New Heaven & Earth

Kind of going along with the hell topic, but, at the same time, going beyond it further, hence the new thread...

Here is a question for you Christians...

After all is said and done, and judgement day, hell, and the establishment of the new heaven and earth has all taken place...

Why is it that man will no longer be able to fall? Will he lose his free will?

And if it, indeed, will be impossible in the new kingdom to fall, why was it possible in the beginning? What is to say that whatever triggered this possiblity cannot be triggered later?

Yet another thing that really doesn't make sense, if you really think about it. To me anyways.

Excellent question, but unfortunately, one that I don't feel qualified to answer.
I really haven't given it much thought.

The bible doesnt mention free will, on the contrary it says that God is sovereign (completely in control).

Proverbs 19:21
Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand.

If the 'christians' had it there way, they would have most of the planet in hell. Thank God, He is love.

If god doesn't give man free will, then you run into a lot of theological problems, namely faulting god for sin.

There is a lot of gray area, think no one will dispute you about that. And you will probably never get the answers you are striving for. But if you believe, you believe. For many, at many times - that's enough. No one is forcing anyone else to believe or convert. If you believe, you believe. It's there for me. But I don't have the answers to answer your questions, debate. Let go, and let God -- and then you will learn firsthand - He will answer all your questions, in His way, in His time. Sorry, He doesn't work according to our schedule.

Children are forced to believe.





Are you really satisfied with this solution to all of the theological contradictions and hiccups in your religion? To just say "we can't understand God"? In the end, all you have done is relegate God to the gaps in your knowledge. God ends up being an embodiment of your ignorance, a dump for all of the things you don't get.

I think it's a shame when people give up challenging themselves and resort to wilful inconsistency.

Not particularly a "you Christian".... ........yet you pose relevant questions.

Here is a little passage from the pen of Thomas Merton, a Catholic monk, who also liked a beer or two at times....

The mere ability to choose between good and evil is the lowest limit of freedom, and the only thing that is free about it is the fact that we can still choose good.

To the extent that you are free to choose evil, you are not free. An evil choice destroys freedom.

We can never choose evil as evil: only as an apparent good. But when we decide to do something that seems to us to be good when it is not really so, we are doing something that we do not really want to do, and therefore we are not really free.

Perfect spiritual freedom is a total inability to make any evil choice. When everything you desire is truly good and every choice not only aspires to that good but attains it, then you are free because you do everything that you want, every act of your will ends in perfect fulfillment.

Freedom therefore does not consist in an equal balance between good and evil choices but in the perfect love and acceptance of what is really good and the perfect hatred and rejection of what is evil, so that everything you do is good and makes you happy, and you refuse and deny and ignore every possibility that might lead to unhappiness and self-deception and grief. Only the man who has rejected all evil so completely that he is unable to desire it at all, is truly free. God, in whom there is absolutely no shadow or possibility of evil or of sin, is infinitely free. In fact, he is Freedom.

from "New Seeds of Contemplation"

Anyway, the implication would seem to be that we achieve true freedom at the moment we actually lose free will.

Why could we not be created this way? Because from God's side He would know we were robots.

Why, having reached this state can we not fall again as we did before? Aye, a good one!

St Augustine, one of the great Christian thinkers, when contemplating the "fall", came to the conclusion that some of the created angels were given less natural grace than others, this to offer some reason why perfectly good beings should have fallen in the first place. Augustine saw himself the impossibility of the "choosing" of evil ex-nihilo, and needed to find/offer some sort of explanation.

Other Christian Fathers, often of the Eastern Orthodox side of things, suggest that in a certain sense the "fall" was not so much a rebellion, more a necessary step for "created" beings. "O felix culpa!" or "O fortunate fault that merited so great a Redeemer!"

(Which suggests a line from a song sung by the great Jerry Lee Lewis on his "Last Man Standing" album....

"From the rocking of the cradle
To the rolling of the hearse.
The going up
Was worth the coming down" )

So, anyway, the answer to the conundrum you have set would seem to be that the "fall" must needs have happened once (and did so by Divine fiat) - given the wish to share the infinite freedom of Divinity with created beings - yet need not and will not happen again.

Whether or not any of that makes sense I have no idea. For myself, the main challenge to any faith that the Ultimate Reality is Love remains the existence, and the sheer extent, of suffering. Arguments about free will are, at least for me, in comparison, petty quibbles.

Just to finish, a few lines to contemplate and ponder....

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. (T.S.Eliot)

Thanks for a great post. It gave me some things to think about, particularly the ideas of true freedom from the above philosophers. Of course, it still doesn't address why the whole she-bang cannot happen again, but the additional idea that it only needs to happen once to eliminate it from happening again is something to think about.

Someone else also suggested that, in a "new heavenly body", the desire to chose evil (or, in the mindset of the above, the inability to choose good) becomes non-existant.

Of course, this is all just us trying to grasp an understanding of what we probably were not meant to ever fully be able to understand.

I generally find anything "new" and improved is overrated.

Besides whats gonna happen to the people in old heaven and hell?

They'd go to the 'new' heaven and hell (BTW, he said 'earth' not 'hell'). It'd be like...living in a temporary house until your new house is built.

God will answer all your questions when the time is right.

Like you, its all "something to think about", but I don't "believe it" as such. I've waffled on elsewhere about a "way of unknowing" where the idea is more a resting in the mystery than an attempt to explain, even to fully understand.

Not so much because ultimately the "truth" is a set thing that CAN be understood/explained, but in the sense that "truth" is a living reality, pure freedom, that can be experienced/lived, but not "thought" (put into words)

Anyway, perhaps enough.....

Exactly.

No one should be faulted for sin.

Sin is valuable and necessary.

I think the whole thing with sin in the bible was put in there to control people.

How can anyone know what evil is without sin existing?

Imagine how naive we would be if we never had any direct or indirect experience with bad stuff?

Yet god act like sin was something unexpected in the bible.

A monkey wrench in his well oiled machine if you will.