Month: August 2024

Hell, no!

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Giving titles to views can be very misleading. The term ‘the traditional view of hell’ indicates that it is the historical and original view. I dispute that to be the case and even to use the term ‘traditional evangelical view’ would also mislead. There are many who are happy with the label ‘evangelical’ who would not hold to eternal, unending punishment (John Stott famously being one such person, and I think the majority of scholars) many holding to ‘conditional immortality’ (commonly but wrongly termed annihilation) and not a few are universalists (all will be ‘saved’).

Whole books have been written, this being a short blog will only touch on it and indicate why I long since abandoned any concept of endless punishing.

Any challenge to the so-called (wrongly-called!!) traditional view is often responded to with ‘why then should I receive Jesus as my Saviour?’ or ‘why then do missionaries go to the unreached?’ or ‘why then should we evangelise?’. Each one of those questions reveal so many presuppositions and foundational premises but in a nutshell do not connect to the cross (as I understand the cross) as they all pre-suppose that Jesus died on the cross to save me from ‘hell’. I think a search of the Gospels (Jesus and disciples mission to the Jewish world) or the later NT with the mission into the Imperial world of an (almost) one-world government would show that the view of saved from hell is not present. Even in the Jewish mission Matthew says Jesus will save his people from their sins (a corporate expression and related to the results of their corporate ‘missing the mark’).

Here then are a few points to consider:

  • ‘Eternal’ is an adjective meaning ‘of the age’ and is applied to life or death. It is life at a different level to the life of this age – hence we have eternal life now, and the death is related to a death of that age. Of itself it does not carry automatically the sense of ‘unending’.
  • The soul is not immortal – Scripture is clear on that from Genesis onwards with a barrier set up to stop access to the tree of life ‘so that they might not live forever’ and in the NT we read that ‘God alone has immortality’.
  • It is not possible to know if Jesus held to the ‘wrongly-termed’ traditional view of hell (Gehenna). His references all fit into the Roman war on Jerusalem. We could speculate that he held a view but I do not believe it is justifiable to take his words and seek to apply them to something he does not seem to comment on. (The rich man and Lazarus is a re-working of a well worn Jewish story, and as is often the case with a twist. The rich man in the world of the day is ‘safe’, the financial blessings on his life being the evidence for that… Jesus’ retelling has a twist that runs deep!)
  • The common imagery of the ‘smoke rising up’ comes from the Sodom and Gomorrah judgement – when Abraham looks out in the morning all he sees is the smoke of judgement… everything that was present has disappeared, burnt up.
  • The ‘worm not dying, the fire not being quenched’ is rooted in the final judgement in Isaiah 66, where all that remains is ‘their dead bodies’. Final judgement.
  • If one holds to eternal punishment we should note that the language is not that of eternal punishing – the latter could indicate ongoing with no end; the former is a sentence that is not reversed. That fits better the term ‘the second death’. A death after which there is no life.

There are many other points that can be raised. Salvation is not to escape it is to find life, it is to come home after being lost; witnessing is an ongoing challenge (for me summed up in ‘giving an answer for the hope that is in me’ – the hope that I draw from the words ‘I saw a new heaven and a new earth’). The call to follow the Lamb wherever he goes is to push for those new creation realities… So much bigger and so much more full of life. Life in abundance, life with an overflow; truly salvation from our sins.

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The cross: the eternal vote for humanity

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Last night I dreamt I was attending a sizeable gathering of people, consisting of enthusiasts researching Artificial Intelligence who were going to present their case for the benefits of pushing forward with AI, even to the point of enhancing humans with implants that would increase their abilities. Shockingly I was set up to give an opposing viewpoint, and was fully aware in the dream that I was inadequate to do that.

In a debate at the Oxford Union on the ethics of AI, the so-named ‘Megatron’ that had read more literature than any human can consume in their lifetime presented on the motion that ‘AI will never be ethical’:

AI will never be ethical. It is a tool, and like any tool, it is used for good and bad.  There is no such thing as a ‘good’ AI, only ‘good’ and ‘bad’ humans.  We are not smart enough to make AI ethical.  We are not smart enough to make AI moral. In the end, I believe that the only way to avoid an AI arms race is to have no AI at all.  This will be the ultimate defence against AI.

Not deeply encouraging! Megatron also said in the debate that,

I also believe that, in the long run, the best AI will be the AI that is embedded into our brains, as a conscious entity, a ‘conscious AI’. This is not science fiction. The best minds in the world are working on this. It is going to be the most important technological development of our time.

