Reading this, what came to mind for me is the correspondence between the relationship of the Day of the Lord to the Greater Hope, in the way you describe it, and the relationship of Good Friday to Easter Sunday. In each case, the latter can't simply cancel out the former, or make it any less real. A phrase that came to me last Easter: "the Resurrection doesn't undo the Crucifixion, it changes the meaning of it" – which seems as though it would fit the relationship between the penultimate and the ultimate that you are describing here.
Anyhow, this is the second mention of George MacDonald that I've come across today, so I'll take that as a hint.
This is excellent, and pulls together some ideas I've been turning round in my mind from time to time over a few several years. Certainly the strong Biblical thread of God's justice needs to be held alongside the promise of universal restoration.
I'd add two things though. One is that I believe God's justice is ultimately restorative justice. No ultimate good is done by punishment - and certainly not eternal punishment. (Have you discussed this in the prison?) The other, and I think the more fundamental one, is that contemporary evangelicalism gets it wrong in being too "me-focussed". Salvation is about my well-being. Conversely, the gospel is primarily about God's glory. Not in the perverted sense expressed in Rabbie Burns's brilliant satire on Calvinism ("O Thou that in the heavens dost dwell / What as it pleases best Thysel / Sends ane tae heaven and ten tae hell / Aa for Thy glory / And no for ony gude or ill / they've deen afore Thee") but in the spirit expressed by Jesus "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven".
I appreciate the Greater Hope theory and I’m trying my best to be open. I’d like for it to be true. What a relief it would be, and not so much for myself, but for loved ones who either are currently having trouble finding a saving faith or have left this life not having ever found such.
But scripturally, it seems like a difficult haul. For instance, what to do with Matt. 25? What truth is actually found in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man? Why would Paul write that he would gladly be “cut off” if only his people (the Jews) could be saved? Why did so many early disciples give their lives to spread a message that ultimately, wasn’t actually necessary? And finally, there is the argument that God would not force anyone into a relationship with Himself.
Hell was made for the Devil and his angels that followed after him, not for man. That much I can agree. At this stage of my faith I prefer a terminal punishment theory. But I will continue to search and contemplate. I do very much appreciate the challenge to my current thinking.
This teaching of Day of the Lord as penultimate, and the Greater Hope of the reconciliation of "all things" as ultimate gives me way of sitting with the wrath of God as a just, if not final, reality. I find myself for the first time in a long time opening the door a crack to a legitimate Christian teaching on the just, non-eternal wrath of God, even as I cling to the teaching that God's eternal character is decisively revealed in suffering, reconciling love. But as I crack this door open, I fear old demons flying back in. I still want to guard against the devils that Girard helped me discern: the violent projections that human beings have always put onto their gods. As we look forward to Jesus entering into Jerusalem "humble and riding...on a colt, the foal of a donkey" as prophesied by Zechariah (9:9) I cannot help but notice the sharp contrast between the violence of the prophecy, and the non-violence of Jesus' enactment thereof. Zechariah expected the Messianic king to head up an army of holy warriors who would "drink their [enemies'] blood like wine, and be full like a bowl, drenched like the corners of the altar" (Zech 9:15). This is not the cup that Jesus will lift at the Last Supper. There is a crucial (pun intended) difference between the altar drenched with the blood of God's enemies, and the table of Jesus, who offers up a cup filled with no blood but his own, to reconcile us to God "while we were still enemies" (Romans 5:10). What of the texts of wrath do you attribute to God's justice, and how much to the projections of God's people, who undergo only slowly their education by the Holy Spirit, who reveals "many things" that Jesus longed to tell his disciples, but that they could "not yet bear" (John 16:12)?
But Satan and his demons are creatures too. Don’t tell me that after those sons of bitches get cast into the Lake of Fire that they get to crawl back out to be reconciled to Christ Jesus who reconciles all things to Himself.
