From: George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Date: Tue Jul 08 2003 - 15:25:38 EDT
Howard J. Van Till wrote:
>
> >From: "Glenn Morton" <glennmorton@entouch.net>
>
> > Without a doubt one might find something wrong with Deutsch's test, but
> > ....The scientific thing is to explain exactly why that test won't
> > work. If you actually read what I quoted from Brown's book the experiment
> > gives a different result for the 2 different views of quantum. That means it
> > is TESTABLE. Deutsch's article does have the computer world thinking about
> > these things. And regardless of whether or not we christians want to deal
> > with the implications, theologically, they are there.
>
> Glenn,
>
> Independent of the outcome of such tests, I'm intrigued by your list of
> possible implications and your questioning the willingness of Christians to
> deal with them. Take the first question, for instance.
>
> > 1. IF MWH, then hell is full of an infinity of unsaved vs the 1 saved
> > individual. It means that God saves everybody with a plan to condemn the
> > vast, vast majority to hell.
>
> Or does it mean that the Judeo-Christian portrait of a God who would send to
> hell all of those persons who believe (perhaps on the basis of the best
> thinking of which they were humanly capable) something different from X
> (some set of acceptable propositions) is a portrait of the Sacred (God if
> you prefer) that is radically inadequate or incorrect? Are you (as a
> representative Christian) willing to reexamine that portrait of God?
I think that Glenn's point can be stated better than by putting it in terms of
who will be in Hell & who won't, & that Howard's description in terms of acceptance or
non-acceptance of a set of propositions is something of a caricature of traditional
Christian belief. But there is a significant issue here: How can there be an
acceptable Christian eschatology with MWH?
By "acceptable eschatology" I mean one that involves some ultimate vindication
of the good and defeat of evil. For all that can be criticized about traditional ideas
of final damnation & hell, one of the ideas they convey is that finally evil will be
shown, beyond challenge and in the sight of all creation, to _be_ evil. eternal
condemnation in Hell is not the only way of doing that. A universalism in which all
things ultimately are reconciled with God can express the same idea. But if "all have
won and all shall have prizes," if there as many worlds in which Nero is raised from
the dead as those in which Jesus is risen, then it is hard to see how divine justice, or
for that matter divine love, has any ultimate vindication.
Of course Howard may be willing to excise all the biblical material that points
(often in strongly symbolic ways) to such an eschatology, just as he's indicated that
he's happy to excise Isaiah 45:7. But I think that Glenn has raised a serious
theological question about MWH for those who take the biblical witness seriously.
But that can be put another way. _If_ we want to maintain some version of MWH
then the theological issues raised by such a view will have to be resolved
eschatologically - in agreement with the emphasis of a number of modern theologians.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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