My Emails to Dr. Hany Mina - 3

Email: 3
From: me
To: Dr. Hany

Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2007 7:38 PM

Dear Hany (if I may),

Swift reply, thank you for that.

To continue the debate, then...

I can maybe accept the notion that God didn't give us a detailed answer to my question about Salvation after Death, however I disagree that The Parable of The Ten Virgins must mean eternal damnation, because I have -finally- decided to not use parables to form doctrines, since parables are by nature subjective to the listener's perception. A good example of an alternative explanation to the parables of eternal hell is this one on The Parable of Lazarus & The Rich Man.

What you have mentioned, sir... is pretty much what I had read earlier in other places that discuss the subject based on christian text.

I would like to add the following in introduction, though:

1- This is an important issue, not theological chit-chat, because in the spiritual sense, I need to believe in a God who's better & more loving than myself, which is the main attraction & the most solid argument in almost everything I've began to believe in lately.

2- Through God's revelations to people, people grow in Him. I'd like to believe that God arranged for me to read & hear all these things as part of my teaching, even if these beliefs are to be refined later & some of them left behind, I still believe it is part of my training.

Now to properly define the problem, the clearest definition I have seen is this , however it neglects christian text since it is a independant of christian beliefs & should apply to all beliefs that hold the view of eternal damnation & an all-powerful, all-knowing & all-loving God.

In the christian text we find a couple of verses (I avoid those in parables now because I'd like to point to the clearer unambiguous verses first) that go further with the issue:

1- 1Pt 3:18-21 establishes the possibility of salvation after death.
2- 1Cor 15: 20-28 establishes the necessity of salvation after death.

(unless somebody can come with a convincing different interpretation of them both)

or as you put it:

1- 1Pt 3:18-21: there has been an invitation (preaching) by Christ to those who were sinners in the days of Noah and not only those 8 persons who were in the ark, AFTER Christ was crucified and went to visit them in the Prison, hence after their physical death. Read it carefully.

2- 1Cor 15: 20-28: This suggests that no part of the creation will remain "outside God" (=Eternally Dead).

Now you said afterwards that these are mere speculations, so I must ask how can they be? If  there is no alternative interpretation of the verses, or is there? you said:

1- As long as free will exists, Hell exists.

true of course, but the idea of universal salvation does not negate free will, it just says that God's Love for us & Patience will be greater than Man's hatred of himself & stubborness, it adds that since God is all-powerful & is outside Time & the material world & he has no deadlines, He will patiently & ultimately get us all back to Himself (The Parable of The Lost Sheep comes to mind when we imagine God's perseverance & determination to save us), He will not force us,  because you can't "force" somebody to believe or see some Truth. but will patiently draw us to Himself & use everything in his power - being boundless is important here- to make us see that Truth, accept that Life & walk down that Way with Him, in Him.

2- So we must make the best of the one and best (even if not the only) chance of repentance and Salvation that we now have.

Well that's the thing, this sounds like people who believe in an ultimate salvation for all mankind may become decadent & wasteful of God's Grace. This may be true sometimes but it reminds me of the Doctrine of Reserve.

this was a supposed practice that hid certain biblical ideas from a new believer in order to not shake their faith, but the problem is that the other idea on which that doctrine is based is that fear of eternal death (hell) can save some people, which I will not accept. plus it is contradictory to the belief  that Truth will set us Free.

I understand that people cannot understand the entire Truth in God at once, this I believe is the reason Jesus spoke in Parables. & it relates to how God gives Faith to people in the form of gradual Revelations, so I can understand why people would hesitate to talk about any of that universal salvation stuff, but I refuse to believe that some people are saved through fear & others through Love! a woman cannot marry a man she is afraid of rather than in love with, it is not a healthy marriage, the same applies to the Kingdom of God.

In addition, this point -the necessity of repentance while we still have the chance- comes into new light with the view that God is Life, meaning that if being with God is being alive, then sinning now & repenting later becomes a meaningless (& indeed painful) practice, if you refuse God you refuse Life... that is hardly something any of us would enjoy whether here on earth or in the age after. you agree that sin carries its punishment inside it, it carries misery & sickness & death.

I believe one of the biggest triumphs of the devil is that he convinced most christians that sin is a beautiful thing that God is denying us... it is true that we desire sin sometimes, but that is quite literally a sickness, due to our sick post-fall nature that God is fixing. The view that you refrain from sin (here it is equivalent to pleasure) & lead a miserable worldly life in order to get pleasure in the afterlife is completely incorrect & doesn't sound christian at all.

this also answers all the questions of "what if I sin all my life and repent at the last minute?" & "How can that be fair to people who were saints all their lives" & all the questions that run along those lines in our heads (The Parable of The 11th Hour Workers comes to mind) God wants to give you Life, when you take it is up to you, if you postpone it, you'll be miserable (spiritual death in seperation from God). so it's not a matter of choice & reward, it's a matter of when you choose to accept the medicine, until then you'll hurt & keep wondering why & looking elsewhere for a happiness that lasts without finding any. so making the best of our time now doesn't fit in this picture, at least not in the direct sense of the phrase.

Moreover, this also sheds a new light on the process by which God is saving us, he is not only trying to make us choose Him (where our Free Will poses a problem), he is doing so by Teaching us & Healing our sickness (which has enslaved us, so he is Freeing us from the bonds of sin), after that choosing him over sin can't be a very difficult choice. I mean to say that here we look at God as a Teacher & a Doctor, rather than a Salesman! This also addresses the issue of Free Will & may give more meaning to it while preventing it from being an obstacle to the greater hope that all will be saved.

Peter