Universalism and Annihilationism - Explain why are they heresy

Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus all alluded to some form of conditional immortality. Don't just dismiss that, think on it. John Wesley also alluded to it … albeit just once. Certain dyed-in-the-wool Anglicans, like John Stott, have given credence to it, if not full-throated support.

On the other side of the same coin of God-will-not-punish-for-eternity is the universalists whom Kallistos Ware says includes "several of the Fathers have none the less believed that in the end all will be reconciled to God." and, channelling them, some Orthanon here has posted repeatedly (and passionately) defences of the same idea. George MacDonald, whose fantasy works inspired Chesterton, Lewis and Tolkien, was also a universalist. D'Engle, whose novel is a film being released nowmaybedependingonwhereyoulive and who was also inspired by MacDonald, was also a defiant universalist.

Why is are these wrong?

Second to this, if everyone is eventually saved or annihilated anyway, why do the evangelisms or suffer this hellish Christian life? Why endure? What advantage is there in it if all are saved? Do we then embrace multi-tiered heavens like the Mormons do?

inb4 ur looking for an easy way out!
inb4 muh Pope says it is
inb4 heretic / troll / etc
Let's do this topic properly, shall we?

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Other urls found in this thread:

newadvent.org/fathers/0105.htm
earlychristianwritings.com/text/justinmartyr-dialoguetrypho.html
newadvent.org/fathers/0103234.htm
prophecy.land/2329-prophecy/
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

Sauce?

Hell is everything else, because everything else is blemished.

I've thought about universalism in the past. I don't see why anyone should be comfortable with the idea of universal salvation, as I've imagined, because it would make hell an extension of purgatory. Contrary to what one might think, the choice between heaven and hell might not be obvious to people torn apart from God's eternal presence and grace, and sinners would suffer in hell for as long as they were either arrogant or stupid enough (which is the same) to still deny Christ, even after death.

Yeah. I pulled those from other sources. I'm not entirely convinced.
From the Epistle to the Magnesians, Ch6:
newadvent.org/fathers/0105.htm
… Ignatius writes:
Not "evidence of your salvation", but "of your immortality", implying that we win immortality from Christ, not just salvation.

Secondly, from:
earlychristianwritings.com/text/justinmartyr-dialoguetrypho.html
… Chapter V, Justin Martyr writes:
>Thus some which have appeared worthy of God never die; but others are punished so long as God wills them to exist and to be punished.'
Also, apparently in his Second Apology, Ch7, he writes:
And YET, he also writes in his First Apology Ch28 that:
So, it seems he changed his view between those two apologies.

And thirdly, Irenaeus in Against Heresies, Book II, Chapter 34, paragraph 3:
newadvent.org/fathers/0103234.htm
>For life does not arise from us, nor from our own nature; but it is bestowed according to the grace of God. And therefore he who shall preserve the life bestowed upon him, and give thanks to Him who imparted it, shall receive also length of days for ever and ever. But he who shall reject it, and prove himself ungrateful to his Maker, inasmuch as he has been created, and has not recognised Him who bestowed [the gift upon him], deprives himself of [the privilege of] continuance for ever and ever. And, for this reason, the Lord declared to those who showed themselves ungrateful towards Him: "If you have not been faithful in that which is little, who will give you that which is great?" indicating that those who, in this brief temporal life, have shown themselves ungrateful to Him who bestowed it, shall justly not receive from Him length of days for ever and ever.
In the following paragraph, he adds:
The inference is, then, that God gives life, God can take life away, but the soul … er, may be eternal???

I'll add that the New Catholic Encyclopedia reads, "From time to time there has recurred the idea of conditional immortality … Irenaeus said that the soul is not immortal by nature, but it can become immortal if it lives according to God’s law."

Do with that as you choose.

>because it would make hell an extension of purgatory
bad because … ?
I have no doubt about this, but universalism-orthbro would argue, were he here, that "eternity is a very, very, very long time"

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Considering that he also calls Eucharist "medicine of immortality" it's clear that he use as equivalent to being saved.
And God wills that nothing should perish for he did not make anything that he wills to destroy - for he would not create it.
Not exist fundamentally but in current state.
Or that you see a cow in place of a dog.
If soul (of man) was not eternal God would not give to it "length of days for ever and ever."

If the penalty for murder was lowered to 30 years would you murder?
We universalists DO believe in punishment its just not eternal.

Picked-up pic related as a handy helper on the topic.


Sounds to me like someone is pretty triggered by this thread. Or, more precisely, by my bringing the church fathers into the fray.
You're all over the place making justifications that don't really stand-up to much scrutiny.
Yes, but that only reinforces my point: he equates salvation and immortality and, by inference, the unsaved are therefore not immortal. Otherwise, why use the word "immortality" at all if ALL are immortal? He's applying a condition on it.
Are you applying your own logic to what God is doing, user?
Doesn't stand-up to scrutiny since He has allowed much to be destroyed (incl. future tense) that He Himself made: the present heavens and earth being not the least.
wut … ?
Are you playing word games here? I think you're playing some legalistic word games.
And oooouuuuttt comes the ad hominem. It's all my fault because I can't read what is made vague in front of me.
Nah, mang, "so long as God wills them to exist"/"cease to exist" is pretty clear.
Try again, fam.
Psalm 21, once again, is not universal: it applies to one man, the king; nor, even if it was, does it negate any conditionality for the king ASKS for life
< He asked you for life, and you gave it to him – length of days, for ever and ever.
Just as the Cathbro encyclopaedia says, Irenaeus said the soul was not immortal by nature, but could be made so at God's discretion. For "the king" of the Psalm, it was granted.

Nah, mang, I may not disagree with you in terms of a traditional view of such things, but your argumentation is not slam-dunking the traditional view at all. Let's face facts, some early church fathers appeared to have thought immortality was conditional.


