A Father Learning to Love

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Checkmate For Hell - Part 6: Move 11

This is part of an ongoing series of blog posts, meant to be read in order. In the first post, I introduced the concept of Universalism, and introduced the concept that I would be defending my position through a series of "chess moves". I mentioned that I believe I have checkmate in 2 moves, but because a lot of questions would be left, I would use a series of further moves to keep the king in checkmate while I systematically removed the rest of the pieces from the board. I would highly suggest you read the previous parts of this series before reading this one:
Part 1: Moves 1-3
Part 2: Moves 4-5
Part 3: Moves 6-7
Part 4: Move 8
Part 5: Moves 9-10

Psychological Background
Before we get into the next two “chess moves”, I need to explain a couple of psychological concepts that I will be referring to in these moves. One of the things you are going to have to understand is that Hell-sayers fall prey to cognitive dissonance and employ confirmation bias to protect their views. Yes, those are some highfalutin terms. I will attempt to explain.

Cognitive dissonance is a psychology term which indicates the discomfort experienced when simultaneously holding two or more conflicting cognitions: ideas, beliefs, values or emotional reactions. For example, a smoker will experience cognitive dissonance when they realize that smoking is unhealthy, but continue to smoke anyway. Psychologist Leon Festinger coined the term after infiltrating a UFO cult led by Dorothy Martin. The cult believed that Dorothy had received a prophesy from aliens that there would be a massive flood in the United States on December 21, 1954. Festinger observed the cult members' fervor actually increasing after their prophesies failed to materialize results. Why would these cult members continue in their fervor after it seemed obvious to outsiders that the cult had been proven false? They had committed themselves to this cult in a big way - quitting their jobs, exhausting their savings, and repeatedly warning their families and friends of impending disaster. So to shrug their shoulders, admit their error, and move on would not have been easy. One cultist stated, after midnight on December 21 of 1954: "I've given up just about everything. I've cut every tie: I've burned every bridge. I've turned my back on the world. I can't afford to doubt. I have to believe."

There are three key strategies to reduce or minimize cognitive dissonance:

Focus on more supportive beliefs that outweigh the dissonant belief or behavior.

Reduce the importance of the conflicting belief.

Change the conflicting belief so that it is consistent with other beliefs or behaviors.

Now, as you may have guessed, confirmation bias goes hand in hand with cognitive dissonance. Confirmation bias is a tendency to favor information that confirms a belief or hypothesis, and people who display confirmation bias have a tendency to selectively remember information and interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs.

So let's move on to move number 11:

Chess Move #11
Another common objection to Universalism is that people will bring up the wrathful God of the Old Testament. Now this brings us to a topic I really wish I didn’t have to discuss, but after numerous conversations with one of my friends after presenting my ideas on Hell, it became apparent that I needed to address this issue in order to attempt to free him from an imprisoning idea of a wrathful God. I would address issues such as the meaning of the word “all” changing meaning in the middle of a sentence without any contextual clues, or the question of “does God get what God wants?”, and my friend would display classic cognitive dissonance by refusing to address these issues, but falling back on the ideas of a wrathful God that the stories of the Old Testament seem to support, in his mind.

Now what my friend is doing is a little like the following analogy: imagine that my friend and I have both purchased a complicated jigsaw puzzle that is supposed to end up looking like a representation of a real life site that my friend and I have both seen and are familiar with. My friend has struggled with this puzzle, and because of its difficulty, he took some of the pieces and put them back in the box in order to help him simplify things and focus on putting the other pieces together. But once he had begun to put the other pieces together, rather than taking the other pieces back out of the box, my friend left them there and tried to force the pieces he was working with together. The result was that he did end up with a picture, but it didn’t quite resemble the real life site that it was supposed to resemble. When I tried to point this out to my friend, he took the box with the rest of the pieces and threw it under the couch, refusing to address the pieces within, and then he insisted that it is not the puzzle which is wrong, but our eyes that deceive us into thinking that the real life site doesn’t look like the picture he was left with. But I refuse to say my puzzle is finished until I have both dealt with the pieces that were left in the box, and my resulting puzzle resembles the real life site that I can observe. Meanwhile, my friend continues to try to force his puzzle pieces together with sheer brute strength and willpower.

To further the analogy of the jigsaw puzzle, let's imagine that rather than the puzzle being a picture of a site, it is a portrait. And let's imagine that upon finishing the puzzle, the picture I am faced with is of a man holding a portrait of himself that someone else has drawn. On the man’s face is a mixed expression of compassion and sadness. The portrait of him that he is holding definitely resembles him in some aspects, but it is also badly drawn, as if by a child: aspects of the man’s face are grossly disproportionate, and his face is twisted in a horrid expression. Now, imagine that my friend has thrown away the pieces that would enable him to see that the portrait is just that, and he is convinced that this caricature is actually a photograph of the man, and so my friend is insisting – though it makes no sense – that both pictures of the man are accurate portrayals of the same person. But what he ends up doing with this “god with multiple personality disorder” is that he brings out the portrait that is most convenient for whatever situation he faces at the time. His “god” is a conflicted god of extremes. If this is your god, what inevitably happens is that when you are faced with someone you disagree with, you pull out the wrathful god and ignore the loving god. When you are faced with someone you care about, or when you are struggling yourself, you go to the god of love. But I don’t believe that God has multiple personality disorder! I believe he is “One”, as Jesus said!

