On the Death of Scott Adams and “His” Saving Faith

On By Bobby GrowIn Cultural Christianity, Culture, Salvation10 Comments

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The creator of the Dilbert comic series, Scott Adams, just died today after a long battle with metastatic prostate cancer. He was also a popular author focusing on matters of daily life, and cultural commentary. I followed him on X. He had been publishing videos discussing his cancer, and the state he was in at that moment. Only a few weeks ago he said that he didn’t have much time left. Just a day or two ago he was placed into hospice care; and today he died. During these last few weeks, he said that he was considering becoming a Christian. His thinking sounded something like Pascal’s divine wager: i.e., if the Gospel is real then it will only be of great eternal benefit for the believer; if it isn’t real, then there was no loss. He wrote this a few weeks ago. But on his deathbed, he wrote the following:

I accept Jesus Christ as my lord and savior, and I look forward to spending an eternity with him. The part about me not being a believer should be quickly resolved if I wake up in heaven. I won’t need any more convincing than that. And I hope I am still qualified for entry.[1]

I’ve seen many responses to Scott’s admission from Christians stating that, unfortunately, they don’t think Scott was a real believer. They assert that he was simply using Jesus as a means to ensure that if God and Jesus are real, that he would end up in heaven. They don’t take this to be a saving, effectual faith. And yet, I would argue that it is most surely saving faith.

How many among us had all of the details, had some level of certain certitude that Christ was real, or that God’s grace in Christ could actually save us? We surely were placing our hope in Jesus for just that. But there was no level of certitude required in order to validate a real saving faith before God. In Scott’s final statement, noted above, he did what every single one of us have done, in order to come into a full relationship with the triune God. Some of us did that when we were young children (like me), others of us did that in our young adulthood, some later in life; and in Scott’s case (like the thief on the cross), on his deathbed. He didn’t go to the Buddha, or Mohammed, or the spirit god in the heavens; he didn’t go to the universal soul where atman is brahman for salvation. He had enough witness around him, and conviction of the Holy Spirit to know that if he were going to be eternally justified, saved before God, that it could only be through Jesus Christ.

In his above statement he ends it with, β€˜And I hope I am still qualified for entry.’ He still didn’t fully grasp the freeness of the Gospel, and yet he thrust himself upon the very grace of the Gospel in his final hour. Of all people, genuine Christians ought to see this as a saving cry for mercy to the living God. Of all people, Christians should recognize Scott’s final plea, even entwined in much misunderstanding, as our own cry to the risen Christ. Scott waited till the very end to give his life to Christ. He didn’t have time to be fully discipled into the free grace he became participant with the second he said, β€˜I accept Jesus Christ as my lord and savior, and I look forward to spending an eternity with him. . ..’ If that isn’t a saving confession, just as Christ’s plea to the Father, β€˜Father into thy hands I commit my spirit,’ then God forbid it: I am not saved either. It seems to me that many of the Christians who are claiming that Adams didn’t have saving faith don’t really understand the freeness of the Gospel themselves. If anyone ought to be concerned, it ought to be these folks. And yet, God’s grace and mercy, just as in Adams’ case is big enough to absorb such petty and childish and immature misunderstandings as well.

Furthermore, and this a theological note: Since there isn’t a threshold of faith, as if some type of feeling, or created quality we can manipulate, there is no abstract creaturely register that must be punched through which someone can be saved. Salvation is purely of God in Christ; indeed, that is the whole point of the Gospel. God in Christ assumed our humanity, and by his poverty for us, he made us rich through participation with Him, as He resurrected all of humanity, objectively (carnally), in his vicarious humanity, thereby making the way for all who would say Yes out of His Yes and Amen for us by the Holy Spirit, to become spiritually and subjectively participant with His risen and ascended humanity for us. This is what grounded and grounds Scott’s final placement of trust in Jesus Christ. Not some level of salvific knowledge. Not full awareness of the triunity of God. Just that he was a beggar in need of a big hand to save him out of the pit of despondency he found himself in in his hospice room. The Way for Adams to be saved, even at the last minute, was always already a reality insofar that God freely elected to become Scott, to become us, in order that by the grace of adoption, we might become Him; as co-heirs with Jesus Christ; thus participating and sharing in the glory that the Son has always and eternally shared with the Father in the communion of the Holy Spirit. Scott wasn’t aware of all of the mechanics, and neither are we, really. But he knew that if there was and is salvation to be had, then it had to be through Jesus Christ. And by God’s wisdom and mercy that is all that is required.

