...
the basic issue is whether the divine nature modifies the humanity. I think it is important to say that it doesn't, meaning that Christ's humanity is complete and doesn't have any aspect of humanity removed due to his deity.
So if the ability to finally reject God is intrinsic to humanity, this would be part of Christ's humanity as well.
...
Regarding the idea of a perfect human freedom will, that seems to admit the claim that ability to finally reject God is not intrinsic to humanity.
This implies that God elected to create humanity with imperfect freewill, which could be taken to mean God wanted to be rejected. Which, of course, plenty of Christians believe. Personally I don't.
You seem to be saying that whether or not human beings can or can't reject God is down to their human nature, that it is innate. But it is quite possible for human beings to be constrained in what they can or can't do for reasons not related to human nature, such as if we've made a promise. Or because we're under orders, or on a mission. Our individual circumstances.
Back in the OP, you wrote:
If being human implies the ability to will the rejection of God, you have basically said that Christ is not human.
I don't think that's a valid assertion (you're arguing backwards from a human's unique circumstances to make a claim about human nature). As ChastMastr posted:
I don't wish to appear flippant or dismissive but it really isn't anything that exercises me unduly. I pray for the departed irrespective of whether they were card-carrying Christians or not. 'Will not the judge of all the earth do right?'
I think we differ in the degree of tolerance we have for public teaching about God, which strike me (I assume not you) as closer to Moloch than to the God of Christ. Of course you are free to believe that this is a vicious distortion of the idea that God created people predestined by Him to an eternity of torture "to show his power". Whilst it is obvious that you reject the dogmatic turn or burn teaching, I assume that you feel it divisive and probably arrogant to attack the doctrine and/or it's advocates. We should leave God to sort it out.
My wife is not a universalist and we love each other dearly. But she's no hellfire believer either and I seriously doubt there are any on this ship. But there probably are some who don't definitely rule it out. Maybe including yourself.
No, I don't believe God created people to be predestined to an eternity of torture nor do I believe that it is a distortion of that view to describe it as a Molech-like view of God.
That's not something I hear preached in my own Church and the only places I'm aware of that would preach that are ultra-hardline neo-Calvinist churches, almost entirely independent ones.
I've outlined the Orthodox understanding as I understand it.
Please don't try to second guess what I do or don't believe.
Your own wife isn't a universalist. I'm not speculating about what she believes instead. It's none of my business. You've told us she doesn't believe in hell-fire.
My assumption is that the hell-fire references in the Gospels are figurative or else that the eternal presence of God will be blissful and comforting to some but not others. I don't speculate much further than that.
I take them seriously - I hope - as warnings to avoid presumption and to modify my behaviour - which hasn't worked so far as you can see from my posts at times - and an aid-memoire towards what I hope is continuing repentance and amendment of life.
But I don't go round worrying whether this, that or the other person or whether my unbelieving daughters will end up in torment. I pray for them and for everyone else. I'm not sure what else you'd have me do.
My criticising churches or preachers who preach hell-fire and damnation isn't going to stop them doing so. Besides, that seems increasingly rare these days.
The thing is, I can honestly say that I have never encountered the “public teaching about God,” which strikes you as closer to Moloch than the God of Christ, in any church I’ve ever been part of or attended.
But you must know that it is pretty widespread in the Church. It is not in the earliest creeds or the NT (IMO!), but it is built into the Westminster standards and the Three Forms of Unity. And it almost standard in Conservative Evangelicalism, even if kept in the background.
The point I am making is about the limits of tolerance concerning doctrine you may find abhorrent, and the over-humility of those who thinks that anything controversial is above their pay grade. That makes for a comfortable life, if you want one.
But although connected to views of Hell, I raise the questions concerning what human freedom is, and whether it is bounded by the freedom of God, because they are intrinsically interesting (again IMO) but here, I do admit they are so hard to debate that many attempts to do so get nowhere. As this one may well.
You seem to be saying that whether or not human beings can or can't reject God is down to their human nature, that it is innate.
Sort of. What I'm trying the refute is the idea that God could no more create a human being who is incapable of finally rejecting him, that he could create a square circle. I don't dismiss this idea, but I do think that the Incarnation contradicts it. Because Jesus is fully human and incapable of finally rejecting God.