After repeated conversations with my friend where he continued to bring up this idea of a wrathful God that he feels the Old Testament proves is true, I finally asked him a question that I knew he wouldn’t like. I asked my friend: “what if the Israelites got it wrong?” You see, the picture that Jesus gives us of God’s personality doesn’t seem to match the ideas of a condemning, wrathful God that the Israelites seemed to have in parts of the Old Testament. So what if they got it wrong?

Now this idea really upset my friend – he accused me of going too far by questioning the Bible. He believes in the inerrancy of the Bible, and points to 2 Timothy 3:16-17 as proof of this idea. I will address this passage and what I think it means in a bit, but first I would like to point out some problems with my friend’s ideas on how to view the Old Testament and the ideas of a wrathful God within.

First off, let’s talk about Job. One of the interesting things about Job is that he was not an Israelite, but an Edomite, as Job 1:1 tells us that he lived in the land of Uz, which was on the confines of ldumaea [Edom] and Arabia. Now, as the story goes in the book of Job, Satan issues a challenge to God that if God will “strike everything he has”, Job will “surely curse you to your face.” (verse 11). So God accepts, and Job loses…well, basically everything. His family dies and he loses all of his possessions. Job is stricken with grief, and Job’s friends arrive to comfort him, and it says in Job 2:13:

Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.

When Job’s friends felt that it was appropriate to speak to him about what happened, the advice they give him is that if he would just recognize his sin and repent of it, God would surely forgive him. But Job insists he has done nothing wrong, and for most of the book Job and his friends go back and forth in a continuing debate over these two conflicting points – Job’s friends repeatedly insist he must have done something wrong and is being punished, and Job insisting on his righteousness. Job’s insistence on his righteousness is an interesting point to consider in light of Calvinism’s doctrine of Total Depravity (which we will deal with in the next "chess move"), by the way.

Then at the end of the book of Job, God speaks to Job, and makes him feel very small by asking him questions such as these:

Job 38:4-7
Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone—
while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?"

But lest you read this amazing and humbling passage with an angry tone, take a look at what happens afterwards in Job 42:7-8:

After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has. So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly. You have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has.”

Do you understand what just happened here? First of all, I would say that if you are reading the questions God presents to Job with an angry tone, you don’t understand the plot – the end of the book shows us that God is not angry with Job. Rather, He is lovingly questioning Job. But second of all, the Bible just told us that another part of the Bible was…wrong! If someone were to take the statements of Job’s friends and quote them in order to prove to someone else what God was like, they would be wrong! More than that, though, it is interesting to note that what Job’s friends were saying to him is not unsupported by scripture either. In Deuteronomy 28, it says that if you obey God’s commands you will be blessed in the city and the country, the fruit of your womb will be blessed and crops of your land and the young of your livestock, you will be blessed when you come in and when you go out, etc. And then it says that if you do not obey God’s commands, you will be cursed in the city and in the country, the fruit of your womb will be cursed and crops of your land and the young of your livestock, you will be cursed when you come in and when you go out, etc. So what Job’s friends told him is supported by Scripture! So…which side is correct? Is Job 42:7-8 wrong, or were Job’s friends and Deuteronomy 28 wrong? And what does this say about the inerrancy of Scripture?

But I’m not finished yet. In the beginning of John chapter 9 we see that people are still following the code of Deuteronomy 28 - Jesus and his disciples see a man born blind, and the disciples ask Jesus whether it was the blind man who sinned or his parents? Because if you live by the principle of Deuteronomy 28, it's logical to assume that this man was blind because he was being punished for sins, right? But Jesus disagrees! He overturns this concept! So who are you going to listen to, Moses or Jesus?

But there are more issues for you, if you believe in inerrancy. In Genesis 19:24, we find something peculiar:

Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens.

Now why would it say “the LORD” did something, and then later clarify “from the LORD”? Also peculiar is this one:

Jeremiah 50:40
“As God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah
And their neighbors,”
says the Lord,
“So no one shall reside there,
Nor son of man dwell in it.”

Why would God speak in the third person about Himself like that? Digging a little deeper:

Amos 4:11
“I overthrew some of you,
As God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah,
And you were like a firebrand plucked from the burning;
Yet you have not returned to Me,”
Says the Lord.

Once again, why does God refer to Himself in the third person? And why does the passage switch from “God” to “LORD” at the end of the verse?

Digging even deeper, we find that in Exodus 15:11, Moses asks: “Who is like you among the gods, O Lord?” And Psalm 95:3 says that “the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods.” So what is all of this about? Well, the answer I will suggest is that the Old Testament Israelites were monolatrists – they believed that there were many gods, but worshiped only one, and believed that the god they worshiped was over all the other gods. They believed that YHVH was the king of the gods. From Wikipedia’s article on monolatrism, we find the following:

Recognized scholars have formulated a substantial case for ancient Israel's practice of monolatry.^[3]
"The highest claim to be made for Moses is that he was, rather than a monotheist, a monolatrist. ... The attribution of fully developed monotheism to Moses is certainly going beyond the evidence."^[4]
"As absolute monotheism took over from monolatry in Israel, those who had originally been in the pantheon of the gods were demoted to the status of angels."^[5]
"The exclusivity of the relationship between Yahweh and Israel is an important element in Israel's oldest religious tradition. However, it is not necessary to ascribe the present formulation of the commandment ["you shall have no other gods before me"] to a very early stage of the tradition, nor is it advantageous to interpret the commandment as if it inculcated monotheism. The commandment technically enjoins monolatry, but it can be understood within a henotheistic religious system."^[6]
"The Deuteronomic Code imposes at the least a strict monolatry."^[7]
"In the ancient Near East the existence of divine beings was universally accepted without questions. As for unicity, in Israel there is no clear and unambiguous denial of the existence of gods other than Yahweh before Deutero-Isaiah in the 6th century B.C. … The question was not whether there is only one elohim, but whether there is any elohim like Yahweh."^[8]

So the Israelites believed in many gods. Christians today don’t believe in many gods – we believe in one God, expressed in the three persons of the Trinity. So, the Israelites were…wrong.