I look forward to fellowshipping with Scott Adams in the Eschaton someday soon! Maranatha

[1] sourceΒ here.

The Cipher-Jesus Predestined by the Fallen Heart

On By Bobby GrowIn Barth, CD, Ludwig Feuerbach, Salvation, Theo-Anthropology, Theological Epistemology2 Comments

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German anthropologist and philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach stated: God is β€œthe outward projection of a human’s inward nature.” A very telling observation with reference to a postEnlightenment turn-to-the-subject worldpicture. This remains a fitting observation even for our 21st century time; i.e., that people, by nature (according to Scripture, and empirical observation), in the inverse, have collapsed the classical attributes of God into the mirror of their own image. A postmodern, normative relativistic people simply wake up in the morning, look in the mirror in the bathroom, and say: β€œhello there God.” Even if not this overtly, it is the way us sinners operate enslaved, enbondaged to the incurvature of our in-turned hearts. We are, in the first Adam sense, slaves of our polluted, stained, dead souls; souls that by sinful being (ousia) naturally believe that our way is the way.

This is being played out every single day, not just out there, but in here; indeed, in our own daily lives. This is why the Apostle Paul by the Holy Spirit exhorts us to reckon ourselves dead to sin, and alive to Jesus Christ. Even so, the pagan, the heathen has no resurrection power to mortify these first Adam ways of life that dominate every shred and depth of the marrow of the bones; they are simply enslaved to love of themselves; and left to themselves have no capacity to not sin; to not worship the self as God. It is whilst inhabiting this type of beleaguered existence that in an attempt to worship, the person will name their own person as the Messiah. The urge to worship, of course, is because the human animal has been created by the living and alien God to worship; to worship Him in spirit and truth. But absent the Holy Spirit’s indwelling, the only reality the fallen person knows to worship, most immediately, is themselves. And yet, there seems to be some type of cultural pressure (maybe the Christian witness and the Holy Spirit’s conviction in the world) that leads said fallen people to worship something or someone outside of themselves; even though they haven’t the capacity to actually achieve a genuinely extra worship. And so, they might in parody, and for convenience’s sake, attribute their self-worship to the worship of Jesus. But their respective Jesus, as has already been alluded to, is really a Jesus who does what their deepest desires yearn for; the desires that are enchained to the kingdom of darkness; to their father of lies and death, the devil.

Barth helps us,

It is not, therefore, doing Him a mere courtesy when it names the name of Jesus Christ. It does not use this name as a symbol or sign which has a certain necessity on historical grounds, and a certain purpose on psychological and pedagogic grounds, to which that which it really means and has to say may be attached, which it is desirable to expound for the sake of clarity. For it, this name is not merely a cipher, under which that which it really means and has to say leads its own life and has its own truth and actuality and would be worth proclaiming for its own sake, a cipher which can at any time be omitted without affecting that which is really meant and said, or which in other ages or climes or circumstances can be replaced by some other cipher. When it speaks concretely, when it names the name of Jesus Christ, the Christian message is not referring simply to the specific form of something general, a form which as such is interchangeable in the phrase of Lessing, a β€œcontingent fact of history” which is the β€œvehicle” of an β€œeternal truth of reason.” The peace between God and man and the salvation which comes to us men is not something general, but the specific thing itself: that concrete thing which is indicated by the name of Jesus Christ and not by any other name. For He who bears this name is Himself the peace and salvation. The peace and salvation can be known therefore, only in Him, and proclaimed only in His name.[1]

There are much too many cipher-Jesuses running around, reigning supreme in the world. There is only one Jesus Christ, and He alone puts His words in His own mouth in perichoretic conversation with the Father and Holy Spirit. The zeitgeist would make us think that Jesus is simply an imprimatur of our own waning and base desires; that Jesus is whomever our enchained souls would determine Him to be. Whether this be for interpersonal reasons, or collectivist political reasons. When Jesus simply becomes a cipher for me and my tribe, for our self-determined predestined agendas, He has simply been collapsed into us, as we have stolen His name and badged ourselves with it. God forbid it!

