 10:2;12
359) Prv 11:4
360) Prv 13:12-14
361) Prv 14:19;25-28
362) Prv 15:1;4;11;17;24-26
363) Prv 18:17
364) Prv 20:8
365) Prv 21:8;30-31
366) Prv 22:2
367) Prv 23:18
368) Prv 24:11-14
369) Prv 25;21-22;26
370) Prv 26;2
371) Prv 27:20-21
372) Prv 28: 1-5;13
373) Prv 29:4;7;10;12-14; 25-27
374) Ezra 10:44
375) Judith 8:11-16;9:11-14;16:16
376) 1 Mc 2:61-64;12:21-23
377) Ezra 1:5-6
378) Ezra 3:11-13
379) Ezra 8:22
380) Acts 15:16-18
381) Dt 31:6
382) Sir 50:17;22
383) 2 Kgs 5:14
384) 2 Kgs 6:22-23
385) 2 Kgs 13:23
386) 2 Kgs 14:26-27
387) 2 Kgs 17:39
388) 2 Kgs 19:15;19;34
389) 2 Kgs 20:5-6
390) 1 Chr 16:8-36;41
391) 1 Chr 17:8-15
392) 1 Chr 29:30
393) John 14:26
394) John 16:5-15
395) Is 52:7-15
396) Ps 100:5
397) John 6:29
398) 1 Cor 14:22-25
399) Jer 33
400) 2 Chr 6:33
401) 2 Chr 30:18-20
402) Tobit 14:5-7
403) Ps 139:8
404) Enoch 39 1-2
405) Mt 17:24-27
406) Gal 5:1
407) Lam 3:31-33
*Non-Exhaustive*