But there’s more. Look at these passages (emphasis added by me):

Deuteronomy 12:31
You must not worship the Lord your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.

Jeremiah 19:4-6
For they have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned incense in it to gods that neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. They have built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind. So beware, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when people will no longer call this place Topheth or the Valley of Ben Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.

Point being: God detests child sacrifice. So why would God ask Abraham to do something He detests? For the answer, I go to this essay on what Jews believe:

Some Christians might claim that Gd seemed to want human sacrifices, because Gd appeared to demand one from Abraham, when He commanded the sacrifice of Isaac. This is a misreading of the biblical text in Genesis. When one reads this section carefully, one sees something quite different.
Most Jewish biblical commentators interpret this incident as a test of Abraham's loyalty: Gd wanted to see if he would actually kill Isaac, his own son. However, a number of Jewish commentators from the medieval era, and many in the modern era as well, read the text somewhat differently. The early rabbinic midrash "Genesis Rabbah" imagines Gd as saying "I never considered telling Abraham to slaughter Isaac." Rabbi Yona Ibn Janach (Spain, 11th century) wrote that Gd demanded only a symbolic sacrifice. Rabbi Yosef Ibn Caspi (Spain, early 14th century) wrote that Abraham's imagination led him astray, making him believe that he had been commanded to sacrifice his son. Ibn Caspi writes "How could Gd command such a revolting thing?"
Rabbi Joseph H. Hertz (Chief Rabbi of the British Empire), writes that child sacrifice was actually "rife among the Semitic peoples," and suggests that "in that age, it was astounding that Abraham's Gd should have interposed to prevent the sacrifice, not that He should have asked for it." Hertz interprets the Binding of Isaac as demonstrating that human sacrifice is abhorrent. "Unlike the cruel heathen deities, it was the spiritual surrender alone that Gd required."

Could it be that Abraham was wrong about God?

But there’s more. Ask any atheist or agnostic who is not burdened by dogmatic beliefs that cannot be rationalized, and they will tell you that there are many contradictions in the Bible. Check out this impressive list for some examples (there are plenty more lists like that one out there, by the way). Those who believe in the inerrancy of scripture will insist that this is not so – there are no contradictions in the Bible. But if that is what you believe, you have a lot of explaining to do.

So what’s the answer to this problem? Well, let’s go back and look at 2 Timothy 3:16-17:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

What does the verse say? Does it say that scripture is inerrant? No – it says “God-breathed”, and it says that it’s “useful”. Many people have read into the phrase “God-breathed” and taken it to mean “inerrant”. But there’s a problem with that. Because there’s something else that was God-breathed. What did God do after He created Adam? He breathed into his nostrils and gave him life. Adam is God-breathed. Is Adam inerrant?

Another question that the inerrant believers can’t answer is this: 2 Timothy 3:16-17 was written before the canonization of the Bible, so how does Paul know that everything that will later on be canonized by different people is going to be inerrant? And if this verse was written before the canonization, then what does the term “scripture” refer to?

And there's one really weird thing you'll find if you believe that every single word in the Bible is directly inspired by God and inerrant - Paul doesn't think this way. Take a look at this verse:

1 Corinthians 7:12
To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her.

Did you catch that? "I, not the Lord" - Paul is specifically telling us that he's making a judgment call here, and that he has no word from the Lord to back it up. Wait a minute, that's ok? And if that verse in the Bible isn't directly inspired by God and inerrant...how can we know what else in the Bible is like that? Do we just assume everything else is inerrant but that one verse? Oh, but there's others:

1 Corinthians 7:25
Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy.

Here Paul is again making a judgment call without any direct word from God! And again:

2 Corinthians 11:17
In this self-confident boasting I am not talking as the Lord would, but as a fool.

Three examples where Paul is specifically telling us that things he's written down did not come directly from the "word of God"! Things that are in the Bible.

The problem is that those who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible have historically been the defenders of slavery, persecuting scientists for believing that the earth revolved around the sun and not the other way around, burning witches and heretics at the stake, crusades, and a whole slew of other evils.

But the Bible doesn’t say that the Bible is inerrant. The Bible says it is God-breathed and useful. So, back to the original question: how do we deal with the picture of a wrathful God that seems to be presented in the Old Testament? Well, I don’t think that much of what we see in the Old Testament was meant to be seen as doctrine. I think it was meant to be seen as history. I believe that when we read about “the word becoming flesh” in John 1:1-18, and when we read Jesus telling us not to put new wine in old wineskins in Mark 2:21-22, what this implies is that we should interpret the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus, rather than interpreting Jesus through the lens of the Old Testament.

Jesus was always surprising people by contradicting commonly held beliefs and doctrines of the day – he was always upsetting the status quo. But in order to understand this, and in order to understand why Jesus said and did the things he did, we need to understand what the status quo was. We need to understand how the Jews viewed God in order to see how risky Jesus was; how radical he was; how he contradicted the status quo. We need the history of the Old Testament. But maybe we’re not supposed to take everything in it as doctrine.

