The Off-Center Cross of Christian Universalism
Christian universalism is the belief that all people will eventually be reconciled to God and be saved, and that there is therefore no eternal hell.
It is not the belief that salvation is available to all people if they choose to accept it, nor is it the belief that all religions lead to God. Rather, it is the belief that all people are eventually saved by Christ and go to heaven—or to whatever blessed state it is believed God has in store for humanity.
Recently a Christian blogger whose screen name is The Iron Knuckle posted an article titled, “Tough Apologetic Questions for the Non-Universalist.” I took up his challenge, and posted a long comment in response, whose original version you can read here.
The rest of this post is:
- My comment, edited to add the main questions from the original article as headings, and to remove a closing biblical question for The Iron Knuckle.
- Some commentary on The Iron Knuckle’s reply, and on the general aftermath of my response.
- Some additional thoughts on why many people believe what they do about God’s omnipotence.
Here goes:
Hi The Iron Knuckle,
I don’t expect you to change your mind (I think we’ve had conversations before). But I’ll answer your questions from the point of view of a Swedenborgian Christian non-universalist.
1. Does God love the people in Hell?
Yes, God loves the people in hell.
Hell is not “eternal conscious torment.” This horrible and insane idea comes from reading literally statements in the Bible that should be read metaphorically. There is no literal hellfire. Rather, hellfire is the spiritual fire (in a negative sense) of anger and hatred that people in hell feel and express toward one another and toward God. Hell is not a place where people are punished by God for sins committed on earth. Rather, it is a place where people who have chosen to enjoy evil rather than enjoying good are allowed to engage in their particular foul enjoyments as much as is possible, but suffer the inevitable consequences of their actions, inflicted, not by God, but by each other and by themselves. I invite you to read my article:
Is There Really a Hell? What is it Like?
God does not love the people in hell differently. God’s love is always, everywhere, with everyone and everything, the same. However, people in hell accept God’s love differently than people in heaven. Specifically, people in hell reject God’s love, and what they do inadvertently accept they twist into its opposite.
This means that God did not make hell, as your opening meme suggests. Nor does God send anyone to hell. Though the power to make hell comes from God (there is no other source of power), the people who live in hell make hell for themselves by twisting the power of God’s love into its opposite: greed, selfishness, lust for power over others, lust for promiscuous and adulterous sex, anger, hatred, jealousy, and so on. The people who go to hell send themselves there because they prefer hell over heaven.
2. Can God’s will be defeated?
God’s will cannot be defeated.
However, God’s will is not fully described by the single biblical statement that God “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:3).
God also wills that people be saved in freedom, by their own free will choice, so that the relationship with God is real and human rather than automatic and pre-programmed—which would cause us to be puppets or robots, not human beings. This is why our Lord says:
Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me. (Revelation 3:20)
And it is why the Lord says:
See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. . . . I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days. (Deuteronomy 30:15, 19–20a)
God’s will is not fully described by any single statement or verse in the Bible, but by the entire Bible.
God’s will is more complex than simply wanting to save everyone. God’s will is to have a freely chosen, mutual relationship with beings whom God has created. This means that God’s will is that we be free to accept or reject a relationship with God.
Giving us that freedom requires that God accept and respect our choice if we choose not to have a loving relationship with God. This also is a part of God’s will. Yes, when we choose evil instead of good it invokes God’s “permissive” rather than “ordaining” will, to use your terms. (Swedenborg discusses these concepts under the terms “divine permission” and “divine providence.”) Yet both are part of God’s will and God’s purpose for creation.
In short, God both loves us and respects us enough to give us a choice about whether or not to return God’s love. Giving us that choice and respecting the choice we make is part of God’s will.
Yes, we are children of God. But God wants us to grow up from spiritual infancy to spiritual adulthood. We do not remain infants as your parent/child analysis assumes.
After raising their children from infancy to emancipation, parents must let go of control of their adult children. They must allow their adult children to live their own lives, even if it is not the life that the parent wanted for his or her child. Not doing so causes major problems in the lives of their adult children, often extending to a complete rupture of the relationship.
I have three adult children. And I don’t intervene in their lives to prevent them from doing things I don’t think they should do and that could actually harm them. They are responsible for their own lives now. I give them my love, and I give them my perspective and my counsel if they ask for it. But I let them live their own lives and make heir own choices.
Just as parents must let go of control of their adult children, so God lets go of control of God’s adult children. God wants to be our eternal friend, not our eternal dictator, just as Jesus says:
I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. (John 15:15)
God’s will includes a will not to control us, but to give us the freedom to live our lives as we wish to live them, and to be in loving relationship with God, or not, according to our own freely made choice.
True omnipotence is not rigidly controlling everything. Nor is it being able to do just any old thing, including self-contradictory things like creating a stone that God cannot lift. A desire to control everything is psychological and spiritual weakness, not strength. Doing contradictory and self-cancelling things is weakness, not strength. A house divided against itself cannot stand.
True omnipotence involves accomplishing things. True omnipotence is God having the ability to do everything God wants to do, pursuant to God’s purpose for creation. And true omnipotence includes the ability to step back enough to allow others to have and use power as they wish to use it, though still within the realities of eternal divine law.
On the nature of God’s omnipotence in relation to the created universe in general, and in relation to human beings in particular, please see my article:
God: Puppetmaster or Manager of the Universe?
3. How do the people in Heaven feel about the people in Hell? Do they feel sad?
The people in heaven do feel sad about the state of people in hell. However, like God their Father, they recognize that they must allow the people in hell to live the life of enjoyment of evil that they have chosen.
Jesus said that there is a great chasm between heaven and hell (Luke 16:26). Due to that chasm, most people in heaven do not live in daily awareness of the state of people in hell. Some people in heaven, however, do serve as what might today be called “peace officers” in hell, moderating the worst excesses of the evil spirits there, and carrying out God’s will of not allowing the evil spirits in hell to fall into even lower and worse levels of hell than they chose through their life and decisions here on earth.
In short, the people in heaven also love the people in hell, and have mercy on them, but will not violate their free will as human beings, and will therefore leave them in freedom to engage in the type of life and pleasures they have chosen to the extent that that is possible, even if the people in heaven find that life very sad and distressing. (But the evil spirits in hell find it intensely pleasurable, even if they have to suffer the painful consequences.)
The people in heaven are also realistic in recognizing that the people in hell have no interest in hearing the good news of Jesus Christ and salvation, and will violently reject it if they attempt to preach that good news to them. This is what Jesus was saying metaphorically when he taught:
Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you. (Matthew 7:6)
I have the same problem with Western universalism as I have with the Eastern belief in reincarnation. Both posit that eventually, all people end out in a version of heaven. Both therefore take away our humanity, and make us into mere puppets, and our life and suffering here on earth a mere play and charade, with no real purpose at all. See:
The Bible, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Reincarnation
If eventually all people will inevitably “choose” heaven, then it is really no choice at all, but a predetermined outcome. This would mean that we are not free, not human, and ultimately just an extension of God. And so it would defeat the whole purpose of creation, which is for God to have others to love and to be in mutual loving relationship with.
For a choice to have any ultimate reality, it must be permanent, not temporary. Temporary things are relatively unreal compared to eternal ones.
And if we all end out in heaven anyway, then there is no good reason for God to put us through all this earthly confusion and misery. A truly loving God would simply create us directly in heaven, and skip all the suffering. If universalism were true, then a truly loving God could not stand to subject us to even one second of suffering. It would be utterly incompatible with God’s love and mercy to do so.
If God’s whole will is that there be no evil, then there is absolutely no reason for evil to exist in the first place, and no possibility that evil could exist, since it is contrary to God’s will—and God’s will cannot be defeated.
That is my response to your questions as a non-universalist, non-traditional Christian.
The aftermath
You can read The Iron Knuckle’s antagonistic (his word, not mine) reply to my comment here.
While it did take up some of the points I made in my comment, my general sense was that it contained rather more heat than light. And when he got around to saying that the God I worship is “weak” and “pathetic,” it became pretty clear to me that if he were to accept what I had said in my response to his questions, it would be a mortal threat to his faith.
He confirmed this in the subsequent thread of comments—which he has now deleted (that’s his right; it’s his blog) because of my patronizing (my word, not his) stance toward him, and because I refused to debate him on the substantive issues of his article and my response.
Why did I refuse to debate him?
Because, as he said in one of the deleted comments, if I were to convince him that he was wrong in his understanding of God’s omnipotence and his belief in universal salvation, he would cease to be a Christian altogether.
That’s not a result I want. Winning an argument is not worth destroying someone’s faith.
Besides, I probably wouldn’t have “won the debate” and convinced him anyway. His current faith depends upon his universalist beliefs. He will vigorously defend that belief, even if it is ultimately in error, in order to preserve his faith—which is more critical than the actual truth of the particular doctrines comprising that faith.
False beliefs, when they are held to by someone with a good heart, can still function as truth for them. The goodness in their heart overcomes the falsity of their beliefs and leads them toward living a good life based on those beliefs. That’s why people of good will in all religions can be saved even if many of their beliefs are mistaken. As it says in 1 Samuel 16:7, “The Lord looks on the heart.”
Further, debates and arguments almost always have the opposite effect of what the people engaging in them intended. When people’s closely held beliefs are attacked, they will staunchly defend them, actively seeking out and clasping tightly to themselves everything they can find that supports their beliefs, and minimizing or brushing aside anything that doesn’t. As a result, at the end of the argument they believe even more strongly in their original position, even if it happens to be false.
That’s not a result I want, either.
I’ve been where The Iron Knuckle is (minus the drugs and related crises that he describes in his personal history and testimonials). When I was a twenty-something as he is now, I wouldn’t have listened to my present self either. And I probably would have laced my rebuttals with just as many personal attacks and insults as he does.
In fact, I know I would have, because that’s exactly what my younger self did.
I look back with embarrassment on several instances when my father, who was an eminent Swedenborgian theologian, scholar, and professor, attempted to explain to my teenage self one of the finer points of Swedenborgian doctrine . . . and I informed him in very absolute and not particularly polite terms that his explanation made no logical sense, was entirely unworthy of belief, and could not possibly be what the Bible or Swedenborg said and meant. My views, I thought, were logically airtight, comprehensive, and impregnable. And he was obviously wrong!
My father responded to my youthful onslaughts with the same bemused smile with which I responded to The Iron Knuckle’s onslaught on me.
Of course, my father was right.
My understanding of the Bible and church doctrine, of which I was inordinately proud, (I’d spent many, many hours . . . gosh, several years . . . intensively studying and developing it!) was limited, immature, and faulty. I was not ready to hear and understand some of the more advanced and nuanced things he was attempting to teach me. That took another twenty or thirty years of learning and personal experience in life.
So although my response to The Iron Knuckle’s fists-flying critique of my points may indeed be patronizing, here we are. As they say, “What goes around, comes around.”
Does this mean I think The Iron Knuckle will eventually come around to my point of view? Not necessarily. For one thing, I’m connected with Swedenborgian doctrine and tradition, whereas he’s connected with Catholic doctrine and tradition. Different inputs result in different outcomes.
Beyond that, I have no idea where his spiritual journey will take him in the future. But I do predict that in another thirty years, he’ll think differently even about his own church and religion than he does now. That’s part of growing in faith.
And given the hurricane of a journey that he’s been on so far in life, it seems likely that the hurricane will continue for a few more years at least, until his life settles down into a more regular pattern. Who knows where those winds of constant, rapid change will finally drop him off? My own twenty-something self did not correctly envision or predict where I would be today.
“Bible-alone Christian”
The Iron Knuckle’s comment contained several inaccurate statements about my beliefs. For now, I’ll correct only the one that I corrected in the deleted comment thread. It is a critical one to understand about my Swedenborgian Christian theology and about the articles here on Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life, which are based on that theology.
The Iron Knuckle said in his response to my comment:
you claim to be a “bible alone” christian
In fact, I have never claimed to be a “Bible-alone Christian.”
I am not a Protestant. I don’t subscribe to the Protestants’ “five solas,” including sola scriptura: the idea that scripture (the Bible) is the sole source of reliable doctrine, and is generally self-interpreting. (I should mention that the Iron Knuckle is Catholic.)
What I do believe is that for a particular doctrine to be considered fundamental or essential Christian doctrine, it must be stated in the Bible’s own plain words.
I believe that God is perfectly competent to tell us clearly in God’s own Word what we must believe and do in order to be saved, in language that requires only basic reading comprehension, not theological interpretation and exegesis by human theologians. See “Christian Beliefs that the Bible Does Teach.” In general, I view essential Christian doctrine as doctrine that is required for our salvation.
And I believe that the key tenets that both Protestantism and Catholicism have set up as essential Christian doctrine fail this basic biblical test. See “‘Christian Beliefs’ that the Bible Doesn’t Teach.”
Meanwhile, I also believe that there are many non-essential Christian doctrines that are not stated plainly in the Bible, and do require interpretation and outside sources, such as the writings of various theologians, philosophers, and scientists, to understand and accept. While I would not insist that all people must believe and live according to these doctrines in order to be considered genuine Christians, I nevertheless believe that they are true.
There are many articles on here on Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life expanding upon such beliefs that I do not consider essential Christian doctrine, and that I do not claim to be able to demonstrate solely by quotes from the Bible.
That’s why I feel perfectly comfortable using the writings of my favorite theologian, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), as a touchstone for spiritual and doctrinal understanding.
However, Swedenborg himself stated:
The Church’s body of teaching [traditionally, “doctrine”] is to be drawn from the literal meaning of the Word and is to be supported by it. (Sacred Scripture #50)
Swedenborg followed this principle in his doctrinal writings, quoting extensively from the Bible to support the key teachings that he promulgated as genuine Christian doctrine. The standard index of his scripture quotations fills a book of over 300 pages (over 400 pages in the most recent edition).
For my part, if I can’t point to a place where the Bible itself, in its plain, literal meaning, states a particular teaching, even if I may believe that teaching is true, I do not insist that all Christians must believe it and live by it in order to be genuine Christians.
