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OH! You must read 'The Screwtape Letters', jimmie...weird name...I think that is why some
have not read it..
but you only need 2-3 chapters to be highly entertained by the briliance!
Yes, I'm familiar with that book, but haven't read it yet. Too many others on my reading list. I'll get to it.
Wow. One of only 2 theories of the atonement I've ever heard that has some eloquence (Mystic's being the other). Can't say I believe either, but I see the beauty in both.
You will come to my side one of these days, Pleroo.
I thought it was pretty common knowledge that CS Lewis believed in the miracles, including the virgin birth and resurrection, as LITERAL events, but that he didn't believe in all of the Fundamentals.
He has also prominently acknowledged George MacDonald, a very well known Universalist. My God, do you people really doubt this? I can't trust any of you.
Why don't you at least approach my question from the George MacDonald/ Universalist side of it. Does the fact that a "Christian" writer is also a universalist mean that he is now in hell for not believing in the Atonement?
Why don't you post the source of your information and put it in quotes?
You will come to my side one of these days, Pleroo.
Oh, I'm on your side already Prof. Agape.
My beliefs about God don't hang on the historicity of the Jesus narrative. I don't think a literal atonement (reconciliation with God) was achieved, but rather a movement (perhaps based on one man, perhaps not) towards a clearer understanding of God's nature which helps us to see that God never has been separated from us, except in our own minds. But your theory is certainly more eloquent than mine, no doubt. As I see it, your theory (and Lewis's, too) catches the spirit of the Jesus narrative and follows it to a higher place. That gives it a lot of value in my opinion.
(For those who didn't read nate's posted link about Lewis's theory, this is the portion I'm speaking of:
"Remember, this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of death, is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off of if He chose: it is simply a description of what going back to Him is like. If you ask God to take you back without it, you are really asking Him to let you go back without going back. It cannot happen. Very well, then, we must go through with it. But the same badness which makes us need it, makes us unable to do it. Can we do it if God helps us? Yes, but what do we mean when we talk of God helping us? We mean God putting into us a bit of Himself, so to speak. He lends us a little of His reasoning powers and that is how we think: He puts a little of His love into us and that is how we love one another. When you teach a child writing, you hold its hand while it forms the letters: that is, it forms the letters because you are forming them. We love and reason because God loves and reasons and holds our hand while we do it. Now if we had not fallen, that would all be plain sailing. But unfortunately we now need God's help in order to do something which God, in His own nature, never does at all - to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die. Nothing in God's nature corresponds to this process at all. So that the one road for which we now need God's leadership most of all is a road God, in His own nature, has never walked. God can share only what He has: this thing, in His own nature, He has not.
But supposing God became a man - suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God's nature in one person - then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can do it only if He becomes man. Our attempts at this dying will succeed only if we men share in God's dying, just as our thinking can succeed only because it is a drop out of the ocean of His intelligence: but we cannot share God's dying unless God dies; and he cannot die except by being a man. That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all."
Why don't you post the source of your information and put it in quotes?
Sorry. If you are not already aware of his beliefs, then my job is not to try to convince you. You will probably just dismiss it anyway.
But you can still address my question if it applies to you. My question is geared towards Christians who have DIFFERENT beliefs from Lewis's universalism.
The question can be applied to ANY universalist writer. Do you think that the (universalist) writer is in Hell, and do you think that readers who enjoy him are headed there as well? PARTICULARLY if he applies those principles to his own writing, and that it is actually those universalist principles which appeal the reader, even if he is not conscious of it. (Which I believe Lewis must have done if he loved MacDonald so much.)
Sorry. If you are not already aware of his beliefs, then my job is not to try to convince you. You will probably just dismiss it anyway.
But you can still address my question if it applies to you. My question is geared towards Christians who have DIFFERENT beliefs from Lewis's universalism.
The question can be applied to ANY universalist writer. Do you think that the (universalist) writer is in Hell, and do you think that readers who enjoy him are headed there as well? PARTICULARLY if he applies those principles to his own writing, and that it is actually those universalist principles which appeal the reader, even if he is not conscious of it. (Which I believe Lewis must have done if he loved MacDonald so much.)
I'm confused, Ozzy. Your O.P. indicated you were focused on the Atonement, but now you are asking about Universalism. So, are you asking their opinion about Christian Universalists, or simply about those who hold a different view of the Atonement than the penal substitution theory?
I'm confused, Ozzy. Your O.P. indicated you were focused on the Atonement, but now you are asking about Universalism. So, are you asking their opinion about Christian Universalists, or simply about those who hold a different view of the Atonement than the penal substitution theory?
I'm thinking of Atonement Believers as those who think that salvation is limited to just a few. Even things like penal substitution can exist in universalist world. But I'm asking of people who say that "faith" in the atonement is the only way to salvation, and only a small minority will achieve it.
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