I'm a Christian Universalist AMA

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

In full, I'm a Christian Daoist Universalist, but I don't want to focus on the Daoist aspect of my beliefs in this thread.

[Blue3]

Do you believe that everyone "sees" the truth upon the moment of death, God offers his love and the gift of eternal life, and everyone chooses to accept it?

Or do you think some people choose separation from God, but all of them eventually regret it (even if it takes eons) and accept/love/rejoin God?

Or do you think everyone is in the "presence" of God after death, but for some (since they hate what God is) find it burns like fire and is a painful situation and eventually see the error in their mindset, repent, and begin to feel the "presence" of God like everyone else, as a loving and blissful radiance?

Or do you see some (or everyone) go to a purgatory-like situation, where we choose to be "cleansed" of our imperfections (which might take longer for some) so we can then all be in the presence of God?

Or something else?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Or something else?

Something else, as I'm in the annihilationist camp. (A fairly small one among current day Universalists.)

To begin with, let me say that the only way I can reconcile the Divine's omniscience with our physical reality is to posit that the Divine exists outside of our physical spacetime frame of reference, with the emphasis on being outside time for the purposes of this point.  Hence when Christ went to Harrow the Dead during what for our frame of reference happened on the first Holy Saturday, I hold that he went outside spacetime to Harrow all the Dead as will/has happen(ed) to us all.

Now I also hold that omnipotence means the Divine can do everything that is possible to be done, not that everything is possible to be done. This means that the possibility exists that even outside the strictures of spacetime, there will be those who do not wish to be with the Divine. Hence, a loving God would see to it that such as those would be separated and hence for all practical purposes, annihilated.  The degree to which that annihilation occurs is not for me to say, nor would it necessarily be the same for all. By degree, I mean that utter destruction and utter separation would from the viewpoint of the faithful would both be equivalent to annihilation, despite only one being literally annihilation.

As for burning, I do think we're all likely to experience painful regrets for what we did that we should not have done and what we didn't do that we should have done. An actual Purgatory experience will be provided to those who need it, but those who don't need it will be given some other means of being brought into harmony with the Divine.  After all, why should only Buddhists have claim to the doctrine of expedient means?

[DC Al Fine]

I have a couple questions I asked Nathan and a couple new ones.

1) Could you give a brief tour of the UU movement? (Denominations, current trends, major factions etc.)

2) What's your assessment of the health of the UU movement? I've heard they have a better retention rate than other left leaning denominations.

3) You are the leader of the Evangelical/Catholic/Mainline movements in America. You have unlimited authority except to make fundamental changes to their identity. What do you change and what do you keep the same?

4) What's your general assessment of the dating and authorship of the New Testament?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

1 and 2) While now over five decades old, I don't think the merger ever fully took. While Unitarians and Universalists share many similarities, the former was more philosophical and political in outlook than the latter. It was one of the less fortunate of the wave of church mergers of the 50's and 60's, in no small part because the mostly Unitarian leadership of the merged church proved spendthrift with the resources that largely came from the smaller but better endowed Universalist Church in what proved to be a fruitless quest for growth.

That said while it hasn't grown by leaps and bounds, the UUA has held its own and even grown some. I that's largely because if you're from a mixed religion household, the UUA provides the best chance at accommodating you and seeing to it that your children get a nondogmatic religious education. However, I think that strength is also a weakness in retaining children as they grow, especially if those children adopt a belief system that can be accommodated in a less heterodox religious environment.

3) The UUA has one major problem that it needs to resolve. It has to a certain extent become a place where those who have fled intolerant Christian churches find solace and spirituality as they begin a quest to find a more compatible belief system. That's not the problem tho. The problem is that those refugees are sometimes antagonistic towards Christianity. For example, some UU congregations will program the Flower Communion as a replacement for Easter. And heaven forbid that Christmas gets more than a brief mention during the Winter Solstice service.

4) Largely in line with that developed by higher criticism, tho I think it often is too eager to date certain books as late. For instance, I agree with Marcan priority, but see no reason to assume it couldn't have been written early.

[Kingpoleon]

What denomination of Mainline/Evangelical Protestantism would you say best represents your own beliefs? For example, Methodism, Lutheranism, Baptists, nondenominational, Anglican?

[RFayette]

Do you believe the resurrection was both historical and bodily?  Also, on a related note, what is your opinion of the Jesus Seminar?  More broadly, do you think the UU community tends to be too skeptical/secular-minded on these types of issues?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

What denomination of Mainline/Evangelical Protestantism would you say best represents your own beliefs? For example, Methodism, Lutheranism, Baptists, nondenominational, Anglican?

There's something attractive in each of them, but none is a close match for me. I'd probably be in a UCC congregation if I hadn't found a congenial home in a UU congregation.

[Mopsus]

How did the Unitarian and Universalist churches differ?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Do you believe the resurrection was both historical and bodily?  Also, on a related note, what is your opinion of the Jesus Seminar?  More broadly, do you think the UU community tends to be too skeptical/secular-minded on these types of issues?

Certainly the resurrection was historical. Even if one thinks it was total fabrication or hallucination on the part of his disciples, I fail to see how the story of his resurrection could have come to be believed except immediately after his crucifixion and burial. The resurrection is so pivotal to Early Christianity that Mark stopped there. Moreover Matthew, Luke, and John differ so much on the post resurrection details that I think they come from different communities of Early Christians.

It doesn't matter to me whether it was bodily. The that he returned is what matters and the details are insignificant window dressing.

The Jesus Seminar was too eager to ignore the considerable evidence that there were many Jewish groups then with an apocalyptic world view because they wanted a Jesus that was solely about social justice.

I'll get to the issue of UU views on the resurrection later.