But it is quite possible for human beings to be constrained in what they can or can't do for reasons not related to human nature, such as if we've made a promise. Or because we're under orders, or on a mission. Our individual circumstances.
Yes, but that's a whole different issue. Clearly, a choice made under the threat of violence, or drug-induced incapacity, is not free. And many would say that any debate about whether human choices are really really free, and not controlled by God, biology or whatever, just results in waffle.
I used to believe that. Now it seems just to dodge the issue. And of course the issue of full knowledge comes in. A choice made based on a lack of knowledge is not to be taken as final. So a refusal of God on the basis of what a person knows about what God is like, is not final either. People wedded to damnation usually believe God will never enlighten them, but he did it for St Paul, so maybe it's good enough for everyone.
Please don't try to second guess what I do or don't believe.
Apologies. Although I did make it clear that I would not imagine for a moment that you believe in hard-line hell-fire. I'm reasonably aware of what Orthodoxy teaches, in terms of there being no separate heaven and hell but only a place where the glory of God is clearly seen but what bring bliss to the saved can cause torment in the damned. Plus I am under the impression that a hope for the salvation of all is not futile.
But I don't go round worrying whether this, that or the other person or whether my unbelieving daughters will end up in torment. I pray for them and for everyone else. I'm not sure what else you'd have me do.
Well the idea of contending for the purity of the Faith, is a part of what we are bidden to engage in. In may be that you have a sanguine nature, and in this respect so do I. But there are those who are deeply anxious if even there is any possibility that hell-fire is true, and I know of some who are quite badly affected by it. So to the extent that the Church does not exclude this, it perpetuates this. And I wish it would take a robust stance against any idea that God has created a universe where endless torment can be the lot of some.
Aside: I still think that DBH's best argument of is that of the creation from nothing, because that would teach that God is totally unconstrained as Creator. It is only at the final consummation when everything has been brought to the state that God intended and intends, that we will see God as he wants to be known. And if torment and rebellion of some of his creation is part of that final state, then there truly is a shadow side to God, and "God is love" needs qualification.
No rational being could refuse God if they had perfect knowledge of God. The problem is that people aren't perfectly rational. Psychologists and psychiatrists, at least since Freud, have thought that people choose things that don't make them happy over things that do make them happy for various subconscious reasons. Christians have thought that people choose their own idols over God because they subconsciously want to affirm their self as the centre of their world. CS Lewis' Great Divorce is a depiction of sin as this sort of irrational semiconscious desire. Incidentally, Lewis' depiction of Hell as a form of infinitely prolonged self-chosen Purgatory is the only form of eternal conscious torment that seems remotely believable.
The point of the atonement isn't on this sort of account to meet God's arbitrary standards of punishment, but to allow Jesus to break into our irrational self-absorptions and free us.
Bentley Hart's argument against the CS Lewis model of Hell - and also annihiliationism - is not so much that it's unjust or unloving - the charge that he levels against the doctrine of infinite conscious punishment - as that it means there would continue to be hold outs against God and that God's triumph would be limited.
(When it comes to free will, there are two forms of determinism. The one is based on mechanical materialism: our actions and thoughts are the result of material particles that act as they do for impersonal reasons of cause and effect. The other is psychological: we act because we perceive and desire something as good, and perceiving and desiring something as good, we choose it. Most traditional Christian psychology has used a model of human action in which the latter is true, making it hard to find a place for libertarian free will. Hart I think thinks libertarian free will - the idea that one could choose a course of action for reasons other than it was what one most wanted based on one's assessment of the available options - is incoherent.)
The thing is, I can honestly say that I have never encountered the “public teaching about God,” which strikes you as closer to Moloch than the God of Christ, in any church I’ve ever been part of or attended.
But you must know that it is pretty widespread in the Church. It is not in the earliest creeds or the NT (IMO!), but it is built into the Westminster standards and the Three Forms of Unity. And it almost standard in Conservative Evangelicalism, even if kept in the background.