LAAAWWWL
in my woeful excuse for a country, you can murder someone and get out in eight years.

I get that. It just sounds like purgatory ad infinitum until the Adolph Hitlers of the world finally relent.

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Here's the real reason universalism is wrong. The final real reason.

We can pray and hope that God is so merciful that he saves the majority of his creations. To have sincere faith in God's mercy in a way that doesn't lead to complacency and in a way that sanctifies you, in my layperson opinion, is mostly a good thing.

HOWEVER: the universalist says the following thing, very confidently – "Most assuredly, I, who am speaking, will go to paradise, and I will be numbered with the saints, and no matter how many sins I have to bear, I will most certainly not go to hell."

This is an extremely, extremely prideful statement to make. Never in any of the early Christian works do you hear respected theologians say "I will go to heaven." Actually, the desert fathers were extremely big on never being certain of salvation, and always trying to find the log in your own eye.

That, in my opinion, is why universalism should not be held as an opinion by a Christian.

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It doesn't matter what you believe, it is God's decision.
prophecy.land/2329-prophecy/

Neither of those support ann*hilationism, and in fact, several of those support universalism, like "by which the wicked angels and demons and men shall cease to exist" (we see such clensing and "destroying" fire in works of St. Isaac of Syria).
This is a thinly veiled ann*hilationist thread and its pretty clear that you dont give a crap about universalism, as you didn't even post important church fathers that supported it, such as St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Isaac the Syrian.
Your thread is garbage your views are garbage and dont even bother to reply, I'm not coming back to this degenerate topic.

That site is obscure

Despair of salvation is sin.

Universalists don't believe there is no Hell… Universalists believe Gehenna is of a purgatorial nature.

All of this depends on your idea of eternity as an infinitely long time.

Once you consider god as outside the time domain, eternal punishment=definitive punishment and most apparent contradictions in the NT become less so.

this is great advice for me btw

The mods want this thread to die

...

Even thiough I'm Orthodox I take the condition of eternal torment very seriously. Being in the presence of God is a fixed thing, You're in suspended animation, if his glory burns then it burns continuously.

Yes thank you for your insight that I do believe without doubt that you have personally experienced yourself, even though there are numerous other and extremely contrary information from other sources, but hey a post on Zig Forums is more important than those

The grave isn't final judgement. If anything there may be some possibility of redemption in sheol. However I wouldn't base anything off of
"experiences" by which you presumably mean NDE's.

Thank you for your glorious insight that I was unaware of
I dont. I'm talking about other theologoumenas in general.
Also, I'll be honest with you, the only part that I have problem with was this
This is stupid

P.S. before you ask, no, I'm not rooting for apokatastasis nor do I believe in it. I do hope that thiswill be the case in the and, though I doubt it.

Of course its a nice thought. Its not some subterranean torture chamber, nor is it a free pass, its the final state of the soul on its own terms. By "suspended animation" I meant that no spiritual change can actually take place once you're in the presence of the absolute. Be it heaven or hell, the experience is surely beyond comprehensible.

I was rather calm. I sometimes rant here but that was not the case.
Do you really presume that this topic is worthy of lengthy answers?
I remind you that if a=>b then you cannot say that b=>a. He calls being saved immortality, not immortality salvation.
Also, he says this:
Corrupters of families will not inherit the kingdom of God. And if they who do these things according to the flesh suffer death, how much more if a man corrupt by evil reaching the faith of God for the sake of which Jesus Christ was crucified? A man become so foul will depart into unquenchable fire, and so will anyone who listens to him (Letter to the Ephesians 16:1-2)
Plus he refers to Last Judgment in his epistle to Smyrna. You cannot have Last Judgment without immorality of soul.
No. I do however paraphrase Scripture that Justin himself used, namely Wisdom of Solomon and Sirach.
Plus to use Justin own words: Every man will receive the eternal punishment or reward which his actions deserve (FA 12)
It's plain. Nor wicked nor demons will cease to exist i.e. they will stop being and pass into nothingness. But they will cease to exist in current state. Or to use Justin again:
[Jesus] shall come from the heavens in glory with his angelic host, when he shall raise the bodies of all the men who ever lived. Then he will clothe the worthy in immortality; but the wicked, clothed in eternal sensibility, he will commit to the eternal fire, along with the evil demons (FA 52)
You want to see things, you will see things. Devil will provide. Luther wanted to see "faith alone" everywhere where faith is mentioned and he did. But as reading of NT disproves Luther so reading of Justin and other fathers disproove you as alredy prooven in above paragraph.
But that's not how Ireanus uses this psalm. He does not even quote it in length, he just barrows language. In another place, namely AH 4:28:2) he explains about soul of the wicked:
The penalty increases for those who do not believe the Word of God and despise his coming. . . . It is not merely temporal, but eternal. To whomsoever the Lord shall say, "Depart from me, accursed ones, into the everlasting fire," they will be damned forever.
Some early fathers distinguished immorality with Christ, true immorality, from natural immorality of the soul.

I'll say, whatever the ultimate outcome, Universalism is far from a "doctrine of demons". Nobody will be damned on the basis of believing that all will come to repentance, for that is exactly what the Lord wants above all. Meanwhile to try to anticipate who exactly should be damned or to wish that any particular person, no matter how evil, will be tormented for eternity is the presumptuous attempt to revel and participate in the judgement reserved for God alone. These legalistic moralists do not realize the jeopardy they put their own souls in with this sadistic line of thinking. Let us pray for them.

I'm glad you feel this way. In another thread, an user stated that God has turned his back on sodomites, and that any who have committed the act are beyond His mercy. I find this viewpoint more offensive than the concept of universalism.