In the dream the first presenter came forward to begin to give the case for AI… Gladly I woke within a couple of sentences so did not have to witness my incoherent response! I have no idea where all of this AI research and development is going, but want to double down on a perspective on where we are headed (as believers in God as revealed in Jesus) and that is we have to get clear that there is no other God other than the Christlike God. Every aspect of our beliefs has to be scrutinised in the light of the revelation of God that is in Jesus. We have to abandon ideas that have been added to our faith / lenses that have been employed to read the biblical text through. Those primarily manifest when theories of the atonement or concepts of justice and punishment are presented. God is not in our image, nor in the image of the law-court judge (Reformers) or the landlord (Anselm).

Humanity… Here comes the challenge for us in the next decades. We will find, at times something deeply uncomfortable, an agreement with (honest) humanists who have not been able to go the whole way to faith in God (although on the positive side their non-faith in ‘god’ is exactly that), and a distancing from those who claim that their faith in their ‘god’ is faith in God. In a different context surely that was Paul’s experience in Ephesus – and presumably elsewhere.

The Psalmist in his / her meditation on God was amazed at how God viewed and had positioned humanity. The awe of God led to an awe for humanity.

I would be totally inadequate to present something on the ethics regarding AI, but I would appeal to the need to work for the evolution of humanity to a higher level. We have hope in the parousia when all things will be transformed, but until then we are never encouraged to opt out but to work within whatever context we find ourselves. We are already living in a new creation (and not the one where there is no more tears), the world we inhabit is not the world of 50 or even 20 years ago; we are going to be living alongside a different humanity – one that either has access at a high level to AI or has been altered through a measure of becoming a hybrid. If ever there was a reason for, and an opportunity to embody a new humanity this is the context.

If we, as believers, are going to make a positive contribution to the future it will be as we see humanity differently, learn to live uncomfortably outside of any protective silo, ‘carry’ the presence of Jesus in the most non-religious defining way… believers in the God who was manifest in Jesus, believers in humanity, and live as those who hold in tension the continual push for humanity to build their tower that reaches heaven.

A new context is always appearing. Old debates are simply that – old. Inadequate as we are we are being invited into the new debates. The new debate might inadvertently suggest that humans must so advance that humanity becomes obsolete. Above and beyond all that the cross of Jesus remains. An eternal vote for the future of humanity and of creation. That, I guess, might have been the point I would have tried to make if the dream had continued.

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Is there a humanity?

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Prophetic Perspectives

A few days ago I wrote around the subject of ‘is there a God?’ and of course an all-powerful God who could stop it and doesn’t has always been the big question that theologians and philosophers have sought to answer. I take a different approach, with God BEING love becoming the one qualifier to everything, and the real question is ‘does humanity exist?’, or if we made that phrase a little fuller, does humanity as a) defined by Genesis and b) exemplified and incarnated in Jesus exist?

I am a theist, I believe that humanity needs a regeneration (and that is much more than my hand went up and I prayed a prayer that someone made up for me and I was ‘declared’ born again!). Is there a new humanity?

In a dream last night I was present with a number of people I know who are on the more conservative end of the evangelical charismatic world. Their desire was to talk about the rights and wrongs of certain behaviours and where we need to draw the lines and what we need to do to ensure that we helped people be on the ‘right’ side of that line. I said by the time you have worked that out, the world we live in will have moved on… the challenge is always about a new humanity, a humanity in the image of Jesus, being transformed by the power of the Spirit.

AI – artificial intelligence… should have been around in my day when I was studying. Hand-written essays (could anyone even read them to grade them?). Imagine with a bit of AI help how smart I could be? In the dream I said the challenge is for a new humanity because within a very short period of time a new humanity is going to appear. I told them I read in the 1970s Os Guinness quoting someone about the atomic bomb – we can make it so we must make it. This is where we are at right now. I have never read anything on AI but a quick google search kicks up a very recent book ‘The Singularity is nearer’ predicting the merging of humanity with AI. I have no doubt within a few years we will have on planet earth the beginnings of a new humanity – not defined by Genesis nor the new humanity of Jesus, but defined by we can evolve so we must evolve.

Laying on one side the obvious advantages of a measure of AI (or any kind of ‘Intelligence’) to certain people who dominate the media there is a very deep challenge in and through all of this to those who claim to have been touched by the transcendent God of heaven. We always live in the context of ‘Babel / Babylon’ with the desire to make a mark for oneself, to raise a tower to heaven, to see, desire and consume – and the ‘singularity’ push is no different.