You see, most people are not trained to see the Bible as a story – they’re trained to take digestible, bite-sized chunks of the Bible, and trained never to even consider that these chunks don’t fit together in a coherent manner. But I am saying that the Bible needs to be seen more like the telling of a story, or even a joke. Consider a joke – it has a beginning, a middle and an end. Let’s say I tell you I’m going to tell a joke, and then I say “a string walks into a bar and asks for a shot of tequila, and the bartender tells him that they don’t serve strings there.” And then I stop. You say you don’t get it, and I tell you the point of the story is that strings don’t belong in bars. You tell me that’s not such a good story, and I call you a faithless heathen who is denying the will of God! So we part ways, and later on you relay this story to a friend of mine from the same church. My friend apologizes on my behalf, and tells you that he has a better way to illustrate the story – he says “The string goes outside. He ties himself into a knot and messes up his hair. Then he walks back into the bar and orders a tequila, and the bartender says ‘hey, aren’t you that string that was just in here?’” My friend stops there. You say you still don’t get it. My friend says the point of the story is that if someone rejects you, you should change your look and style, and go on with your life. You say you still don’t get it, and my friend replies “oh, ye of little faith!” My friend walks away in disgust. You leave the conversation, puzzled and a little upset at our reactions. Later on you meet a pastor, and tell him about what happened, and he smiles and says we didn’t tell the ending – he says “the string says ‘nope, frayed knot!’” Now, any one of the three pieces of the joke would not make sense without the others. But this is how people who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible read it. They take it in bite sized chunks and refuse to see that all the pieces are supposed to fit together as a narrative that changes our perspective of what the story is really all about by the end.

In I Thessalonians 5:19-22, we are told:

Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil.

This passage encourages us to be contemplative – to thoughtfully examine what we hear and what we read. Traditionally, one might apply this to writings of various theologians and secular authors. But what if it applies to the Bible as well?

There is a rabbinic tradition known as midrash – in this tradition, those who study the Torah should consider multiple possible interpretations of a passage, and should seek to align their interpretation with religious and ethical values. Maybe it’s time to stop being so militant about literal interpretations of the Bible, and start trying to follow the principle of midrash?

In “Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived”, Rob Bell writes:

Some communities don't permit open, honest inquiry about the things that matter most. Lots of people have voiced a concern, expressed a doubt, or raised a question, only to be told by their family, church, friends, or tribe: "We don't discuss those things here."

I believe the discussion itself is divine. Abraham does his best to bargain with God, most of the book of Job consists of arguments by Job and his friends about the deepest questions of human suffering, God is practically on trial in the book of Lamentations, and Jesus responds to almost every question he's asked with...a question.

What would happen to our faith if we could enter into the conversation? What would happen if we welcomed the conversation of others, even when we disagree - if we saw disagreement as "iron sharpening iron", rather than as a danger? What if we welcomed those we disagreed with rather than casting them out as heretics? What if we could thank those we disagreed with for helping us to flesh out our own thoughts, rather than allowing disagreement to break relationships apart? How might that change the world?

Tune in next time for some more chess moves:

Chess move #12: Calvinism is Totally Depraved
Diagrams
Conclusion: Testing the fruits.

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Checkmate For Hell - Part 5: Moves 9-10

Do not fear.

Do you know what the most repeated word in the New Testament is? Love. In the King James Version of the Bible, love is mentioned 508 times in the Old Testament and 697 in the New Testament.

I John 4:18 says:

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

For some reason, the writers of the Bible were in complete agreement on two very important concepts: fear should be avoided, and we should love instead. I John 4:18 says that “perfect loves drives out fear” – in the King James Version, the phrase that is used is “casts out”, and it’s the same word used elsewhere in the Bible for casting out demons. This verse also says that fear has to do with…punishment. So how can we cast out fear if we still believe there is punishment? And isn’t the concept of eternal conscious torment the most frightening thing our minds could possibly come up with? Isn’t it the worst form of punishment anyone could possibly think of? How could we realistically cast out all fear from our hearts if there is any possibility of eternal conscious torment?

Now you may say, "but I don't fear hell - I know I'm not going there. It's just those people who are going there." There's a problem with that. Jesus says in Matthew 7:1-2:

Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

Did you catch that? If you judge, the measurement you use will be applied to you. So I'd say that measuring out eternal conscious torment is a very, very dangerous thing to do. No matter what the criteria you use, you're in great danger - if your criteria for getting out of hell is correct belief, how can you be certain that your beliefs about the infinite (and thus outside of the sphere of our possibility to know) God is correct? Oooh, that's troublesome. Ok, then we'll go with correct action. Oh...but every single one of us makes mistakes every single day.... Do you see what the problem with measuring out the judgement of eternal conscious torment to other people is? I believe we're not supposed to judge anyone. Not a single person. That's Jesus' job, and he doesn't judge (John 8:15). So it seems to me that the safest way to live would be to believe in God's love for everyone, and to believe that this love will conquer all in the end. That's the only way to be sure we're not judging anyone, and thus in danger of having our measurement of judgement used for ourselves. It seems to me that if you believe in eternal conscious torment, no matter what the criteria you use for who belongs there, you'll always have that nagging doubt - that deep psychological fear of "what if?" And that's not a perfect love that has cast out all fear, it seems to me.

Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to Love God, and the second greatest commandment was to love your neighbors, and when asked “who is my neighbor”, Jesus told a story about a Samaritan – a foreign man of another religion. An “other”. He implied in this story that everyone was our neighbor.

Jesus also commanded us to love our enemies. But this is actually an impossibility, if you think about it – because when you love your enemy, he/she stops being your enemy, but instead becomes your neighbor. How can we see people of other faiths and cultures as our neighbors and love them fully if we believe that they are ultimately destined for a place of eternal conscious torment, separated from us for eternity? How can we love someone we fear? How can we truly love those whom have hurt us if we believe there is no true hope for reconciliation? How can we love those who believe differently and think differently if we’re afraid that they might change our minds, and that this might end up putting us in eternal conscious torment (because we believe that whether we end up there or not is based on correct belief)?

John says: “The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”

Chess Move #10
One of the objections that this teaching on a non-literal hell is often faced with goes like this: “well, Origen was declared a heretic for his Universalist beliefs, so you're going against tradition.” By the way, I can't hear or read the word "tradition" without having the song from "Fiddler on the Roof" start running through my head. But let's address the objection: first of all, just because someone calls someone else a heretic doesn’t mean that they were wrong – always remember that Jesus was a heretic in the eyes of the Pharisees. But second of all, Origen was condemned at the Synod of Constantinople in 543 for apokatastasis and for his theory of salvation history as returning aeons rather than as uni-linear. The church did not ever condemn the general concept of universalism. According to Deak and Dalton, evidence in support of this is that Gregory of Nyssa (380 A.D.), who was a strong proponent of universalism but rejected the idea of returning aeons, was never condemned by any council. Paul Smith lists other early universalists who were not condemned, such as Clement of Alexandria (190 A.D., head of the catechetical school there), Hilary (deacon of the Roman Church), Titus, Bishop of Bostra (364 A.D.), Gregory of Nazianzus (373 A.D., president of the second great Ecumenical Council), and Jerome (346 A.D., translator of the Latin Bible).

So, if so many of the church's most influential leaders were universalists when some of Origen's teachings were declared heresy, it makes sense that it wasn't the general concept of universalism that was the problem - it was a certain specific version of it. Basically, what Origen believed was that God was going to return creation to the exact state it had been in before the fall, that time was going to go through an eternal cycle of creation/fall/redemption, and that God must save all. The heresy was not so much the universalism as some of these specifics, which came from Greek paganism. If it truly were Universalism that was the problem with Origen's heresy, why was it that Gregory Nazianzen, who lived after Origen and was an avowed Universalist, was appointed as the President of the second council of the church in Constantinople in the fourth century?

To add support to this point, we can turn to many quotes from early church history. Augustine himself, who could quite possibly be blamed for the modern popularity of eternal conscious torment, said:

There are very many in our day, who though not denying the Holy Scriptures, do not believe in endless torments.

If one who was quite possibly the best defender against Universalism was willing to admit that there are many who do not deny Scripture and yet believe in Universalism, how can it truly be called heresy?

Tune in next time for some more chess moves:

Chess move #11: What about the wrathful God of the Old Testament?
Chess move #12: Calvinism is Totally Depraved
Diagrams
Conclusion: Testing the fruits.

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Checkmate For Hell - Part 4: Move 8

My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

The word that is translated as “advocate” is parakletos, and a better translation might be “defense attorney.” Now, many people have turned this into an image where Jesus defends us in court with God the Father being the angry judge who demands punishment. But Jesus has made many statements along the lines of John 10:30, where he tells us that he and the Father are one. So why would we think the Father has a judgmental, angry personality if Jesus is the complete opposite?

Also, it’s interesting to note that the same word, parakletos, is used for the Holy Spirit:

John 14:15-17
If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever — the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.

John 15:26-27
When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.

Jesus changes our image of God from an angry judge to a defense attorney. In John 8:1-11, we see Jesus acting both in the role of judge, and of defense attorney when an adulterous woman is brought to him. In refusing to let anyone else stone or condemn this woman, Jesus has taken on the role of the defense attorney. Jesus does judge her when he tells her “Go now and leave your life of sin.” He has pointed out her destructive behavior and commanded her to turn from it – because God loves this woman! Love does not condemn when we disobey – love is saddened because it knows the natural consequences we will face for this destructive behavior. But rather than condemn her, Jesus is standing on her side as a person, and the people he seems most angry with are the stone throwers.

Later in, in Acts 9:1-22, Jesus is also Paul’s defense attorney. It is hard to imagine a more hard-hearted person than one who would travel around stoning Christians simply for being Christians. Paul was full of rage and addicted to control. But Jesus showed love to him, even in his unrepentant state, and softened his heart. Jesus loved and healed Paul – and what did Paul do to deserve this? Nothing.

The good news of the Gospel of Jesus is not that God loves repentant sinners, but that God loves unrepentant sinners.

Perhaps the most dramatic statement of Jesus as defense attorney rather than prosecuting attorney is Jesus’ final words on the cross. The cross shows us a juxtaposition of two realities: the depth of destruction caused by unloving behavior, and the even greater depth of love in God’s response. Rather than condemning those who subjected him to such a violent, cruel, senseless death, Jesus says in Luke 23:34:

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.

