if you switch from the standard evangelical version of the story to one that involves being actually made better. I think that's implying a false dichotomy - I don't think most evangelicals would dispute the account I gave. It's just differing emphases. They don't put it in tracts, but that's because tracts are necessarily brief introductions aimed at people unfamiliar with the message.
Christians seem to be awfully willing to postulate necessary truths for which there's no evidence other than "if this were true it would make it easier to believe what Christianity says" :-). It was admittedly speculative - I said "it's possible" and "I don't know". Sorry if it was sloppy of me to do it even with those caveats. Is it a general trend? Where else have you noticed it?
or (2) something does happen which dramatically changes those relative merits, so dramatically that you become a Heavenly Creature and Paul becomes a Hellish Creature, in which case I think you're missing an account of why that happens and why it's either fair or inevitable that it does so. So - this is also speculation - but it could be that when we die we end up outside time, as God is sometimes thought to be - or at least somewhere where "a thousand years is as a day". That would have two consequences: 1) the upward or downward trajectory could be continued to its conclusion instantly, even if it would have taken millennia of our time; and 2) it may be that the direction can no longer be changed, because there's no longer time to change it. Or, it could be that after death (with or without time-contraction) God perfects people, but can only do so in those who are willing to let him, i.e. those already positively disposed towards him, because he still will not override anyone's will.
it really doesn't seem terribly plausible that Christians when they die are all such that encounter with God would be blissful, nor that non-Christians when they die are all the reverse I think it's certainly plausible, although I can't argue that it's certain. I think some souls are fundamentally aligned in the right direction, and the mistakes they make don't change that, and others aligned in the wrong direction, and the things they get right by luck or their own strength don't change that. King David is a good example of the former - he did some terrible things, but I'm sure that when he met God he was delighted. (There's some stuff at the end of Screwtape, and also elsewhere in Lewis, about how there is pain even for the saved when they meet God, but it's a welcome kind of pain, like removing a scab or a diseased tooth. I imagine that pain is proportional to sins committed on earth. But perhaps the unsaved are those who don't welcome it, who want to keep their scabs and diseased teeth.)
it seems odd that the god who supposedly loves us all enough to die for us wouldn't take the elementary steps that would enable far more of us to *know* (as opposed to "be told, not very credibly") about the problem and its solution. *sigh* Yes. I admit I struggle with that. I think if I had one question to ask God it would be something like "Why don't you make yourself more visible to people? Especially my non-Christian friends?"
I don't know the answer. There are proposed answers, and I expect you know them. Ironically, one of them is roughly what you've been saying on the other branch of the thread: that if we knew with absolute certainty we'd be guaranteed to choose right and then it wouldn't be a free choice.
Something which I think is true - although I find it difficult to believe when I'm having doubts, and you may find it difficult to believe too - is that it is fundamentally our disobedience rather than our incomplete knowledge that prevents us coming to God. The evidence for this is various people in the Old Testament, who had much better evidence that God existed and still disobeyed him. Adam and Eve walked with him in the garden; the Israelites in the desert saw the Red Sea part and the pillars of cloud and fire, and then made their golden calf. I kid myself that my doubts and sins are due to incomplete knowledge, and would disappear if God revealed himself; but in reality I'd probably have been helping build that calf.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2008-05-30 05:29 pm (UTC)I think that's implying a false dichotomy - I don't think most evangelicals would dispute the account I gave. It's just differing emphases. They don't put it in tracts, but that's because tracts are necessarily brief introductions aimed at people unfamiliar with the message.
Christians seem to be awfully willing to postulate necessary truths for which there's no evidence other than "if this were true it would make it easier to believe what Christianity says" :-).
It was admittedly speculative - I said "it's possible" and "I don't know". Sorry if it was sloppy of me to do it even with those caveats. Is it a general trend? Where else have you noticed it?
or (2) something does happen which dramatically changes those relative merits, so dramatically that you become a Heavenly Creature and Paul becomes a Hellish Creature, in which case I think you're missing an account of why that happens and why it's either fair or inevitable that it does so.
So - this is also speculation - but it could be that when we die we end up outside time, as God is sometimes thought to be - or at least somewhere where "a thousand years is as a day". That would have two consequences: 1) the upward or downward trajectory could be continued to its conclusion instantly, even if it would have taken millennia of our time; and 2) it may be that the direction can no longer be changed, because there's no longer time to change it.
Or, it could be that after death (with or without time-contraction) God perfects people, but can only do so in those who are willing to let him, i.e. those already positively disposed towards him, because he still will not override anyone's will.
it really doesn't seem terribly plausible that Christians when they die are all such that encounter with God would be blissful, nor that non-Christians when they die are all the reverse
I think it's certainly plausible, although I can't argue that it's certain. I think some souls are fundamentally aligned in the right direction, and the mistakes they make don't change that, and others aligned in the wrong direction, and the things they get right by luck or their own strength don't change that. King David is a good example of the former - he did some terrible things, but I'm sure that when he met God he was delighted. (There's some stuff at the end of Screwtape, and also elsewhere in Lewis, about how there is pain even for the saved when they meet God, but it's a welcome kind of pain, like removing a scab or a diseased tooth. I imagine that pain is proportional to sins committed on earth. But perhaps the unsaved are those who don't welcome it, who want to keep their scabs and diseased teeth.)
it seems odd that the god who supposedly loves us all enough to die for us wouldn't take the elementary steps that would enable far more of us to *know* (as opposed to "be told, not very credibly") about the problem and its solution.
*sigh* Yes. I admit I struggle with that. I think if I had one question to ask God it would be something like "Why don't you make yourself more visible to people? Especially my non-Christian friends?"
I don't know the answer. There are proposed answers, and I expect you know them. Ironically, one of them is roughly what you've been saying on the other branch of the thread: that if we knew with absolute certainty we'd be guaranteed to choose right and then it wouldn't be a free choice.
Something which I think is true - although I find it difficult to believe when I'm having doubts, and you may find it difficult to believe too - is that it is fundamentally our disobedience rather than our incomplete knowledge that prevents us coming to God. The evidence for this is various people in the Old Testament, who had much better evidence that God existed and still disobeyed him. Adam and Eve walked with him in the garden; the Israelites in the desert saw the Red Sea part and the pillars of cloud and fire, and then made their golden calf. I kid myself that my doubts and sins are due to incomplete knowledge, and would disappear if God revealed himself; but in reality I'd probably have been helping build that calf.