My objection to the great mass of supposedly “essential” Christian doctrine according to the main body of traditional Christian denominations is that the Bible simply doesn’t say it. In fact, the Bible often flatly contradicts it. And I simply don’t go for the idea that human theologians are more competent at articulating key Christian teachings than the Lord himself is in the Bible. If the religion is Christianity, then its primary authority should be Jesus Christ, not Athanasius or Anselm or Aquinas or Luther or Calvin, or even Swedenborg (see: “Do the Teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg take Precedence over the Bible?”).
Nor do I go for the idea that the primary authority on Christian doctrine is the Catholic Magisterium—the reigning body of the Catholic Church, consisting of the Pope and the bishops. The doctrines this body has formulated and promulgated have so often been so completely wrong and false from a biblical, rational, and compassionate standpoint that the Catholic Church’s claim to have authority to define doctrine by apostolic succession all the way back to Peter rings very hollow. Historians have extensively documented how corrupt and riven with conflict this body has been at various times in Catholic Church history. This ever-changing group of men does not seem to have any special inspiration from God. It is just as error-prone as any other collection of human clerics and theologians.
However, the foundational Catholic error that Jesus gave Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven for all people on earth, and that Peter then passed them on to the Catholic hierarchy by apostolic succession, thus making the Catholic Pope and his bishops “the vicar of Christ,” wielding much of Christ’s power over the people of the earth, including the authority to determine their eternal salvation or damnation, will have to wait for a future article.
The Bible and God’s omnipotence
Finally, let’s look at why so many Christians have a rather simplistic understanding of God’s omnipotence.
The Bible states or strongly implies in many places that God is in complete control of everything in the spiritual realms, in the universe of nature, in human history, and in individual human souls, so that every single thing that happens, both good and bad, is an act of God even if someone else (such as Satan) is the one actually carrying out God’s will. Here is just one example:
I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God. I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged me, so that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting people may know there is none besides me. I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things. (Isaiah 45:5–7)
That is the New International Version. In the more traditional and generally more literal King James Version, the last verse reads:
I form the light, and create darkness:
I make peace, and create evil:
I the Lord do all these things.
Yes, it says in the Bible that God creates both light and darkness (metaphorically, both truth and falsity), and creates and does both good and evil. God is presented a being who has absolute control over everything in the universe. God is presented as a being who brings blessings or curses, war or peace, good or evil upon whomever he chooses—and no puny human has any right or standing to question what God does.
Does God really do evil as well as good? Does God really punish and destroy God’s enemies? Is God both a God of love and creation and a God of wrath and destruction?
I don’t think so.
I believe that God is a God of pure love and wisdom, and that anger, wrath, cursing, and destruction are not part of God’s character and actions.
But I also think there’s a very good reason the Bible presents God as also being a God of wrath, punishment, and destruction against all evildoers.
If the Bible didn’t present God in this way, many people, including many Christians, would consider the Bible’s God to be a “weak and pathetic” God. As a result, they would have no respect for God, they wouldn’t listen to God, and they wouldn’t obey God’s commandments.
For people just starting out on the religious and Christian journey, who are often coming fresh out of lives ensnared in various types of evil and destructive behavior, evil looks very powerful. These neophytes to religious life feel in their gut that any God who didn’t get angry at wicked people, cursing them, punishing them, and wreaking all sorts of havoc upon them, is a weak God, and not at all worthy of belief.
In short, many people must believe that God has absolute power both for good and for evil, and absolutely controls everything in the universe, or they will ignore God altogether. And without the fear of God to restrain them, they will feel free to keep right on living evil, selfish, greedy, and destructive lives, free from the fear of any consequences.
These early-stage Christians need to believe, for the sake of their salvation, that if they do evil things, God will burn with wrath against them and miserably punish them. And many Christians (and people of other religions as well) never make it beyond that stage fear of punishment and hope for reward as the primary basis and motivator for their religious life.
Here is how Swedenborg puts it while explaining the Lord’s words to the serpent in Genesis 3:14, “Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals!”:
Jehovah God—the Lord—never curses anyone, is never angry at anyone, never leads anyone into crisis. He does not even punish us, let alone curse us. It is the Devil’s crew that does such things. Nothing of the sort could ever come from the fountain of mercy, peace, and goodness.
This passage and many others in the Word describe Jehovah God as not only turning his face away, being angry, punishing, and testing, but even killing—and, yes, cursing. This was in order to foster the belief that the Lord controls and arranges every last detail in the universe, including evil itself, punishments, and times of trial. After accepting this very general idea, people would learn just how he controls and arranges things. They would see that he transforms the evil involved in punishment and in our ordeals into good.
All scriptural teaching and learning begins with the most general things; for this reason the literal meaning abounds in broad ideas. (Secrets of Heaven #245)
In other places, Swedenborg explains that these “general things” and “broad ideas” are necessary for new Christians and for simple-minded people generally so that they will respect God and listen to God, repenting from their sins and living a good life as commanded by God.
Christian universalists take this rather broad and simplistic understanding of God’s omnipotence in a different direction. They believe that if God is omnipotent, this means that God is able to and will save all people, and will ultimately put an end to hell and all evil, raising everyone up into heaven. Those who adopt this belief vehemently reject as unloving, unmerciful, weak, and ineffective any God who would not save everyone.
For more on God’s omnipotence versus human free will, and on how for the sake of our salvation the Bible as a whole is accommodated to human ways of thinking, and often veils divine realities in human appearances, please see these articles:
- God: Puppetmaster or Manager of the Universe?
- Why does God Harden our Hearts, and Why are We Held Responsible?
- How God Speaks in the Bible to Us Boneheads
All of this is why, when I encounter relatively new Christians such as The Iron Knuckle, and also non-intellectual Christians, who believe in simplicity that God’s omnipotence means being able to do anything at all, both good and evil, and that God has absolute control over everything that happens in the universe, including the ability to save every single human being and eliminate hell, I don’t argue with them about it. It is necessary for them to first adopt this “broad idea” of God as all-powerful so that they will respect God and listen to God instead of thinking of God as a “weak and pathetic” God.
However, if you are ready for a more philosophically and theologically sound understanding of God’s omnipotence, I recommend that you read Swedenborg’s True Christianity, #56, 57, & 58.
All of this is yet another reason I declined to debate The Iron Knuckle on his beliefs about divine omnipotence and universal salvation. I do not want to be in the position of attacking his relatively newfound Christian faith before it has a chance to strengthen and mature to the point of being ready for a more in-depth and realistic understanding of the ways of God and spirit.
Besides, his soul is in God’s hands, not mine. As long as he has a heart to follow God, God will lead him where he needs to go, both in his beliefs and in his life.
For further reading:
- God: Puppetmaster or Manager of the Universe?
- Is There Really a Hell? What is it Like?
- Pain, Punishment, Prison, and Hell
- The Bible, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Reincarnation
- How God Speaks in the Bible to Us Boneheads
- Why does God Harden our Hearts, and Why are We Held Responsible?
- Heaven, Regeneration, and the Meaning of Life on Earth
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Lee Woofenden is an ordained minister, writer, editor, translator, and teacher. He enjoys taking spiritual insights from the Bible and the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and putting them into plain English as guides for everyday life.
Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life 
I appreciate the post and your comment, and I remain completely exasperated at your patronising tone about how I’m young and naive and therefore my theological views are incorrect and invalid whereas you are mature and have thought things through and are obviously in the right.
This is nothing but an ad hominim fallacy. I wish you would actually respond to the issues raised. Furthermore I’m not convinced that you actually read and understood the original post (instead of only paying attention to the headings), because your arguments are all already adequately dealt with there. Your comments about freedom and God’s will not being completely described by the parts of scripture which clearly state he is going to save everyone were all dealt with in the original post, for example. Your answers to the questions posed are inadequate, as the original post demonstrates. I do not mean to personally attack you by calling your God “false”, “weak” and “pathetic”; I am instead merely stating the reality of the situation. My God is more powerful than your god. My God is more loving than your god.
I am more than willing to listen to you, (and your comments stating that I’m not are incredibly offensive) but why on earth would I want to trade the one true gospel of universal salvation for your depressing, watered down message where many people end up stuck in Hell forever?
Also, you are a protestant. Your view of the bible as outlined in this post is indistinguishable from that of every protestant ever. You believe in sola scriptura. Stop denying it. XD
Hi The Iron Knuckle,
Well, aside from the fact that:
. . . aside from all that, by golly, maybe I am a Protestant! 😛
Hi The Iron Knuckle,
Thanks for coming over here and commenting.
Sorry for the patronizing. But I read your post, your response to my answer to your questions and the ensuing (now deleted) comment thread, your About page, and your entire long four-part personal history and testimony. And though there are, of course, many differences in our respective experiences (my younger years were nowhere near as turbulent as yours have been so far), in tone and approach you are so much like me when I was a little younger than you currently are (at the age of 25 I had just gotten married) that it’s hard not to see my own headstrong, self-assured, cocksure, and often very wrong younger self in your writings and your general approach to religion and life.
And incidentally, I’ve also spent an awful lot of time watching Star Trek. 🙂
Plus, as I alluded to in my commentary here, you’ve been going through rapid changes in your fairly short Christian journey so far. It’s not at all clear to me where you’ll end out, and whether you won’t go through yet another major change in your views in a couple more years, just as you have at least every couple of years so far.
When I was a little younger than you are today, I lived for the argument! I knew I could take on all comers and win every time. Yes, I was intelligent and all that. Second highest SAT score in my well-educated, suburban, largely Jewish high school class. But I was also young and foolish, and didn’t know very much about life. Three or four decades later, with a lot more life experience over the dam, I generally pick my battles carefully, and engage in argumentation only when I think it may accomplish some good.
In your case, the combination of your caustic tone and your assuring me that if I were actually to convince you that you are mistaken, you would abandon Christianity altogether, suggested that this was not going to be a fruitful battle to fight. I wouldn’t bother arguing with my own younger self. And the usefulness of a debate with you similarly looks rather meager.
On the other side of the coin, there is a zero percent chance that you will convince me that you’re right about universal salvation and the nature of God’s omnipotence. I’ve already considered your basic arguments long before you ever made them, and have found them seriously lacking in depth, breadth, philosophical and theological rigor, and coherence with human reality.
My basic theology has been settled for decades. Though I am continually learning more, I am both fully convinced of and fully comfortable with that theology. I’m not looking for anything else, nor do I expect that I ever will be. So if you think you’re going to level your jousting stick at me and knock me off my horse, that’s just not going to happen. I would encourage you not to waste your time trying.
If you are interested in a more in-depth explanation of my specific beliefs about divine omnipotence and eschatology in contrast to yours, I would be happy to respond to any questions you may have.
However, I have no interest at all in engaging you in a debate that you think one of us is going to win and the other is going to lose. That’s not what I’m here to do.
And my apologies, but I’m simply not interested in spending a lot of time examining your beliefs and your rationale for them. My only purpose for doing so would be to equip myself more effectively to refute them for my readers here on Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life.
For the most part, I find examining the common fallacies of other religious beliefs to be a sad and tedious undertaking. I find them so riddled with falsity, and find it so depressing that so many people are stuck in those fallacies and half-truths, that I do it only to make myself better able to help extricate people who are tangled in their web and want to break free.
Last year I forced myself to read two books on faith alone by leading Protestant theologians, recommended to me by an online Protestant contact. I found it so teeth-gratingly unpleasant that I finally had to stop midway through the second book. I just couldn’t handle any more of that rank fallacy and falsity all dressed up as as biblical truth. It almost felt like it was going to make me physically ill.
In four decades of examining the beliefs and practices of other churches and religions, though I’ve gained many fine insights along the way, it has never happened that I’ve thought, “Wow, I like this belief system better than my own!” The beliefs I hold to are so far beyond anything that I’ve ever found in any other church or religion—by whole orders of magnitude—that none of those others have even the slightest attraction for me.
Having said that, I do find many of their adherents to be fine and wonderful people. During my decade as a pastor I cultivated friendly relations with all of the local churches, pastors, and spiritual leaders—Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, general liberal and evangelical Protestant, Unitarian Universalist, Jewish, Muslim, and any other religious flavor that existed in the town where my church was located. I did my best to bring them all into harmonious and constructive relationships with one another as much as possible, and enjoyed the whole process immensely. I even invited in spiritual leaders from traditions that weren’t represented in that town—Hindu, Buddhist, Native American—to address my congregation and any interested townspeople. Though I’m not a universalist, I do believe that God, and more specifically Jesus Christ, is present in all religions with saving power.
Meanwhile, I myself am a Swedenborgian Christian. I am a cradle Swedenborgian. My first stirrings toward the Swedenborgian ministry came when I was only eight or ten years old. I saw my father in the pulpit, and knew that I would be a Swedenborgian minister myself. The route to get there was more extended and circuitous than I expected. And my ministry today is very different from what I thought it would be at this time of my life when I first entered seminary twenty-five years ago. But I will always be a Swedenborgian minister, scholar, counselor, author, and evangelist. That’s what God put me on earth to do. My primary purpose in life is to spread and teach this belief system to anyone who might find it enlightening, and to give people spiritual insights that help them through their personal and spiritual crises and in their daily spiritual walk.
If you’re interested in learning from me, I’ll give you as much time and attention as you want. If you want to argue and debate with me and attempt to prove to me that I’m wrong, that would be a waste of both your time and mine, and is not something that I have the slightest interest in spending my time at. I regularly delete comments from people who come here just to tell me how terribly wrong I am. They’re a waste of my time. It’s right in my comments policy.
As arrogant and off-putting and patronizing as all of this may sound to you, I’m not in the habit of sugar-coating things. My policy is that it’s better to state plainly where I stand and what my approach and interests are. Then anyone who comes my way can either take it or leave it—100% their choice.
If, with all of this in mind, you still want to continue the conversation, I’m here.