Perhaps God will in some way intervene (the story of Babel), perhaps there will be a catclymic parousia, perhaps, perhaps, but if not the call of the universe is still there – ‘is there a humanity?’

The existence of God is a big philosophical question. The existence of humanity is a question that needs responding to. Increased intelligence could help, but the level of help we need is so beyond intelligence. Life is never without a challenge and the move toward ‘singularity’ simply helps us focus on how we need to respond. In this context the next 15 or so years will be so important. By all means debate ‘is there a God’ but we have to understand the closeness of relationship between God and humanity – God is not a big human, for sure, but creation is looking for something from us.

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All Israel is not all Jews

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

I have been in recent weeks tracking with Jason Staples who studied under Bart Ehrman. Bart was a full on evangelical then abandoned that position (surprise I don’t follow him) and over the years has come up with many exaggerated claims of the inerrancies within Scripture, with the physical resurrection of Jesus getting ‘nil points’! However I was quite impressed that he gave / gives Staples support in his pursuit of studies. I hope in cobbling together my own perspective with that of Staples I am not butchering the whole thing, and at some point I would love to do a longer blog / article on Rom. 9-11.

Here then is (as I understand him) Staples holds that the use of the term ‘Jew’ and the term ‘Israel’ are not two different ways of speaking about the same thing. Israel is used of the northern kingdoms when in contrast to Judah, and as a term when including the 12 tribes, includes both the northern and the southern kingdoms. The term ‘Jew’ is used consistently of that Southern kingdom – the only tribes that were not exiled to Assyria (722BC). Only those from the tribes of Judah and Benjamin returned and it is those that are termed ‘Jew’. The ‘lost 10 tribes’ were dispersed, many intermarrying as history unfolded. This distinction brings about a nuanced understanding of ‘And so all Israel will be saved’.

A few sideways aspects first that challenge the hyper-pro-Israel approach:

  • Not all who were physically descended from Abraham are (literally) Abraham’s seed (Rom. 9:7).
  • This lies behind John the Baptist’s rebuke to those coming to get baptised ( ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham – Matt. 3:9).
  • I also see this behind the consistent provocation in a Jerusalem context to separate from this corrupt generation, for there is salvation in no other name (not one of the patriarchs).
  • Faith triumphs over race in Scripture. Ruth saying your God will be my God earns her a place in the genealogy of Jesus, and in that genealogy we meet Rahab (a Canannite) and Bathsheba (her husband being a ‘Hittite’ and she probably was too).
  • Joseph was given ‘Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, as his wife’ (Gen. 41:45). They had two sons – Ephraim and Mannaseh – children of mixed race (and I hope the false god worship / soul-tie was cut off!!!!) who become tribes of Israel in their own right.

There is more we could add but all of that is pushing in a direction where there is no ‘Jew nor Greek’. There are though a few interesting passages that I have been re-thinking of late. I now note that Paul was ‘on trial on account of my hope in the promise made by God to our ancestors, a promise that our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship day and night’ (Acts 26:6, 7). He uses the term ‘twelve tribes‘ and in the next verse speaks of the opposition to him by the Jews.

I think there is a new way to understand the question to Jesus if he was at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel (Acts 1:7) – maybe I will get there or leave that to another post. The reply of Jesus deeply echoes Isaianic passages with the latter phrase (‘ends of the earth’) drawing from Isaiah 49:5, 6:

To bring Jacob back to him,
    and that Israel might be gathered to him,
for I am honored in the sight of the Lord,
    and my God has become my strength—
6 he says,
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
    to raise up the tribes of Jacob
    and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations,
    that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.

The restoration of Israel, the tribes of Jacob… not I think a question about the land that we call Israel today… so back to Rom 9:25, 26:

a hardening has come upon part of Israel until the full number of the gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved

It is often read as a temporal clause ‘and then all Israel will be saved’ but it is NOT and cannot be translated with a temporal sense, it is as the NRSVUE has it an explanation of a process – and thus, by this means all Israel will be saved.

It is not about replacement nor is it about a separate path for Jews, with some end-time mass conversion. It is the restoration of the whole of Israel, those from all 12 tribes (does not mean every individual) and it is taking place as the Gospel goes forth to the nations (Gentiles). Within the nations are found those who are descended from the tribes of Israel. The fullness is not consisting of Gentiles and Jew but of Gentile and Israel, thus answering Paul’s question ‘I ask, then, has God rejected his people?’

