God

A Simple Rite of Marriage for Two True Believers

/ TIK / Leave a comment

https://i0.wp.com/www.romeoandjuliet-weddings.com/images/rome/rome-church-wedding/medieval-church/slide/medieval-church-trastevere.jpg?resize=676%2C454&ssl=1

I take issue with the traditional western Christian understanding that the wedding vows are only in effect “until death do us part”. This would be appropriate in a Buddhist context, where there is a strong emphasis on the impermanence and conditioned nature of all phenomena, however I am utterly convinced that this sort of language is entirely inappropriate in a Christian context, which is supposed to give an absolute priority to the permanence and unconditionality of the eternal life that Christ has won for us all.

Appending “until death do us part” to your wedding vows strikes me as a blasphemy against the resurrection of Easter; as a denial of the total victory of life, love, light and grace over death, selfishness, darkness and sin; it is a repudiation of the conquering of evil, demons and damnation by goodness, angels and salvation; it is to renounce marriage and Heaven and embrace divorce and Hell; it is to substitute the obedience of Christ for the rebellion of Adam.

As far as I’m concerned, claiming that every marriage dissolves at death is strictly equivalent to denying that Christ has risen from the dead, and so even if this doesn’t make you a heretic in the eyes of Holy Mother Church, it renders you a heretic under the divine gaze of goodness, truth and beauty himself. If ever I find myself in the awkward and unfortunate situation where my conscience compels me to choose between God and Holy Mother Church, I will choose God every time. Thankfully it’s never come to that before, and I have confidence that it won’t happen over this issue either.

Of course, the Divine Liturgy is inspired and infallible, so there must be some reason why God allowed this troublesome phrase to be inserted into our wedding vows. Well, legal contracts dissolve at death, it is true. No law can compel you once you have passed from life into death. And in this sense, the “until death do us part” condition in the traditional Catholic vows is a valid summary of the legal situation we find ourselves in. But marriage is not merely a legal contract; it is also a holy and everlasting covenant, akin to the holy and everlasting covenant between Christ and Church.

DIVINE MASCULINE & FEMININE JAN 14 - 20, 2018 MULTIPLE ...According to the order of Law, marriage is understood in a legal and contractual sense and therefore divorce is possible and is in fact ultimately inevitable, as all sin and so all die. However according to the order of Grace, marriage is understood to be an unconditional covenant, and therefore once truly entered into, it is a divine relationship that never can and never will be broken by anything: On account of the resurrection, not even death is able to dissolve it. It is in this sense that marriage here on earth reflects the heavenly marriage between Christ and Church. Just as Christ will never abandon the church and the church always clings to Christ, and on account of the resurrection not even death can separate them, so too husband pursues wife and wife clings to husband, and on account of the victory of the resurrection, not even death can nullify this marital union.

In light of these reflections, I have composed a wedding liturgy complete with vows which better reflect the reality of the victorious Gospel.

The Wedding Liturgy

Twin Soul Ascension Report ~ Easter Gateway Divine ...

Groom:

I vow to you that I will love you and fight for you in every way, always and everywhere, whether we be together or apart,

I vow that as you ascend to Heaven, I will be your partner on the journey and assist you; and whenever you descend to Hell, I will be your companion in the darkness and rescue you,

I vow that neither death nor life, nor angels nor demons, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers nor rulers, nor height nor depth, nor Hell nor damnation, nor anything else whatsoever, will divorce me from you.

I vow that even if God himself should declare us to be divorced, I will not accept it and will wrestle with him until he allows me to continue loving you in peace.

Groom (or a trusted minister)

Do you have faith that these my/[Groom]’s vows are infallibly guaranteed by the unconditional promise of God himself, by the supreme victory of the resurrection, and by the eternal and everlasting life that the Lord Jesus Christ has won for us all?

Bride:

Just as I have faith in these holy and divine mysteries, and just as I have faith in God, so too I trust you and I trust your vows.

Groom:

Truly, I am now and forever married to you.

[Put a ring on her finger and kiss her on the cheek]

Bride:

I vow to you that I will love you and fight for you in every way, always and everywhere, whether we be together or apart,

I vow that as you ascend to Heaven, I will be your partner on the journey and assist you; and whenever you descend to Hell, I will be your companion in the darkness and rescue you,

I vow that neither death nor life, nor angels nor demons, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers nor rulers, nor height nor depth, nor Hell nor damnation, nor anything else whatsoever, will divorce me from you.