I’m aware that it, or a form of it (if I’m understanding correctly what “it” actually refers to), is widespread in some segments of the Church. That’s not the same as “widespread in the Church,” I don’t think. (And fwiw, in my experience, “Conservative Evangelicalism” generally refers to a British form of Evangelicalism; it doesn’t necessarily map on to American Evangelicalism easily, which is what I’m more familiar with. I’m actually never quite sure exactly what it means.)
As the late Metropolitan Kallistos Ware used to say, 'We may hope that all may be saved, we cannot say that all will be saved.'
That is, I think, similar to what Karl Barth, coming from a Reformed perspective, said:
If we are certainly forbidden to count on this [universal reconciliation] as though we had a claim to it, as though it were not supremely the work of God to which man can have no possible claim, we are surely commanded the more definitely to hope and pray for it as we may do already on this side of this final possibility, i.e., to hope and pray cautiously and yet distinctly that, in spite of everything which may seem quite conclusively to proclaim the opposite, His compassion should not fail, and that in accordance with His mercy which is "new every morning" He "will not cast off for ever." (Lam 3:22f,31)
Please don't try to second guess what I do or don't believe.
Apologies. Although I did make it clear that I would not imagine for a moment that you believe in hard-line hell-fire. I'm reasonably aware of what Orthodoxy teaches, in terms of there being no separate heaven and hell but only a place where the glory of God is clearly seen but what bring bliss to the saved can cause torment in the damned. Plus I am under the impression that a hope for the salvation of all is not futile.
But I don't go round worrying whether this, that or the other person or whether my unbelieving daughters will end up in torment. I pray for them and for everyone else. I'm not sure what else you'd have me do.
Well the idea of contending for the purity of the Faith, is a part of what we are bidden to engage in. In may be that you have a sanguine nature, and in this respect so do I. But there are those who are deeply anxious if even there is any possibility that hell-fire is true, and I know of some who are quite badly affected by it. So to the extent that the Church does not exclude this, it perpetuates this. And I wish it would take a robust stance against any idea that God has created a universe where endless torment can be the lot of some.
Aside: I still think that DBH's best argument of is that of the creation from nothing, because that would teach that God is totally unconstrained as Creator. It is only at the final consummation when everything has been brought to the state that God intended and intends, that we will see God as he wants to be known. And if torment and rebellion of some of his creation is part of that final state, then there truly is a shadow side to God, and "God is love" needs qualification.
Please don't try to second guess what I do or don't believe.
Apologies. Although I did make it clear that I would not imagine for a moment that you believe in hard-line hell-fire. I'm reasonably aware of what Orthodoxy teaches, in terms of there being no separate heaven and hell but only a place where the glory of God is clearly seen but what bring bliss to the saved can cause torment in the damned. Plus I am under the impression that a hope for the salvation of all is not futile.
But I don't go round worrying whether this, that or the other person or whether my unbelieving daughters will end up in torment. I pray for them and for everyone else. I'm not sure what else you'd have me do.
Well the idea of contending for the purity of the Faith, is a part of what we are bidden to engage in. In may be that you have a sanguine nature, and in this respect so do I. But there are those who are deeply anxious if even there is any possibility that hell-fire is true, and I know of some who are quite badly affected by it. So to the extent that the Church does not exclude this, it perpetuates this. And I wish it would take a robust stance against any idea that God has created a universe where endless torment can be the lot of some.
Aside: I still think that DBH's best argument of is that of the creation from nothing, because that would teach that God is totally unconstrained as Creator. It is only at the final consummation when everything has been brought to the state that God intended and intends, that we will see God as he wants to be known. And if torment and rebellion of some of his creation is part of that final state, then there truly is a shadow side to God, and "God is love" needs qualification.
I do contend for the purity of the Faith, Anteater. You will sometimes see me doing so on these boards.
That's different to setting off on a one-man personal crusade against conservative evangelicals, against Roman Catholics or Anglicans, Presbyterians or Protestants more generally.
Heck, if I wanted to dot i's and cross t's on every issue where the Orthodox might diverge from other Christian traditions I wouldn't post on anything else. We could have a debate about ecclesiology now, for instance, as to what exactly we mean by 'Church' but that would derail the thread.
I'm sure Shipmates will remember how I could be a first-class pain in the arse (so what else is new? 😉) I could be when I was moving on from charismatic evangelicalism. I hardly posted about anything else.
