Kirk Cameron Rejects Eternal Conscious Torment, Embraces Conditional Immortality

[makesends]

Josheb said:
Got a question for you @JesusFan. As you envision the new, restored, heavens and earth, does sin exist in the new heavens and earth? How about death? In the new and restored heavens and earth, does death exist? It's a simply yes or no inquiry. I'm not interested in digression or overwrought explanations that don't actually answer the question asked.


Does sin and death exist in the new heavens and earth?

makesends said:
Do you line up the new heavens and earth with 'all there is' at that point. Does 'all reality' = 'new heavens and earth'?

Not sure I understand the question because there has always been an existence prior to the creating of creation. The heavens and the earth (whether old or new) is/are created. The reality of that creation is, likewise, created. God could create an infinite number of creations, and each creation might have its own reality that is real, real reality. Because by definition each would have its own limits/limitations, each would be different from uncreated reality. No creation is God. Therefore, no "all reality" in/of any creation equals all reality.

Therefore, the word "all" needs to be removed from the inquiry unless it is qualified to apply only to the creation in which that reality exists. Then the question becomes circular and, therefore, nonsensical. Does the new creation "line up" with all that exists in the new creation? Yes. The ambiguous "line up" must also be defined. Does the new creation's reality all there is of that creation's reality. Yes, that is the necessity of that created creation. As to my inquiry about the existence of sin and death in the new heavens and earth, the new creation, all questions about reality must pertain to that inquiry because anything outside of the inquiry is off topic. Annihilation (if that is what occurs) is an intra-creation condition, not an extra-creation one. Any and all reality existing outside the created creation is irrelevant.

A simple, "no", would have sufficed, lol.

Perhaps I was projecting, but your question to @JesusFan (who holds to ECT, I think) seemed to assume something along the lines of 'once annihilation sets in, there is only the one reality of new heavens and new earth, (which necessarily includes no death, sin or hell)', or, as seemingly posed to JF, "How can there be ECT if at that point (post resurrection) the only reality is the new heavens and new earth?"

 

[JesusFan]

Josheb said:
Got a question for you @JesusFan. As you envision the new, restored, heavens and earth, does sin exist in the new heavens and earth? How about death? In the new and restored heavens and earth, does death exist? It's a simply yes or no inquiry. I'm not interested in digression or overwrought explanations that don't actually answer the question asked.


Does sin and death exist in the new heavens and earth?

makesends said:
Do you line up the new heavens and earth with 'all there is' at that point. Does 'all reality' = 'new heavens and earth'?

A simple, "no", would have sufficed, lol.

Perhaps I was projecting, but your question to @JesusFan (who holds to ECT, I think) seemed to assume something along the lines of 'once annihilation sets in, there is only the one reality of new heavens and new earth, (which necessarily includes no death, sin or hell)', or, as seemingly posed to JF, "How can there be ECT if at that point (post resurrection) the only reality is the new heavens and new earth?"

If you mean here the Eternal State, there will be no more sin, death, but shall be forever more saved and lost who had been physically resurrected

 

[JesusFan]

Depending on what you mean, by "just ceased to exist", I disagree. In the annihilationist thinking, they don't "just cease to have existed". And there's the difference. If, at the end of their punishment/judgement, they are eliminated, it doesn't imply that they did not live at some point.

If they are eliminated and there is a cessation of torment because there is no longer anybody to receive that retribution and punishment, it could have been infinite punishment (fitting the infinite crime against infinite God) in some other way than unending time passage.

Except Jesus stated that they will be varying levels of punishment in hell, and do not see if all get smoked out as fulfilling that

 

[JesusFan]

Got a question for you @JesusFan. As you envision the new, restored, heavens and earth, does sin exist in the new heavens and earth? How about death? In the new and restored heavens and earth, does death exist? It's a simply yes or no inquiry. I'm not interested in digression or overwrought explanations that don't actually answer the question asked.


Does sin and death exist in the new heavens and earth?

Not in the ternal state, but there shall remain physically resurrected saved and lost

 

[JesusFan]

That is incorrect.

Aside from the fallacious appeal to purity, even humans regularly execute "true" judgment by causing the perpetrators of certain crime to cease to exist. It's called capital punishment. God's a big fan of it.

All the concerns you've broached have been addressed in this thread (and not just by me). Have you read through the thread?

Not all criminals though het the capital penalty applied towards them, and if all got crease to exist, would not be based upon varying degrees of punishment, and God seems to see living forever even in eternal lake preferable to just ceasing to n on exist

 

[makesends]

makesends said:
Depending on what you mean, by "just ceased to exist", I disagree. In the annihilationist thinking, they don't "just cease to have existed". And there's the difference. If, at the end of their punishment/judgement, they are eliminated, it doesn't imply that they did not live at some point.

If they are eliminated and there is a cessation of torment because there is no longer anybody to receive that retribution and punishment, it could have been infinite punishment (fitting the infinite crime against infinite God) in some other way than unending time passage.

Except Jesus stated that they will be varying levels of punishment in hell, and do not see if all get smoked out as fulfilling that

You're missing my point. I'm saying that the intensity of their punishment would be equivalent to 'unending', but in a non-temporal situation, and would also be equivalent to an annihilation which also is time-dependent, as is ECT. No need for any "all gets smoked out" notion.

It's a little analogical to the "when is the elect justified?" question that occupied a couple threads, not long ago. One person was trapped in the notion of the TIME at which it happens, instead of the facts of what happens, and how it happens. —We KNOW the facts, here: Rebellion/disobedience/enmity against God will be paid precisely and thoroughly by the offender. But our concepts and terminology concerning the facts mislead us, I think, into thinking we understand what is done there. I think that we mostly agree that the post-resurrection state of the Redeemed is not quite temporal, in the way we currently perceive "temporal". So why should the torments of hell be temporally discerned?

To me, it is quite likely that the question is not how long it takes, nor whether it ends, but, rather, "Who are these people, really, to whom God has not shown saving mercy? What does God do to them, and why? What is the distance between what happens to them according to what they deserve, and what happens to those who are saved by the Grace of God? What is the distance between the ontology of the reprobate, and the ontology of the redeemed?" Other questions I also think are relevant: "What, really, IS death, and destruction, and consuming, and torment, and the other biblical terms and adjectives appropriate to that 'realm'?

 

[makesends]

Not all criminals though het the capital penalty applied towards them, and if all got crease to exist, would not be based upon varying degrees of punishment, and God seems to see living forever even in eternal lake preferable to just ceasing to n on exist

Two thoughts jump out at me here: The wages of sin is death and, Annihilationism does not propose an even field, but only an ending of existence at some point. Dying, and then consummated death.