By gfackre on 7/10/2009 7:27 PM

Everlasting Death?


All biblical images of life everlasting imply, indeed even portray, its opposite. What would that contrary be?

The Yes of “life together” would face a No of “life apart,” everlasting estrangement from the relationships God intended for the world: no blessed participation in the Life Together of the triune Being; no joyful celebration of the same; no rapturous bonding in the unities God intended for us—familial, ecclesial, political; no reconciliation with or of the natural cosmos. So understood, everlasting death is more horrible than popular portrayals of fiery pain; our worst anthropomorphic imaginings seem far short of the hell of…life apart.

The fearsomeness of everlasting death, however conceived, has prompted some to argue for more hospitable endings. The most generous is that of universalism in which all will be brought to eternal life, given God’s universal desire for all to be saved (1 Tim 2:4) and ev ... Read More »

By gfackre on 7/5/2009 7:26 AM

James Luther Adams taught a generation of his students that what we hold to be true eschatologically will be what we work for ethically. In this case it means that a passionate ecological ethic rises out of a conviction that God will bring a nature renewed.

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Miroslav Volf summarizes the comprehensive Christian belief in life everlasting we have been describing in this way" "the final reconciliation of 'all things,' grounded in the work of Christ the reconciler and accomplished by the Spirit of communion, is the process by which the whole creation along with human beings will be freed from transience and sin to reach the state of eternal peace and joy in the communion with the triune God." [Miroslav Volf, "Enter Into Joy! Sin, Death and the World to Come," in THE END OF THE WORLD AND THE ENDS OF GOD: SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY ON ESCHATOLOGY, ed. John pOlki ... Read More »