Jesus left many clues throughout his ministry that God is our defense attorney, rather than our judge or prosecuting attorney. In Luke 4:14-30, Jesus proclaims his mission using the words of Isaiah 61:1-2. But why are the people so angry with him to the point of wanting to throw him off the edge of a mountain at the end of this story? When Jesus quoted Isaiah 61:1-2, he skipped a sentence at the end of verse 2 – a verse about the day of God’s vengeance - and then he goes on to speak of how prophets are not accepted in their hometown, citing stories about the prophets showing God’s mercy to a Sidonian and a Syrian. This angered the Jewish leaders because the implication was that Jesus was removing the promise of vengeance towards Israel’s enemies, and proclaiming God’s favor upon them.

Jesus also told parables that illustrated how God loves the unrepentant sinner. In the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15:11-30, Jesus is portraying an image of the worst kind of sinner to his audience. This prodigal son, in demanding his inheritance before the father died, was basically saying to his father "I wish you were dead." Now, this story is often portrayed as if the prodigal son did repent before returning to the father. Scholars, however, indicate that the prodigal’s motive at this point is more likely self-interest – he’s hungry. James Burtchaell writes:

The ruined and desperate son heads home not because he is repentant but because he is starving. The story never suggests that he has had a change of heart; only a change of diet. He is still the same schlemiel [Yiddish equivalent of “jerk”] of a son who comes scuffing up the road to the homestead.

Another indication of the son’s unrepentant state is in verse 20 – while the son “was still a long way off,” the father saw him and ran to him. These words are not meant to indicate geographic distance from the father, but rather his emotional distance – his hard-hearted lack of repentance. The father offers love and reconciliation to his son before the son has truly repented and without ever asking for an apology or a change of heart. Then, later on in the story, the father forgives the elder son before he repents too. The elder son has also insulted the father by arguing with him in public. But the father still promises him: “everything I have is yours.”

But Jesus left more clues, because this parable was preceded by two more that offer the picture of God loving the unrepentant sinner. In Luke 15:3-7, Jesus tells a story of a lost sheep, and in Luke 15:8-11 he tells a story of a lost coin. In each of these stories, God is the one who takes the initiative and seeks out the unrepentant sinner while they are still lost in their sin. It is this fact that truly gives the other 99 sheep security – God’s determination to seek out the unrepentant sinner assures the rest of us that He will never let go of us.

“But what about the passages where Jesus is referred to as the judge?”, some may say. The tendency is to think that at the last judgment, Jesus goes through a radical personality change when He becomes judge. But Jesus does not suffer from multiple personality disorder - in Hebrews 13:8 we are told that “Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” And what is a profound mystery to us in our humanity is that Jesus is the judge who doesn’t judge: in John 8:15 Jesus tells us that he passes judgment on no one.

But wait, let me ask this: if Jesus is the judge AND defense attorney, how could we possibly lose that case?

Another example we could give of how Jesus was a defense attorney might seem strange at first – the one example in scripture where we see Jesus visibly angry: at the temple when Jesus drove out the money changers. Those with views of God as a wrathful God have a hard time understanding what’s going on here – they think the anger displayed is all about God being mad that business is being conducted in the temple. But what is really going on here is that this business was keeping common people from drawing near to God. Common people were not being allowed to bring their own sacrifices, but were being told they had to buy sacrifices from the business of the temple, and were not allowed to use money from their culture but had to subject themselves to the unfair practices of money-changers who would short change people. And so the religious elite were constructing a wall between people and God, and this infuriated Jesus – it’s the only example in the Bible of him being visibly angry.

In the time that Jesus lived, it was common practice for people to curse their enemies. In Bath, England, archaeologists have uncovered scores of tablets with prayers on them, and these are referred to as “curse tablets”, because this was the most common type of prayer. People would give the name of someone who hurt them, and ask the gods to bring down vengeance. An eloquent example of this comes from a curse tablet found in Rome:

I invoke you, holy angels and holy names … tie up, block, strike, overthrow, harm, destroy, kill, and shatter Eucherios the charioteer and all his horses tomorrow in the arena of Rome. Let the starting-gates not [open] properly. Let him not compete quickly. Let him not pass. Let him not make the turn properly. Let him not receive the honors…. Let him not come from behind and pass but instead let him collapse, let him be bound, let him be broken up, and let him drag behind. Both in the early races and the later ones. Now, now! Quickly, quickly!

But Jesus said:

Matthew 5:43-47
You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?

This was not conventional wisdom – it was a stark contrast to the common views of the day. And there’s something you need to understand about Jesus. People often talk about how some people “talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk.” But Jesus taught by example. In his wonderful book “Who Is This Man ?: The Unpredictable Impact of the Inescapable Jesus”, John Ortberg tells the story of how Jesus taught the principle of loving your enemies by example:

One day Jesus drops a bomb. It’s early in his ministry, things are going well, and he has drawn a crowd so large that he must teach from a boat in a lake so all can hear. That evening he says to his disciples, "Let’s go over to the other side."

That’s the bomb. The "other side" is something of a technical term. Jesus is not talking just about geography. The other side of the lake was the region of Decapolis, the "ten cities." This was largely enemy territory. Its inhabitants were pagan people.

Ortberg then explains that Decapolis is where the seven nations of Canaan settled, and how their pagan religions exalted violence and sexuality and greed. In this culture, the pig - which was regarded as unclean in Israel - was viewed as sacred and used as part of their worship. The Jews actually believed that Satan lived on the "other side", and no one would go to the other side for fear of the consequences - especially not a rabbi. Also, Decapolis was a center of Rome's power - home to a military base of over six thousand soldiers. Ortberg goes on:

Jesus casually suggested one day, "Let’s go over to the other side."