Hi The Iron Knuckle,
A few more responses in the cold, hard light of day:
I did indeed read your article and its questions. In fact, I read it through several times before and during the writing of my response. You will notice that even though I reproduced only your main questions here, the structure of my response generally follows the structure of your original post. However, I was also aware that I was writing a comment on your blog, not a full-blown article. I kept it as brief as I could while still providing a minimally adequate response to the big questions you are asking. The linked articles provide more depth on each subject, and are available for you to read, contemplate, and comment on.
The reality is that I do think you’re young and naive, just as I was at your age. I’m not going to sugar coat that, even if it’s not “polite.” Some social conventions are good. Some social conventions get in the way of necessary truth. And the reality is that for those seeking wisdom, it requires a certain amount of life experience to gain that wisdom.
I delayed my entrance into seminary by a decade because I realized that I was too young, foolish, and immature to be a pastor and give spiritual guidance and advice to people who actually had some experience in life and were facing real life issues and struggles. So instead of going into seminary right out of college as I had originally planned, I went out into the secular world, traveling, working, and supporting myself. After a decade had gone by, and I’d gotten married and had my first child, I finally felt ready to return to my youthful plans for seminary and parish ministry. Though I’ve done some very stupid things in the course of my life, delaying the start of my ordained ministry and learning a bit about life first, so that I went into the ministry as a thirty-something rather than as a twenty-something, was one of the smartest things I ever did.
To dip into the substance of your views just a bit in relation to naiveté vs. experience:
The idea that all people will be saved, I believe, demonstrates a naiveté about the realities of human life and character.
All actual experience demonstrates that some people do make choices for evil instead of good, and that for some of the people who make that choice, no amount of love, truth, therapy, punishment, or anything else budges them from it. They enjoy engaging in evil. They have no interest in living any other way. Even if we gave them eternity to change their minds, they simply wouldn’t change their minds.
So yes, I do think you’re naive for believing that all people will eventually choose the good and be saved. It’s endearing to see young, idealistic people believing that eventually we’ll all do a big group hug and sing kum ba yah together. Unfortunately, real life just doesn’t work that way. We’re human beings with free will. And some of us use that free will to persistently choose evil over good.
I hate poking holes in youthful idealism. It feels just a bit mean. But more life experience tends to do a very good job of that anyway for people who aren’t so stuck on their own idealistic theories that they are unwilling to pay any attention to any reality that doesn’t support their idealistic notions. Better to pay attention to reality and be prepared for it.
Raising children, for those who are actually paying attention and have a spiritual and moral focus in life, also provides a reality check for youthful idealism. Fortunately, all three of my children have turned into fine young adults. But that doesn’t mean they haven’t done some extremely stupid and dangerous things along the way, any of which could easily have gone south and ruined their adult lives. And like most young adults, they’re still doing a few things here and there that I don’t think are the best idea. But I have to let them live their own lives.
Being a parent of growing and then adult children gives far greater perspective on God’s role as a parent to humanity. It’s just not as simple as young people and people who have never had children of their own commonly think it is. People who don’t have children commonly think that they would raise the perfect children. It’s difficult for people who are not parents themselves (either biological or foster/adoptive) to have a realistic understanding of God’s role as parent.
The flat, one-dimensional concept of God’s omnipotence that you articulate goes hand-in-hand with this general naiveté about human life, human free will, and parent / child –> parent / adult child relationships. For a better understanding of the realities of divine omnipotence from a philosophical and theological perspective, I encourage you to read the three sections from Swedenborg’s book True Christianity that I linked toward the end of the above post.
I might be young and naive, but you come across as a prideful, bitter, cranky old man who’s been brainwashed by a false prophet. Not that I’m saying swedenborg is actually a false prophet, as I haven’t read him. But you definitely are. You are spreading pessimism about the nature of God and unbelief. You are peddling a God who is not powerful enough to fulfil his stated plans, and I confidently predict that if you take the time to respond to this comment with some sort of apologetic you will just end up peddling a God who is not loving enough to save the people in Hell.
You are an enemy of the Gospel. Your God is neither powerful nor loving. You think that you are being “realistic” and “wise” while I’m being “young” and “idealistic”, but in reality you simply lack faith and joy while I am overflowing with both.
I can’t possibly imagine how your worldview, in which most people end up damning themselves to hell forever and never escaping, could possibly be more rewarding and fufilling than my worldview, which is centred around the good news and glorious gospel promise that God guarantees the salvation of the entire cosmos and everything in it.
I’m not really in the business of debating, I prefer discussion, and I am sincerely open to reading anything you care to recommend about this swedenborg fella. However I draw the line at the gospel: you cannot take the gospel away from me, nothing else matters. And if push comes to shove and we simply must debate, it may turn out that you are just the stubborn old pharisee, so blinded by his religious framework that he is unable to perceive the truth, but I would be happy to engage you for the benefit of the spectators who are not so hard-hearted, and in doing so perhaps spread my invincible joy further into the world.
God will save everyone. Everyone will be won over by his love. Everyone will repent. God promises it, and his promise cannot fail. To say otherwise is a denial of the divine goodness and sovereignty: The highest of blasphemies and the most grave of mortal sins.
Hi The Iron Knuckle,
Normally I delete insulting and antagonistic comments such as this one, per my comments policy. However, since this post was a reply and rebuttal to one of yours, I’ll let you have your say. As for the substance of this particular comment, it is all covered already in the above article, so there’s no need to respond further here.
You say you haven’t read any Swedenborg, but then that you are sincerely open to reading anything I care to recommend about him. I would suggest starting with the selections from Swedenborg’s book True Christianity that I linked toward the end of the above article. These cover a more philosophically and theologically sound understanding of omnipotence than the common notion that “God can do anything.” It may take a few readings to wrap your head around what he is saying, but it will be worth the effort.
For my overall view on Swedenborg, please see this post—which is also liked in the above article:
Do the Teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg take Precedence over the Bible?
“Bleeding heart liberals think that if we could just love hardened criminals enough, and give them intensive therapy for what their evil parents and this evil society did to them, they would all become fine, upstanding citizens and we could let them out of jail. Experience simply doesn’t bear that out.”
But doesn’t God have an eternity to work on people? I don’t think the analogy stands up. He has eternity and infinite wisdom. I hope the universalists are right, or I am in for a bad eternity. Some of us can’t be good, we can’t love our neighbors. Some of us are just not a good fit in this world, so all that comes back from us is anger and resentment. I’m in my 50th year now, and I am no closer to improvement than when I began at 12.
Hi Rob,
I continue to think that when you enter the spiritual world at the end of your life here on this earth, you will be pleasantly surprised. Loving our neighbor is not primarily a feeling, but an action. People with a naturally grumpy and solitary personality who still act rightly toward other people and contribute in some practical way to the wellbeing of society will be in heaven, not hell. And heaven has room for all different personality types.
What about my other point, that God has an eternity to work on a person? Is anything to hard for the Lord? Or, “with God all things are possible.” Are you saying that given enough time (and there’s infinite time) that God can’t bring a person to loving Him and others through their free will? If it’s not impossible (and why would it be impossible?), then what reason could God have for not spending eternity seeking His lost coins? I guess that’s the question, is it impossible.
Hi Rob,
If we humans cannot make a permanent, eternal choice about who we wish to be and where we wish to live, then our free will is not real. If we all end out where God wants us to be, then it is God making the choice, not us, and we are neither free nor human. For more on this, please read the sections starting with the heading, “What’s wrong with reincarnation?” in my article, “The Bible, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Reincarnation.”
Rob speaks the truth and as usual, Lee peddles a naive understanding of freedom.
Hi The Iron Knuckle,
This is a sudden and unexpected onslaught of comments from you. What prompted you to come back here a year later and re-engage?
what is the main difference between universalist and swedenborg christians. I think both make sense and they both talk of Gods all inclusive love. However the belief in eternal hell isn’t something i want to belief. By the knowledge that some can never be good is like saying people are born bad. Its the whole nature v nurture thing but i think everyone has a choice of good and evil – free will – otherwise people wouldn’t be evil if they had no choice but to be that way. No one who lives in the dark not the light is very happy that way and i think everyone deserves to see the light. I don’t think there are evil babies but people can turn at some point but usually for a reason. A reason i hope that God takes away in time. If gods love is unconditional for all of us wouldn’t he do everything he can to take away the hurt that caused an individuals hate. Some humans don’t fit into life. Some its not their fault at all. People often suffer from mental health problems and can’t fit in. some commit suicide. I choose to believe that God guides the ones who couldn’t cope in life for whatever reason and his light takes away the hatred. The end of all things is a state of blessed reunion with God, the Creator — not eternal separation, misery, or destruction (John 12:32, Rom. 5:18, 1 Cor. 15:22,28, Col. 1:20, 1 Tim. 2:4-6). Since no human being is totally bad, no human should perish eternally. I believe God’s grace extends to everyone and, as we read in the Parable of the Lost Sheep, God is not satisfied with even ninety nine percent of people being saved, but keeps searching until the last lost sheep (person) is saved (Luke 15:3-7). Souls that leave this life on earth without experiencing salvation will have other opportunities for conversion, learning and growth after death (1 Pet. 3:18-20, 4:6). No one will ever run out of chances to return home to their Creator. Even the most evil beings who have ever lived can still be saved — and will be, in the fullness of time (Phil. 2:10). That is God’s promise! john 1:29 – “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! However there are some like Hitler that perhaps were simply evil but it would be better if he couldn’t change to kill him eternally than have him burn forever. And hell in the afterlife keeps the evil in that world as much as in this world.
I’m interested in your beliefs on what swedenborg christians think happens if a person has potential to be kind but has hate in them. where does god put them?. is there a limbo. And if a person in hell suddenly becomes better does God realise or has he just abandoned his children to their fate. if your adult child becomes a murderer or rapist the parents while they are disappointed in their child usually still go to see them. And surely peoples goodness is based often on the life they lived. if you are raised in abuse and are neglected by parents or you are raised in a loving home and have everything you could want the adults you become will be quite different. even if you have a really hard life you can still choose love not hate and it can make people more determined but they are still likely to carry around the hurt. When people die they haven’t neccessarily left their demons to rest. no ones perfect and they might still need to work on some things. especially with temptation but things that arent their fault like self esteem issues. making a choice for heaven or hell is very black and white something that humans aren’t. we are messy, complicated, imperfect, loving and kind but with things like jealousy and greed in us that however much we try to stop has a way of coming out sometimes. I believe that God knows us and wants the best for us. If someone feels unable to cope then Jesus would never turn their back on them but would support them. I don’t want an environment where the nazis can persecute their victims in the afterlife or the racist still go on attacking blacks but I believe that these atrocities were man made and people will be in gods love and light and will stop the hatred.
its weird how compared to all other religions how much christians fight each other. you have the muslims, the jews, buddhists and while some are a lot stricter than the others the wars that have gone on with the christians – people of the same religion is absurd. And christians seem the least unchrist like so much of the time. Like gandhi said i like your christ but not your christians. loving your neighbours and enemies isn’t something a lot of christians do. But with the religions of christ everyone seems to be at war with each other over different variations of the same belief while jesus was a pacifist who said turn the other cheek and preached love and kindness to all.
Hi Annie,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your thoughts and questions. There’s a lot to cover here—too much for a comment. So I’ll refer you to some articles along the way that cover these subjects in more detail.
To take up your last point first:
Christians aren’t the only ones who bitterly fight each other. The Muslim world today is rife with internal conflict and power struggles. Similar things are happening within other world religions as well. But to focus on Christianity, I believe that the reason Christians are so unChristian is that the “Christian” Church of today is, in fact, non-Christian. It has long since abandoned the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Bible for human-invented doctrines that are diametrically opposed to what Jesus and the Bible teach. For more on this, please see:
And there are plenty more where those came from!
But to your main point and question:
The difference between Swedenborgian Christians and Universalist Christians is that Swedenborgians believe that God gives us a true choice between good and evil, and that if we choose evil over good, God respects that choice, and will not keep badgering us to change it until we accede to God’s wishes.
Hell, from a Swedenborgian perspective, is not so much a place of punishment for sins as a place where people who have chosen to enjoy evil and destructive pleasures can engage in those pleasures as much as possible, even though it inevitably results in pain and punishment inflicted upon them, not by God or by devils with pitchforks, but by one another as they seek revenge upon each other. For more on what hell is really like, please see:
Is There Really a Hell? What is it Like?
And on why there must be an eternal hell for our freedom to be real, and for us to be human beings rather than mere robots, please read the sections starting with, “What’s wrong with reincarnation?” in the article, “The Bible, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Reincarnation.”
God’s love is unconditional for all the beings God has created, including the worst demons in hell. God continues to love God’s enemies. God continues to “make his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and send rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45). God never withdraws God’s love from anyone.
However, those who choose evil over good turn their backs on God and reject God’s love. And God will not force God’s love upon us. Doing so would be disrespecting us as people. It would be like that person whom we have told we do not love, but who continues to send flowers and make proposals anyway, causing us pain and anguish instead of pleasure and joy.
God continues to love the people who have chosen hell, but the best God can do is to hold them back from plunging into behavior even worse than the evil behavior they have chosen to enjoy during their lifetime on earth. That is as far as God’s mercy upon the the evil spirits in hell can go without disrespecting them as people and taking away their humanity. Without the ability to choose who we will be and how we will live, we are not human beings.
However, no one goes to hell due to external circumstances. People born into poverty, abuse, criminal culture, and so on do not go to hell because of that. Only what we have freely chosen, having the ability to choose something else, remains with us in the afterlife. Parental and social influences over which we have no control are not held against us. Also, people with mental illnesses do not go to hell because of things they have done under the influence of their illness.
For more on how environmental influences do not cause us to go to hell, please see:
I realize this doesn’t answer all your questions, but I hope it’s enough to give you some sense of where Swedenborgians stand on these issues. If you have further thoughts or questions, please feel free to continue the conversation.
Meanwhile, Godspeed on your spiritual journey!
