Does Malachi 1:2-3 Teach Double Predestination?

The term ‘double predestination’ simply means that, just as God predestines some, but not all, to eternal salvation, so he predestines others to eternal punishment; this second part of ‘double predestination’, God's appointment of all but the elect unto eternal destruction, is sometimes called ‘reprobation’; and those who are not the elect are thus called the ‘reprobate’.The object of Malachi was in reminding the Jews that they were loved and chosen by God; it was, that he might the more amplify their ingratitude for having rendered such an unworthy reward for so great a favor of God: as he had preferred them to all other nations, he had justly bound them to perpetual obedience With the inductive method, we will present a more objective truth of Scripture. We will not only explain the truth of the Bible would conclude (correct interpretation), but also accompanied by the evidence and arguments of the conclusions. In conclusion, the meaning of hate in this context is God hated Esau, the absence of affection, because he is a sinful people therefore Yahweh opposed and kept distant from him (have no relationship). Based on this meaning, we can summarize that this verse (Mal. 1:3) doesn’t teach about reprobation that God has predestined Esau to go to eternal destruction because Yahweh hated him beforehand but Lord indeed hated Edomites because they are sinful people.

Eksistensi Yesus Kristus dalam Perjanjian Baru

When God created the first humans, namely Adam and Eve, they were both created in the image of God without any sin in humans. But humans eventually fell into sin because of the wrong choices of humans by violating God's commandments by eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil which was forbidden by God to be eaten, because when humans eat them, they must die and death is what makes humans sin and lose holiness. God of himself (Rom. 3:23). Sin makes humans separate from God and humans cannot reach God because of the enmity that occurs between humans and God. Sin led man to destruction and the eternal punishment of God. However, it was because of God's great love for humans who were specially created in the image of God, so that God took the initiative to deliver and save mankind from destruction and God's eternal punishment which would be bestowed upon mankind because of man's own sin.AbstrakKetika Allah menciptakan manusia pertama yakni Adam dan Hawa, maka keduanya diciptakan segambar dengan Allah tanpa ada dosa dalam diri manusia. Namun manusia akhirnya jatuh dalam dosa oleh karena pilihan manusia yang salah dengan melanggar perintah Allah dengan memakan buah pengetahuan yang baik dan yang jahat yang dilarang oleh Allah untuk dimakan, sebab ketika manusia memakannya pastilah mati dan kematian itulah yang membuat sehingga manusia menjadi berdosa dan kehilangan kekudusan Allah dari dirinya (Rm. 3:23). Dosa membuat manusia terpisah dengan Allah dan manusia tidak bisa mencapai Allah karena perseteruan yang terjadi antara manusia dengan Allah. Dosa membawa manusia kepada kebinasaan dan hukuman kekal Allah. Namun karena kasih Allah yang sangat besar terhadap manusia yang diciptakan istimewa yakni segambar dengan Allah, sehingga Allah mengambil inisiatif untuk melepaskan dan menyelamatkan manusia dari kebinasaan dan hukuman kekal Allah yang akan ditimpahkan kepada manusia oleh karena dosa manusia itu sendiri.

Meditating Death in Medieval and Early Modern Devotional Writing

Meditating about death and the afterlife was one of the most important techniques that Christian societies in medieval and early modern Europe had at their disposal for developing a sense of individual selfhood. Believers who regularly and systematically reflected on the inevitability of death and the certainty of eternal punishment in hell or reward in heaven would acquire an understanding of themselves as unique persons defined by their moral actions; they would also learn to discipline themselves by feeling remorse for their sins, doing penance, and cultivating a permanent vigilance over their future thoughts and deeds. The book covers a crucial period in the formation and transformation of the technique of meditating on death: from the thirteenth century, when a practice that had mainly been the preserve of a monastic elite began to be more widely disseminated among all segments of Christian society, to the sixteenth, when the Protestant Reformation transformed the technique of spiritual exercise into a Bible-based mindfulness that avoided the stigma of works piety. The book discusses the textual instructions for meditation as well as the theories and beliefs and doctrines that lay behind them; the sources are Latin and vernacular and enjoyed widespread circulation in Roman Christian and Protestant Europe during the period under consideration.

Stokes: Victorian Britain's most important religious scientist?

