Saturday, September 7, 2013

Evangelical Universalism

Hi everyone.

Lately, I have been looking into Universalism (NOT Unitarian Universalism) after trying to pull together a logical explanation of man's "freewill" and God's "freewill". Previously I have been an Arminianist who was looking into Calvinism.
I have nearly come to the conclusion that man and God do not have free will at all. It is more like we have free agency (A freedom to act out our character). I am thinking this way because, if God chooses from before the foundations of the world those whom would be saved and at the same time be choosing those who accept Him, then there must be a predictable nature about our characters.
Our characters must have a system or predictable character by which God can read us. Just like God has a character and does not change. We cannot decide who we are. I think our perceptions of who we and who God is can change but not who we really, truly are. If we did have a "free" choice, then our choices would be random, because they would not be following a system or character. Randomness is not observable or coherent.
So, God made us, and so we will be what God made us to be.
Then it leads to, why would God make someone specifically for eternity in hell?

As I said, I have been looking into Universalism for obvious reasons. I originally thought they were a bunch of wackos who didn't take the Bible seriously, and to my surprise I found out that they actually do and that they actually have some strong arguments to illustrate their case.

These guys are quite an interesting read http://www.evangelicaluniversalist.com/forum/
and also this non-exhaustive list of scriptural support was interesting too http://www.auburn.edu/~allenkc/univ3.html

Keen to hear people's thoughts.

Dan

1 comment:

  1. Dan,

    I am not sold to this idea but I am not opposed to it. If God wants to redeem all men then let Him. It would be the nature of God to forgive man but there is a lot of scripture that needs to be reinterpreted and maybe even stretched. Unfortunately, I don't think we will ever know the real idea behind hell and redemption. If you want more reading try Rob Bell.

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