I vow that even if God himself should declare us to be divorced, I will not accept it and will wrestle with him until he allows me to continue loving you in peace.

Bride (or a trusted minister):

Do you have faith that these my/[Bride]’s vows are infallibly guaranteed by the unconditional promise of God himself, by the supreme victory of the resurrection, and by the eternal and everlasting life that the Lord Jesus Christ has won for us all?

Groom:

Just as I have faith in these holy and divine mysteries, and just as I have faith in God, so too I trust you and I trust your vows.

Bride:

Truly, I am now and forever married to you.

[Put a ring on his finger and kiss him on the cheek]

Trusted minister/witnesses:

I/we declare and recognise {Groom] and [Bride] to be truly and eternally married as husband and wife!

[Thunderous applause from the witnesses]

[The newlyweds share a kiss and then depart to the bedroom to get it on all night long like it’s the song of songs, baby]

catholicity and covenant: Song of Songs: rediscovering the ...

St Maximus the Confessor and Apokatastasis

/ TIK / Leave a comment

St Maximus the confessor draws a distinction between the “wanting” of God and the “willing” of God. Importantly, this maps directly onto the “wanting” of the soul and the “willing” of the soul. This is very important for understanding how universal Salvation is compatible with the popular understanding of free will.

The Willing and Wanting of God

God wants to save everyone: According to Catholics this is indisputable and fundamental. Because God is love, how could he ever want to damn someone? However, just because God wants something doesn’t mean he wills it. Wanting is a desire, whereas willing is an active manifestation of an intention, aimed at the satisfaction of a desire.

So on the one hand, God loves us all and wants to save us all. However, we abuse our freedom, and therefore God wills to punish us. The analogy of the father and the child helps to make sense of this.

A good father never wants to punish his child. So too, God never wants to punish us. However, the father sometimes feels compelled to punish his child, so as to “teach the child a lesson”. This should be both a corrective and a retributive punishment – which is to say, the punishment should be fitting and in proportion to the crime, but the punishment should also be aimed at educating and correcting the child and encouraging him to return to the right path.

Now, all of us have sinned, and therefore even though God wants to save us all, his will is compelled by his perfection of justice to condemn all mankind to damnation in Hell (Samsara). So there’s two things happening here: there is the Apokatastasis (Universal Salvation), in which both God’s willing and God’s wanting are in perfect harmony, and then there is the Massa Damnata, in which God’s willing is out of sync with God’s wanting: In the Apokatastasis, God both wants and wills all to be saved, and so all are saved. Whereas in the Massa Damnata, God wants to save everyone, and he does not want to punish anyone, but his will is compelled by his perfect justice to punish us all.

The summary with respect to God is that God always wants to save us all, however because all of us sin, he wills to damn us all.

The Willing and Wanting of The Soul

The analysis of willing and wanting with respect to God maps directly onto the willing and wanting of the Soul.

Every soul wants and desires God, and every action that a soul undertakes is aimed at trying to move that soul towards God. However due to our limited perspective, we often make mistakes, due to lack of prayer and mindfulness of what is right and wrong in any given situation. With our will we make choices which we think will satisfy our wanting, but often we are mistaken and our choice has the opposite effect.

In this way, with our wanting, we always seek after God, but with our willing we often fall short of God and find ourselves deeper in the darkness.

Synergism and Predestination

Now, the doctrine of synergism states that there is a perfect harmony between the wanting of the soul and the wanting of God, as well as – startlingly – perfect accord between the willing of the soul and the willing of God. That is to say, the soul always wants God, and God always wants the soul.

However when the willing of the soul is not directed towards that which will truly satisfy it’s wanting, then so too the willing of God will not be in accord with that which truly satisfies his wanting. Both God and the soul always want the soul to move towards God, but sometimes the soul wills to move away from God, and whenever it does this, God accordingly wills to move away from the soul.

In this way when someone sins they have failed to act correctly and have chosen wrongly. The result is an explosion of justice from God in the form of an increase of retributive punishment. And so when we reject God, we are punished, but the key thing is that this is not the punishment of a king towards a slave; it is instead the punishment of a father towards a son.

As such, God’s justice is a merciful justice: it aims at the salvation of the sinner. But God’s justice is also a retributive justice: his punishment always fits the crime.

Lets take things to the extremes: When the soul definitively rejects God (and St Maximus firmly maintains – along with popular catholic tradition – that this is possible), God’s justice responds with definitive rejection of the soul.