Sir George Gabriel Stokes is justly recognized for his substantial contributions to mathematics and physics, particularly optics and hydrodynamics. Yet Stokes also had a particularly noteworthy involvement in the religious life of Victorian Britain, and especially in the relationship between science and religion. As an outspoken evangelical, a prominent religious scientist, a lecturer on natural theology, and a lay writer on widely-debated theological topics such as eternal punishment, Stokes made contributions unsurpassed by any of his contemporaries. However, these have often been overlooked. This article redresses this situation, by explaining Stokes's religious life, his influence on debates over science and religion, his natural theology, and his promotion of the doctrine of conditional immortality. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Stokes at 200 (Part 1)’.

Mazdeans and Christians Facing the End of the World: Circulations and Exchanges of Concepts

This contribution offers a conspectus of the parallel treatment of some escha­tological subjects in the comparative framework of Mazdean and Christian sources. Although some impact of the Judeo-Chris­tian tradition on Iranian apocalypticism has been fittingly detected in previous studies, the author in­sists on evidence showing a sort of circular exchange between Chris­tians and Mazdeans, where, for in­stan­ce, chiliasm presents some Iranian (and not only Ba­by­lonian) resonances, while the well-known Zo­ro­as­trian doctrine of universal mercy and of the *apokatastasis* shows impressive correspondences with the Ori­genian doctrines. What distinguishes the Iranian framework is the fact that millenarianism, apocalypse and *apokatastasis* did not directly contrast, as it happened in the Christian milieu. These Christian doc­trines played a certain influence in Sasanian Iran, although their diffusion and acceptance was pro­bably slow and progressive, and became dominant among Zoroastrians only after the fall of the Sasanian period, when the Mazdean Church was no longer the pillar of the state and the social and legal order. The diffusion of the doctrine of universal mercy was a later acquisition, as shown from the evidence that earlier Mazdean doctrines did not assume a complete salvation for the wicked but prescribed a harsh and eternal punishment for them. Fur­ther­more, the author focuses on his own research on these sub­jects and summarises some results concerning a new and original presentation of the Mazdean concept of evil as a manifestation of suffering, comparable to a state of mental 'sickness.'

Faith and Thought

This chapter examines Stokes as an outspoken scientist of faith. It uses Stokes to examine the intellectual threats to conservative Christianity in the second half of the nineteenth century, and highlights his leading role among Victorian Britain’s religious scientists, through bodies such as the Royal Society and the Victoria Institute. It also explains how Stokes’s upbringing and education formed the basis for his own evangelical theology, and highlights his two most significant contributions to that field. First, it explores Stokes’s opposition to the doctrine of eternal punishment, and his promotion of conditional immortality as an alternative. Second, it highlights how Stokes continued to advocate the natural theology and teleological argument of William Paley a century after they were first proposed, as a method of harmonizing faith and scientific practice.

«ETERNAL PUNISHMENT» AS A REGULATOR OF ILLEGAL CONDUCT OF THE ENGLISHMEN IN EARLY MODERN TIMES

В статье рассматриваются особенности религиозного сознания и мышления англичан раннего Нового времени, связанные с восприятием «вечного наказания». На основе текстов проповеднической публицистической литературы XVII–XVIII веков проанализированы представления, страхи и ожидания «вечного наказания», разделяемые как духовенством, так и мирянами. Методологическим ориентиром при анализе проповедей послужили принципы «новой культурно-интел- лектуальной истории», которая видит свою основную задачу в исследовании ин- теллектуальной деятельности и процессов в сфере гуманитарного, социального и естественно-научного знания в их конкретно-историческом социокультурном кон- тексте. В рассматриваемый период угроза «вечного наказания» и воздаяния по грехам была более эффектив- на, чем страх перед земным правосудием. Союз церкви и государства выражался в совмещении понятий «боже- ственное возмездие» и «уголовное наказание». Постоянная актуализация образа ада, истолкование природных явлений и эпидемических болезней в понятиях «предупреждения» и «возмездия» со стороны священнослужите- лей обеспечивали поддержание социального порядка и закладывали привычку к повиновению государственной власти. Англиканская вера отвергала учение о чистилище, проповедники последовательно проводили мысль о том, что верующие должны придерживаться такого образа жизни, который позволит достичь покаяния и исправления в течение земной жизни. Угроза «вечного наказания» для грешников обеспечивала относительное послушание гражданским законам. The article considers peculiarities of the religious consciousness and mentality of the Englishmen, associated with perception of the «Eternal punishment» in early modern times. Based on preaching sermons of XVII-XVIII centuries, the article analyses the perception, fears and expectations of «eternal punishment», shared by either clergy or laity. The principles of “the new cultural-intellectual history” served as a methodological orienting point in analyzing sermons, that sets as its main task the study of intellectual, social and scientifi c knowledge in their specifi cally-historical and sociocultural context. In the period under review, the threat of «Hell’s torments» and retribution for sins was more effective than the fear of “Earthjustice”. The Union of Church and State was refl ected in combination of the following concepts: «divine retribution» and «criminal punishment». The constant actualization of the image of Hell, the interpretation of natural phenomena and epidemic diseases in the concepts of «prevention» and «retribution» by the clergy ensured the maintenance of social order and develop a habit of obedience to the state power. The Anglican faith rejected the doctrine of purgatory; the preachers maintained the conviction that believers should follow such a way of life that would allow them to seek penance and rehabilitation during their mortal lives. The threat of «eternal punishment» for sinners provided the relative obedience to civil laws.

