[dekeguy]

Quote: Drolefille
I tend to agree with you although quite frankly I'm up in the air about my personal beliefs at this point. I think, baptised or not, most people are pretty good people. Short minded and selfish at times, but few are cruel and few deserve afterlives of eternal torment/absence from the presence of God. However, looking biblically there's such a contrast between OT God and NT God that while Jesus talked about Abba, the Hebrews... well not so much.
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Drolefille,
As to the differences between the OT and NT God, I always figured that God reveals Himself to us as we are capable of understanding Him. He doesn't change, we just get a little better at understanding Him.

As to eternal torment, our late Pope John Paul II had a very interesting take on eternal damnation. He said, "Because our holy mother the church tells us so we must believe that there is a hell. We are not, however, required to believe that there is anyone in it."
A very profound observation to my thinking.
When I was in Theology class as an undergraduate my old Jesuit professor said that there was rather a lot he was looking forward to learning when he faced his judgment. However, he thought that since hell is defined as the complete absense of God and since God is omnipresent it logically follows that when you die it is either heaven or oblivion. If you make the cut you are in, if not you simply cease to be.
He went on to say that he was sure that God would not condemn a soul unless that soul was ESSENTIALLY negative. He then asked us if we could envision someone who could have absolutely no positive aspects whatsoever. He felt that such a person would have to be completely insane and therefore not culpable. In other words, its pretty hard to tick off God sufficiently to merit oblivion.


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Quote:
Jesus is obviously male. I instinctively refer to God as male because, well I grew up that way, but as the Holy spirit is never drawn as a female figure, most of the feminine divine ends up placed on Mary, although never enough to have her raised to the level of deity herself of course.
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Actually, there was a movement back in the 19th Century where Cardinal Mercier of Brussels led a movement to have Mary proclaimed as co-redemptor along with Christ. This was pretty close to out and out heresy so you can guess what happened when the Pope called him for consultations. Can you spell "Whoops, sorry, let me back off of that real fast"?
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The Church's teachings on Mary are another sticky point I have, but that's a story for another thread.
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Please post your thoughts or PM me if you wish. I'd like to hear and discuss this with you.