According to Paul in his letter to the Romans, all of us have definitively rejected God and we all continue and persist in this rejection. And so all of us have tasted Hell. In a sense, St Augustine was right about the massa damnata: all of us will be damned forever.

But there’s a rubber band effect in play here. It is just because all of us are damned, that all of us will be saved; the punishment of Hell (Samsara) is the very means by which God educates us to be able to make the right choices. Sometimes it takes total damnation of a soul; it requires a soul to hit rock bottom, in order for that soul to finally realise the truth of his situation and repent.

So even if a soul ends up in Hell by means of it’s own mistaken willing, that soul still desires to be in heaven by it’s infallible wanting. Everlasting damnation is the educative means by which God will bring that soul back to heaven.

If a soul ends up in Hell, that soul’s wanting and willing are out of sync. They are willing the wrong things in an attempt to satisfy their wanting. Similarly with God; when a soul ends up in Hell, God does not want the soul to be in hell, but he does will that the soul be in Hell.

In summary, the willing of the soul is directed towards the satisfaction of the wanting of the soul. So too, the willing of God is directed towards the satisfaction of the wanting of God.

The implication of this is that everything God wills, ultimately has the purpose of satisfying his wanting. So if God wills that someone be everlastingly and eternally damned forever and ever, then in a most mysterious way this act of will has the purpose of satisfying God’s want to save that soul. In other words, everlasting and eternal damnation is sometimes exactly what it takes in order for the soul to ultimately get what it wants, and also for God to ultimately get what he wants.

Conclusion – God or Hell: Which is More Eternal?

St Gregory of Nyssa – who was a firm universalist – pondered these ideas, and speculated that for most souls the stay in Hell would be a temporary one, but for some souls (for example perhaps Satan and/or Judas) their damnation will be so complete that their purification will “extend into infinity”.

But he also remembered that “God is infinitely more infinite than infinity and eternally more eternal than eternity”, and so he had the wisdom to ask “What happens after forever?” and his answer was αποκαταστασις; the final and universal rest of all souls in paradise . Those who find themselves stuck in Hell forever will finally begin to repent after a forever has elapsed. For the forever of Hell cannot compare to the forever of God. Hell may very well feel like forever to a soul who is stuck there, but to God, the punishments of Hell do not last even as long as the blink of an eye.

In this way, we have both the massa damnata and the Universal Salvation shown to be compatible with each other. Everyone will be damned for all eternity, and everyone will be saved for all eternity, and the key to understanding how this can be, is St Maximus’ distinction between willing and wanting.

Footnote

Just as the Catholics are correct to insist that “God loves everyone and desires to save all without exception”, so too, the Calvinists are correct to insist that “God is just and actively wills to send sinners to Hell”: When a soul finds itself stuck in the torments of Hell, this is because God wills it, but not because he wants it.

Support a Missionary Studying Patristic Greek and Latin

/ TIK / Leave a comment

tl;dr Summary:

I am trying to rustle up some money so that I can attend the 2020 Macquarie Ancient Language School intensive summer week. I intend to study biblical and patristic Greek for the duration of the week. I am also trying to gather funding to attend the Sydney Latin Summer School. Both of these weeks are taught in an intensive mode, which I personally find very effective and valuable.

I need $500 in total. $160 will pay for the tuition for the Greek week, and the extra $20 will cover the cost of the food catering for the week. The remainder ($320) covers the total cost of the Latin summer week including food and materials.

I do not have a very large or stable income. Which is why I’m asking for donations. The vast majority of my money goes into rent, and the rest of it goes into groceries. If you were willing to help out with supporting me in my academic and religious missions, it would mean the world to me.

To donate, click here

Elaboration:

I’m a second year arts student, studying ancient languages at the University of Sydney.

So far I have studied

  • Classical Latin (one year)
  • Attic Greek (one year)
  • Koine Greek (one semester)
  • Levantine and Modern Standard Arabic (one semester)
  • Mandarin Chinese (one semester)
  • Biblical Hebrew (one semester)
  • Sanskrit (one semester)

I am intending to continue with all of these languages over the next 5 or so years and strive to achieve mastery in them all at least in terms of reading fluency.

My motivation for this is that I am intending to go into academia and missionary work here in Sydney. There are many diverse religious communities in this city, each with a very important history, culture and deep tradition. The languages I am studying are highly relevant to the literature that has historically defined these communities.

