Re: Loquat...

No Loquat, my problem is just lack of time really. I can't be beating dead horses when I really need to be straightening out my alive child. She's twelve and getting ready to enter teenage hell, what will feel like eternal conscious torment I'm sure, and I'm not ready. :(

Being ganged up on doesn't really bother me. If that was the case, well I would have never lasted on these forums for as long as I have because that's all it's ever been pretty much. :)

And no I wasn't offended by your comment on the company I keep when it comes to hell. That comes with the territory and so I'm used to it.

But because the traditional view of hell is so deeply entrenched in the church, I do think this topic especially needs a systematic approach, which I'm not prepared to bring, nor have the time. Discussing points here and there is just probably not a good idea. But if anything, I guess I stirred up some interest. There's nothing wrong with that especially since this debate is getting more and more common out there and it doesn't hurt to be more prepared if we find ourselves in these conversations.

I'm glad you say you are not closed minded to the conditional immortality view, and I hope you will give it a fair hearing. Listen to Glenn Peoples too from the Rethinking Hell site. I've been listening to him some the last couple of days, and he's good too.

How exactly has the conditional hell view been freeing for me? Well I guess we would be getting into emotional arguments if I go there. I mean all doctrines affect us on an emotional level, don't they? Well the really important ones at least. We certainly can't base our doctrines on how we feel about them. I know that for sure. But nevertheless, the truths of God effect us on a personal, emotional basis. Right? I could go into some deep stories about all that, but that's probably not what you want to hear.

You said, "Who in their right mind would defend such a concept as ECT unless they believed it was revealed truth?"

My dad always makes the point that the nature of the ECT doctrine is so horrific that we as a church need to at least make sure it's the truth by studying the issue very intensely before we keep putting it out there. Let the debates go on, encourage the study, don't shut it all down for whatever reason when it needs to thoroughly be investigated. But you can only imagine the crapola the church would have to face, the crapola pastors would have to face especially, if they had to come out and acknowledge we've been wrong about this all these centuries. It might be hell on earth. :) But then in other ways, it could awesome.

But you are right, lots of doctrines cause offense, especially the doctrines of grace, and humanly I have trouble with those too. But yes, we have to submit to whatever the scriptures say, whether we like it or not. I just think that with the case of traditional hell, the church has gotten it wrong, and the real truth happens to be easier to accept, still horrific, but not like the horrificness of eternal torment.


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