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Tue May 3 10:41:24 EDT 2011


God's. ... Ultimately, we believe, and this is why we are Christians, that
it is through Jesus Christ that God will reconcile all things to himself.
How that will come about, we can only be agnostic about, whether it is
through some real but unconscious response to the Christ within them now,
or whether it is in response to some eschatological revelation, or by some
other means." Similar expressions appear on page 184.
 
Words on on 190 seem to mirror Trevor's sentiment? "In the Old Testament
the wraith-like existence of Sheol, the place of the departed under the
earth, is a place of non-being, far removed from the gift and fulfilment of
eternal life. Such non-being is the triumph of death, often envisaged as an
engulfing power opposed to God."

Page 199: "Final judgment therefore remains a reality. Moral and spiritual
choices are ultimate and serious choices. In the past the imagery of
hell-fire and eternal torment and punishment, often sadistically expressed,
has been used to frighten men and women into believing. Christians have
professed appalling theologies which made God into a sadistic monster and
left searing psychological scars on many. Over the last two centuries the
decline in the churches of the western world of a belief in everlasting
punishment has been one of the most notable transformations of Christian
belief. ... Hell is not eternal torment, but it is the final and
irrevocable choosing of that which is opposed to God so completely and so
absolutely that the only end is total non-being. Annihilation might be a
truer picture of damnation than any of the traditional images of the hell
of eternal torment."

Gilbert L. Rice




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