In terms of the academic side of things, I’m intending to do comparative studies of Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, Jewish and Daoist philosophy/theology. I want to get deep into all of these traditions at once and study them via the original languages and primary texts.

In terms of the more practical missionary side of things, I spend much of my week visiting mosques, temples and churches in order to engage with members of these various traditions at both a lay and academic level. Learning these languages enables me to connect on a very deep level with all these people, as I’m able to articulate the theology which defines their faith lives in their own prestige language.

As a missionary, I don’t actually seek to convert anyone to anything. I merely aim to be a bridge between communities that tend to regard each other with suspicion and animosity (for example, evangelicals and Catholics, or Muslims and Christians). In other words, my goal is to teach Muslims about true Christianity and teach Christians about true Islam, and that sort of thing. There are many myths and lies on both sides of the divide and my mission is merely to shine a light and reveal the lies for what they are, and hopefully in the process get people talking and engaging with each other in a more friendly way.

A breakdown of which of the languages I am studying correspond to which religions:

  • Arabic – Middle and far Eastern Christianity, Islam of all varieties
  • Latin – Western European Christianity, the Vulgate, the eastern church fathers, the liturgy
  • Greek – Eastern European Christianity, the new testament, the Septuagint, the eastern church fathers, the liturgy
  • Syriac – The language of Jesus, the liturgy, the far eastern church fathers, the Peshitta
  • Hebrew – Judaism and all it’s related literature. The Torah, Mishnah and Talmud
  • Chinese – Chinese religion and philosophy
  • Pali and Tibetan – Buddhism
  • Sanskrit – Buddhism and Hinduism

To donate, click here

Protected: If Religions Were Drugs….

/ TIK

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

David Bentley Hart – That All Shall Be Saved

/ TIK / Leave a comment

I’ve just read the recently released book length essay by David Bentley Hart concerning Universal Salvation – “That All Shall Be Saved”. I was pleasantly surprised to be struck with some insights regarding theodicy and the mystery of evil, which now seem completely obvious to me despite being elusive up to this point. Here they are in dot point form