[1] Karl Barth,Β Church Dogmatics IV/1 Β§57 [021] The Doctrine of Reconciliation: Study EditionΒ (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 18.

God’s Adversary and Ours: A Brief Theology of the Devil / A Book Impression

On By Bobby GrowIn Apocalyptics, Book Reviews, Diabology, Doctrine Of Creation, Doctrine Of Sin, Salvation4 Comments

Just finished. It is a good provocative read. It is written in a nice narratival theological style, which definitely works within the spirit and ambit of the Barth Imagestyle (i.e. engagement with Holy Scripture throughout). Philip re-places a doctrine of the devil into the second article, so, Christology and Soteriology (think Apostle’s Creed) versus the traditional placement as found in the first article with reference to original creation and God’s providence. This reorients thinking the devil from emphasizing him as a fallen angel, and instead sees him primarily in the scenery of the wilderness, as the adversary (of Christ), as adventitious, and anarchic. These three themes serve to organize the way that Ziegler seeks to place the devil within a dogmatic location of the second article. And it shouldn’t be forgotten that Ziegler is doing all of this work as a type of revitalization of a satanology for and within Reformed theology, proper.

One question I had going into this book was to see if Philip would hold to the idea that the devil is β€œpersonal,” or if the devil has an ontology of diabolical sorts. In the long and the short of it: yes, Ziegler affirms a type of nothingness beingness (my phraseology) which pairs well with Barth’s doctrine of sin or β€œnothingness” (das Nichtige)β€”which you can read about in CD III/3 (I also have some passages on that in my Barth Reader).

As a North American evangelical, like myself, I am conditioned to think of the Devil in the first article. As someone who reads Barth and Torrance and Calvin a lot, I am re-conditioned to think within the second article. And so, this clash continues for me, particularly when it comes to such matters as a satanology represents. Beyond that, as a basic evangelical Christian, there are too many real-life encounters that I have had with the demonicβ€”ones that mirror those in the Gospels etc.β€”that experientially keep me from falling into any type of crass physicalism when it comes to the dark spiritual realm. Even so, the themes that Ziegler develops, therein, don’t contradict that reality, it just textualizes them in ways that some readers might think envelopes this matter into a purely intellectual exercise; but that would be wrong. Take it up and read for yourself.

The ‘Father-Son’ Theory of the Atonement V PSA as the Frame

On By Bobby GrowIn Atonement, Church History, Classical Theism, Critiquing Classic Calvinism, Evangelical Calvinism, Federal Theology, George Tuttle, John McLeod Campbell, Order of Salvation, Salvation2 Comments

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Penal Substitution Atonement (PSA) theory has been in the news again lately (online/social media). As an Evangelical Calvinist (see V1&V2 of our Evangelical Calvinism books, and my articles-mini-essays on the topic) I have pressed what TF Torrance refers to as the β€˜ontological theory of the atonement.’ Many evangelicals and Reformed folks think that PSA in fact is the Gospel simplicter. And so, to deny PSA would be to deny the Gospel itself. But as I have demonstrated over and again at the blog, the background to PSA theory isn’t as prima facie biblical as its proponents make it sound. The β€˜theological’ framework that fomented what we think of as PSA today is largely rooted in the Federal (Covenantal) theology of the early Reformed theologians. It has humanity placed into a relationship with God that is necessarily framed by a forensic premise (i.e., the covenant of works). This forensic premise, or covenant of works, according to Federal theology, is ultimately fulfilled for the elect of God, when Jesus comes and meets the conditions of the covenant of works (that Adam and Eve) broke, thus restoring the legal connection to God that heretofore had been lost to humanity since after Eden. And it is this Federal (Covenantal) relationship that is given metaphysical orientation by the scholasticism Reformed commitment to what Richard Muller identifies as a Christian Aristotelianism. Suffice it to say, in nuce, PSA represents a theory of the atonement wherein humanity is genetically related to God based on a metaphysics of a Divine-Law-World relation; indeed, which requires that in order for fallen humanity, and the elect therein (think decretum absolutum β€˜absolute decree of election-reprobation’), to be justified by God, that the Son of Man must become man, die on the cross, extinguishing the wrath of God, paying the legal penalty for sin, and allowing the elect humanity to come into a right and legal standing relationship with the triune God; particularly, the Father (whom the PSA proponents emphasize as the β€˜Law-giver,’ per their juridical system).