What was he doing? Didn’t he know that the kingdom is for our side? It’s almost as if he didn’t know that this is the other side. It’s almost as if he thought it’s his side. It’s almost as if he thought every side belonged to him, or that he belonged to every side. It’s almost as if he thought that all the peoples of the earth were now going to be blessed through him – even the seven nations of Canaan.

So Jesus and the disciples go to the "other side." What they find there was quite unlike what had become Jesus' usual reception of large crowds. Instead, they found one lone demonically afflicted man. This man runs to Jesus and kneels at his feet - the demon possessing him demanding to know what Jesus wants. Jesus asks the demon its name, and the response is heavy on the symbolism: Legion. Legion was the name the Romans - the oppressors of the Jews - used for a company of soldiers, and this area housed one of the largest of Rome's legions. The spirits asked to be sent into a herd of pigs - again, heavy on the symbolism. In 1 Maccabees, Jews had been commanded to eat pork by Roman soldiers and were slaughtered when they refused. Furthermore, the symbol of the Roman Legion in that area was a boar's head. So the pig, as well as the name "Legion", were both symbols of the oppression of the Jews. Jesus casts the demon into the herd of pigs, which rushes to its destruction - a symbolic reversal of the story in 1 Maccabees through the liberation of a man from the "other side".

When the people of the area come and witness the scene, their response provides some very interesting psychological analysis. Here was a man who had reportedly been causing a lot of trouble – the story tells us that he had been chained before and had broken his chains in an extraordinary feat of strength. You’d think the townspeople would thank Jesus for taking care of their problem, and maybe even do as the Jews and bring him more of their sick for healing. But instead, they begged him to leave. Ortberg explains:

Why? Because he had power, but he wasn’t one of them. He was from the wrong side. And he might use his power to hurt them.

Jesus agreed to go. The man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him. Jesus, who up to now had been telling everyone, "Follow me," said no. He said, "Go tell your story."

Imagine this man’s feeling when that boat rowed away and he wasn’t in it. But he did what Jesus asked. He told people in Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. "And all the people were amazed."

Here’s the rest of the story. Jesus returned to Decapolis a short time later. This time great crowds came to see him. "They ran throughout that whole region and carried the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went – into villages, towns or country side – they placed the sick…. They begged him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed."

In other words, the seven nations of Canaan were praising the God of Israel. The first time Jesus went over to the other side, nobody was home except for one pathetic wretch. The second time he came, it was one of the most dramatic responses in all of the New Testament. People were more receptive to Jesus here than any other place he had ever gone.

They had heard that this Jesus cared about someone on "their side.”

Now, when you hear this story, do you really think that the God whom Jesus represents is planning to throw a majority of the people of this world into eternal conscious torment?

Jesus taught by example. He told us to love our enemies in Matthew 5:43-48, and then he repeatedly showed us how to do that. And then, in verse 48 of the passage, he said:

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

He said “be perfect”, right after talking about loving enemies. And he implied that the heavenly Father is perfect at practicing this. This suggests that, rather than being infinitely offended by every petty offense as some would ask us to believe (see "infinite punishment to serve a finite crime" in Chess Move #3), God is infinitely merciful. Or in other words, as the Bible says, God's love and mercy endure through the ages (Ps. 106:1; 107:1; 118:1; 138:8; and over and over in Ps. 136).

Robert Ingersoll once said:

They say that when God was in Jerusalem he forgave his murderers, but now he will not forgive an honest man for differing with him on the subject of the Trinity. They say that God says to me, "Forgive your enemies." I say, "I do;" but he says, "I will damn mine." God should be consistent. If he wants me to forgive my enemies he should forgive his. I am asked to forgive enemies who can hurt me. God is only asked to forgive enemies who cannot hurt him. He certainly ought to be as generous as he asks us to be.

I wonder if God really is not as generous as He asks us to be? If Jesus said that the Father was perfect right after talking about loving enemies, do you really think there's a time limit on that? Do you really think that perfectly practicing the act of loving your enemies involves throwing them into, or even allowing them to endure eternal conscious torment if there is any possibility of sparing them from this fate?

Tune in next time for some more chess moves:

Chess move #9: No fear.
Chess move #10: Wasn’t Origen a heretic?
Chess move #11: What about the wrathful God of the Old Testament?
Chess move #12: Calvinism is Totally Depraved
Diagrams
Conclusion: Testing the fruits.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Checkmate For Hell - Part 3: Moves 6-7

Chess Move #6

What is the Biblical definition of death? Is it an eternal conscious torment?

Before I answer that, I’d like to consider one of the common objections that people have to Universalism. It is quite common for a Universalist to be accused of throwing out God’s justice, or to put it another way: there are no consequences for sin. But we must use the Bible to define what the consequences of sin are, and Romans 6:23 says that the wages of sin is death, not eternal conscious torment. So perhaps some would like to define death as eternal conscious torment in an eternally burning lake of fire. But if that’s your move, then you have a problem, because this is not how the Bible defines death. Ecclesiastes 9:5 says:

For the living know that they will die,
but the dead know nothing;
they have no further reward,
and even their name is forgotten.

Hmmm… if “the dead do not know anything” as the verse says, how do they even know they’re being tormented? They know nothing. That sounds unconscious to me. Also, Psalms 115:17 says:

The dead cannot sing praises to the Lord,
for they have gone into the silence of the grave.