I am baffled by where you got the foolish idea that Universalists deny that God gives us true freedom and a real choice. Where in the original article did I ever say that? All that I am insisting on is that our freedom is not more powerful than God’s freedom, and ultimately his love is so seductive that it is guaranteed to ultimately win us over. Whether we are on earth or in hell, at some point we are guaranteed to repent. Also your caricature of God forcing himself on us and badgering us for all eternity is highly uncharitable. It’s more like God just never revokes his offer of salvation: it has no time limit or expiry date. All he has to do is gently woo us over and eventually we will cave to his romantic overtures. God is the perfect lover and all of us are his bride to be. God is not a creepy stalker who tracks us down and forces us to love him.
I am also baffled by your inaccurate assumption that Universalists deny eternal hell. We don’t. Hell is infinite, eternal, timeless, everlasting, and completely horrible, even in universalism.
“God continues to love the people who have chosen hell, but the best God can do is to hold them back from plunging into behavior even worse than the evil behavior they have chosen to enjoy during their lifetime on earth. That is as far as God’s mercy upon the the evil spirits in hell can go without disrespecting them as people and taking away their humanity. Without the ability to choose who we will be and how we will live, we are not human beings.”
“The best God can do” is not to save these people? It’s just to hold them in their misery and tortures for all eternity? What a weak and pathetic god you worship. It should be obvious to everyone that you are worshiping a lifeless idol, rather than the one true living God who loves the universe into existence and drives all things to their perfect destiny. You have essentially described a “god” who is fundamentally _limited_ and subject to arbitrary restrictions on his sovereignty and power, whereas I worship a God who can do all things, including winning over those who reject him.
Your construal of freedom is _incredibly_ naive. Sincere question: Do your views on freedom come straight out of swedenborg? Because I highly recommend you read aquinas, herbet mccabe, and the classical theists. They have a far less anthropomorphic construal of freedom than the one you are pushing. The purpose of freedom is to love God, not to choose Hell. God gave us freedom so that we could love him, not so that we could damn ourselves. To refuse to love God is *not* a free choice, it is an enslaved one. God is in the business of rescuing captives from slavery, just as he did with israel and egypt in the exodus story. And that is exactly what he’s going to do for the entire world. All of us are already in Hell, and the only way to escape is to trust the prophets (such as myself) who speak God’s promise on his behalf. Everyone will be saved. Stop rebelling against it. It’s not too good to be true. God really is that good. The gospel really is that wonderful.
Everything you write seems to indicate that you think a choice for evil is equally as valid and admirable as a choice for good. as if God just gives us two options and doesn’t particular care which one we choose just so long as we make a choice for _something_. In reality there is only one valid choice: God himself, and God will not rest until we all make it.
Hi The Iron Knuckle,
Most of this is already covered in the above article. I won’t repeat myself here.
However, I’ll respond to a few points.
You say:
All of these are just different ways of saying that ultimately, we do not have real freedom, because ultimately, there is only one choice: God’s way. And if that is the case, a) we are not truly human, and b) God is a sadist for putting us through all this pain and misery when ultimately, we’ll all end out in heaven anyway. Why not skip the pain and misery, and just create us all directly in heaven?
You say:
If everyone is ultimately saved, what’s the use of an eternal hell? Who would live there?
You say:
First, God does not hold anyone in hell. The evil spirits hold themselves there.
Second, as I said to you in response to a recent comment on a different article, much of the problem is an inaccurate view of hell in traditional Christianity (Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant, and their offshoots) due to a literal interpretation of statements about hell in the Bible that are meant to be read metaphorically. There is no literal fire searing the flesh of evil spirits in hell. Hellfire is not physical fire, but spiritual fire, which, in a negative sense, is the rage and anger of evil spirits against one another. No one is literally roasting in flames in hell. To evil spirits in hell, their lives seem quite normal, even if not always comfortable. For more on this, please see:
Is There Really a Hell? What is it Like?
Despite appearances to the contrary, evil spirits choose to be in hell because that is where they can live the evil life that they enjoy, even if they also have to suffer the inevitable backlash and punishment from those they have harmed—meaning the other evil spirits in hell. They are not allowed to attack or harm angels and good spirits.
The idea that “God can do all things,” while common, is inaccurate, because it is not understood properly.
For example, God does not do anything evil. For God to do evil would be to undo the good that God does. And as Jesus tells us, “A house divided against itself cannot stand” (Matthew 12:25; Mark 3:24–25; Luke 11:17). God does not contradict and stymie God’s own actions by doing opposite things. That would be weakness, not strength. Once again, I recommend that you read (and re-read) the three sections from True Christianity linked at the end of the above article, which go into more detail about what omnipotence is and isn’t.
I’ll respond in a separate comment about where my view of freedom comes from, even though that, too, is already covered in the above article.
Hi The Iron Knuckle,
You ask:
Swedenborg does inform my view of freedom. However, Swedenborg’s views on freedom came primarily from the Bible itself, and secondarily from his experience in the spiritual world.
I won’t repeat the Bible passages I already quoted in the above article establishing that God gives us freedom to choose between good and evil. But here are a few more, focusing on those showing that the Bible does indeed state that we can choose eternal hell (emphasis added in all quotations):
Yes, I know, universalists read the Greek word commonly translated “eternal” as meaning “for an age.” I think that is a mistaken understanding. Besides, Mark 9:48 makes it clear that it is talking about eternal fire, that is never quenched, not just fire that lasts until the end of an age.
The common and ordinary meanings of the words used in the Bible itself make it clear that for those who enter there, hell is eternal, not temporary. Other interpretations stretch the meanings of those words beyond all recognition and common sense.
This is where Swedenborg got his view that hell is eternal, and this is where I get my view that hell is eternal, for those who choose to enter there.
And once again, if hell is not eternal, than God is a sadist for allowing anyone to experience even one second of it. If God does not ultimately allow us to choose evil, but in the end causes all of us to choose good, then there is absolutely no justification for the existence of a hell at all, nor, indeed, for any of our suffering here on earth.
Hi The Iron Knuckle,
Here is the first article in a four-part series that takes up some of these issues in more detail:
God, Forgiveness, Freedom, and Hell – Part 1
And for a more philosophical look at the big picture of how God runs the universe see also:
God: Puppetmaster or Manager of the Universe?
Hi The Iron Knuckle,
One more response for now. You say:
I actually agree with you that the purpose of freedom is to love God, not to choose hell. But in order for that to actually be a free choice, and our choice, God must allow us to choose hell instead of God if we so desire. Otherwise it is not a choice, there is no freedom, and we are robots, not humans.
God created human beings uniquely with free will so that we could be in a freely chosen relationship with God, which is the only way we can be in a real relationship with God, and not just a pre-programmed one. If I program my computer to say, “I love you,” it means nothing. But if God gives human beings the ability to choose to love God, and they do make that choice, then it does mean something. That, and not the programmed computer or robot, is a real, mutual relationship of love.
However, if we ultimately do not have any choice not to choose God, then our supposed freedom is only an illusion. The time scale makes no difference. If ultimately all people “choose” God, then it is actually not a choice, but something that is programmed into us. If there is real choice, some will choose one thing, and others will choose another thing.
In response to your final statement, this involves confusion between two different kinds of freedom:
Here on earth, God gives us freedom of choice between good and evil, even though we don’t always have freedom to live the way we have chosen due to earthly political regimes and restrictions. Each choice has its pleasures, and each has its attractions. God leads, guides, and urges us to choose the good (see Deuteronomy 30:15–20). But God allows us to choose the evil if we so desire.
In the afterlife in the spiritual world, God gives us the freedom to live the life we have chosen here on earth. If we have chosen good, God lifts us up to heaven and gives us an eternally joyful life there. If we have chosen evil, God allows us to “make our bed in hell” (Psalm 139:8), where we can eternally indulge in the twisted pleasures of our evil desires, while inevitably feeling the pain and retribution that comes from those desires—not at the hand of God, but at the hands of our fellow evil spirits in hell.
Both those who choose good and those who choose evil prefer the life they have chosen. That is why they chose it in the first place.
And yes, the life of evil in an enslaved life. It is slavery to our evil desires. But it is a slavery that those who live there have chosen.
Be aware that not all people choose freedom:
Yes, some people choose slavery over freedom, forever. That is what the evil spirits in hell have done.
Your responses betray a severe lack of understanding of the greek language and relevant issues, as well as an obvious unfamiliarity with universalist theology and the gospel.
Firstly, αιωνιον is “age” in the genitive case. This literally translates to “of the age”. If you disagree with the brute fact that everlasting/eternal damnation is nowhere to be found in the greek NT. Your head is buried deep in the sand.
Secondly, despite the lack of scriptural support for everlasting/eternal damnation in the original manuscripts, there is strong traditional precedent for the notion alongside an undeniable presence in the broader scriptural traditions (vulgate, Pretty much every english translation apart from the DBHNT, etc). As such, i cannot deny everlasting/eternal damnation. However you have to ask the question: which is more eternal? Hell or God? Does Hell ultimately thwart Gods plans to save us? Or is he powerful and patient enough to work with our freedom and win us over even while we are stuck in the infinite torments and rejection of Hell? I say “yes, of course!” But you say no, and i therefore rightfully accuse you of the sin of idolatry because you are clearly worshipping a weak and pathetic “god” who is unable to achieve his purposes, plans and goals, and would rather that we damn ourselves than that we love him, thus making him evil and not loving. You are in fact worshipping satan by the name of yahweh. I exhort you to repent of your blasphemy at once, lest you be cast into the lake of fire.
Thirdly. What you have described sounds nothing whatsoever like freedom; it sounds like clinical insanity. If what you have described is freedom, then I don’t want it, and i sincerely hope that I don’t have it.
What a strange God it is, who just stands by while we commit spiritual suicide, claiming that his respect for our “freedom” is more important than his desire that we experience his love to the full. Surely you’ve got kids. Would you just “respect their freedom” when they express a desire to kill themselves? NO! You help them with all your strength to choose life, as a good father should. So it is with God. He never forces us, but he never needs to. He can guarantee that we will make the right choice, without ever forcing us to do it. Your insistence on this perversion of “freedom” compromises the gospel.
Hi The Iron Knuckle,
And your responses show a basic misunderstanding of how language works.
There is a common misconception among people who haven’t actually worked with language or done translation that you can take a word from one language and just replace it with a word from another language and you’ve “translated” it. But in every language, words do not have a single point-like meaning, but a range of meanings fanning out from an original root meaning. We can usually tell which particular meaning of the word is intended by considering the context in which it is used.
In the case of the Greek word αἰώνιος (aiōnios), the meanings given in Thayer’s Greek Lexicon are:
This word is derived from the word αἰών (aiōn), whose basic meanings are:
It has various other meanings derived from these, one of which is “the worlds, the universe.”
It, in turn, is derived from the word ἀεί (aei), whose meanings are:
And which itself is derived “from an obsolete primary noun (apparently meaning continued duration); “ever,” by qualification regularly; by implication, earnestly:—always, ever.”
In short, αἰώνιος can mean “for an age,” but it can also mean (and most often means) “eternal.” This meaning is well-attested in both classical and New Testament Greek, as you will see if you follow the links to its definition, and to the definitions of the words from which it is derived.
What I have presented here is, in fact, a very compact version of the meanings of a very complex word with quite broad usage and meanings. The idea that you can just flatten and compact all of that broad usage and meaning into the single English word “age” shows, as I said above, a complete lack of understanding of how language works.
Yes, in some instances αἰώνιος means “for an age.” But in other instances—and much more commonly, in New Testament usage—it means “eternal.” Further, the original root doesn’t even mean “age,” or a time of limited duration. It means perpetually, always. “Age” is not the root meaning of the word. Perpetuity is. The meaning of “age” was a shortening of the original meaning of perpetuity to denote a very long time whose precise ending is unknown, an eon.
Ironically, if you go with the narrow and unsupported notion that αἰώνιος means only “an age,” you have to reject eternal life also. The very same word is used in the New Testament to speak of eternal life, eternal salvation, and so on. By the illogical verbal “logic” that is used to deny eternal death, one would logically have to deny eternal life also.
No, my friend, you have been mesmerized by a false and narrow notion of how language works, and of the meaning and derivation of the word αἰώνιος. Its meaning of “to eternity” is well-attested both in the classical Greek language used before the New Testament was written and in the many translations that have been made of the Greek New Testament ever since it was written—as even you seem to admit in this very comment of yours.
If you choose to ignore and deny the root meaning of the word, the various usages of the word, and the long history of what the word means and how it is used that stretches from long before the New Testament was written right up to the present, then it is you, my friend, who are “burying your head in the sand,” and refusing to accept any facts or realities that conflict with the opinions you have adopted.
As for the rest of your points, I’ve already dealt with them repeatedly in the above article and in my previous responses.
I know you feel very strongly about this, as shown in all the charged language that you keep using. But there simply is no sound biblical, linguistic, or historical basis for your rejection of an eternal hell.
And once again, I recommend that you gain a more realistic and less literalistic understanding of hell. Hell is not “eternal conscious torment” as so many fundamentalists, evangelicals, and other traditional Christians wrongly believe. This is based on reading the Bible according to the letter that kills instead of according to the spirit that gives life.
I know this is really late but Universalism just doesn’t make sense. I wish it did. But if it were true, there would be no reason for choice. Lee is right. Swedenborgian theology, if anything, teaches us that our actions have severe consequences. I do believe God’s mercy and forgiveness is extremely encompassing but He also can’t force someone to love Him or others. It makes sense to me, that someone or some people can become so dull or “evil” in their heart, that they can reject love, or that it would become extremely painful to even feel love. “Hell is a choice, it could not exist otherwise.” – C.S. Lewis
I can offer you dinner and home to stay an infinite amount of times but if free will exists, you can always reject it as many times too.
Hi Moore,
Thanks for your good thoughts.
when god created us he said we were very good but on earth without his loving constant presence we made mistakes. however with jesus in heaven we are all much likely to be better with Jesus’ guidance around us. some people here have no guidance whatsoever, feel bitter towards other because of this. but its because of their life situations. people who are surrounded by kindness and love are often kinder and more loving themselves while those who have never known happiness or a kind life can’t be expected to be judged by God on the life they lived on earth without looking at the type of life they lived on earth.
