reasoning from scripture

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When asked about what would happen at the judgement to those who had
never heard of jesus, Matt said:

MATT 
My opinion, for what it is worth, is that God will judge all in a 
just and fair manner, possibly according to the knowledge 
they possessed, though I have no Scriptural authority to 
support this speculation.

PHIPPS
I'd like to respond to this.  First, let me acknowledge that I asked
Matt for his *opinion*, I was not trying to be tricky or anything.  And
I do appreciate that he gave his opinion in a frank, candid manner.
Thanks Matt.

To be frank myself, that's exactly the view I held when I "walked with
christ."  There was that unfortunate absolute statement of jesus that
"no man" would get to the father except through him, but I used my
ability to reason and interpret rather than a direct reading of the
verse.  I said "Although that's what the verse says, that's not really
what it MEANS."  Most christians I know also feel this way.

This is not a unique situation.  The church in which I was raised
(Adventist) doesn't believe that the torture of the unbelievers will go
on for eternity.  Yes there are verses which seem to say that it will,
but they use "the whole bible in context", and their reasoning to say
that the loving god they find "in context" wouldn't do such a cruel
thing (they have other devices like claiming that the unquenchable fire
is so only in the sense that its *effects* will be everlasting--the evil
dead will never come back).  So they look for possible metaphorical
meanings to the verses that don't fit in with their morality.

But lo and behold, when I began to read the literature from non
SDA-christians, I found that many of them think genesis is metaphorical.
This was a shock to me, since I'd had the impression that most, if not
all of the "good" christians believed the whole thing was real.  It
seems some good christians think it unlikely that people could build a
brick tower that reaches all the way to heaven.  It seems they find it
unlikely that the lion and t-rex were herbivores, or that a single boat
held 2 (or seven) of every kind of animal on the planet, or that a fruit
could be so good for you that if you ate it you would live forever even
if god didn't want you to. 

Ok.  I guess this got a little long-winded, sorry about that.  Here's my
point.  There is a clear, unambiguous statement, supposedly made by
jesus that says NO ONE will get to the father except through jesus.  You
choose to get around that statement by thinking about it for yourself,
and because of your conclusion, you do something (you haven't said what)
to escape the distasteful message of that verse.  Maybe you interpret it
to apply to a very limited set of people, or maybe you ascribe
metaphorical rather than literal significance to it--it really doesn't
matter what method you use.

The problem which arises from this is that once you decide there needs
to be a little "wiggle room" in the meaning, then there's no stopping
the wiggling.  The other liberalizations of scripture I mentioned (
hellfire not being eternal, and genesis not being literal) both derive
from the same principal :  this verse doesn't match with my independent
reasoning, therefore it must not mean what it says, so let's look for
another meaning.

Let me state again that I recognize you gave only your opinion, and to
thank you for doing so.  But let me also point out that your opinion
contradicts at least one scripture I can think of right now.  How can
you reconcile the two without undermining the literality other parts of
the bible, such as those I mentioned?

peace,
john phipps

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