It was all part of the process, of course but it must have been very wearing for Hosts, Admins and everyone else.
If I were in conversation with a conservative evangelical - or someone from any other Trinitarian but non-Orthodox tradition for that matter - I'd first seek to establish what we had in common before debating those areas where we might differ.
It's not my job to go round 'correcting' other people's views or theological positions but I will give my opinion if asked.
I know too many converts to Orthodoxy who act in an unnecessarily arsey way towards Christians of other traditions to want to emulate them in that respect. That doesn't mean I hold loosely to Orthodox distinctives but I like to think I pick my battles carefully.
I know of Orthodox people who wouldn't even attend an RC or Protestant service. I would and do.
That doesn't mean I'm 'better' or 'worse' than them but I'm not a one-man doctrinal purity crusade.
Besides, as @Nick Tamen has observed we can't generalise across geographical or denominational boundaries. I'm sure Karl Barth and Orthodox theologians would have large areas of overlap. They'd also have areas where their views diverged very significantly.
The key thing on whatever side of any particular fence we are on is to acknowledge and respect both convergence and divergence except in those areas where we might consider the differences to be so acute as to endanger the adherents or participants in some way.
Yes, hell-fire and damnation style preaching can cause psychological damage. But I can't single-handedly stop it.
Same with prosperity-gospel preaching and other excesses.
I apologise thatcwhen I wrote about 6 evangelical schools, I was doing so from memory. I think they were Catechetical Schools, and they were as listed by @Nenya I think it would be virtually impossible for anyone who has a belief in biblical inerrancy to deny that Jesus taught that the majority of the human race would be eternally destroyed. (Matt 7.13-14). But it's quite equivocal whether he meant annihilation or ect. Or whether Scriptue as a whole teaches much about ect, which I don't think it does. Jesus often taught in hyperbole, such as plucking out your eyes.
It comes down to whether one can believe in a God who would do that. As in create sentient beings in full knowledge of such a bleak eternal destiny. Those of the early Church Fathers who were universalists usually took the view that the purpose of the Incarnation was the defeat of sin, death and the devil, and the iconography of the harrowing of hell, where Jesus descends to the underworld, smashes the gates of hell, and leads Adam and Eve, who were the cause of it all, out by the hand.
While I'm quite comfortable to see a lot of myth in such imagery, Christianity believes in a single cause of all creation, when God spoke creation ex-nihilo, and it was perfect. Infernalists want us to believe that, once evil entered into creation, it remains eternally in the separation of the saved and the unsaved. I can't believe in a dualistic outcome like that. Admittedly anihilationism would solve that problem, but we would still be left with a God who sees most of us as a failed experiment in creation. My only way out is apokatastasis, where God restores all things.
You seem to be saying that whether or not human beings can or can't reject God is down to their human nature, that it is innate.
Sort of. What I'm trying the refute is the idea that God could no more create a human being who is incapable of finally rejecting him, that he could create a square circle. I don't dismiss this idea, but I do think that the Incarnation contradicts it. Because Jesus is fully human and incapable of finally rejecting God.
You're still not addressing the question of whether this is innate to His human nature (and thus all human nature), or a consequence of other factors. There are many things that are true of Christ that aren't true of any other human being.
But it is quite possible for human beings to be constrained in what they can or can't do for reasons not related to human nature, such as if we've made a promise. Or because we're under orders, or on a mission. Our individual circumstances.
Yes, but that's a whole different issue.
I would say it's closely related - the issues of free will and constraint seem highly relevant to a human being on a mission to save the world in obedience to His Father. A mission that can only succeed if He completely submits His human will. Or would you dispute that Jesus could completely submit His human will while all other human beings cannot?
Clearly, a choice made under the threat of violence, or drug-induced incapacity, is not free. And many would say that any debate about whether human choices are really really free, and not controlled by God, biology or whatever, just results in waffle.
I used to believe that. Now it seems just to dodge the issue. And of course the issue of full knowledge comes in. A choice made based on a lack of knowledge is not to be taken as final.
Why not? It's almost the story of our lives to make choices based on lack of knowledge. And sometimes our lack of knowledge leads directly to our deaths.