Hi Annie,
Yes, God created everything, including us, very good in the beginning (Genesis 1:31).
But God did not then withdraw into heaven and leave us to our own devices. When Adam and Eve ate from the tree God had commanded them not to eat from, the next thing that happened was that they saw God walking in the garden. And this is presented as if it was something that happened regularly. When Adam and Eve hid themselves, God called out to them, asking where they were (Genesis 3:8–9).
Adam and Eve had a direct, personal relationship with God. They didn’t disobey God because God wasn’t around to talk to them and have a relationship with them and give them guidance. They disobeyed God because they chose to pay attention to their senses, and follow sensory information and pleasure, rather than listening to God. Eve ate from the tree of knowledge when she saw it as desirable and pleasurable (Genesis 3:6), knowing full well that God had said not to eat from it (Genesis 3:2–3).
In short, the choice for disobedience over obedience, and for evil over good, was made with their eyes open, under God’s direct care and guidance. It was a choice, pure and simple, not something they did because they weren’t getting proper care and guidance from God.
There is nothing God could have done for them in the spiritual world after they died that God didn’t do for them in the Garden of Eden, where God walked with them and talked with them and gave them all the guidance they needed to choose good over evil.
Yes, for many of us here on earth today things are much murkier. We’re not always sure what’s right and wrong. But God doesn’t hold us responsible for things we couldn’t know or didn’t do out of our own free choice. God doesn’t hold us responsible for our upbringing, or for faulty genetics, or for anything we’re pushed into by outside influences and pressures. God holds us responsible only for things we freely choose. On the evil side of the ledger, God holds us responsible only for wrong attitudes and bad behavior that we freely choose of our own accord when we could very well have corrected our attitudes and done the right thing instead.
Everything that has been imposed upon us from the outside will fall away in the spiritual world after we die. Only what we have freely chosen as self-responsible adults will remain as a permanent part of our character. And people who never became self-responsible adults either because they died as children or teens or because a birth defect or illness compromised their mental capacity will all go to heaven, not hell, in the afterlife.
I hope this helps.
Amazing article, and decision to not respond any further to allow Iron Knuckle´s faith to continue it’s natural path and potentially mature in the future.. I’m tuning into your blog more often; I find in your writing and way of explaining a further interest in christianity that I’ve begun adopting recently.
Waiting eagerly for the future article when Jesus gave the Keys to the kingdom of heaven to Peter.
Thank you very much for this insightful, faithful blog. 🙂
Hi Yulian,
Thanks for your comment, and for your kind words. I’m glad you’re finding our blog so helpful! If any thoughts or questions come up as you read, please don’t hesitate to comment further. Meanwhile, Godspeed on your spiritual journey!
“If we all end out where God wants us to be, then it is God making the choice, not us, and we are neither free nor human.”
So the damnation of some or many is baked into the cake, so to speak. If it’s an impossibility that all will be saved, then it has always been a certainty from eternity past that many will not be saved.
Hi Rob,
No, nothing is baked into the cake. Everyone could be saved if they wanted to. Salvation is freely available to everyone. No one is created for damnation. Everyone is created for heaven.
The only people who aren’t saved are those who choose not to be saved.
Why does a person choose one way or the other? What makes one choose the good and another the evil? Is the person who chooses the good smarter, wiser or inherently more virtuous? I used to ask this of Arminians on a Christian board and I couldn’t get an answer other than a re-assertion that everyone has a choice. Myself, I think people act whichever way because they think it will bring them happiness or at least freedom from pain. I think all our actions are based on those two things. I find it easier to forgive others too when I see them as like me, trapped in a hostile universe. But getting back to free will, I think it’s a horrible thing to create creatures knowing that some or most will experience misery forever, and I can’t fathom how people who believe in hell can choose to have children, knowing there’s a possibility that the child will experience that eternal misery. It just blows my mind.
Hi Rob,
The thing is, people who go to hell don’t experience misery forever. Rather, for the most part they have a life that seems fairly ordinary to them. Sometimes they feel pleasure, and other times they feel pain. Just like a lot of people here on earth. They get to do a lot of the things they like to do, and they intensely enjoy it. Unfortunately, their destructive types of pleasures inevitably result in painful consequences. But for them, that’s just part of life.
Hi Rob,
People do choose evil because of the pleasure it gives them. If evil wasn’t pleasurable, why would anyone bother with it? The problem is that evil pleasures bring pain as well.
Good also has its pleasures, which may seem more subtle at first, but which in the long run are far greater. And though it may require some sacrifices, doing good does not inevitably bring pain, as doing evil does.
So people make a choice between getting their pleasure or happiness from good things or from evil things. Either way has its attractions. But good brings greater joy, and doesn’t have the negative side effects that evil does.
Renaissance drama abonds with examples of characters that enjoy being evil, the so called villains, who do evil consciously and are even proud of this. There are others who are just weak and are drawn to it, like in some of the paintings of Toulouse-Luotreck of Moulin Rouge dancers, or in Gustav Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovari, where Flaubert traces all the steps of the elicit love affairs of the heroine with all the thrill and attraction but ultimately leading to her downfall. Dostoyevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment is a truly insightful journey into the intricacies of vice and crime. Crime, vice and evil, we learn, do exert enormous power on some people. They are very attractive, otherwise people will not be drawn to them so powerfully. Look at the terrorists that abduct and kill innocent people for ransom or because of some political “cause”. Today, we are taught to believe all people are basically good. But there is ample evidence that people are still very different in the sense that each single person makes their own choices which can be either good or destructive even to themselves. There is a book by psychiatrist Morgan Scott Peck, called People of the Lie, that gives lots of examples of exactly this type of human beings. Such people may not be fully conscious when they commit evil deeds, especially if they have been raised in a bad family or are living in a bad neighbourhood, but they can at least repent, which they choose not to do. Some do repent, while others are drawn to evil because of some kind of pleasure it seems to offer. The choices we make are only partly determined by our environment or by the examples we see every day, our upbringing and education. In the long run we all do what we choose to do. We are free. And with freedom come consequences. What goes around, comes around. You reap what you sow.
Hi Magnolia,
Thanks so much for your insightful mini-essay on human good, evil, and freedom. I couldn’t have said it better myself!
Revisiting this post, I’m reminded of this quote from Martin Luther King Jr.:
“Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy.”
That said, generally speaking, I do much prefer universalists to those who believe in sola fide, because the latter has unfathomably horrific implications at face value, and, I think, tends to come from a less well-meaning place than the belief that everyone is destined for salvation, wrong though that belief may be. To put it another way, I think it’s naïve to think that everyone will turn out good in the end, but I think it’s frightening that some people are okay with the idea of their non-Christian neighbors burning forever.
Hi Griffin,
Great MLK quote! I couldn’t agree more, both with his words and with yours.
Hell as I had been taught and believed for so many years terrified me. I could not conceive of people being damned to punishment for all eternity for limited or temporal deeds, yet I understood the need for justice. Does eternal hell fit the crime? After reading some Swedenborg I preferred his view of Hell over my previous view that people suffer in flames of real fire forever. What kind of God is it that would do that? We find human beings who burn others alive most grotesque and evil.
However, I have been reading several works on Christian Universalism and find the arguments persuasive. Thomas Talbott’s book THE INESCAPABLE LOVE OF GOD challenged me and the author makes a good effort in one of his chapters on how we can still have free choice and yet in the end (in another age for some people) choose God. Hell will have its place in that process and hell is a place that is not fun. Another challenging book against the standard view on hell is THAT ALL SHALL BE SAVED by David Bentley Hart (better have a dictionary with you if you read it-lots of big words 🙂 ),
I find Swedenborg’s view the only possible view in the light of God’s love and justice if Hell continues through all eternity. However, if Hell is meant to purge and cleanse like a refiner’s fire ridding the dross and impurities from tainted gold and silver then universalism seems plausible. Either way is preferable to me than the teaching I was raised in which only terrified me and made me afraid of God. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” roasting eternally in the fires of Hell is offensive to me now. The Iron Knuckle’s postings seem most uncharitable for a person who espouses universalism. I thank you, Lee, for having remained as charitable as was possible.
Hi Brian,
Thanks for your comments, and for your kind words. I sympathize with The Iron Knuckle. There was a time when I was as young and headstrong as he is. I confess to having at times engaged in a similar pattern of bloodying my knuckles on people’s faces (not literally) in order to preach the Gospel of Love. I work on doing better now.
Yes, the universalists have some very tempting arguments. Two basic points keep me from accepting them:
The second one, especially, I find inescapable. If our eternal state is ultimately going to be heaven, there is no justification for putting us through all this hell. If all people are destined for heaven, then even allowing us a single second of struggle, pain, and agony is cruel. If ultimately evil is overcome in every one of us, a truly loving God would skip the evil altogether, and create us directly for heaven.
God didn’t do that. And the only possible justification for God not doing that is that God has allowed us true freedom of choice, in which, if we wish, we can actually choose to reject God, goodness, and truth.
Without God giving us that choice, our “freedom” isn’t real. If ultimately, God and goodness is our only choice, then what is actually happening is that God has designed and programmed us to ultimately choose the good. This means that God is making the choice for us, and that the freedom we feel we have is mere illusion.
I agree with you that freedom of choice is a really big part of God’s plan for the world. He didn’t make us to be puppets on a string; we have free will, which means we can choose to follow God and goodness, or choose to do evil and end up with some serious problems. I can understand why some people want to believe that God saves everyone, because it really does sound nice. But let’s face it, there’s evil in this world, and some people will not change their evil ways even if they know there’s a better way.
I hope most people choose to do good, even if they don’t quite understand how much God loves them. He still loves even the people who do wrong, but He can’t force them into heaven. It’s up to them to come to Love and Truth.
Hi Autumn,
I couldn’t have said it better myself! Unfortunately, some people just don’t want to change. They enjoy their favorite evil behavior, and will keep at it no matter how many opportunities God gives them to live in a better way.
That’s true, that’s life’s reality. But the good thing is that we all have the choice to change. No one has to stay evil. That’s probably why God gives everyone those opportunities to change their lives.
Hello Lee, I hope you can answer some questions for me.
I know that the pleasure of hell and the happiness of heaven are opposite to one another however it seems to me that you are saying that the pleasure of sin that the people in hell experience is as good as the joy that the people in heaven experience. It sounds like you’re saying one isn’t any better than the other, it’s just a matter of preference. Such as me liking the color blue and you liking the color red. If that is the case then it sounds like the only reason for choosing heaven is to avoid the pain which is hell not because it’s actually any more enjoyable than hell.
If the above is true then it seems like the people in hell like their sinful pleasure more than the people in heaven like their heavenly joy. I say this because the people in hell experience pain along with their pleasure. So the people in hell must consider the pleasure of evil to be worth the pain that they experience otherwise I would think that they would stop doing evil and therefore stop the pain. I assume that people in hell understand that pain will come with their pleasure sooner or later and yet they continue to do evil anyways and this goes on forever. So in effect they are willing to suffer for all of eternity to get their sinful pleasure. If that is the case they must really value and love their sinful pleasure! However on the other hand the people in heaven don’t have to suffer forever in order to get their heavenly joy. They may have to suffer and struggle in various ways on earth but once they go to heaven all that is over.
I think what I’m trying to say is that if the people in hell are willing to choose hell forever they must not know about heavenly happiness. But if the people in hell did know about heavenly happiness and chose to reject it in favour of sinful pleasure that would really call into question the value of going to heaven. In other words if there was even one person who chose hell over heaven forever, the people in heaven might think to themselves “why is that person choosing the pleasure of sin forever? does he have something I don’t? am I missing out on something etc.”
Also another question I have is whether it is possible for a person to change their mind after death or is their will fixed forever. And if we no longer have free will after death to accept the Lord and change our ways how are we still human? Because I think you said before that our free will is what makes us human and if we don’t have free will we are no longer human.
Also you say, “If all people are eventually saved, then God is a sadist for allowing us to experience any evil at all.” I am hoping you can explain this more as I’m not sure what you mean. If everyone went to heaven eventually why would God be a sadist for allowing any evil or pain?
Also you say, “any choice that is only temporary is ultimately an unreal choice.” I agree with that statement but I’m failing to see why it matters. I hope you can explain why it matters if our choice is permanent and therefore real.
Thanks.
Hi Nathan,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your comment. These are all very good questions.
First, none of what I have said in this article or anywhere else on this website is meant to imply that there’s no difference between the pleasures of heaven and the pleasures of hell, and that one is just as good as the other.
There is a distinct difference between the pleasures of heaven and the pleasures of hell.
In heaven, everyone’s pleasures add to everyone else’s pleasures. In hell, everyone’s pleasures subtract from everyone else’s pleasures.
In heaven, my joy is to serve you and give you joy, and yours is to serve me and give me joy. Everyone loves and does good deeds for everyone else. This means that the joy and happiness of the people living in heaven continually builds to all eternity.
In hell, my joy is to do something that hurts you, and your joy is to do something that hurts me. Everyone hates everyone else and is always trying to get their own pleasure at the expense of everyone else. This means that the pleasures of the people who are living hell are always curtailing and limiting themselves.
Also, in hell pain always follows pleasure because the pain of retribution and punishment is inherent in the destructive pleasures. Think of an alcoholic who continually hits the bottle even though s/he knows that there will be a splitting headache once it wears off. You can’t separate the hangover from the alcohol. The alcohol causes the hangover by the very nature of its destructive effects upon the body.
So no, one isn’t just as good as the other. The pleasure, joy, and bliss of heaven is far greater than the destructive and self-destructive pleasures of hell. Angels do not look at evil spirits in hell wondering if they are missing something. They look with a mixture of sorrow and disgust. Sorrow because the people in hell have chosen such a self-defeating and painful life, and disgust because the things that the evil spirits in hell enjoy are indeed disgusting.
