Kid dies

[Drich]

Again I beg to differ and appearently so does the parable and the one that told it. If you read the parable it clear points out that the 'fairness of heaven has little to do with what man believes is fair. [snip]

It still sets a redemptive standard as to who will and who will not merit heaven.

Yes but the point you were making was the standard was the goodies went to heaven and the enmeies of the goodies went to Hell.

When in fact the oppsite it true. In that only admitted "baddies" go to heaven and the "moral goodie" goes to Hell.

 Does the parable say that those who didn't show up to work at all will also be paid?  No it does not.  The parable underscores the point that people will be redeemed "by grace, through faith."  While faith isn't a sufficient condition for salvation, it does play a role.  I've read several interpretations of the parable and in none of them was the message of the parable that Christ was unfair.

THEN READ THE PARABLE ITSELF!!!
9 “The workers who were hired at five o’clock came to get their pay. Each worker got one silver coin. 10 Then the workers who were hired first came to get their pay. They thought they would be paid more than the others. But each one of them also received one silver coin. 11 When they got their silver coin, they complained to the man who owned the land. 12 They said, ‘Those people were hired last and worked only one hour. But you paid them the same as us. And we worked hard all day in the hot sun.’

13 “But the man who owned the field said to one of them, ‘Friend, I am being fair with you. You agreed to work for one silver coin. Right? 14 So take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same pay I gave you. 15 I can do what I want with my own money. Why would you be jealous because I am generous?’

16 “So those who are last now will be first in the future. And those who are first now will be last in the future.”

How could you possible miss this?

In the parable it clearly states the men who worked all day thought Christ/landowner to be unfair! And the land owner rebuked them explaining that their reward/heaven was not based on what they did, but what he was generous enough to give them. Again dispelling your idea of a primitive sense of fairness.

 Quite the contrary, he points out that all will receive the same reward, by grace, through faith.  So faith becomes the first dividing line between those who might be redeemed and those who definitely will not be redeemed.

 Actually Christ sums it all up by saying the first shall be last and the last first in Heaven. again a bit of unfairness if one measures service by how long and what they do.

It is the only aspect of the sanctification process which we can control, and the only part that we can know by inspection.  That Christ taught a specific form of redemptive justice does not negate the fact that he did in fact teach such a form.  That is all that's necessary to show that heaven and hell still functioned in the people's minds as a dessert for those who are faithful, as the passage from Romans underscores.

If this were true then there would only be room in Heaven for those of faith. I have little to no faith in what I believe I need to see proof. God delivers 'proof' for people like me if we meet Him on His terms. Doubting thomas and Even Paul both needed 'proof' inorder to believe in Christ. They (to a varying degree) Got what they needed. Now according to your take on the Romans 10 message faith is the only key to salvation.. So what then of those who do not need faith as they experience God?

"Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies,"
John 11:25, NASB

But is belief predicated on Faith? Do you have faith in oxygen/air? or do you believe in the evidences that Oxygen is present and believe that the air is safe to breath???

Belief is the key and it is not the same as blind faith. That said the bible points to those who have only their faith and great is their reward in Heaven, but trlly so many more believe because they are privy to God.

first you said:

I was thinking about this earlier. Heaven and hell are a manifestation of the imagination of people who recognize that the world isn't fair, and can't accept it. They are completely unable to accept reality as it is, and so they imagine a reality in which everybody gets what they deserve.

Now you say:

Whether or not it is counter to the prevailing standards of the time is irrelevant to the question as to whether it was a system of redemptive justice or not.  Again, will those who do not have faith in the redemptive power of Christ's sacrifice be saved?  If you answer "no," then you've already set up a standard by which the "good people" -- that is, those who have faith -- will be sorted separately from those who do not.  You haven't abolished heaven and hell as cosmic equalizers, you've simply changed the entrance requirements.

When has redemptive justice ever been fair???
One dying for all or even someone else is not fair. An innocent man dying in place of another is the oppsite of fair...

Me think she moveth the goal post on this one.

Even so according to Jesus there are no "good men" only God is 'good.'

First of all, in my original post I said that "people" are the subject of my consideration, not Christians specifically.

That's a load. Even if you want to say that now it becomes 'moot' in your last sentence when you brought in all the rest of modern religion. Once you claim modern religion was 'schackeled by primitive thoughts on heaven and hell) you opened yourself up to a compareson to cannon, not your fan fiction of heaven and hell.

But modern religious people are shackled to the past, and so they endorse such infantile fantasies.

That's all you sweet heart. By comparing modern religious people to those who by your estimation could not conceive of a world without "fairness" in their heaven or hell you opened the discussion to cannon. In that what does cannon say about heaven and hell verse your estimation of what those people in your fan fiction had to say, verse what the people thought and did in that time frame.