  1. Contrary to popular educated Christian opinion, evil does have an identifiable reality and substance and essence; evil is not merely an illusion. The experience of pain is the essence and substance of evil. In this way, evil is a real and true component of the fabric of reality – and we are all intimately familiar with it – even if it is understood to be a privation and purely negative, parasitical phenomenon. For example when someone is tortured, both the act and the outcome are evil (although even in the case of a torture the intention is good, as in the case of torturing someone to obtain information which would prevent a destructive act of terrorism).
  2. God does not sovereignly determine evil acts and outcomes. He merely sovereignly permits them. The one single thing that God sovereignly determines is the glorious eschaton and a creation which is constructed in such a way that it infallibly arrives at this eschaton – this is the essence of predestination. The intermediate details are almost entirely determined by us and our autonomous agency (ie, free will) – putting aside direct and divine miraculous intervention.
  3. God does not control all things, but he does create all things. Everything that happens happens because God sustains it in existence and creates it – including our autonomous “free” choices. However God is not a puppet master; nothing is caused by God in the same sense that a puppeteer pulls strings to animate his puppet, or in the same sense that I cause a billiard ball to move by striking it. (For more on this point, search for “Double Agency” and “Synergism” and “The Causal Joint”)
  4. Evil is not part of God’s plan and God’s original design had no evil in it. If it were up to God, there would be no evil. God neither desired nor ordained the Holocaust, he merely permitted it. The holocaust is not an integral component of God’s plan, and he still would bring about the glorious apokatastasis even if the holocaust had never happened.
  5. Our freedom means that the possibility of evil is necessary, but the actuality of evil is not essential. In other words rapes, murders, tsunamis and genocides are not crucial components of God’s plan to bring us to the eschaton, even though rapes, murders and tsunamis are accounted for in that plan. In other words, God has built contingencies into evil, such that it always rubber-bands back to good, in both a temporary and ultimate sense, but his plan does not require evil in order for him to achieve his purposes.
  6. God does not play dice; he knew all possible outcomes of his act of creation before he created – to speak analogically – and yet he went ahead and created anyway. He arranged creation such that everything works together to bring about the glorious eschaton, regardless of whether evil occurs or not. This implies that regardless of how much or how little evil we commit, all things are predestined to the happy ending of the eschaton. To put it in a catchy sound bite, freedom pertains to history while sovereignty pertains to eschatology.
  7. It will not do to complain that the one true gospel of universal salvation renders all action meaningless, “so we may as well eat, drink, have sex and be merry, because it will all be ok in the end anyway regardless of how we behave”. This attitude is completely delusional. Evil is not a step towards the eschaton, it is always a step away from it. For this reason, so long as we remain in our sins, the eschaton is prevented from being actualised. You can’t “sin and still be saved”: So long as you go on sinning, the promised eschaton is prevented from being realised. However, God has created reality in such a way that eventually everyone will infallibly be enlightened as to the truth of things and cease from sinning.
  8. There are two relevant conceptions of Hell to entertain.
    • The first is where someone else holds us in the flames against our will (for example in the case of rape or torture) for sadistic ends. For example the Calvinist god (ie, Satan) wants to demonstrate his attributes and glory, so he damns people to hell and derives selfish glory from their tortures and takes sadistic pleasure in their pain, and all the while they are screaming for mercy and trying to escape. In this first conception, we are in Hell because someone has abducted us and carried us there and held us against our will. To escape from this damnation, some third party has to come and defeat the monstrous prison master and trample the gates of Hell, allowing everyone to escape to freedom. (cf, early “ransom” theories of atonement)
    • The second conception of Hell is where no one is actively holding us in the flames but our very own selves. In this second conception, to remain in the fire could only be due to slavery to ignorance and insanity. However unlike the first conception of Hell, in this conception we do retain our agency and autonomy and dignity, despite being enslaved to the powers of darkness and delusion. Under this second schema we retain the ability to make mistakes and learn from them, and as the ages go by it is inevitable that we will eventually make all the possible mistakes and learn all the possible lessons, and therefore eventually arrive at a state of being wherein we always make the right choices; it is only at this point that we truly can be said to be “free”, “liberated” and “saved”. In this second conception, the process of salvation is less of a “prisonbreak” and more of an education.
  9. People always seek God in everything that they do, it’s just that sometimes (often) they do it in entirely the wrong way. Even the sadistic rapist is not primarily trying to inflict harm on his victim; he is merely seeking pleasure, which is itself a good thing, but unfortunately in this case the pleasure is coming at the expense of the pain of a second person, and this pain is an evil thing. As such, the ultimate sin is to seek retribution: “You hurt me, so I will hurt you”, which only leads to “I hurt you, so you are going to hurt me” and this continues in a vicious circle forever, condemning all of us to an everlasting Hell. The only way to break free from this samsaric cycle of vengeance inflicted and vengeance suffered is to adopt an attitude of mercy, grace and true justice, which involves striving for love and unconditional forgiveness, rather than clinging on to a disordered desire for revenge and “justice”.
  10. It should be recognised that even the desire for revenge and retributive “justice” is in actual fact a desire for God, but it is a fundamentally disordered desire because it has conflated seeking heaven for oneself with inflicting Hell on someone else, and this will in actual fact only serve to perpetuate the current situation – which is a seemingly endless circle of evil, pain and suffering; something of a massa damnata. Retributive justice can only serve to postpone the glorious apokatastasis that we all ultimately crave. However at the point where everyone understands that always and unconditionally seeking the good for the other is the key to true happiness – rather than seeking revenge – the eschaton will have finally been inaugurated. Cue the second coming. Cue the final resurrection. Cue the glorification of Satan and his demons. God is finally all in all, and the glory is infinite and the rejoicing never ends. All are in love and love is in all, and all the evils we had suffered were worth enduring after all. Thanks be to God

Salvation is a Promise, not an Offer

/ TIK / Leave a comment

APOKATASTASIS - TravelQuaz.ComThe original Sola Fide rested on the conviction that salvation is a promise, not an offer. If it’s an offer, then it depends on us to accept it. The key phrase there is “it depends on us”; in other words it is a violation of Sola Gratia and Sola Fide. Whereas if salvation is a promise then it depends entirely on God, which is much more in accord with Monergistic Calvinism and Lutheranism, rather than Arminianism. If salvation is a promise, then it doesn’t depend on how much faith we have, or whether we even have any faith at all; instead it depends entirely on God’s love and sovereignty.

The only question left if you’re on board with all of this is “To whom does God speak this promise?” Luther’s answer was “Whoever has been baptised”; he was very sacramental. Whereas Calvin’s answer tended more towards “preaching as sacrament”; that is, whenever the preacher declares his congregation justified in the name of the risen Christ, the unconditional gospel promise has been spoken; the final judgement has taken place; and the congregation is divided into sheep and goats in that very moment; there are those who trust the promise and those who don’t; those who do are saved into the life of the age, while those who do not are condemned.