It is true that the evil spirits in hell love their particular pleasures so much that they are willing to endure the pain that inevitably follows.
But it is not true that they don’t know what the pleasure of heaven is like. During their lifetime on earth they saw how good people live, and what sort of life they have, and they chose to live an evil life anyway. Even after they die they can go to heaven if they want to. But those who do find it excruciatingly painful because the atmosphere of love for God and for other people conflicts with their own exclusive self-love and love of money.
Those who are specially prepared by God to see what heaven is like without having to feel it as pain do admit that the pleasures of heaven are much greater than their own pleasures in hell. But they can’t maintain that for long. Pretty soon they start wanting to be back at their own home in hell, where they can enjoy their own types of pleasure—which is not possible in heaven. And once they’re back at their home in hell, they deny everything they had briefly realized about how much greater heaven’s joy is than hell’s pleasure.
Can people who have chosen a life of hell change and go to heaven instead after they die?
As much as good and thoughtful people want the answer to that question to be yes, the real answer to is no.
At the time of our death the pot is fired, so to speak. Unlike during our time on earth, when the clay is still soft and can be re-shaped into something different, that is not possible once we die.
If you try to change the shape of a fired pot, all that will happen is that it will shatter into pieces. The same thing would happen if anyone tried to change the character of a person in either heaven or hell. It would only result in destroying the person entirely. That’s why God doesn’t do it, and doesn’t allow anyone else to do it either.
Does this mean that people in heaven and in hell are no longer human, because they no longer have free will?
No, it doesn’t.
There are two distinct types of freedom. One we enjoy fully while here on earth, but not in the other life. The other we enjoy partially here on earth, but fully in the spiritual world—with the caveat that we enjoy it fully only if we choose heaven.
These two types of freedom are:
Here on earth we have spiritual freedom of choice to decide what sort of person we want to be in our heart. That choice will determine what we are like as a person.
More specifically, we have freedom to choose our “ruling love,” which is the core love and motivation of our life. Whatever we decide here to love most of all, that will determine who we are forever. The general choices are to put God first, to put other people first, to put worldly wealth and pleasure first, and to put ourselves and our own power and influence first. Every human ruling love falls into one of these four categories. People who who chose the first two will make their eternal home in heaven. People who choose the second two will make their eternal home in hell.
What we don’t always have here is the freedom to live as we have chosen. Some people do, and some people don’t, depending upon what choices they have made and what the social and legal environment is like in the part of the world where they live.
When we move on to the spiritual world, we have already exercised the first kind of freedom. We have exercised our freedom to choose what kind of person we want to be. We then move fully (or as fully as possible) into the second kind of freedom, which is the freedom to live as we have chosen.
People who have chosen heaven are fully able to live the way they have chosen because they have chosen to love and live what is good, and there are no limits on that in heaven. No external social or legal pressures exist in heaven to prevent them from fully expressing their love of doing the particular type of good they have chosen to devote their lives to.
People who have chosen hell are able to live the way they have chosen. They can engage in their favorite criminal activity or self-centered pursuits. However, as discussed above, that freedom is self-limiting and self-punishing. The pain of the consequences of evil actions always follows the pleasure (for them) of those actions. So they do have freedom to engage in their evil desires, but they cannot do so with abandon. There are inherent limits in how far they can go, and how much they can get away with before the inevitable reaction and retribution of pain and suffering crashes in upon them.
But back to the main issue, we are still human because we still have the capabilities of will, understanding, freedom, and rationality. It’s just that the freedom of choice that we had here on earth changes into the freedom to live the way we have chosen.
And this is actually a far greater freedom.
Which is greater, learning to ride a bicycle or riding a bicycle?
Which is greater, choosing to start a company, or running that company successfully after you’ve started it up?
Which is greater, getting married to the one you love, or being married to the one you love?
Yes, freedom of choice is a wonderful thing. But the freedom to live the way we have chosen is far greater. And that is the freedom that people in heaven enjoy fully, and people in hell enjoy as much as is possible for them given the self-limiting nature of their choice of ruling love.
This also leads into your last question, about why it matters that any choice that is only temporary is ultimately an unreal choice.
Consider the mutual choice to pursue a marriage relationship with another person, to get married, and to live together as “one flesh,” to use the biblical metaphor. This is inherently a relationship that has no end. There is no end to the amount of love and understanding that can grow over time in a mutually loving and faithful marriage relationship. No matter how old the two get, they are always happy to be with each other, and the relationship is always growing.
When one of them dies, the other pines to resume the relationship. So much so that I continually get questions and comments from people whose husband or wife has died, and they’ve been taught by their so-called Christian churches that there is no marriage in heaven, and they come here looking for some hope and assurance that they can resume their marriage relationship with their husband or wife after they die. Much of the joy in a relationship of love is in the feeling that it is forever.
What if I had to say “no” to these bereaved husbands and wives? What if their choice to love someone and live with them in loving, faithful, monogamous marriage came to an end? How real was their choice then? All of a sudden it doesn’t exist anymore. Their choice was only temporary. Now it means nothing but wistful memories of something that is forever out of their reach. It is worse than if they had never had that beautiful relationship in the first place, because they can never have it again. They would have a few years of joy, then an eternity of pain in never being able to have that joy again.
This is just one example of why any choice that is only temporary is ultimately an unreal choice. If we choose something, and we can spend a certain amount of time living out that choice, but then it comes to an inevitable end and we have to spend all the rest of eternity not being able to live as we have chosen, how real is that choice? It’s not real at all.
What is even seventy years of happily married life compared to an eternity of no marriage in heaven, as the so-called Christian churches teach?
Now to wrap up with your second-to-last question about why, if all people are eventually saved, God would be a sadist for allowing us to experience any evil at all.
What would be the point of that? If everyone is eventually going to experience bliss in heaven anyway, why wouldn’t God just start us out in heaven, and have us remain there, and never experience evil at all? If everyone is going to have eternal bliss anyway, allowing us to experience even the slightest bit of evil and pain would be sadistic on God’s part because it would be completely unnecessary.
The whole point of evil is that it gives us a choice as to whether we want to live God’s way or our way. Whether we want to have a mutually free loving relationship with God and with our fellow human beings or whether we do not want to have that kind of relationship with them. If we have no choice but to have that relationship, then it is not a real relationship. It is just something we are programmed to do, and we are robots, not people.
Since everything good is God and is from God, if the only “choice” is good, then the only choice is God. And if there is only one choice, is that really a choice at all? This is why God had to allow (not create) evil.
If everyone ends out “choosing” the good, then the practical reality is that there was no choice at all.
If a game show had two doors, Door A and Door B, behind which there were two different prizes, but everyone always chose Door A, and nobody ever chose Door B, how many people would believe that there is a real choice? Something would be causing everyone to “choose” one and not the other. In reality, it would be a “choice” caused by some factor other than the people’s own free will. I.e., it would not really be a choice.
In order to be human, we must be able to make that choice. We can’t spend forever making that choice. In that case, there would also be no choice, because the choice would never be made. We make that choice during a certain period of time, which is our lifetime on earth.
Without the ability to make that choice, we would be human neither in this world nor in the next. We would be robots that God had programmed to say “I love you.” It would mean no more than if you programmed your computer to display the words “I love you” on the screen. If you thought at that point that you now have a “relationship” with your computer, you would be living in a fantasy land.
God allows evil because it is the only way we can be truly human and have a choice of whether or not we want to love God and be in a loving relationship with God and with our fellow human beings. If, in the end, we all “choose” heaven, that “choice” isn’t any more real than if the contestants on a game show for some reason always chose Door A, and never chose Door B.
In that case, why even have a Door B?
Why would God allow us to experience even a single moment of pain if we will all inevitably end out experiencing the joy and bliss of heaven to all eternity? There would be no purpose for it whatsoever! For God to do so would mean that God is a sadist who enjoys seeing people suffer pain even though it is completely unnecessary.
I hope this sufficiently answers your questions. Of course, these are big questions. Please feel free to continue the conversation if you’re not quite satisfied or if I’ve missed something that you’re particularly wondering about.
Meanwhile, Godspeed on your spiritual journey.
I have read this article and most of the comments to it, and I wish to pose a few objections.
First, exegetically, it seems that Paul was a universalist. I am not sure what Paul’s authority in the New Church is (isn’t he supposed to be in hell?) But for me, he is an apostle and his words are pretty authoritative. And he seems to believe that ‘just as in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive’; that eventually ‘every knee shall bow and tongue confess that Jesus is Lord’; that the wicked ‘vessels of wrath’ will be converted into vessels of mercy (all israel will be saved, Romans 11), etc.
Second, I find your notion of free will, or of free will in general, to be deeply confusing. It seems God himself must lack free will. Because God always chooses what is good, and he undergoes no deliberation concerning what sort of person he wants to be, and he is not ‘free’ to do evil.
Evil is bondage and slavery. In what way, then, is the choice for evil really free? On a conventional level, sure, if someone of sound mind murders another person, we say he did it freely. But on a metaphysical level this is very obscure. We switch between talk about freedom and moral responsibility on one hand, and mechanistic talk about causes of people’s actions, depending on whether we are trying to hold them accountable for some procedure of justice, or whether we are trying to rehabilitate them. And it doesn’t seem that either perspective can or should dominate the other. It’s just about what we are trying to do.
It seems that when a person loves something, they are responding to the real good God has put into that thing. If someone has premarital sex, for example, it is because they are responding to the real good God has placed in human sexuality and romantic relationships. And something about their perception of that good is disordered, so they are unable to truly get what they desire from it.
And so it seems to me that only a choice for the good can be a truly free choice.
If a child holds his hand to a hot stove, and doesn’t pull away as he is burned, we would think, “This child has some sort of problem, he has nerve damage or he’s drugged or something, he doesn’t know what he is doing.” That is like Jesus’ prayer for his murderers: “Forgive them, they do not know what they are doing.” But we would not look at that child and say, “Oh, he is exercising his free-will.”
It seems that you’re saying the lives of people in hell never reach such a fever pitch of misery that they are, so to speak, compelled to leave their sin.
I have had experiences like this. It did not feel like a free choice but like a compulsion; seeing by the light I was given, I could make no other choice than God.
On the other hand, I know a man who’s entirely turned his back on the good. He embraces a most evil and sick ideology and all of his good personal qualities are filtered through that. And he has somehow rationalized the pain that accompanies his pleasure as right, natural, even good. So maybe it’s possible to get to that point after all, but I can’t really comprehend it, and I can’t imagine that God would just stop trying to reach people like that.
Despite all these words, it’s very much an instinctive thing for me. I can’t imagine giving up on my friend. I can’t imagine God giving up on him either. And if he saw, even for just a moment, the true nature of what he was doing, I can’t imagine that he would stay content with his sin. It wouldn’t FEEL like a choice at all, then, anymore than I have a choice to believe the moon is made of cheese or that England does not exist. Sometimes reality just compels me to acknowledge truth.
Perhaps I don’t understand people as well as I should.
Hi Axis,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your comment and questions. These are very big issues. You, of course, will have to make up your own mind about them. But I will respond as I am able, and refer you to some other articles here that take up some of these issues in more detail.
First, about Paul:
Paul’s writings are not considered to be part of the Word of God in New Church circles. They therefore are not seen as authoritative. (But our understanding of “authority” is generally different from that of traditional Christianity anyway.) However, Swedenborg said that Paul’s writings are “good books for the church,” along with the writings of the other Apostles. And from my perspective, they support New Church beliefs just as much as the Gospels and the rest of the Bible do.
However, Paul’s writings must be read in light of Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels, and in light of the Bible as a whole. See:
Jesus Changed Paul’s World
Unfortunately, much of present-day Christianity, especially in its Protestant wing, reads Jesus in light of its complete misunderstanding and misinterpretation of Paul, rather than reading Paul in light of Jesus’ teachings. See, for example:
Faith Alone Does Not Save . . . No Matter How Many Times Protestants Say It Does
For more on Paul from a New Church point of view, please see:
Why Isn’t Paul in Swedenborg’s Canon?
Here on Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life, though I personally accept Swedenborg’s canon of scripture, I make my doctrinal case based on the Protestant canon because that is the minimum canon accepted by all Christians outside the New Church.
Unfortunately, Paul had a wee bit of an ego (he’s always talking about himself!) and as a result wrote in a rather fancy style, as reflected in Peter’s comment about Paul’s writings in 2 Peter 3:15–16. It is therefore rather easy for people to miss Paul’s point, and misunderstand his meaning.
Without a good understanding of Paul’s overall message, and its complete dependency on Jesus’ message, people—including high-powered Christian clerics and scholars—can and do go completely off-course, twisting Paul’s words into all sorts of shapes that are completely foreign to the message he was attempting to promulgate. If Peter, who was taught by the Lord himself, found some things in Paul’s writings hard to understand, it only stands to reason that the same would be true for many later Christian thinkers.
In short, Paul’s letters can be easily misunderstood if they are not read from the perspective of his overall message. Two key elements of that message are:
If we read his writings with these two key points in mind, many things in his writings that have been completely misinterpreted among Christians for many centuries become clear and sensible, and fully in line with Jesus’ teachings.
So yes, I’ll engage based on Paul’s writings. But in my view, the Gospels, and Jesus’ life and teachings, are the cornerstone and heart of the Bible message. Paul is to be read in the light of the Gospels, not the reverse.
It astounds me that many Protestants have given Paul so much authority that they reject Jesus’ teachings if, in their minds, they conflict with Paul’s teachings. They do this by claiming that Jesus was preaching to people of the old covenant, which didn’t end until his death, whereas Paul was preaching to people of the new covenant. But it is utter blasphemy to sideline the Lord Jesus Christ himself in favor of one of his Apostles. Who is wiser, the Apostle, or the Lord himself from whom the Apostle received his message? Should we really pay attention to Paul, but not to Jesus? To believe so is unChristian and blasphemous. And indeed, The Christian Church is Not Christian.
