No, you are honestly given the opportunity to do something good. Going to hell is throwing it away.I am not given an "oppurtunity" to play a part in God's game. — Beebert
Why not? You keep telling me about the NT writers, that doesn't matter. The OT and NT were never meant to be stand-alone - they need to be read and understood through the lens of Apostolic Tradition.Yes I read your answers on the bible texts in question and unfortunately they didnt convince me. — Beebert
I can't answer your questions. We'll have to wait and see. Clearly talk of "end" or "beginning" is pointless with regards to eternity.Is there no movement in eternity? By your definition if eternity, then what suggests that there will not be an end to the punishment of the wicked? If eternal punishment just means timeless punishment, or punishment outside of time, then Perhaps it will not be without end? — Beebert
I think the message of Revelation is great. The wicked will be destroyed, what's bad about that?! If a criminal is arrested and put in jail to rot there, will you cry or rejoice? I would rejoice, because we've been freed of an evil man who was harming us!Just read the Book of revelation. It really is a disgusting little piece of literature as far as beauty of writing is concerned. Its moral message isnt any better. — Beebert
It was exceedingly clear to people who were familiar with Tradition. The NT - such as Paul's letters - were given to communities which were ALREADY Christian. How did they become Christian? By the oral teachings of the Apostolic Tradition. The writings they received were meant only as further guidance, to be interpreted in the light of Tradition. It is through Tradition that they first became Christians, not through reading Paul's letters. So it may be difficult for you to interpret because you don't understand the metaphors that are used, but those who have the support of Tradition do.When I call the New Testament ungifted, what I mean is basically that they seem incapable of delivering a clear message. But perhaps being clear didnt matter to them. — Beebert
That's not what John says.Btw, John doesnt just want them destroyed, he wants them to be tormented forever and ever. And ever. Without end. Only then he can enjoy his paradise. — Beebert
You have a very strange morality then. Clearly getting rid of evil is a good thing, not a bad thing. Would you rather that the criminal torment his innocent victims?! :sIf a criminal is in jail to rot, I would most often cry(Which Silouan would too obviously) but sometimes in exceptional cases rejoice. — Beebert
Nope. Christianity has been very successful, so clearly that "remote" part of the Middle East wasn't so remote at all. It's the world's largest religion, and has spread today in all corners of the world - and it's spreading at a super-fast rate in the developing world.I understand concerning tradition. It just seems to me that God could communicate a little more clearly than by sending his son to die in a remote part of the middle east among a bunch of superstitious and illiterate people 2000 years ago. And then Communicating these great news to the rest of us by starting to letting Paul have an epileptic seizure where he receives the whole gospel in a vision. And then time goes on and Rome takes over it all and proclaims the Good news by threatening people with a Dante's vision of hell and burning heretics and wirtches on the stake, which eventually after approximately 400 years of tyranny results in a reformation where a mean Little peasant is angry and wants to Change it all. So he Changes the whole idea of Faith and salvation basically which eventuellt results in us having 30 000-40 000 different denominations of christianity. And during all this time God and his truth has been hiding itself in the east! Doesnt this sound a bit ironic? — Beebert
we can then ask why there is the privation of the good, as opposed to just the good. — Thorongil
In traditional theology and metaphysics, the natural was largely conceived as the evil, and the spiritual or supernatural as the good. In popular Darwinism, the good is the well-adapted, and the value of that to which the organism adapts itself is unquestioned or is measured only in terms of further adaptation. However, being well adapted to one’s surroundings is tantamount to being capable of coping successfully with them, of mastering the forces that beset one. Thus the theoretical denial of the spirit’s antagonism to nature – even as implied in the doctrine of interrelation between the various forms of organic life, including man – frequently amounts in practice to subscribing to the principle of man’s continuous and thoroughgoing domination of nature. Regarding reason as a natural organ does not divest it of the trend to domination or invest it with greater potentialities for reconciliation. On the contrary, the abdication of the spirit in popular Darwinism entails the rejection of any elements of the mind that transcend the function of adaptation and consequently are not instruments of self-preservation. Reason disavows its own primacy and professes to be a mere servant of natural selection. On the surface, this new empirical reason seems more humble toward nature than the reason of the metaphysical tradition. Actually, however, it is arrogant, practical mind riding roughshod over the ‘useless spiritual,’ and dismissing any view of nature in which the latter is taken to be more than a stimulus to human activity. The effects of this view are not confined to modern philosophy.
This perhaps more than anything else forms the greatest barrier to my possible conversion. — Thorongil
That's certainly part of the criteria of success. If Christianity is true, and God communicates through Christianity, then presumably Christianity couldn't be a small religion followed by very few people, but would rather reach out to a large number of people, and that's exactly what we see today.BTW, since when did amount of members mean success? — Beebert
No, because it diminished the number of Christians, amongst other things.Was the inquisition a success? — Beebert
I don't know, I'd tend to believe you're more likely to go to heaven to be honest.If I live a life alone in the Woods from the age of 0 to 40 and never injure Another man, and then I die at that age without believing in God and Christ, I am going to hell right? — Beebert
It's hard to say, we're not given any kind of certain knowledge about who achieves salvation and who doesn't. There's a gentile for example talked about in Scripture called Cornelius, and he was called righteous and pleasing to God before he heard about Christ.So only those who know about Christ and reject him anyway goes to hell? — Beebert
There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are so strongly attracted by Him that they are His in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who are being led by God's secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it. For example, a Buddhist of good will may be led to concentrate more and more on the Buddhist teaching about mercy and to leave in the background (though he might still say he believed) the Buddhist teaching on certain other points
— C.S. Lewis
Anonymous Christianity means that a person lives in the grace of God and attains salvation outside of explicitly constituted Christianity — Let us say, a Buddhist monk — who, because he follows his conscience, attains salvation and lives in the grace of God; of him I must say that he is an anonymous Christian; if not, I would have to presuppose that there is a genuine path to salvation that really attains that goal, but that simply has nothing to do with Jesus Christ. But I cannot do that. And so, if I hold if everyone depends upon Jesus Christ for salvation, and if at the same time I hold that many live in the world who have not expressly recognized Jesus Christ, then there remains in my opinion nothing else but to take up this postulate of an anonymous Christianity.
— Karl Rahner
Nevertheless, God, who desires to call all peoples to himself in Christ and to communicate to them the fullness of his revelation and love, "does not fail to make himself present in many ways, not only to individuals, but also to entire peoples through their spiritual riches, of which their religions are the main and essential expression even when they contain ‘gaps, insufficiencies and errors'". Therefore, the sacred books of other religions, which in actual fact direct and nourish the existence of their followers, receive from the mystery of Christ the elements of goodness and grace which they contain.
— Pope Benedict XVI
If someone who lives in the midst of Christianity enters, with a knowledge of the true idea of God, the house of the true God, and prays, but prays in untruth, and if someone lives in an idolatrous land but prays with all passion of infinity, although his eyes are resting upon the image of an idol – where, then, is there more truth? The one prays in truth to God although he is worshipping an idol; the other prays in untruth to the true God and is therefore in truth worshipping an idol.
— Kierkegaard
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