Alternatively to that, one of the Fathers of us Evangelical Calvinists, John McLeod Campbell, a Scottish theologian of the 19th century, kicked back against the premise of the PSA position vis-Γ -vis the nature of the atonement, and against the Westminster theology that had codified the theological framework that funds the PSA position, particularly as that was being pushed in his context in the Church of Scotland (before he was excommunicated), as he gives us re-framing of atonement theory where the relationship between God and humanity ought to be framed first as thinking of God as Father rather than Law-giver. It was this re-framing that ended up getting Campbell kicked out of his beloved Church of Scotland, and which led him to minister elsewhere, as an independent of sorts. When you see what his view was, in a nutshell, as we will visit that now, as George Tuttle recounts that for us, you might be shocked to think that this would have the type of doctrinal gravitas required to get someone officially banned from their own denominational and local church. Tuttle writes of Campbell’s framing on the atonement:

Herein lies one of Campbell’s major objections to founding a view of atonement on the concept of justice β€”whether distributive or rectoral. Both systems visualize what he calls purely legal atonements, that is atonements, the whole character of which is determined by our relation to divine law. The real problem of atonement, however, is not merely to discover a way in which we may stand reconciled to God as a law-giver. The question contemplated in scripture and to which the Gospel is an answer is not how we can be pardoned and receive mercy, but how it could come to pass that the estranged can be reconciled. God’s intention is, as St. Paul declared, β€˜to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.’ (Gal. 4:5). The relation between a judge or a governor and the accused subjects is vastly different from that of a parent to erring children. To distinguish the former from the latter is to move from an artificial atmosphere of impersonal display of benevolence to a warm and living relationship of love, Campbell therefore could not rest in any conception of the atonement which involved, as he says, β€˜the substitution of a legal standing for a filial standing as the gift of God to men in Christ.’ This is not to say that Campbell denies the truth of a legal standing any more than he denies the inexorable demands of divine justice. Just as justice is brought with the concept of God as love, so the validity of a legal standing is brought within that of a loving relationship. Justice has its ultimate source in the love of God. When the loving God is honoured, justice is honoured also.

Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β  The atonement is thus revealed retrospectively as God’s way of putting right the past, and prospectively as introducing us to a life marked by a filial relation to God eternally. Both are celebrated by believers, both must be included in their thought concerning the nature of the atonement.[1]

One might think this ought to be unremarkable. And yet in the face of meddling with the Westminster God of consensus, the Aristotelian-formed God who relates to the world through a metaphysic of a decree of law (e.g., covenant of works etc.); who must remain the β€˜unmoved mover’ of monadic adoration; it is this very meddling, even if all the theologian is doing is attempting to shift the mind’s eye to the fact that God is first Father of the Son before He is ever a Law-giver/Creator, that will get you canned like Campbell was.

Some might imagine that the Campbell thesis was a minority report. In his particular environ it was at his time. But outside of his particular ecclesial and geographical environ (and even amongst it, among some other key theologians and pastors like himself), his view became a dominate one. Even overcoming many of the places and people who were initially against his alternative and kerygmatic reading of Holy Scripture. Even so, today, by the retrieval of many in the evangelical and Reformed sphere, we are only getting the Westminsterian Report. This simply wasn’t the case, even historically (which I have demonstrated elsewhere).

In the end what matters, though, isn’t whether this or that doctrinal position was the majority or minority report in the history. What matters for the Protestant Christian, is whether or not a position corresponds more proximate with the witness of Scripture. I would contend, and have done so vociferously over the years, that the Campbellian theory of the β€˜Father-Son-Atonement’ framing is indeed the most biblically correlative and theologically resplendent view presented. If you don’t to hold it: repent!