One result of this viewpoint of mine, in answer to your more specific point and question, is that I look first to Jesus’ many statements that both salvation and damnation are eternal, and I read Paul’s statements in light of those, rather than the other way around.
I do not think Paul meant to say that all people are ultimately saved. For example, you refer to Romans 11:26, in which Paul says, “All Israel will be saved.” But just a few verses earlier, he said:
Here the salvation is not universal, but conditional upon their not continuing in unbelief.
So yes, some of Paul’s statements can be read to mean that he was a universalist. But these statements are not crystal clear on that point. If he had wanted to say that all people are ultimately saved, he could have done so. He certainly had the vocabulary and writing ability to say that all people ultimately end out in God’s kingdom, and none will end out in destruction. But he never does say this.
Instead, he makes it clear that those who are faithless and do evil will be condemned, while those who have faith and do good will be saved. What would this distinction even mean if the people who do evil and are condemned are eventually saved anyway? If we read Paul in this way, it takes all the teeth out of his preaching.
But this is not the place for a full exploration of Paul on the subject of universalism. Short version: I do not think such a reading of Paul can stand in the context of his entire surviving body of writing. And I certainly do not think it can stand if we read Paul in light of Jesus’ teachings, rather than the reverse, as is commonly done in the so-called Christian church.
This is getting long, so I’ll continue in another reply.
Hi Axis,
Now about free will:
It is important to understand that there are two key forms of free will:
The first one, though it comes first in time, is a secondary form of free will. The second is the primary form of free will. The first one sets us up for the second one. The first is short-lived. The second is ongoing.
Let’s say a person chooses to be a computer programmer. That choice is made in a relatively short period of time. But the state of being a computer programmer that follows from it lasts for a long time.
Without the freedom to be a computer programmer, the choice to be a computer programmer would have no meaning. For example, if a person lived in such poverty that he or she doesn’t even have access to computers, there would be no meaningful choice to be a computer programmer.
Here on earth, our primary freedom is freedom of choice. Particularly, spiritual freedom of choice. Here, we can make a choice of what sort of person we want to be. That choice happens in a relatively short period of time. Even if it takes us an entire lifetime, that is a mere blip on the screen of our eternal life in the spiritual world once our life in this world is over.
In the spiritual world, our primary freedom is the freedom to live as we have chosen. That freedom is never taken away from us. But as you suggest, it is full freedom only if we have chosen good rather than evil.
For God, freedom of choice is not necessary. God’s character did not develop as ours does. It just is. The primary freedom God has is the freedom to do what God wants to do. This is another way of saying the freedom to live as we choose. So God is free, and God’s freedom is the greater, eternal kind of freedom, in comparison with the temporary freedom of choice that we humans have during our lifetime on earth.
Of course, even in the spiritual world we do have a general freedom of choice in what we want to do today, and what projects we want to work on. Freedom of choice doesn’t disappear entirely. But our fundamental choice, that of the type of person we want to be, has already been made. The pot of our character is fired at death, and does not change to eternity. It only grows in the direction we have already set for ourselves during our lifetime on earth.
If this were not the case, then no one could be secure in their lives, either in heaven or in hell. If the choice we made on earth were changeable in the afterlife, then to all eternity, angels would have to fear the possibility that one day they would choose evil instead of good, their entire beautiful life in heaven would be destroyed, and they would have to endure the horrors of hell. They could never dwell secure, as the Bible promises to those who trust in the Lord.
People in hell, also, would not be secure in their choice of what sort of person they want to be. Take the example of someone who is well aware that smoking is deadly, but chooses to smoke anyway. How would that person feel if some do-gooder constantly hounded him or her to stop smoking? The intention might be good, but the effect would be that the person who enjoys a smoke could never have a moment of peace. All he or she wants is to be left alone to enjoy a smoke and go about his or her day.
Similarly, God does not “give up” on people in hell. Rather, God respects their choice to enjoy evil rather than good. God does not constantly hound them, trying to get them to change their mind. The fundamental reality is that they don’t want to change their mind, and they don’t want anyone trying to convince them to do so. They’ve made their choice. Now they are living it.
But for more on this, please go to this article:
The Bible, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Reincarnation
Then, if you don’t want to read the whole article, scroll down to the heading, “What’s wrong with reincarnation?” and read from there. I have the same problem with universalism that I do with reincarnation: it takes away our humanity by taking away our freedom to choose what sort of person we want to be.
Although I understand that compassionate people don’t want to see anyone going to eternal hell (and neither does God, by the way), practically speaking the reality on the ground is that many people do persistently choose an evil and destructive way of life, even though they are perfectly capable of choosing a good and kind way of life. Experience teaches that as much as it would make much more sense to choose the good over the evil, some people choose evil. And that is the choice they want to make.
Evil does have its pleasures. Otherwise no one would ever choose it. For some people, theft, domination, rape, murder, deceit, and so on are very pleasurable. In fact, they could be pleasurable for any one of us, if we were to make that choice. If you look into you own heart, I am sure you will see things in there that would feel pleasurable to you even if you are well aware that they are very wrong, evil, and destructive. And you could choose to devote your life to those pleasures if you wanted to. Then you would become like your friend who has turned his back on the good.
I should add that no outside forces, or physical and genetic factors, ever cause a person to go to hell instead of heaven. Only choices made freely, when we could have made a different choice, become a permanent part of our character. All physical, genetic, and external factors that influence us here on earth are taken away after death. Then, all that remains is the character we have built for ourselves within the range of possibilities, either good or bad, that we had on earth. For more on this, please see:
Can Gang Members Go to Heaven? (Is Life Fair?)
There is much more that could be said in response to your thoughtful comments and questions. But I’ll leave it at this for now. Feel free to continue the conversation if, after reading these comments and the various linked articles, you still have thoughts or questions.
And once again, ultimately you’ll have to make up your own mind what you will believe. That is part of the freedom of choice that we enjoy as human beings living on this earth.
Thank you for your kind and thorough response.
I can see where you are coming from, and it does line up with and explain some aspects of my experience, like my struggles with my friend.
Exegetically, however, I am still not convinced.
Here is an article by a universalist: https://campuspress.yale.edu/keithderose/1129-2/
He leans on 1 Corinthians 15:22, Colossians 1:19-20, and Romans 5:18.
I’d be grateful if you could say a few words about some or all of these texts.
Regarding eternal punishment, the problem here is that the word translated ‘eternal’ can mean ‘eternal’ or it can mean ‘for a period of time.’
Personally, I find the strongest text against universalism to be Jesus’ words on blasphemy against the Spirit. This seems like a real warning, and interpreting aionios as ‘a very long time’ doesn’t get us off the hook, since Jesus says this sin won’t be forgiven in THIS aeon OR the aeon to come. Granted, he also doesn’t say any specific person is in this position, but it’s suggestive.
Your words about free choice make a lot of sense to me, but since this is essentially philosophy, I’m gonna have to let it sit in my mind a while and see what grows from it.
Peace and blessings to you.
Hi Axis,
Thanks for the link to the article. It has major problems, biblical, doctrinal, and conceptual. But since you’re asking about the exegetical issues, I’ll stick with those for now.
Exegetically, the author’s argument depends upon:
On that last point, please see:
Faith Alone Does Not Save . . . No Matter How Many Times Protestants Say It Does
Oh, and he seems to have the standard Protestant malady of interpreting Jesus in light of Paul rather than the reverse, as if Paul were somehow greater that Jesus.
I’ll focus mostly on the first point above in taking up the three passages you mention from the article.
1 Corinthians 15:22
The biggest problem with taking this passage as a universalist proof text is that it occurs within an extended discussion of resurrection. Paul is here arguing that there is life after death, and that this applies to all people. To yank this out of context and say that Paul is discussing whether everyone will be saved is to ignore the entire point and flow of Paul’s argument in order to support something that Paul simply never says.
Consider that from a literalist perspective (and the author does seem to be a fairly literalist interpreter of the Bible, to the point that he even sidelines Jesus’ parables as reliable sources of doctrinal understanding), Adam’s sin caused our literal death. Such people believe that if Adam had not sinned, there would be no physical death, and we would all live forever physically on this earth. So from a literalist perspective, since all literally died due to Adam’s sin, therefore all will literally come to life again due to Christ’s saving work.
If the author really wants to be literalist about it, then he should recognize that all Paul is saying here is that since everybody died because of Adam, everybody will be resurrected and keep on living because of Christ. That would be a terribly reductionist reading of Paul’s argument, but it underscores the fact that Paul is here talking primarily about resurrection.
Spiritually, it is not true that all died because of Adam’s sin. Rather, all became subject to death because of Adam’s sin, and died because they themselves sinned. This is stated about as explicitly as Paul says anything in a verse that Protestants tend to conceptually subtract several words from when they are pushing forward their doctrine:
Death spread to all, not because Adam sinned, but because all have sinned.
But back to the point, though it is true that “life” commonly means “being saved” in the Bible, here the general subject is not salvation, but resurrection. It is ignoring the context to read “all” here as meaning that all are saved, when the obvious meaning is that all are resurrected because Christ has defeated death through his resurrection. What happens to people after they are resurrected is the subject of so many passages in the Bible that there should be no question about it.
Even if we do read “made alive” in 1 Corinthians 15:22 as referring to spiritual life, i.e., salvation, the very next verse makes this conditional, not universal:
What does Paul mean by “those who belong to Christ”? Sure, you could argue, as this author probably would, that all people belong to Christ. But that would drain Paul’s entire letter of all meaning. It’s all about accepting Christ and being saved by Christ. The obvious meaning of this verse is that the ones who believe in Christ are the ones who will be saved.
I could go on about the broader context, but I hope this will be enough to show that the author’s reading of 1 Corinthians 15:22 is faulty because he takes that verse right out of its context and gives it an entirely unnatural meaning. Once again, the “all” here is about all being resurrected. What happens next is the subject of other passages, which make it very clear that some are resurrected to eternal life, and others to eternal death.
Colossians 1:19–20
Here the author engages in fancy footwork to argue that “all” doesn’t really mean all, but only humans. The passage here says, not “all people,” but “all things.” But the author tries to argue this away, saying that it doesn’t actually apply to the Devil, who was thrown into the lake of fire, and that even the prophet who was thrown into the lake of fire probably wasn’t a human being.
In other words, “all” means “all” when it suits the author’s doctrinal position, but not when it doesn’t. He can’t have his cake and eat it too.
In general, the author spends enormous time with fancy arguments about the meanings of particular words, while not paying attention to the more important determinant of a word’s meaning, which is its context. It is a classic case of not seeing the forest for the trees.
And indeed here, just as in 1 Corinthians 15:22, Paul immediately puts the kabosh on the idea that “all” means that everyone is saved—once again in the very next verses:
If Paul’s “all” always means that all are saved, why does he keep on adding provisos right after he has made that statement?
The author very much wants Paul to be a universalist, so much so that he ignores Paul’s clear statements on the subject in favor of rigidly narrow definitions of particular words to the exclusion of their context.
Words commonly have a whole range of meaning. What they mean in any particular place can be understood from the context. Here, the context makes it clear that Paul does not mean to say that all are eventually saved. If he had wanted to say that, he was perfectly capable of doing so plainly and clearly, without leaving us to niggle over the definition of one or two words.
Romans 5:18–19
Here once again the author engages in a lot of verbal gymnastics to argue that “many” really means “all,” or might as well mean “all.” But if Paul meant “all” in verse 19, why did he say “the many,” not “all”?
In reality, this couplet of verses shows that Paul did not have some rigid conception of “all” in mind when he wrote “all,” but was using that word rhetorically. Once again, in the very next verse after verse 18, which is the one the author wants to focus on, Paul makes it clear that he is not using “all” in that way. Hence the author’s need to engage in the aforementioned mental gymnastics to get out of the obvious conclusion that Paul was not a universalist.
I could go on with additional verses that the author quotes, but I hope this will be enough to satisfy you that exegetically, the author is not on solid ground, but is using specific preferred word definitions as daggers to kill the context in which those words are used.
Later in the article the author makes the standard universalist argument that the Greek word translated “eternal” doesn’t really mean “eternal,” but “of an age.” I’ve already dealt with this in the above article, so I won’t repeat all of that here.
However, I do find it very funny that the author tries to argue his way out of the problem that if it means only “for an age” when it refers to damnation, then it must mean only “for an age” when it comes to salvation also.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If you’re going to argue that damnation is not eternal because the word really means “for an age” and not “for eternity,” then what basis is there for arguing that salvation is eternal? Ironically, this argument for universalism based on a rigid and narrow reading of the word commonly translated “eternal” actually weakens the case for universalism by calling into question also whether salvation is eternal. What we’re left with is no clear message on either point.
Why should we assume that if there are “further chances” for salvation after death, there aren’t also “further chances” of damnation after death? All this leaves us with is complete uncertainty and insecurity about our eternal state after death. The only alternative is to deny free will and say that God ultimately forces everyone to be saved, as the author himself conjectures at one point late in the article. But on his confusion as to whether God’s foreknowledge does or doesn’t imply determinism (a classic head-scratcher), please see:
If God Already Knows What We’re Going to Do, How Can We Have Free Will?
Even if the Greek word’s root meaning were “of an age,” which it isn’t (as covered in the above article), that still wouldn’t take away from its meaning of “eternal.”
Consider the Greek and Hebrew words commonly translated “heaven.” The root meaning of those words is not “heaven,” but “sky.” In some places they are translated “sky,” and in others they are translated “heaven,” depending upon the context (as always!).
Does the fact that the word “really” means “sky” mean that there is no heaven? That every time the Bible talks about heaven, it really means “sky”?
Will we really, literally, “be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord forever” (1 Thessalonians 4:17)? Will we be living with the Lord up in the literal clouds of the literal sky of this literal earth forever? The whole notion is absurd. Paul’s words here do draw on common ideas of the time that heaven is in the sky above our heads while hell is down under the earth beneath our feet. But we read them literally at the peril of falling prey to absurdity.