So a refusal of God on the basis of what a person knows about what God is like, is not final either. People wedded to damnation usually believe God will never enlighten them, but he did it for St Paul, so maybe it's good enough for everyone.
Doesn't looking at individual cases suggest that God will enlighten some people, but not others?
@pease It's certainly true in this life that God enlightens some people and not others. That is one of the reasons that I don't believe the door is closed at the moment of physical death. Life is not a level playing field and I will never be able to conceive of a God who wouldn't level up the playing field for those who have little opportunity in this world to make the right decisions.
You're still not addressing the question of whether this is innate to His human nature (and thus all human nature), or a consequence of other factors. There are many things that are true of Christ that aren't true of any other human being.
I think it's fairly obvious that I believe it's innate. In the sense that what can be said of Christ's humanity is true in general of humanity.
But I'm not sure we can get further, and I don't mean this disrespectfully. But delving into the details of how we analyse what we can know about the Incarnation is so difficult that maybe it's just a question of each person seeing differently. And of course, the fact that I want to see it in a certain way is obviously going to be a factor. Maybe we just leave it there.
I think it would be virtually impossible for anyone who has a belief in biblical inerrancy to deny that Jesus taught that the majority of the human race would be eternally destroyed. (Matt 7.13-14)
Well I have no belief in Biblical Inerrancy, so that's not so much of a problem. But the NT is hopelessly self contradictory in this. The same Jesus said that "if I be lifted up I will draw all people to myself".
I admit freely that the philosophical and ethical issues are decisive for me. If it could be proved that Christianity teaches Eternal Conscious Torment, then I cease to be a Christian. It's as simple as that. Not that I think it can be proved, but if we get to just text-battling, Universalism can by no means be proved either. Purely on exegetical grounds I think maybe Conditional Immortality wins out, but it all hinges on the meaning of key words, and I don't think we have any true experts in NT Greek on the Ship, so best left alone.
I think it would be virtually impossible for anyone who has a belief in biblical inerrancy to deny that Jesus taught that the majority of the human race would be eternally destroyed. (Matt 7.13-14)
Well I have no belief in Biblical Inerrancy, so that's not so much of a problem. But the NT is hopelessly self contradictory in this. The same Jesus said that "if I be lifted up I will draw all people to myself".
I admit freely that the philosophical and ethical issues are decisive for me. If it could be proved that Christianity teaches Eternal Conscious Torment, then I cease to be a Christian. It's as simple as that. Not that I think it can be proved, but if we get to just text-battling, Universalism can by no means be proved either. Purely on exegetical grounds I think maybe Conditional Immortality wins out, but it all hinges on the meaning of key words, and I don't think we have any true experts in NT Greek on the Ship, so best left alone.
1. Materialist determinacy, which effectively denies the reality of people as intentional individuals and, at least to me, is totally incoherent.
I don't see how Materialist determinacy denies intentionality at all. Which is totally coherent.
2. Libertarian free-will, which is the majority belief today, and basically says that our choices are outside of the control of anyone but ourselves, and specifically within the Christian context, outside of the control of God. People reject him no matter how hard he tries.
At the moment of action, we are the agent of that 'choice'.
As for 3.
3. God controlled free-will.* This says we are really intentional people not just physio-chemical entities, but there are bounds on our freedom, so that ultimately God determines our fate and can overcome our resistance.
We are really intentional physio-chemical entities. And I'm delighted that someone believes on the way to Love.
Comments
Back in the OP, you wrote: I don't think that's a valid assertion (you're arguing backwards from a human's unique circumstances to make a claim about human nature). As ChastMastr posted:
No, I don't believe God created people to be predestined to an eternity of torture nor do I believe that it is a distortion of that view to describe it as a Molech-like view of God.
That's not something I hear preached in my own Church and the only places I'm aware of that would preach that are ultra-hardline neo-Calvinist churches, almost entirely independent ones.
I've outlined the Orthodox understanding as I understand it.
Please don't try to second guess what I do or don't believe.
Your own wife isn't a universalist. I'm not speculating about what she believes instead. It's none of my business. You've told us she doesn't believe in hell-fire.