Reading this, what came to mind for me is the correspondence between the relationship of the Day of the Lord to the Greater Hope, in the way you describe it, and the relationship of Good Friday to Easter Sunday. In each case, the latter can't simply cancel out the former, or make it any less real. A phrase that came to me last Easter: "the Resurrection doesn't undo the Crucifixion, it changes the meaning of it" – which seems as though it would fit the relationship between the penultimate and the ultimate that you are describing here.
Anyhow, this is the second mention of George MacDonald that I've come across today, so I'll take that as a hint.
This is excellent, and pulls together some ideas I've been turning round in my mind from time to time over a few several years. Certainly the strong Biblical thread of God's justice needs to be held alongside the promise of universal restoration.
I'd add two things though. One is that I believe God's justice is ultimately restorative justice. No ultimate good is done by punishment - and certainly not eternal punishment. (Have you discussed this in the prison?) The other, and I think the more fundamental one, is that contemporary evangelicalism gets it wrong in being too "me-focussed". Salvation is about my well-being. Conversely, the gospel is primarily about God's glory. Not in the perverted sense expressed in Rabbie Burns's brilliant satire on Calvinism ("O Thou that in the heavens dost dwell / What as it pleases best Thysel / Sends ane tae heaven and ten tae hell / Aa for Thy glory / And no for ony gude or ill / they've deen afore Thee") but in the spirit expressed by Jesus "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven".
I appreciate the Greater Hope theory and I’m trying my best to be open. I’d like for it to be true. What a relief it would be, and not so much for myself, but for loved ones who either are currently having trouble finding a saving faith or have left this life not having ever found such.
But scripturally, it seems like a difficult haul. For instance, what to do with Matt. 25? What truth is actually found in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man? Why would Paul write that he would gladly be “cut off” if only his people (the Jews) could be saved? Why did so many early disciples give their lives to spread a message that ultimately, wasn’t actually necessary? And finally, there is the argument that God would not force anyone into a relationship with Himself.
Hell was made for the Devil and his angels that followed after him, not for man. That much I can agree. At this stage of my faith I prefer a terminal punishment theory. But I will continue to search and contemplate. I do very much appreciate the challenge to my current thinking.
George Macdonnald is awesome. I wish I could see God like he saw him.
This teaching of Day of the Lord as penultimate, and the Greater Hope of the reconciliation of "all things" as ultimate gives me way of sitting with the wrath of God as a just, if not final, reality. I find myself for the first time in a long time opening the door a crack to a legitimate Christian teaching on the just, non-eternal wrath of God, even as I cling to the teaching that God's eternal character is decisively revealed in suffering, reconciling love. But as I crack this door open, I fear old demons flying back in. I still want to guard against the devils that Girard helped me discern: the violent projections that human beings have always put onto their gods. As we look forward to Jesus entering into Jerusalem "humble and riding...on a colt, the foal of a donkey" as prophesied by Zechariah (9:9) I cannot help but notice the sharp contrast between the violence of the prophecy, and the non-violence of Jesus' enactment thereof. Zechariah expected the Messianic king to head up an army of holy warriors who would "drink their [enemies'] blood like wine, and be full like a bowl, drenched like the corners of the altar" (Zech 9:15). This is not the cup that Jesus will lift at the Last Supper. There is a crucial (pun intended) difference between the altar drenched with the blood of God's enemies, and the table of Jesus, who offers up a cup filled with no blood but his own, to reconcile us to God "while we were still enemies" (Romans 5:10). What of the texts of wrath do you attribute to God's justice, and how much to the projections of God's people, who undergo only slowly their education by the Holy Spirit, who reveals "many things" that Jesus longed to tell his disciples, but that they could "not yet bear" (John 16:12)?
But Satan and his demons are creatures too. Don’t tell me that after those sons of bitches get cast into the Lake of Fire that they get to crawl back out to be reconciled to Christ Jesus who reconciles all things to Himself.
C’mon! What kind of idiotic exegesis is THIS?