election Flashcards
election definition
the idea that some people are chosen by God to enter hell or heaven.
universal election
JOHN HICK: God’s nature is omnibenevolent so it follows that logic that everyone will be saved. God’s eternal love is greater than any finite sin.
john hick book
UNIVERSAL ELECTION
‘Death and Eternal life’
he claimed that life is a process of soul making where we learn to become more virtuous. this process continues in death despite the evil that may have been committed
Limited election
- ST AUGUSTINE:
-because of original sin in Genesis 3 and the fall of humans, they have been so corrupted that they can only be saved through the grace of Jesus Christ.
-God is all-knowing so will know who would be saved as they are pre-destined. God has predestined some individuals to salvation, but has not actively predestined the rest to damnation
‘all nations will be gathered before him’ = everyone has the opportunity
CALVIN:
-he expands this and argues that since God is all-knowing he not only knew who would be saved but who would be sent to hell (DOUBLE PRE-DESTINATION)
‘some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation’
(catholics reject this saying God will send no-one to hell)
CS LEWIS: ‘the gates of hell are locked from the inside’ - God doesnt put anyone in hell.
‘inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world’
unlimited election
KARL BARTH: God is sovereign and Christ died for all. In church dogmatics he argued ‘God is both the elected God and elected man in one’ = God elected humanity by ‘taking on the flesh’ and humanity is brought into God because Jesus represents humanity.
=everyone is invited but you have to answer the call, only God knows who will accept the invitation
Karl Barth book on unlimited election
Church Dogmatics
he argued ‘God is both the elected God and elected man in one’ = God elected humanity by ‘taking on the flesh’ and humanity is brought into God because Jesus represents humanity.
what does the parable of the sheep and the goats suggest about type of election
-Jesus suggests not all people will be saved, so shuts down universalism
-limited election as the righteous were chosen ‘before the foundation of the earth’ = predestination (possible double)
=points towards unlimited election as suggests people’s actions decide judgement
Alastair McGrath
refers to election as ‘one of the most enigmatic and puzzling aspects of Christianity’
debate on heaven is ‘speculative and pointless’
heaven definition
it is the presence of God
heaven is a place
the bible teaches that Jesus has a physical body after his resurrection and this physical body went up to heaven at the ascension - meaning it went to a physical place
-revelations 1-4 quote
-NT Wright argues the resurrection points towards a future hope that all creation will be transformed. in his book SURPRISED BY HOPE, he argues that the transformation of creation is expressed in language that sign-posts what is to come.
-Isiah 25:6, he describes a rich banquet on God’s hold mountain where all his people will join him
-Pam Reynolds who has no measurable neural activity had an experience in brain surgery where she felt joy and love, saw religious figures and deceased people and thought she was in heaven
heaven as a place quote
revelations 1-4: ‘Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth,’
heaven as a spiritual state.
-origen believed the resurrection body was purely a spiritual entity which possessed the same form
-aquinas suggests the soul enters a state of beatific vision where the soul encounters God face to face (corinthians 13:12). the soul will be reunited with the body at the time of eschatology when Jesus returns in Parousia, suggesting a place where all will be raised and final judgement will take place.
key word for life after death
eschatology - the study of the end of the world
heaven does not exist
Marx argues religious concepts were a reaction to socio-economic alienation. religion promised a blissful afterlife to discourage social rebellion. heaven was a psychological projection rooted in the childish fear of death.
heaven is a symbol of a moral and spiritual life
Benjamin Ritschl interpreted the kingdom of God as a present set of moral values - heaven is a present state where they are blissfully happy as they are virtuous in this life.
Waterfield sugests heaven is not a palce but a symbol that represents ‘blissful happiness in our interaction with other people’ ie our moral life together
Jesus says in Luke 17:20 ‘the coming of the kingdom of god is not something that can be observes, nor will people say ‘here it is’ or ‘there it is’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.’
sheep and goats parable on heaven
‘the righteous into eternal life’ is a reward for feeding the hungry, visiting the prisoners, clothing the naked. suggests there will be a reward
does God’s judgement take place at death or at the end of time
+parable of the sheep and the goats: ‘all the nations (of history) will be gathered before him’
-purgatory
hell definition
seperation from God
hell is a place
+revelations 21 vision of ‘a lake of fire’ where bad people are tossed in
+dante’s divine comedy describes the journey through Inferno (hell) down through the 9 layers of immorality
+jonathan edwards: ‘sinners in the hands of an angry God’ = protestants emphasize hell as a punishment for sin and a place where people suffer eternally
+NT Wright suggests that language of hell in the bible sign-posts eschatological judgement but should not be read as dramatically as a literal burning lake.
hell is a spiritual state.
-origen argues ‘each sinner kindles his own fire and our vices from its fuel.’ punishment is not inflicted through a God or Satan but through each person’s ‘interior anger’
-Gregory Nyassa agrees and links judgement to the way in which a person’s consciousness condemns them thorugh guilt and shame
hell doesnt exist
Marx- language of the afterlife is a form of social control aimed at keeping people in their place
Freud - reflects a psychological fear of death
Dawkins - hell is based on fear and to teach children irrational beliefs is abuse
Hume - calls God’s justice into question because a finite sin can never deserve eternal punishment.
