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The Prodigal Son and Satan

lunamoth

Will to love
Since I am unfamiliar with universalism to begin with, the statement in post #36 is not only useless but seems like a rather insufficient way to support ones claim.
Well, your suggestion is good, in fact I'm sure there are a number of threads on this topic where Soj has given his views on this, including the relevant Biblical passages. I think his reply may have been one out of weariness at having his views once again called 'non-Biblical.' I don't mean to speak on behalf of Sojourner, but since I share many of his views on this I am sympahtetic to his situation.
 

sojourner

Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
Why not start a thread called "Universalist Themes in the Bible," list them in the thread, then link to that thread whenever anyone asks for you to support your claim?
One would think that that is a much better alternative to "Read it for yourself."
There have been threads. Since I don't know how to link threads, your suggestion seems rather more useless than asking someone to "read it for themselves.
 

sojourner

Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
Well, your suggestion is good, in fact I'm sure there are a number of threads on this topic where Soj has given his views on this, including the relevant Biblical passages. I think his reply may have been one out of weariness at having his views once again called 'non-Biblical.' I don't mean to speak on behalf of Sojourner, but since I share many of his views on this I am sympahtetic to his situation.
BINGBINGBINGBINGBING! Yahtzee! You hit the nail on the head. Thank you.
 

McBell

Resident Sourpuss
There have been threads. Since I don't know how to link threads, your suggestion seems rather more useless than asking someone to "read it for themselves.
Goto that thread.
Highlight what is in the address bar.
Right click the highlighted text.
Select "copy" from the list
Goto message you want the link to be.
right click and select "paste"
 

sojourner

Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
Goto that thread.
Highlight what is in the address bar.
Right click the highlighted text.
Select "copy" from the list
Goto message you want the link to be.
right click and select "paste"
AND THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE!!!

Thanks for the tutorial.:)
 

sojourner

Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
Why not start a thread called "Universalist Themes in the Bible," list them in the thread, then link to that thread whenever anyone asks for you to support your claim?
One would think that that is a much better alternative to "Read it for yourself."
It has never proven to do any good to go to such measures. The usual answer is: "Oh, you're interpreting that wrong." I'm just not of a mind to go to all that fuss for nothing.
Luna's right. I'm tired of doing that for no return on the investment.
 

McBell

Resident Sourpuss
It has never proven to do any good to go to such measures. The usual answer is: "Oh, you're interpreting that wrong." I'm just not of a mind to go to all that fuss for nothing.
Luna's right. I'm tired of doing that for no return on the investment.
Fair enough.
However, what is the thread in question so that I may go and learn about it?
 

lunamoth

Will to love
Maybe this will help a bit:

Apocatastasis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

wiki said:
[edit] Christianity

In Christianity, apocatastasis is the doctrine of the ultimate reconciliation of good and evil. Apocatastasis maintains that all moral creatures -- angels, humans and devils -- will eventually come to a harmony in God's kingdom. It is based on the Biblical passage in 1 Corinthians 15:28 ("When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.") and was extensively preached in the Eastern church by St. Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus, and in the Western church by Ambrose of Milan in the 4th century. Jerome (347-420) initially believed but then recanted and Basil the Great (330-379), who opposed the doctrine, wrote that the majority of Christians believed.
The belief was first articulated and defended by Origen of Alexandria (185-232) and Clement of Alexandria (?-215), two theologians who were schooled and steeped in Hellenistic philosophy and familiar with Gnostic and Mystery Cult writings. They freely adapted neo-Platonic terminology and ideas to Christianity while explaining and differentiating the new faith from all the others.[8] [9]. Some scholars credit Origen's On First Principles as the first Christian systematic theological work.[10] It contained key concepts of the Trinity and Free Will as well as Apocatastasis.

A little more than a century later, another systematic theologian, Augustine of Hippo (354-386), focused on a different part of the bible and formulated what later developed into the doctrine of double predestination, which is the belief that some people are predestined for salvation and some people are predestined for damnation.[11] Constantinople 543 condemned Apocatastasis and the Anathema was formally submitted to the Fifth Ecumenical Synod of Constantinople (553). However, Origen's other theology about transmigration of souls and the possibility of glorified man falling again to restart the cycle played a role.[9] The Anathema against apocatastasis, or more accurately, against the belief that hell is not eternal, was not ratified despite support from the Emperor, and it is absent from the Anathemas spoken against Origen at Constantinople II.

Apocatastasis almost disappeared from Christian thought despite some respected theologians such as Maximus the Confessor, Scotus Erigena, Amalric of Bena and Hans Denck who continued to believe in the doctrine then generally considered heterodox by the Western Church. The belief became more public during the Protestant Reformation when all Catholic doctrines and practices were called into question, causing Adolf von Harnack, church historian, to state that nearly all Reformers were "apocatastatists at heart".[12]

However, it should be noted that certain small groups who claimed to have preceded the Protestant Reformation, such as the early Anabaptists and Sabbatarian Church of God groups, did teach a form of apocatastasis and were condemned by the Latin and later Reformation churches. Groups, such as the Living Church of God, Philadelphia Church of God, and other Post Armstrong Churches, which claim the Sabbatarian Anabaptists as ancestors, still teach that God will raise the dead and later call everyone who was not called in this age and that nearly everyone will ultimately accept that calling.

A related belief is Universalism, which is the doctrine that all human beings will be saved from eternal damnation or annihilation in hell.

[edit] Apocatastatic themes in the Bible

Origen's extensive writings showed great familiarity with the body of literature that eventually became canonized at a council in Carthage in 387.[13] The Bible, which contains multiple stories of apocatastatic fall from grace followed by redemption and restoration, formed the bedrock of his theology.

Latin Bible c. 1407


These stories contain three key elements.
  1. The person or nation going through the cycle is fundamentally marked and changed by their experiences.
  2. There is a subtle current of inclusiveness that weave through these stories. In the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas' Parable of the Lost Sheep, the lost sheep is one of the largest and the shepherd abandons his ninety-nine to search for it. When he finds it, he tells it, "I love you more than the ninety-nine" (Gospel of Thomas, v. 107). In the Christian Gospels, the shepherd searches for the sheep only because it is lost.
  3. The person or nation sometimes return to something glorious and mysterious. It is a homecoming but it's not a place that they have been before. These are seen in the Eschatological prophecies for Egypt and Assyria in Isaiah (Isaiah 19:23-25), for Sodom in Ezekiel (Ezekiel 16:53-55) and for the entire world in Revelation (Revelation 21-22).
The word, apocatastasis, only appears once in the Bible in Acts 3:21. Peter heals a handicapped beggar and then addresses the astonished onlookers. His sermon sets Jesus in the Jewish context, the fulfiller of the Abrahamic Covenant, and says, "He [Jesus] must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything (apocatastasis), as he promised long ago through his holy prophets." [1]
 
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