back to schools of thought......
back to schools of thought......
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As we noted earlier,...the word 'death' can be variously 'defined' or 'interpreted'. A soul may 'die' also to varying degrees, and who could say when 'death' is fully consummated, as in a total disintegration or destruction of that soul, COMPLETELY? This of course means that soul is totally dissolved, expunged, voided out as it had never existed. These are among the speculations as what death might mean, besides the varying stages of 'death' a soul might experience in its journey of life,
since one can mind the things of the flesh or the Spirit and reap the fruit thereof proportionately at any point in time,...so beyond suppositions, its all pretty
'relative'.
A 'soul-death' view holds that souls that finally choose death and totally reject 'God' altogether reap the final consummation of 'death' in its utter finality as the cessation of life. This cessation of life includes the cancelling of consciousness, the disintegration of that individual soul as a living entity. That soul is 'no more', dissolved back into the primal elements, and only a memory...its personality-potential and activity as that 'person' is expunged from which there is no resurrection. I think that's pretty clear, even though some debate that this is not expressly taught in the scriptures. (The fact is a lot of things regards the metaphysics/ontology of the soul are not fully 'explained' in the so called 'scriptures').
If the total embrace of iniquity and rejection of 'God' entails such annihilation into 'nothingness', then such a wiping out of existence would seem fair, since the consequence of choosing such iniquity in full, is obliteration, destruction, oblivion.
But for a 'god' to keep souls in a state of eternal torment/pain/punishment.... with no hope of relief, remedy or repentance is
insane as we've stated many times previously, which would appear 'obvious' to most reasonable folks. Love would keep wooing souls back to itself, for as long as souls have the ability to return to 'God',....
Love would ever hold itself open to them. We are brought to 2 possible conclusions for the totally wicked who utterly reject Life.
1) total death (disintegration) of these souls, which is the cessation of their conscious individual existence. This is only when iniquity has reached its zenith and the ultimate consequence of its embrace has been fully earned, resulted in
termination of life.
2) a 'death-state' which is an eternal separation from 'God' where the punishment, pain and torment
of being somehow 'seperated' is eternally sustained,
to no end. Here the souls are kept in a 'stasis' of perpetual torment, misery and degeneration....for all eternity,.....and as we said,...
to no end, because these souls are
somehow kept 'separated' from God forever.
Covered earlier -
ECT fails in glorifying 'God'
There are other views among Spiritualist and Universalist schools that offer other possibilities on the issue of soul-progress and destiny as well, that do not accept the above conclusions.
pj