Hell as “Eternal” Punishment? On the Depiction of Hell in Vīlhojī’s Kathā Gyāncarī

This paper engages with the literature of the Biśnoī Sampradāya, a religious tradition that emerged in the fifteenth century in Rajasthan and traces itself back to the Sant Jāmbhojī. The paper specifically examines a composition of the sixteenth-seventeenth century poet-saint and head of the tradition Vīlhojī. His Kathā Gyāncarī is a unique composition among the corpus of Biśnoi literature with regard to its genre, style and content. The text revolves around the consequences of one’s actions after death, particularly punishment in hell. This paper aims to illustrate that the Kathā Gyāncarī depicts suffering in hell as the eternal consequence of committing sins or crimes, which is unique not only for Biśnoī literature, but for Sant literature in general. It argues that the depiction of hell as eternal punishment was used as a rhetorical strategy at a time the Biśnoī Sampradāya faced intense difficulties. In another vein, this depiction of hell could indicate the Biśnoīs’ close connection to the Indian Shi’a community of the Nizārī Ismā’īlīs. This is reflected not only in the Kathā Gyāncarī’s function of hell as a eternal punishment for disbelievers and sinners, but also in the soteriological role of the teacher or guru as well as in the appearance of various Nizārī figures and motives in the text. In either way picturing hell as eternal suffering serves to amplify the authority of the Biśnoī teachers and the supremacy of the Biśnoī religious doctrine.

Prison, Penance or Purgatory: The Interpretation of Matthew 5.25–6 and Parallels

Scholarship on Matt 5.25–6 has focused on the question of whether the saying offers mundane wisdom or threatens divine judgement, with the majority concluding that it refers to eternal punishment in hell. This article examines debt-prison and related phenomena before turning to the illuminating history of ancient interpretation. The article concludes that the ‘eternal damnation’ gloss widely favoured today is an overinterpretation first inspired by the exigencies of fourth- and fifth-century doctrinal controversy. Instead of eternal perdition, Matt 5.25–6 and its parallels suggest a time of straits followed by possible release.

Hell and Its Rivals

The idea of punishment after death—whereby the souls of the wicked are consigned to hell—emerged out of beliefs found across the Mediterranean, from ancient Egypt to Zoroastrian Persia, and became fundamental to the Abrahamic religions. Once hell achieved doctrinal expression in the New Testament, the Talmud, and the Qur’ān, thinkers began to question hell’s eternity, and to consider possible alternatives—hell’s rivals. Some imagined outright escape, others periodic but temporary relief within the torments. One option, including Purgatory and, in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the Middle State, was to consider the punishments to be temporary and purifying. Despite these moral and theological hesitations, the idea of hell has remained a historical and theological force until the present. This book examines an array of sources from within and beyond the three Abrahamic faiths—including theology, chronicles, legal charters, edifying tales, and narratives of near-death experiences—to analyze the origins and evolution of belief in hell. Key social institutions, including slavery, capital punishment, and monarchy, also affected the afterlife beliefs of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Reflection on hell encouraged a stigmatization of “the other” that in turn emphasized the differences between these religions. Yet, despite these rivalries, each community proclaimed eternal punishment and answered related challenges to it in similar terms. For all that divided them, they agreed on the need for—and fact of—hell.