 The fact is that ideas about heaven and hell predate the life of Christ (e.g. the book of Enoch) and post-date him (Islam).  That you personally consider Christ God and therefore privileged in his opinions on the subject means absolutely squat.  And while I used the terms heaven and hell, which technically restricts me to apocalyptic Judaism, Christianity, Islam and other faiths which followed, the idea of a divinely ordained reward for doing or believing the right things has a much greater scope, including Exilic and Post-exilic Jews and their notion of a "New Kingdom" (e.g. Isaiah), Norse mythology with its Valhalla, Grecian mythology with its Elysian fields, Hindu belief with its concentration on karma and moksha, and Buddhists with their concepts of dependent origination and nirvana.  So, no, I am not limited in the scope of my comments to the lense through which you personally view the question, that of the words of Christ.  If you insist on limiting the scope of the discussion in this way, it is you who is off-topic, not me.

The fact that you are still lumping heaven and Hell with anyother mythos means you still do not understand what heaven and hell is per the bible.

Regardless, my words hold true both within your "canon" and outside of it.  

No. your word hold true about the versions of heaven where good people are treated fairly and a hell where bad people are punished.

Again Heaven and Hell proper have no such boundries and isn't centered around being 'fair.' matter of fact I will go out on a limb abd say 95% of the people going to Hell will not see it as being 'fair.' because again mst of them think they are 'good people.' While morality plays a key role in most versions of heaven and Hell, the heaven and Hell in the bible has little to do with morality.

Now if your last paragraph was anattempt to walk back and exclude Heaven and Hell proper/Christian versions then I do conceed with the first 1/2 of yourstatement that many would conceive of a proper/fair place for the goodies. but again Cannon does not describe such a place for Christian which according to you is apart of that mix.

I say they are not because Heaven and Hell as per the bible is confusing and conterintuitive once understood as written. Why would a primitive man create such a hostile enviorment as a reward why would he invent being in the service of God forever? why not 50 virgins and all the pizza and weed once could ever want?

This is getting tiresome.  The fact that Jesus taught a different standard in no way negates the fact that he taught various standards about what did or did not make a person worthy, and faith in the redemptive power of Christ's sacrifice is the card that trumps then standards of the time.

Again different standard= abstract or counterintuitive thought to a primitive mind who sought to create a fair safe heaven. That fact right there defeats your critique of the reason Christianity describes the HEaven told to us in the bible.

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and in Romans 10:8 the word used is:
rhēma
a saying of any sort, as a message, a narrative: concerning some occurrence, λαλεῖν τό ῤῆμα περί τίνος, Luke 2:17; ῤῆμα τῆς πίστεως, the word of faith, i. e. concerning the necessity of putting faith in Christ, Romans 10:8; a promise, Luke 1:38; Luke 2:29; καλόν Θεοῦ ῤῆμα, God's gracious, comforting promise (of salvation), Hebrews 6:5 (see καλός, c.); καθαρίσας... ἐν ῤήματι, according to promise (properly, on the ground of his word of promise, viz. the promise of the pardon of sins; cf. Mark 16:16), Ephesians 5:26 (others take ῤήματι here as equivalent to 'the gospel,' cf. Ephesians 6:17, Romans 10:8; (see Meyer at the passage)); the word by which something is commanded, directed, enjoined

Which changes the meaning of logos ( a record of what was done) to A promise yet to be full filled (BY THE SAME GUY)

Nothing changes in my point sportress, as Christ is still the 'Word' we must have in our hearts and on our toungues in order for us to be in a place to make that simple confession. meaning (Rather than Christ Himself if you use the John 1:1 defination as I did, You with the word rhēma get the promise Christ made... is in your words, acts and faith will buy you eternal life if you simply call out to Him.

You were so quick to 'rightly divide' the word you failed to see how it all fits together.

First of all, rhēma is only equivalent to logos if one is referring to a speech act.  John was not referring to a speech act but rather to the divine personage himself, so your equivalence is a false one.

 You failed to grasp the cmpareson. While John speaks of the embodiment of the word I am saying Paul speaks to the Promise the embodiment left. There is nothing false here.

The word logos was a term of art in Hellenic philosophy and religion of the time, and it has shades of meaning far beyond those contained in the word rhēma.  So, no, you can't just substitute one for the other without drastically altering the meaning of the text, as one refers to a speech act and the other has a considerably different connotation.

The only difference here if the "wrod/Christ were there with you, verse having his promise with us.

Beyond your ignorant butchering of the meaning of the text, I still do not see what point you think you are making with this errant substitution.

if you were not so quick to judge you might accidentally allow something into that tightly closed mind of yourn.

So quick to judge so quick to dismiss so you don't have to walk back anything else you've said. That's par for the course though isn't it? Rather than say hey "Drich" you were right. I did not know Christian's version of Heaven and Hell was so different than every other religion. I was so foolish in thinking that Dante's imaginngs were just an expression of litary art based on mythology more so than Scriptural Christianity. I simply go lost and thought everything was the same. but you are right it is different because Your stripped down version of Heaven does not sound so appealing and Hell does not sound so bad.

Then I could explain what made Heaven Heaven and Hell Hell.

But nooooo.... little miss can't ever be wrong finds it much easier to curse me and call me stupid.