Just as the relevant Greek and Hebrew words can mean either “sky” or “heaven,” depending on the context, so the Greek word in question here can mean either “for an age” or “to eternity,” depending on the context.
This whole argument that the Bible never really means that there is eternal punishment is based on a fundamental ignorance—by which I mean ignoring—of the basic nature of language. The reason dictionaries have multiple definitions for almost every word in them is that words do have multiple meanings depending upon how they are used.
Arguing that aiōnios means “of an age” whenever it is talking about damnation is a clear-cut case of doctrine driving bible interpretation. The author tries to argue that he is not interpreting the text, just reading it. But really, he is misreading the text because he is not allowing the meanings of words to vary with their context (unless it suits his beliefs), and he is not allowing the context to inform him what the word means in that context.
I do understand that universalists have a soft heart, and very much want everyone to be saved. Unfortunately, their soft-heartedness runs straight into the stubborn fact that not all people are like them. Some people are, in fact, very hard-hearted and stiff-necked, and have no desire to be saved, no matter how many opportunities they are given. Once again, see the later part of this article, starting with the heading “What’s wrong with reincarnation?”:
The Bible, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Reincarnation
There is also the matter of literalist Christians taking the Bible’s description of hell as a place of fire, torture, and punishment far too literally. On that, please see:
Is There Really a Hell? What is it Like?
There are many other problems with the author’s arguments—too many to cover in a comment. Some of them are dealt with in the articles I’ve linked here. If there are others that you still have questions about, feel free to ask.
But in summary about the exegetical issues:
It is striking that in each of the three main Bible quotations that the author brings forward to bolster his universalist position, in the very next verses Paul makes it conditional, or at least softens his “all” into something less universal. This illustrates the error of basing one’s doctrine on individual verses yanked out of their context. There are multiple definitions of words for a reason, no matter how much this author would like to ignore and sideline that fact.
And on the first passage, eternal life is just not what Paul is talking about. He’s talking about resurrection.
If children who pass on are invariably saved without their free will being violated, wouldn’t all in hell eventually getting out sooner or later not violate their free will either?
Hi K,
Children who die before reaching adulthood are a special case. They are human beings, but they had not yet developed into full human beings—i.e., adults.
Children who die are always saved because at the time of their death they did not yet have their full as-if-of-self rationality and freedom so that they could make a choice one way or another, and have it be their own choice. They are still under the influence of their parents or whoever raised them. That’s why our courts do not consider children legally liable for acts that if they were adults would be charged to them as crimes. Their parents or guardians are considered liable for their actions because they are responsible for them.
Once people become full adults, meaning human beings all of whose mental capacities have developed to the point that they are responsible for themselves, the situation changes. At that point, the choices we make are our own choices, based on our own freedom and rationality. To reverse those choices would be to violate our free will and our humanity.
Another way of saying this is that the default destination is heaven, and children who die have not yet reached the point at which they can choose hell out of their own free will. Their free will is not violated because they do not yet have the level of free will that makes them responsible for their own choices and actions.
Mentally competent adults, however, do have that level of free will. This means that if their choice about their own ruling love and their own life is abrogated, their free will has been violated.
Didn’t the Rich Man perish in literal fire? Luke 16:19-31, right?
I don’t see how anyone could possibly choose eternal hell over eternal fellowship with God. They would weigh the costs and benefits of each, and see that the benefits of eternal fellowship with God outweigh the costs, and the costs of eternal hell outweigh the benefits. In the context of a lifeboat vs. a sinking ship, I’m sure that there are at least some people that think and say “I don’t like either Heaven or Hell, but if I had to choose one, I would choose heaven”? Like they don’t like Heaven, but at least it’s better than hell.
Don’t the ones in hell want to view things from the perspective of those in Heaven? I want to view things from everyone’s perspective.
Hi World Questioner,
Jesus’ story of the rich man and Lazarus is a parable. It is a basic error to take everything in it literally. Nor does it say that the rich man perished in literal fire. Please, don’t add words to the Bible!
As for the rest, I would simply say that there are quite a few people on this earth who could very well have lived a good and honest life, but decided to live an evil and criminal life instead, or at least a self-indulgent one. Why do they do it? Because it feels good to them.
It would just be horrible if I were one of them.
I get troubled by the fact that I could have been born to be one of them. However I explain it. I could have lived the life of one of them. Like my soul could have been born into one of them.
Hi World Questioner,
No one is born to be a citizen of hell. Everyone is born to be a citizen of heaven. If anyone becomes a citizen of hell, it is because he or she knowingly and intentionally chose evil over good as a rational, self-responsible adult.
I don’t think I communicated it right. It’s too hard to explain.
Don’t they want to view things from the perspective of those that go to Heaven? Don’t they “wish I were one of them” (with “them” referring to the people in the highest Heaven)? Don’t they want go to the same point that the people in Heaven are viewing from?
I want to walk to the spot that God is viewing from… Metaphorically speaking.
Hi World Questioner,
If they wanted to view things from the perspective of those who go to heaven, then they themselves would go to heaven. But they don’t want to view things from the perspective of those who go to heaven.
Aren’t characters in parables unnamed?
Hi World Questioner,
Not in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.
The rich man is unnamed. His name must have been blotted out because he went to hell. Does that suggest that when people go to hell, their names are cut off and not remembered? Lazarus, on the other hand, is named. That’s only because he didn’t go to hell. I could provide a link to the GotQuestions answer addressing that, but you won’t listen to what it says because it is too materialistic.
Hi World Questioner,
I don’t think that the rich man wasn’t named because he was in hell. Satan is named in the Bible, and presumably he is in hell.
Will our unsaved loved ones be replaced? If I lose an unsaved loved one to death, will he/she be replaced by a person that has all the same good, special qualities, but ends up being redeemed instead, as the unsaved loved one should have been? Will the damned wicked be replaced by righteous twins? “Righteous twin” would be the inverse of “evil twin.”
Does God replace those in hell with “righteous twins”?
Will the damned look up into Heaven and realize they have been replaced? That would make the damned ones’ anguish even worse, wouldn’t it? Have you watched Toy Story 3? Not to spoil it, but Lotso was replaced. And that hurt. Those in hell could be just as hurt by being replaced by “righteous twins.”
I tried https://www.google.com/search?q=unsaved+%22loved+ones+be+replaced%22, https://www.google.com/search?q=%22replace+our+unsaved%22, https://www.google.com/search?q=hell+%22replace+our+lost+loved%22, https://www.google.com/search?q=%22unsaved+ones+be+replaced%22, https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Unsaved+be+replaced%22 and https://www.google.com/search?q=%22damned+be+replaced%22, but I couldn’t find anything. How could it not exist? How could no one have published a question and answer related to that?
Hi World Questioner,
Each person is unique. There are no “replacements,” if by that you mean the same person but good rather than evil. There is no “mirror universe” in the manner of the science fiction trope.
Keep in mind that God’s view is eternal. God provides loved ones for us to be with to eternity if that is what we want. They may not be the same people as the ones we thought they would be here on earth. Although if we are very close to someone here on earth who doesn’t go bad, that relationship will continue on the other side.
The anguish of the damned in hell has nothing to do with wishing they were in heaven, wishing they were with former loved ones, an so on. They don’t want to be in heaven, and they don’t care about other people. Their anguish is the inevitable backlash and pain that comes from their own evil actions, and from their inability to achieve all their evil goals, involving getting all the power in the universe and all the wealth in the universe for themselves. So no, even if they were “replaced,” they wouldn’t care at all.
I saw the first two Toy Story movies. I haven’t seen the third.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the previous comment went into spam. The one a few seconds before this one.
Hi World Questioner,
It didn’t go into spam. It was held for moderation because of all the links.
Hi Lee. I had a question for you that I can’t remember asking: What do loved ones in Hell think about their missing loved ones? e.g. if my dad is in hell, is he looking for me? or is he so self-preoccupied he doesnt even think about it? In other words, have you written anything about what those in Hell think about those in heaven?
Hi Duane,
In general, people in hell, and evil people here on earth, think of others only in terms of how those others can benefit them. Even here on earth, there are plenty of examples of parents who view their own children as good only if their children benefit them in some way. For example, parents who think of their children as a future means of supporting them, and who value their adult children only if they provide for them, give them money, and so on. This is exactly how people in hell will think of their “loved ones,” including their own children, parents, and other family members.
I put “loved ones” in quotes, because people in hell don’t really love anyone but themselves. If they make a show of loving anyone else, it is only a front to get benefits for themselves. Or they may “love” someone who loves the same evil things they do, but that love is like the love of thieves for each other when they are working on a criminal job together. If they’re successful, they’ll then set about fighting among themselves about who gets the best of the loot. Each one wants all of the loot for himself. Their “love” is purely self-serving.
As for what those in hell think about those in heaven, in general evil spirits hate angels and want to destroy them. That’s because angels stand for the opposite of what they themselves stand for. Angels stand for loving God and loving the neighbor. Evil spirits stand for loving self and loving worldly things such as wealth and pleasure. Evil spirits hate angels the way a criminal hates the police and the judge. The police and the judge stand for what is good and right. They stand in the way of the criminal’s selfish and greedy schemes. This is why evil spirits throw themselves into hell. They are trying to get as far away as they can from the love and light of God and the angels. Hence the words in the book of Revelation:
To evil spirits, God’s love looks like wrath because it melts away and destroys evil whenever it touches it. And so they hide away in the caverns of hell, so that none of God’s love can reach them and burn away the evil that they love so much. (But enough of God’s love does get through to keep them alive.)
If your father is in hell, the last thing you want is his “love.”
Hi Duane,
While it’s not quite on this topic, here is a somewhat related article:
Can I be Saved if I Hate my Mother?
Lee
I underestand this part theoretically about love; but my question is more so: what is the narrative someone like e.g. my father would tell himself why he doesnt see me? what those people in heaven are all doing? who God is? how do the people in Hell understand their lot? God? how they died and moved to that world? In other words, I’d wonder if someone in hell ever thought “wait what am i doing?” It sounds, the way you and Swedenborg describe it, that they are in some kind of dream like trance from which they can never be awakened?
Hi Duane,
I would say, rather, that they live in an illusory fantasy from which they do not want to get awakened. But they do get awakened from it when their evil actions generate the inevitable painful consequences.
As far as family relationships, in the course of time both angels and evil spirits forget the biological relationships they had on earth. This does not happen instantly. Although there is nothing in Swedenborg that says so, I tend to think that as long as there are still descendants on earth who can remember the person who has died, that memory can be recalled so that people passing over from this life to the next can see and talk with the people they love and care about. But over the equivalent of centuries, those memories will fade entirely. Then, people think of each other as brothers and sisters, and of God as their Father/Mother. (Though Swedenborg, of course, says only “Father.”) It’s not that the earthly memories are gone entirely. They can still be recalled even ten thousand years later if there were some reason to do so. But recalling them plunges angels back into earthly thoughts, which are dark and confining compared to the spiritual and heavenly thoughts they have in heaven.
If this seems strange, consider that very few people have any memories of their experiences in the first one to three years of life, not to mention in the womb. And these are some of the most richly formative times of our lives. Yet we go through our adult lives perfectly well without access to those memories of our early life.
In answer to your questions, then, your father might think about you for a while, and wonder where you are, and why you don’t come to see him. But eventually those thoughts would cease as he immersed himself in his new life, and his memories of his old life on earth faded. And even in those early days, if he did think about you, it would likely be along the lines of, “Why doesn’t that worthless boy come and help me out? Doesn’t he know that I’m struggling here? What an ungrateful #$%@! I put all that time and money into raising him, and this is how he repays me???” There would be no thoughts at all of how you’re doing, whether you’re happy, and so on. It would be all about why you’re not doing for him what he thinks you should.
But as I said, over time he would forget all about you. His whole life would be focused on the people who are now around him, who are his fellow evil spirits in his particular corner of hell.
As far as God, he would want to be as far away from God as possible. And when he did think about God, it would be with nothing but hatred. He would blame God for every bad thing that happens to him, while simultaneously being mad at God for not letting him be fully successful in carrying out his evil schemes. In reality, these things are not God’s fault. But evil spirits in hell are there precisely because they refuse to take responsibility for their own actions. Both here on earth and in hell, evil people always blame others for their own faults and wrong behaviors and the resulting bad consequences. And especially in the spiritual world, the one they blame most is God.
As for how they got to hell, that, too, will be forgotten before long. At first they may think about it. But since they went there of their own accord, it’s not something they particularly want to think about, especially when things aren’t going well for them.
As far as dying and going to the spiritual world, many of them continue to believe that they are in the material world. Especially if they are atheists and materialists, they don’t believe in the existence of a spiritual world, so they convince themselves that they are still living on earth in the material world. After all, the lives of evil spirits are very much like living in a rotten area of the material world. What they see around them is a lot like a blasted slum full of thieves and addicts, or like underground caverns full of bats and cave slime. It is therefore not difficult for them to think that they are still living on earth. Remember, they do their best to live in their own fantasy world. Seeing their surroundings as they really are, and recognizing that they are in hell, is not something they are interested in doing.
Which reminds me of an old joke from the 1970s:
A Catholic priest, a Jewish Rabbi, and a New Age practitioner find themselves together in hell. They ask each other why they’re there.
The priest says, “They called me a whiskey priest. I just couldn’t stay off the bottle! And that’s why I’m in hell.”
The rabbi says, “What can I say? I love pork! And that’s why I’m in hell.”
The New Age practitioner says, “We’re not in hell! And I’m not the least bit hot!”
Your teachings would suggest that people in hell don’t want to do good, because no good is being done to them. Is that right? They think, “What’s the point of doing good to others if no one else will do good to me?”
Hi World Questioner,
Yes, but mainly, they simply don’t enjoy doing good for anyone but themselves. It feels very unpleasant to them. If they do good for anyone else, it is only to get benefits for themselves. Even then, they hate and begrudge having to do anything at all for anyone else. They think they should get good things for themselves without having to do anything at all.