Universal Reconciliation

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I'm an atheist but I find universal reconciliation to be interesting. It means that all people will eventually go to heaven regardless of whether or not they believed in Jesus Christ. Sinners will go to hell but not for eternity.

Universal reconciliation was believed in by the majority of Christians during the period of early Christianity.

Doesn't this sound more plausible than an eternal hell?

I suppose, but it sure as hell sounds more moral.

extra Ecclesiam nulla salus

Yes, but I prefer what many near-death-experiencers (NDEs) have reported, that the only judgment that takes place is that of the deceased judging themselves after a life review.

It sounds like nonsense to me.

ruveyn

It sounds a lot more desirable than me, and plausible from a philosophical stance.

Eternal torture without hope of end or respite sounds like the will of a masochist, rather than a benevolent god worthy of worship much less one I would want to spend eternity with.

have you ever noticed that people who have NDE's never seem to bring back accounts of 'hell'?

There is not an iota of empirical evidence indicating humans have a life after their physical death.

Such is wishful thinking.

ruveyn

Yes, which leads me to believe perhaps there is none. I think we create our own heaven or hell - on earth or later - if there is a later.

Yessir..as my old TV Pal Brother EV Hill say one time. "You cant check into Hell for the weekend just to see if you like it." The Good Book says the fire is not quenched and the worm never dieth..paraphrasing of course. Choose wisely. Weigh the possible consequences of your decisions. Thanks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRSjzY0s0SM

Also, the theology generally isn't that God is damning people, but that God has to actively save people, and he can't do that if they have not asked to be saved. Everyone needs to be saved because some people who never existed ate a fruit that they weren't allowed to eat. Of course, that also makes very little sense.

How can it be Heaven when most of the people are not like the rest?

Uniformity! Conformity! Cookie-cutter souls playing and singing the same songs over and over forever and ever, Hallelujah!! ! THAT is Heaven!

There was an entire American denomination based upon the theology of universal reconciliation (the Universalist Church). It later joined with the Unitarian Church to form the Unitarian Universalist Association.

The theology of Bible Believing Christians runs something like this. We are all damned extending back to the failure in Eden and to our own propensity to fail to properly observe God's Written Ordinances. So he sends us a Life Preserver in the form of Jesus Christ. For them who are smart enough to grab hold of Jesus they will be moved from enemies of God to being Beloved Children and younger siblings of Christ. It's indescribably delicious..to coin a phrase..lol.

Smart enough? Are you condescending enough?

Well, the general Orthodox viewpoint is we should hope and pray for Universal Reconciliation. However, it's not guaranteed. We simply do not know how God will judge everyone. God is within his power and rights to send everyone to hell if he wants to, that's a given. But, since we do believe God is a merciful God, it's likely he'll have some amount of mercy on nonbelievers. People who willfully don't believe will probably be treated differently than people with no opportunity to know (ie, people in a remote jungle type thing.) In Orthodox Christianity, we pray for the souls of the departed, that God will have mercy on them. What God decides, we don't know.

This is an interesting argument about who is "saved" though.

Even in the Bible Jesus says this:


I interpret that as meaning that people who do not know will not be judged as severely as people who do know and reject Jesus's teachings.

So I'd like to lean toward Universal Reconciliation, but I can't speak on behalf of God on what exactly he's going to do one way or the other. One thing interesting, Origen's theory of UR only got rejected by the Church after he said the demons and possibly Satan himself would be reconciled again, but there wasn't really controversy over it applying to humans.