My assumption is that the hell-fire references in the Gospels are figurative or else that the eternal presence of God will be blissful and comforting to some but not others. I don't speculate much further than that.
I take them seriously - I hope - as warnings to avoid presumption and to modify my behaviour - which hasn't worked so far as you can see from my posts at times - and an aid-memoire towards what I hope is continuing repentance and amendment of life.
But I don't go round worrying whether this, that or the other person or whether my unbelieving daughters will end up in torment. I pray for them and for everyone else. I'm not sure what else you'd have me do.
My criticising churches or preachers who preach hell-fire and damnation isn't going to stop them doing so. Besides, that seems increasingly rare these days.
The point I am making is about the limits of tolerance concerning doctrine you may find abhorrent, and the over-humility of those who thinks that anything controversial is above their pay grade. That makes for a comfortable life, if you want one.
But although connected to views of Hell, I raise the questions concerning what human freedom is, and whether it is bounded by the freedom of God, because they are intrinsically interesting (again IMO) but here, I do admit they are so hard to debate that many attempts to do so get nowhere. As this one may well.
Yes, but that's a whole different issue. Clearly, a choice made under the threat of violence, or drug-induced incapacity, is not free. And many would say that any debate about whether human choices are really really free, and not controlled by God, biology or whatever, just results in waffle.
I used to believe that. Now it seems just to dodge the issue. And of course the issue of full knowledge comes in. A choice made based on a lack of knowledge is not to be taken as final. So a refusal of God on the basis of what a person knows about what God is like, is not final either. People wedded to damnation usually believe God will never enlighten them, but he did it for St Paul, so maybe it's good enough for everyone.
Well the idea of contending for the purity of the Faith, is a part of what we are bidden to engage in. In may be that you have a sanguine nature, and in this respect so do I. But there are those who are deeply anxious if even there is any possibility that hell-fire is true, and I know of some who are quite badly affected by it. So to the extent that the Church does not exclude this, it perpetuates this. And I wish it would take a robust stance against any idea that God has created a universe where endless torment can be the lot of some.
Aside: I still think that DBH's best argument of is that of the creation from nothing, because that would teach that God is totally unconstrained as Creator. It is only at the final consummation when everything has been brought to the state that God intended and intends, that we will see God as he wants to be known. And if torment and rebellion of some of his creation is part of that final state, then there truly is a shadow side to God, and "God is love" needs qualification.
No rational being could refuse God if they had perfect knowledge of God. The problem is that people aren't perfectly rational. Psychologists and psychiatrists, at least since Freud, have thought that people choose things that don't make them happy over things that do make them happy for various subconscious reasons. Christians have thought that people choose their own idols over God because they subconsciously want to affirm their self as the centre of their world. CS Lewis' Great Divorce is a depiction of sin as this sort of irrational semiconscious desire. Incidentally, Lewis' depiction of Hell as a form of infinitely prolonged self-chosen Purgatory is the only form of eternal conscious torment that seems remotely believable.
The point of the atonement isn't on this sort of account to meet God's arbitrary standards of punishment, but to allow Jesus to break into our irrational self-absorptions and free us.
Bentley Hart's argument against the CS Lewis model of Hell - and also annihiliationism - is not so much that it's unjust or unloving - the charge that he levels against the doctrine of infinite conscious punishment - as that it means there would continue to be hold outs against God and that God's triumph would be limited.
(When it comes to free will, there are two forms of determinism. The one is based on mechanical materialism: our actions and thoughts are the result of material particles that act as they do for impersonal reasons of cause and effect. The other is psychological: we act because we perceive and desire something as good, and perceiving and desiring something as good, we choose it. Most traditional Christian psychology has used a model of human action in which the latter is true, making it hard to find a place for libertarian free will. Hart I think thinks libertarian free will - the idea that one could choose a course of action for reasons other than it was what one most wanted based on one's assessment of the available options - is incoherent.)
That is, I think, similar to what Karl Barth, coming from a Reformed perspective, said: (Church Dogmatics, IV.3.2)
That is where I’m comfortable landing.
Sure, but
I do contend for the purity of the Faith, Anteater. You will sometimes see me doing so on these boards.
That's different to setting off on a one-man personal crusade against conservative evangelicals, against Roman Catholics or Anglicans, Presbyterians or Protestants more generally.