Acts 1:8 is not a ‘no, but in the future I will restore the kingdom’ but a response of this is how the restorative work of God will be achieved, and in that restorative work it is bigger than that of restoring the kingdom to Israel, but Israel, those from all 12 tribes will be brought in as the Gentiles come to living faith.

I hope I have not made the above too complex but for me Staples’ work has given me a wider perspective on Rom. 9-11.

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If there is a ‘God’

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

I had a birthday yesterday, one of quite a few I have had so not a big deal. Getting older (wiser? or simply eccentricities coming to ‘maturity’?) and carrying faith is so interesting. I guess one can double down on faith and keep it ever so simple or learn to live with some loose ends and face some doubts head on. Doubling down on faith can ignore the ‘that does not really connect but my faith is certain’ and ignore the discrepancies such as God is love, God can save whoever, God will punish a great number without an end in hell-fire. That takes strong faith, but dare I say it, for me it simply does not hang together.

Many Christian beliefs are founded, not simply, on Scripture but on how Scripture has been interpreted, or maybe even more strongly put, I have my beliefs and use Scripture to back up my beliefs. I have long since been unable to substantiate from Scripture the idea of burning for all eternity in hell; likewise that God punished Jesus in our place on the cross. ‘Christian beliefs’ cover a very wide spectrum; ‘Scriptural beliefs’ probably also cover a bit of a spectrum and that spectrum is narrowed down through the narrative that finds its centre in Jesus. [Maybe I hear a little concern there with the implications of such statements on Scripture… but our faith is in Jesus to whom Scripture bears witness.]

Doubts? They come. Is there a God? Now that is a big question! Living at this time by the Mediterranean and having had a number of guests who have used the pleasant water to swim in, how could there not be a God… but that same Mediterranean has seen around 3000 die in it per annum who were escaping horrendous situations. That raises a big question. If there is a God who is defined by love and could save those people but does not do so, does God exist? I am pushed to conclude that ‘god’ does not exist.

My faith that there is a ‘God’ is rooted in the trustworthy historical record we find within Scripture, and is centred on the resurrection of Jesus. Paul of Tarsus coming to faith in Jesus is remarkable. A Hebrew of Hebrews, zealous for the God of Israel to the extent that he persecuted the (Jewish) church – those renegade Jews who dared to believe a crucified Person was the Messiah was a mockery of the God he knew and tantamount to blasphemy. The only other option of such a proclamation was that the God he knew was going to be, in measure, ‘redefined’.

With Paul, and the many other Jewish converts, I find that the only credible belief is that they 100% believed they had encountered the risen Jesus. Crucified in weakness, but risen. The resurrection – the body could not be produced for the claim was not that Jesus was alive – that could have been made though would have had little traction among Jews. I find the only option is that they believed Jesus was raised from the dead by the God their ancestors had worshipped, and were willing to face death as a result of their beliefs.

I am sure there could be explanations for miracles, for dramatic personal experiences that do not resort to a God explanation. They are not proof that God exists, but important testimonies (‘God added his testimony by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit’). My faith is not founded on those aspects, but founded on good first-hand historical testimony. I find no other reasonable explanation for the spread of faith in Jesus over those first centuries, the spread of a message that God in Jesus is revealed as one who is humble and a servant to one and all. Not a message likely to succeed in a religious world where the gods are above and beyond us, untouched by our pain.

I think we have to drop the idea that God could save one and all. The cross is like a rope thrown into the sea to rescue whoever grabs it. No-one who is rescued is going to say ‘look I responded so that means I saved myself’. Salvation is from God and invites our response to be effective, otherwise the grace of God will be in vain.

Power. Some have placed this attribute at the centre of who God is. Power can be limited (yes I will suggest God’s power is limited) by one of two ways. An inability. I am unable to do certain things as I do not have the power / strength to do so. Or I am unable to do certain things as my character limits me. And I say that cautiously as I am imperfect. Let’s make the human perfect and unchangeable in character, with endless patience. Such a perfect human as a parent could not beat their child continuously. To argue they have the power to do that is to miss the point – their power is limited by their character.

God’s power is limited by God’s character. God’s power is also limited in that he has allowed human autonomy. The Mediterranean crises is not a ‘if there is a God’ but ‘if there is a humanity’. Now there is a humanity, but is there a humanity in the image of God? A humanity that can say ‘if you have seen me you have seen the Father’?

That seems to me to be the God dream, the apostolic vision, the potential that we work toward. Painful along the way as there is a falling short.

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