But the key point here is that the promise has been spoken, and at the end of the day this promise cannot fail, on account of the one who is really speaking it. If God – through me – declares you justified, then that’s damn well how it is, regardless of whether you trust the declaration or not. However, you won’t experience the salvation that Christ has won for you, and that is presently being declared to you, until you place your trust in that declaration.

So yes, if one does not have faith, they are not saved. But you are nevertheless elect, regardless of whether or not you have faith, because God declares that it is so, and the divine declaration of God completely and entirely trumps a person’s lack of faith.

APOKATASTASIS - TravelQuaz.ComThis is what bugs me about typical evangelical distortions of Sola Fide. They get everything totally back to front. They will claim that it’s only after we have faith that God declares us righteous. But this is just silly: How am I supposed to have faith in God’s declaration when God hasn’t even spoken that declaration to me?

This is why Luther put everything on baptism; because his interpretation of the sacraments was that they are the objective, tangible moment when the declaration of justification is made. They therefore give you something to anchor your faith on. Whereas the Evangelical construal requires me to have faith before I even have an object to anchor my faith on in the first place. This distortion of the doctrine of Sola Fide is clearly the work of Satan as he constantly battles and compromises the doctrines of the church.

So according to evangelicalism, I’m required to have faith in the declaration. But how can I place my faith in the declaration if the declaration is not even spoken until I have faith? It’s a chicken and egg impossibility.

Whereas the original Sola Fide went more like this: “Christ died for you, and therefore your future is secure” – None of this pointless speculation about who is elect and who is not. For you can be 100% assured and certain that you are saved by the blood of Christ, and this is not because of anything you’ve done – not even your faith.

Similarly, you can be 100% assured and certain that whoever it is you are talking to is also saved by the blood of Christ. This is because scripture clearly says so, and this therefore gives you the authority to proclaim the divine declaration of justification to that person as an unconditional promise, in the name of Christ and the good God on high.

Eternal damnation is always a completely abstract hypothetical. It’s for people who are not present, and this is why we must evangelise. We need to proclaim the declaration of righteousness to everyone, and help them to believe it. Remember Romans 10: “How can they believe if they have not heard? How can they hear if no one is sent to them?” etc etc

But remember: The moment your gospel preaching gets contaminated with conditions and “ifs”, you’re preaching some other gospel. “If you get circumcised”, “If you get baptised”, “If you go to confession”, “If you die without committing mortal sins”, “If you believe in Jesus” –  all of these are false gospels.

The one true gospel goes something more like this: “Christ died for you, and so I confidently promise you that your eternal destiny is secure”, and to go even further you could say “and if by chance you do end up in Hell, I promise you that I will come down there and help you to escape.”

Every false gospel preaches law in the form “If x then y”, whereas the true gospel preaches promise in the form “because a then b”.

Highway to Heaven – And the Words became BooksCompare “If you believe, Christ will save you”, to “Because Christ has saved you, you may now trust him and rejoice!!!” The first proclamation is law, it generates works or efforts or εργα, and as you know, we are not saved by works or efforts. Whereas the second proclamation is gospel, good news! The first proclamation places a massive burden on the hearer: they must try as hard as they can to fulfil the stated condition. But how on earth does one even begin to believe?

So the first proclamation will either produce despair, or a proud Pharisee: Despair, as the sinner realises he is completely incapable of meeting the required condition. Or a Pharisee, when he fools himself into thinking that he has successfully managed to do it. Whereas the second proclamation is liberating; it confronts the listener so completely that their only response can be a free faith or a heart that yearns to explode into that free faith but is enslaved by questions, objections and doubts – all of which will be dealt with in due time, if only they would be humble and patient.

This is the essence of faith alone: Once the gospel has been correctly spoken, faith is the only possible response. If the gospel is proclaimed and there is no faith, then the person doing the proclaiming simply hasn’t done the proclaiming correctly, and the saving word of the gospel was therefore never actually spoken. In this way, if someone ends up in hell, it’s actually not their fault; it’s my fault, because I wasn’t able to evangelise them effectively.

But thank God for his unconditional promise, and the fact that his word always achieves what it sets out to achieve, and that we are authorised to spread that promise to the entire world, and that it can’t ultimately fail: eventually all will hear it, all will understand it, all will believe it, all will be saved, and God’s final victory will be complete.