Here the grave is described as silence - doesn't sound like consciousness. Now, with the next verse we find something interesting: I Thessalonians 5:10 uses a particular word in most versions, but some of the newer versions have changed it to "dead" - in NIV it says:

He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him.

This verse uses the analogy of sleep to describe death, but like I said, some newer translations have started switching that word out. But many scriptures describe death this way: sleep. One website I looked at said they had counted over 50 times the word "sleep" or some form of it was used to describe death. So if the wages of sin are death, as in Romans 6:23, and the Bible defines death as sleep, this creates a problem for believers of eternal conscious torment. But let’s move on to my next “chess move”.

Chess Move #7

Now we’re going to examine what the Bible says about how a person is “saved”. Now, those who believe in Hell would like a way to keep from going there. So they’ve worked out a Hell avoidance plan, and that usually involves saying a prayer that they call “the sinner’s prayer” and “accepting Jesus into your heart.” Usually, they don’t have a clear way of defining how that last one works out, and if you press them for details on how that works, their answer is usually just kind of along the lines of mysterious voodoo magic, in my experience. Oh, don’t get me wrong – I think that “accepting Jesus into your heart” is actually a valid, rich metaphor that we should seek deeper understanding of. But usually, this whole “magical incantation resulting in the disembodied spirit of Jesus moving into your blood pumping organ” idea is not well thought out by those who use it. But what’s really interesting about that whole thing is that you can’t find this “sinner’s prayer” anywhere in the Bible. You never see Jesus getting his disciples to pray any form of this prayer - he just says to them "follow me." So if this "sinner's prayer" of mysterious origins is not the way to be “saved”, then what is? Well, let’s look at the Bible.

One of the most famous passages on the subject is Ephesians 2:8-9, which says:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast.

So we’re saved not by anything we can do, but through something God gives us. So after we’re saved, we can sit around on our butts, right? Let’s look at some more Bible passages on the subject of being saved. Romans 10:9 says:

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Now, aren’t “confessing” and “believing” verbs? Things we do? Didn’t Ephesians 2:8-9 say it’s not from anything we do that we are saved? Is this a contradiction?

Romans 10:9 also brings up an interesting conundrum for Hell-sayers: Phillipians 2:10-11 implies that at some point every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. So are we to believe that at this point, whenever it is, the Romans 10:9 rule does not apply anymore? Is God really that petty, that he has an expiration date on his offer? God is the ultimate salesman? Act now - we have a limited supply of salvation?

Let’s look at more Biblical passages. In Luke 23, Jesus is hanging on the cross, and he has two men beside him, one on either side. One of the men joins in with the mockery of Jesus, and the other rebukes him, and then says to Jesus in verse 42:

“Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.”

What is Jesus reaction? This is it – I’m not removing anything in between – in verse 43, the entirety of the verse says:

And Jesus replied, "I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise."

So, we’re saved by asking Jesus to remember us? That’s not the same thing as being saved by confessing with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believing in our heart that God raised him from the dead, right?

In Luke 20, when Jesus is asked about marriage in the afterlife, in his reply he says that the people who will be part of the “age to come” are those who are, as verse 35 says: “worthy of being raised from the dead.” So we’re saved because God considers us worthy? Or because we’re born again? Or because we ask Jesus to remember us? Or because we confess and believe? Or because of grace?

Now there’s one other story about being saved that I find interesting. In Luke 7, there is a very vivid image presented when Jesus eats at Simon the Pharisee’s house, and, as verse 37 says: “a certain immoral woman” came and joined them. A lot of people hold the view that this woman was a prostitute – we don’t really know that for sure, but we know that whatever she had done, it was considered pretty bad, because Luke considered it necessary to tell us what kind of woman she was. But she was the one who cried tears all over his dirty feet, wiped them off with her hair, and then kissed them (a sensual image that would have been considered pretty risqué back then, and probably still today), and poured the expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet. At the end of the story, without having indicated to us that the woman said or did anything else, Jesus says to her: “your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

So, how are we saved? Wait, there’s more. There is a concept you will find throughout the Bible of a household being saved by the faith of one member of the family, as in Acts 16:31. And then we also have in I Timothy 2:15 it says that women will be saved through childbirth. So how are we saved?

So far we have:

Childbirth
Saved through your family members
Faith that seemingly is apparent when you cry and wipe away tears with your hair and kiss Jesus' feet and pour perfume on them
Being worthy
Ask Jesus to remember you
Confessing
Believing
Grace (not by works)

How are we saved? Are you feeling confused yet? Maybe strangest of all in this exploration is the fact that we never, ever see (not anywhere) in the Bible the “Sinner’s Prayer” that so many seem to teach is the way to become saved. No magic incantation saves you – at least not according to the Bible! Now, if I see Hell as eternal conscious torment that will be experienced by anyone who has not taken the proper Hell-avoidance plan before they die, the conundrum of trying to figure out how exactly I could be “saved” from it would really bother me. If that’s what I believe about Hell, that is.

But we're going to take a break. Tune in next time for some more chess moves:

Chess move #8: Jesus is our defense attorney and our judge - how can we possibly lose that case?
Chess move #9: No fear.
Chess move #10: Wasn’t Origen a heretic?
Chess move #11: What about the wrathful God of the Old Testament?
Chess move #12: Calvinism is Totally Depraved
Diagrams
Conclusion: Testing the fruits.