Hick: hard to imagine a perfectly loving God would allow his creatures to suffer for eternity. rejects eternal hell.
Leibnz: ‘it seems strange that evil must triumph over good under the supreme authority of the one who is sovereign good’
‘conditionalism’ which was popular in 80s: unless you accept christ, you will cease to exist.
hell is a symbol of a moral and spiritual life
-paul tillich: hell is symbolic. language of hell represents our psychological and spiritual alienation. ‘hell must be taken seriousl as metaphors for the polar ultimate in the experience of the divine’ (heaven represents a fulfilled moral life and fear is the polar opposite filled with dread and despair)
purgatory definition
roman catholic teaching by augustine and origen that people can still be saved after death but have to cleanse their souls. an individual comes to terms with the full meaning of repentanc and grace
purgatory exists corinthians
+corinthians 3:15 ‘anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, through he himself will be saves, but only as through fire’
+ 2 Maccabees 12:46 ‘it is therefore holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sin’
+catherine of genoa: ‘because the souls in purgatory are without the guilt of sin, there is no obstacle between them and god except the pain that holds them back’ = we are released from sins that hold us from God who has already forgiven us.
corinthians 3:15
‘anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, through he himself will be saves, but only as through fire
2 maccabees 12:46
‘it is therefore holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sin’
purgatory is a place
+corinthians 3:15
+catherine of genoa - ‘souls in purgatory are without the guilt of sin, there is no obstacle between them and god except the pain that holds them back’ - purgatory is a place where we are released from sins that hold is back to god
-origen and clement of alexandria taught that those who died without time to perfrom works of penance would be ‘purified through fire’ in the next life.
purgatory is a spiritual state
-catechism of catholic chuch says that ‘after death they undergo purificaiton, so as to achieve holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven’ => purgatory is not a place but a process through which souls that are not fully repentant are able to be made ready and pure for heaven
-origen argues that purgatory was like a probationary school where souls are perfected. better understood as an analogy than literally as a place.
-John Hick: ‘the gap between the individuals imperfections at the end of this life and the perfectly heavenly state in which he is to be participated has to be bridged’ approach is based on soul making, rejects the idea of a final heaven and hell.
purgatory is the symbol of a spiritual and moral life
-NT Wright agues there are no scriptural reasons for purgatory. the death of Jesus means people will be saved and there is no need for further purification since Jesus defeated sin and death all together. suggests the language of purgatory is a metaphor for the spiritual struggles to live a holy and spiritual life, as we are conscious that sometimes we fail to live as god wants
-Karl Rahner: it is a metaphor for the soul’s greater awareness of sin in the time between the particular judgement and the final judgement
sheep and goats on purgatory
does not confirm this. there is division between the righteous and the unrighteous who are sent immediately to heaven and hell - there is no 3rd category.
heaven in the old testament
‘where lion will dwell with lamb’, ‘people will ‘beat their swords into ploughshares’ and he describes a rich banquet on God’s hold mountain where all his people will join him- Isiah 25:6
bultmann on heaven
demythologized the bible
He emphasized faith as radical obedience to God in the present moment, where humans experience either Heaven or Hell in each moment. Therefore, Bultmann’s belief in heaven is not in the traditional sense of a physical place but as an existential state of being in relation to God
parable of the sheep and goats key takeaways
-judgement at the end of time ‘all nations gathered before him’
-chosen by God at the foundation of the world ‘inherit the kingdom prepared for you’
-judged by what they did not believed ‘for i was hungry and you gave me food, i was naked and you gave me clothes, i was in prison you visited me’
-God identifies with the marginalised and you are encouraged to show solidarity with the poor - motive is not to serve God but to do what is right ‘lord when was it we saw you hungry or thirsty’
will we be physically resurrected? St Augustine
physical bodies are what leads us to sin and restricts us from being with God. only through god’s grace can we overcome our physical problems.
-only the spiritual remains when we die. the physical submits itself to the spiritual and animalistic desires of the body leave.
will we be physically resurrected? Origen
-got content from plato
-god made our souls at creation and later puts them into bodies (links to world of forms)
-doesnt believe God would allow imperfect physical bodies into heaven
=REPLACED BY A SPIRITUAL BODY IN HEAVEN = non-physical soul
will we be physically resurrected? St Thomas Aquinas
we cant behold God’s essence with bodily eyes as God isnt bodily (beatific vision)
instead we see him with the mind
will we be physically resurrected? methiodus of olympus
artist made a statue, someone defaced it. to be able to get the perfect statue - youd have to melt down then recraft to make perfect once more
-god intended for us to have free will so it is okay if you sin. rather than eradicate sinful physical and keep the pure good, God melts us down to create us as perfect again in the way we were intended.
=Physical resurrection
will we be physically resurrected? Richard Swinburne
at death the body ceases to function and gradually decays (empirically true)
what happens to the soul is God’s will. he can choose to keep it in existence forever. the soul is the real you and needed to be able to continue living.
