Universal Salvation

[Guest Mikey_C]

I saw my Dad has purchased a book entitled, Universal Salvation - by Robin Parry and Chris Partridge. Seems that there is a debate in Christian circles about this issue.

I notice that many people on here use the notion of hell as a counter argument to Christianity - however the concept of Universal Salvation would negate that.... The concept of hell was one of the key flaws in Christian reasoning in my view, and part of the reason I lost my faith.

 

Anyone read it, or have any views?

 

[Young Mother Atheist]

I think there was a thread around here not long ago about that. It's titled "it it finished". The books like that, though, are just people trying to make the Bible say what they want it to say. There are ideas, such as hell, that people can't deal with so they try and figure out a way to do that instead of just throwing away the whole religion. It's much easier for individuals to change a way they think about something within their belief system rather than to junk the belief system all together.

 

Brian McClaren writes some books like this such as A New Kind of Christian and another book on hell.

They are just trying to make it easier to believe in and deal with. And they can do this pretty easily because there are so many differing opinions and contradictions in the Bible that you can almost always find a verse to back up what you want to say or believe (and a verse to rebutt it...).

[KT45]

yeah I studied it for a while. go to www.tentmaker.org since it has so much information.

 

here is a debate against the guy who created the site (and the movement i think). But he loses the debate against a fundie. After watching you could tell he didn't prepare well

 

http://www.tentmaker.org/video/pax/paxindex.htm

Just click faith under fire

[Guest Mikey_C]

yeah I studied it for a while. go to www.tentmaker.org since it has so much information.

 

here is a debate against the guy who created the site (and the movement i think). But he loses the debate against a fundie. After watching you could tell he didn't prepare well

 

http://www.tentmaker.org/video/pax/paxindex.htm

Just click faith under fire

 

 

Thanks, interesting to see so much material online, never knew it all existed! Have been bumbling along by myself working things out for years. Finding this website was surprise enough

[deepblue]

People who argue for universal salvation from the Bible are just being dishonest. Either they should accept the doctrines of the faith or quit.

[RHEMtron]

This is the thread Young Mother Atheist was talking about: http://www.ex-christian.net/index.php?show...c=3030&st=0

 

Also, as far as hell goes, keep this in mind:

excerpt from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell

The religious and secular man's nightmarish ideas of HELL (that is, of a Christ-managed hothouse where sinners get burned forever) come to them compliments of ... careless translating ... the practice of ignoring separate Greek words.

 

In 2 Pet. 2:4, God chose the Greek word "Tartaros" (ταρταροω; English transliteration, "Tartarus") to identify the temporary abode of sinning angels. Tartarus holds spirit beings, not humans, and there is not a flame on the premises. The KJV and NIV translators (neither of whose versions have any influence in the expression of Eastern Orthodox doctrine) gave this specific Greek word the English equivalent, "hell".

 

In Matthew 5:22 (and in several other places), God chose a different Greek word, "Geenna," (English transliteration: "Gehenna") to name a valley on the southwest corner of Jerusalem where the corpses of criminals will be disposed of during the thousand-year kingdom. There are flames here, yes, but the flames cremate the dead (Is. 66:24), they don't torture the living. Most of humanity is not even alive to see Gehenna (Rev. 20:5), let alone be tormented there. The KJV and NIV translators gave this specific Greek word the English equivalent, "hell".

 

In Luke 16:23 (and in other places), God chose the Greek word, "hades", to describe the state of invisibility; in Greek, the word means "unseen". God uses this word often to describe a person's nonexistence in death: unless spoken of figuratively, a dead person doesn't see anything, hear anything, feel anything, know anything, do anything: hades. Flames, screams, pointy tails and pitchforks are conspicuously absent. All the dead "go" here, not just the wicked. The KJV and NIV translators gave this specific Greek word the English equivalent, "hell".

 

Priddy goes on to point out that if a (Western) Christian says that someone is in "Hell", that "is a terrible lack of information", because many versions of the Bible indiscriminately use the word "Hell" to describe three different places. If you press the point, and the Christian says that person is in Gehenna, then you could take a plane to Jerusalem and look for the person there. If the claim is that the person is in Tartarus, you can point out that they were never a stubborn, sinning angel who surrendered their sovereignty during the days of Noah (1 Pet. 3:19-20. 2 Pet. 2:4, Jude 6). And if in Hades, you could rejoice that, like Christ (briefly, Acts 2:3 l), David (Ps. 16: 10), and Jacob (Gn. 37:35) before him, the person has ceased from their troubles and sufferings (Jb. 3:11-19), and now rests, as if asleep (Jn. 11:11,14). However, given the perfectly natural evolution of concepts over a long period of time, examples such as Sheol, provide us with a good example of how ideas can begin with a simple meaning - "the grave" - and morph into a far larger concept - a place of eternal torment.

 

*edit*

But if you want to argue based on scripture for Universal Salvation, ask Amanda. She has some good thoughts on it.

[The Sage Nabooru]

I don't believe in universal salvation, because I don't believe people need to be "saved".

 

Universal afterlife, now that's a different story.

[Lycorth]

I don't believe in universal salvation, because I don't believe people need to be "saved".

 

Universal afterlife, now that's a different story.

 

Simple truth, simply stated

[Kurari]

My take on Universal Salvation is that it makes more sense to me than the Hell concept, but the Bible is pretty clear on what it takes to go to Hell. Even if it is a bit contradictory. I know people who claim to be christians who consider Jehovah and Jesus unconditionally loving and omnipotent. But they have to ignore most of the Bible except for the "good parts," and they believe in Universal Salvation. I tried doing that myself and realized I had cut out so much out of the religion there wasn't much of anything left. Ultimately I decided that there was no point in calling myself a christian because I really wasn't one. I wasn't following anything that wasn't being said in thousands of other religions around the world.

 

I guess if they want to label themselves "christian," just because they believe in Jesus it's really none of my business. Maybe belief IS all you need to be defined as one. But I also think they are cutting a huge chunk out of what defines the religion, so I wonder what the point is.

 

Not that that is a complaint. I would LOVE to have a world full of christians who didn't believe in Hell, evangelization, or elitism.

[NotBlinded]

I wonder who it is that defined the religion? Maybe by redefining it, they are actually getting back to what it was before it was defined (by the church).

 

I don't see the harm. Sure, one can reject it totally and be left with nothing, or one can reject the myth and be rewarded with philosophical and spiritual insights.