[1] George M. Tuttle, So Rich a Soil: John McLeod Campbell On Christian Atonement (Edinburgh: Handsel Press, 1986), 82-3.

Confessions On Why I Do Theology

On By Bobby GrowIn Bobby Grow, Christian Spirituality, Devotion, Discipleship, Doxology9 Comments

I have been asked over the years why I do what I do; in regard to reading and writing theology. I’ve been asked if this is some sort of hobby for me (one time I was Imageassertively told that that is all this ever could be). I am always taken aback by this question. I look at inhabiting Scripture as my life, not a vain thing. I look at good theology as an extension of, and deep dive into the inner-reality of Scripture; which is, Jesus Christ. I look at my Christian existence, and the doing of theology therein, as my lifelong discipleship project; as my sanctification; and this, wrapped in a doxological frame. But I didn’t arrive at this perspective without years of trial and tribulation. It has been those seasons of despair where the Lord has broken down all of the artificial and cultural structures funding my being, and rebuilding from there; on the foundation that only God alone can lay in Jesus Christ. And of course, these seasons ebb and flow continuously as the Christian’s life. I don’t view reading the Bible, reading theology, doing theology, practicing theology, as anything other than as an act of loving worship of my Father; indeed, of the triune life of my God.

I can sort of understand how that might look like a hobby to some. But at least for me, in the economy of God’s kingdom, I have no other categories through which to be in a constant growing and learning relationship with the living God. Indeed, I’m unsure how it is possible to really live the Christian life otherwise. It is false to reduce theology to a purely intellectual type of masturbation. This would indeed be some type of hobby of idolatry, wherein the person’s navel becomes something of their own holy of holies. God forbid that I would fall prey to ever viewing the engaging of theology as a hobby to massage the intellect with. For me, it is an Affective Theology that is at work, as that is grounded in the vicarious life of Christ whom I have come into the grace of adoption with. I have no categories for thinking the Christian life except through very intentional categories as those; indeed, as those are ever afresh anew apocalyptically inbreaking into my life as a Christian from this moment to the next by the mercy of the triune God.

My life, I always hope, is simply to be a witness to the ground of my life; who is the Christ. And in order for that to be an organically spiritual thing, it must be one that is deeply rooted in doing the work of rightly dividing the Word which is truth. For me, it has to be all or nothing. And even my all, apart from Christ, is never enough. But as Paul says: we aim for perfection. That is, we aim for the eschatological life of God to keep renewing us by both His death and life, as that is given expression through the mortal members of our bodies.

This is not a pietism. It is instead a devotion for Christ propelled by the very passion of His life for me, as my own. In other words, this approach of worship flips what is typically understood as a pietism on its head. It does this by understanding that the condition for living the Christian existence before God entails the concrete life of Christ as the ecstatic ground that it is, as He has come to us for us, and in turn, taken us with Him into the bosom of the Father. So, it isn’t a turn to the subject, and then only following, a reflexive turn to God. It is an immediate turn upward to God through the inner union Christians have come to have with Christ for them and in them by the Holy Spirit.

Church Dogmatics, V1 V2 V3 Done V4 To Go

On By Bobby GrowIn Barth, CD

Just finished Volume 3. 2/3 of the way through the 6M words. All that remains is Volume 4 (the blue ones not pictured). I think I’m gonna take a bit of a sabbatical from the CD till I start V4. I have a bunch of other readings I need to get caught up on. We are richly blessed in our country to have the freedom and access to such great doctors of the church. Amen. In the meantime you can always stay in touch with Barth through myΒ Barth Reader. And Merry Christmas!