Heck, if I wanted to dot i's and cross t's on every issue where the Orthodox might diverge from other Christian traditions I wouldn't post on anything else. We could have a debate about ecclesiology now, for instance, as to what exactly we mean by 'Church' but that would derail the thread.
I'm sure Shipmates will remember how I could be a first-class pain in the arse (so what else is new? 😉) I could be when I was moving on from charismatic evangelicalism. I hardly posted about anything else.
It was all part of the process, of course but it must have been very wearing for Hosts, Admins and everyone else.
If I were in conversation with a conservative evangelical - or someone from any other Trinitarian but non-Orthodox tradition for that matter - I'd first seek to establish what we had in common before debating those areas where we might differ.
It's not my job to go round 'correcting' other people's views or theological positions but I will give my opinion if asked.
I know too many converts to Orthodoxy who act in an unnecessarily arsey way towards Christians of other traditions to want to emulate them in that respect. That doesn't mean I hold loosely to Orthodox distinctives but I like to think I pick my battles carefully.
I know of Orthodox people who wouldn't even attend an RC or Protestant service. I would and do.
That doesn't mean I'm 'better' or 'worse' than them but I'm not a one-man doctrinal purity crusade.
Besides, as @Nick Tamen has observed we can't generalise across geographical or denominational boundaries. I'm sure Karl Barth and Orthodox theologians would have large areas of overlap. They'd also have areas where their views diverged very significantly.
The key thing on whatever side of any particular fence we are on is to acknowledge and respect both convergence and divergence except in those areas where we might consider the differences to be so acute as to endanger the adherents or participants in some way.
Yes, hell-fire and damnation style preaching can cause psychological damage. But I can't single-handedly stop it.
Same with prosperity-gospel preaching and other excesses.
It comes down to whether one can believe in a God who would do that. As in create sentient beings in full knowledge of such a bleak eternal destiny. Those of the early Church Fathers who were universalists usually took the view that the purpose of the Incarnation was the defeat of sin, death and the devil, and the iconography of the harrowing of hell, where Jesus descends to the underworld, smashes the gates of hell, and leads Adam and Eve, who were the cause of it all, out by the hand.
While I'm quite comfortable to see a lot of myth in such imagery, Christianity believes in a single cause of all creation, when God spoke creation ex-nihilo, and it was perfect. Infernalists want us to believe that, once evil entered into creation, it remains eternally in the separation of the saved and the unsaved. I can't believe in a dualistic outcome like that. Admittedly anihilationism would solve that problem, but we would still be left with a God who sees most of us as a failed experiment in creation. My only way out is apokatastasis, where God restores all things.
I would say it's closely related - the issues of free will and constraint seem highly relevant to a human being on a mission to save the world in obedience to His Father. A mission that can only succeed if He completely submits His human will. Or would you dispute that Jesus could completely submit His human will while all other human beings cannot?
Why not? It's almost the story of our lives to make choices based on lack of knowledge. And sometimes our lack of knowledge leads directly to our deaths.
Doesn't looking at individual cases suggest that God will enlighten some people, but not others?
But I'm not sure we can get further, and I don't mean this disrespectfully. But delving into the details of how we analyse what we can know about the Incarnation is so difficult that maybe it's just a question of each person seeing differently. And of course, the fact that I want to see it in a certain way is obviously going to be a factor. Maybe we just leave it there.
I admit freely that the philosophical and ethical issues are decisive for me. If it could be proved that Christianity teaches Eternal Conscious Torment, then I cease to be a Christian. It's as simple as that. Not that I think it can be proved, but if we get to just text-battling, Universalism can by no means be proved either. Purely on exegetical grounds I think maybe Conditional Immortality wins out, but it all hinges on the meaning of key words, and I don't think we have any true experts in NT Greek on the Ship, so best left alone.
The True Experts (TM) all disagree anyway.
Or not, if death turns out to be It.
I don't see how Materialist determinacy denies intentionality at all. Which is totally coherent.
At the moment of action, we are the agent of that 'choice'.
As for 3.
We are really intentional physio-chemical entities. And I'm delighted that someone believes on the way to Love.