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A Psalm for the Dark Night

On By Bobby GrowIn Devotion, Doxology, Prayer, Probing4 Comments

Where is God? Why doesn’t he care? Why does he let me go through these dark shadows of existence? There is a deep waning in what appears to be his absence. As if β€˜greater are the circumstances of life, than he who is at the right hand of the Father.’ This is what the serpent whispers into the ear-gate as I continue to sputter in what seems to be the darkness of the abyss. Where are you, O Lord? Why have you abandoned me? It seems like your cross, rather than bringing light, only brings darkness in the torment of my soul. Why do the evil seem to flourish, whilst those in Christ are left to wax and wane in the midnight hours. Indeed, the dark soul of the night seems to circumscribe and eclipse even the sunshine of the noon day. Where art thou, O Lord? My body shivers with a crippling anxiety, an angst that pulsates through my very being. And yet am I not a child of the living God? Why have you forsaken me, O Lord? While your Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path, it seems as if a bushel has been placed over your Word, such that all I can do is trip and fall over my own two feet. My soul is in despair, O Lord! How much longer until you roll the heavens of bronze back like a scroll; how much longer till you release me from these black hours of my daily life? My breath is scorched by the pain of my own agony. My fleeting thoughts seem to be what life has become. Please, Lord, never leave me or forsake me. You promised you wouldn’t, but then where are you now? In my greatest hour of need it is as if you are hidden behind a horrible decree that keeps you from understanding that my frame is but dust. Where art thou, O Lord? If this anguish continues to consume me, I am sure my everlasting bed will be with the earth worms of the blighted soil. Why is this happening to me, O Lord?

Take heart, little child, I have overcome this world. Your momentary anguish now, shall be and has been swallowed up by the very ardor of my Holy life. I remember your frame is as dust, as is mine now; even glorified at the Right hand of our Father. I am your hope, in the midst of the darkness; I am your power in the midst of your greatest weakness. I am carrying you now in the bosom of our Father. You feel absence, but in the economy of my life for you, that is what me holding you ever more tightly comes to feel like. Your feelings might betray you this night, this day, this season of time, but I will never leave or forsake you. I see you trembling, even now. I trembled and quaked in the manger, in the garden, on that old rugged cross, even for you; even as I had you with me in those dire moments of the parched life. But just as I had you with me in those moments, just as I was you and for you in those moments of despair, even now I am with you as the risen One. I have not forgotten you; au contraire! I have brought you up with me, in the ascension into the heavenly places. Whilst you continue to inhabit the body of death, I inhabit the body of everlasting life and eternal life for you; I have reversed the curse, and the very body you experience as death now, will finally be raised in consummate exaltation, just as my body of death was for you. And this resurrected life, this recreated life I bring to you even now, even in the midst of your waning moments, by the Holy Spirit. I am closer to you than you are to yourself. Be not afraid, little child.

Heretic or Heterodox?

On By Bobby GrowIn Apologetics, Hell, Historical Theology, Salvation2 Comments
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Arius the Heresiarch

I’ve been involved in some discussions recently revolving around figuring out what ought to count as heresy versus heterodoxy. Well, I should say, I’ve been attempting to introduce the heterodoxy category as a way to think about aberrant teachings without going to full ramming speed, and labelling everything we disagree with as heresy. The reason this has been coming up more on other social medias is because Kirk Cameron recently just came out as an Annihilationist (or Conditional Immortality proponent). So, predictably, folks have been calling him a heretic. But I protest.

It is better to identify teachings that we might disagree with, and that might be considered aberrant, as heterodox. The distinction I make between heresy and heterodoxy is as follows:

  1. Does it deny the eternally triune life of God (de Deo uno, de Deo trino)?
  2. Does it deny that the singular person of Jesus is both fully God and fully human?
  3. Does it deny that salvation comes by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone?

If the answer to the above questions is yes, then I would identify holding these teachings as damnable heresies; that if someone is committed to them, they cannot be eternally saved. But if someone, like Kirk Cameron, has arrived at what I would consider to be a matter of adiaphora and/or aberrant, non-essential, teaching in regard to a doctrine of hell, then I would consider this heterodoxy. Surely, heterodox teaching can have serious effects on someone’s Christian spirituality and the way they interpret the world, and those around them; and for this reason, if something is heterodox it represents a serious matter worth debating over. But just because Cameron, in this instance, affirms an aberrant or heterodox doctrine of hell (in my view), this will not result in him spending an eternity in hell for affirming it. Cameron, I presume in good faith, doesn’t reject any of the three marks of heresy I have indexed above. As such, he is eternally justified before the living God in Christ, and not a heretic.

If everything we disagree with, in regard to Christian teaching, is just heresy because I disagree with it, then in reality nothing will be heresy in the end. There needs to be some nuance on the continuum of Christian teaching; that is, in regard to its relative intensity vis-Γ -vis the role it might play in regard to identifying a teaching that is in fact eternally damning. Annihilationism does not represent a damnable teaching, even if, in my view, it represents a heterodox position. Matters of adiaphora, like doctrines of hell, respective viewpoints on biblical eschatological positions, so on and so forth, can indeed, as noted previously, have some serious and deleterious implications with reference to someone’s daily experience as a Christian person. And for this reason, bad teaching ought to be identified and called out. But it ought to be done in such a way, that recognizes distinctions along a continuum of gravity, and discern therefrom.

That said, many consider me a Barthian heretic; so, my post could be self-serving in that sense Haha.

On the Conscious Annihilated Everlasting Existence: Mirifica Commutatio

On By Bobby GrowIn Athanasius, Election, Hell, Salvation5 Comments

Athanasius thought of sin and the fractured life with God, as a dissolution. Annihilationism has been in the news lately (because of Kirk Cameron’s recent Imagedisclosure that he now holds to the conditional immortality or annihilationist position in regard to hell). There is a sense that at the last judgment those spiritually outside of Christ will finally be dissolved; we could even say, annihilated. But the fact of the matter remains, according to Scripture’s teaching: the final annihilation of fallen human beings will be an everlasting existence in the midst of a conscious annihilation. Such that, the individual person will exist in the dissolution they currently inhabit nowβ€”apart from union with Christβ€”but like a wandering star for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever, they will be fully β€œalive” in the midst of their annihilated being. It behooves folks to come to Christ whilst there is still time. Maranatha

And yet, there indeed remains hope eternal in Jesus Christ. Athanasius, as noted, maintained that to be out of union with the triune God entails that the human existence, left to itself, would fully cease to existβ€”again, not consciously, but in its dissolved statusβ€”indeed, this is the status fallen humanity currently inhabits (whilst fully conscious). The difference at the final judgment, is that those who die outside of Christ’s righteousness for them, will become fully aware of the fallen statuses they have been inhabiting their whole respective existences now. At that time, the veil will be removed, and the reality will come full weight; whether that be for those spiritually in Christ or those outside. Again, it behooves people to leave this current world-iteration in full union with Christ; simply by saying Yes to Jesus’ offer of eternal life in Himself for you, for us.

Below, Athanasius details the various notes I have been engaging with in the aforementioned. He makes sure to give the fallen, those being currently destroyed (see I Corinthians 1:18), those living in a dissolving self, the Good News of God in Jesus Christ. He makes sure to end on the elevated reality that God has not in fact left us to our vanishing selves, and instead, in a β€˜wonderful exchange,’ given us the very weight and substance of His life that He alone possesses; the only eternal life around.

. . . Yet, true though this is, it is not the whole matter. As we have already noted, it was unthinkable that God, the Father of Truth, should go back upon His word regarding death in order to ensure our continued existence. He could not falsify Himself; what, then, was God to do? Was He to demand repentance from men for their transgression? You might say that that was worthy of God, and argue further that, as through the Transgression they became subject to corruption, so through repentance they might return to incorruption again. But repentance would not guard the Divine consistency, for, if death did not hold dominion over men, God would still remain untrue. Nor does repentance recall men from what is according to their nature; all that it does is to make them cease from sinning. Had it been a case of a trespass only, and not of a subsequent corruption, repentance would have been well enough; but when once transgression had begun men came under the power of the corruption proper to their nature and were bereft of the grace which belonged to them as creatures in the Image of God. No, repentance could not meet the case. What β€” or ratherΒ WhoΒ was it that was needed for such grace and such recall as we required? Who, save the Word of God Himself, Who also in the beginning had made all things out of nothing? His part it was, and His alone, both to bring again the corruptible to incorruption and to maintain for the Father His consistency of character with all. For He alone, being Word of the Father and above all, was in consequence both able to recreate all, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be an ambassador for all with the Father.[1]

[1] Athanasius, On the Incarnation,Β Β§7, 32-3.