You will say: but those quotes were written both “for” and as if “against” by the saints, who knew God-Love (we are now talking about the Witnesses of Eternal Life of the New Testament era; the Old Testament did not know God-Love, so the men and women of the Old Testament could only know about God, and man knew God (not counting Adam’s experience in Paradise—that’s another question) after the Incarnation)—what’s the thing here?! We talked in the first part, that a word is an indication of a certain reality, which has (should have) the goal of joining (making a participant) the listener (e.g., Christ is Risen—go and see, check, touch, convince yourself and, having experienced the resurrection, having met the Risen One, exclaim—Truly Christ is Risen)! This indication is either direct (“Here, You tell us directly and say no parable”), dogmatic (which excludes, at least tries to exclude ambiguity, uncertainty), which clearly (as far as human language allows) delineates the boundaries of reality, or pedagogical (mediated—the language of parables, riddles, allegories), one of whose techniques—through the unreal to lead to the knowledge of the real (which have the goal: “save with fear”; the mother tells the child, warning of trouble: if you drown—do not come! or: if you do not eat porridge—the bogeyman will take you!8 etc.). In the mouth of the Church, the goal of the indication (dogmatic or pedagogical) is one and the same—Eternal Life, Happiness. But with each, the Church speaks his language, according to his cognitive abilities (with children—one language, pedagogical (child-leading)—verbal milk; with elders—another, dogmatic—solid food). Misunderstandings begin when there is a substitution: pedagogical indications are given the status of dogmatic… But this substitution can, if desired to know the truth, be immediately detected. If desired…
The bee, wherever it is (even on a pile of manure) always looks for a flower, and the fly, on the contrary, always looks for filth. Like attracts like! Therefore, people who have not known the Truth and, even, have not embarked on the path of righteousness (to be truthful with oneself, not to deceive oneself), seek out pedagogical quotes and elevate (elevate) them to the rank of dogma and say: according to Scripture (by Scripture) they must suffer eternally and endlessly—it turns out a caricature of reality. This worldview (not everyone will be saved) from the point of view of Christianity is so primitive that it is not even worth discussing on this subject, but we will say something.
First, let’s remind (see Part I) that the Gospel (literary works of the first Christian communities according to the apostles Matthew, Mark, etc.) is not a photo or video report from the scene, it is not a stenographic report about events related to the life of Jesus Christ, it is “verbal icons of Jesus Christ”. And we understand what an icon is (where everything is symbolic and from the point of view of this world, historical reality—often untrue; e.g., on the verbal icon of the Gospel of John there is an image, which from a historical point of view (consideration of historical events)—unreal. For example, – is the expulsion at the beginning of his ministry by Jesus from the temple of sheep and oxen (2: 13-16); and that they sold oxen and sheep in the temple – neither the first nor the second could be and was not. So, John (or better to say—the community that testified about their experience of knowing the Risen Christ, which coincides (coincides) with the testimony of the apostle John: “We (the community, which is the author—V.A.) know that his (John’s – V.A.) testimony is true”), if he wrote a historical, documentary work, would have told an untruth, a deception, and since he is an icon painter – everything is fine; for example, by adding to the verbal icon oxen and sheep, which were supposedly sold in the temple, the icon painter thereby emphasized the pernicious, godless state of the contemporary God-killers-Jews, with whom Christians polemicized at the time of writing this icon (i.e., “Gospel according to John the Theologian”, or as it is customary “Gospel of John”) from the point of view of expressing the spiritual state of the clergy, the elite, the nobility of the Jews – this stroke is true, and from the point of view of the fleshly history – untrue) and whether we can say: but it is depicted on the icon!? On a photograph, we can refer to it: that something is fixed on it! The icon “dynamically fixes” the invisible and incomprehensible – hypostasis! Therefore, simply referring to: “because it is written”, that is, “according to Scripture”, we know what leads to – God is nailed to the cross, previously condemned to death…
So, some thoughts about the eternal perdition of someone. If we dogmatically claim that someone will perish forever, i.e., will be infinitely in a godless state (hellish torments), then we are saying a simple thing: God is not love and evil is stronger than good!?? God-Love, who knew that a free creature would reject Him and would suffer endlessly—gave life to this creature!? Such acts not God-Love, but a god-tyrant. Let’s remind (Part I) that in order to assert, testify about something, it is necessary to be an eyewitness, to know what we assert, on our own experience (we do not talk about evil and death. Evil, non-being, godlessness did not need to be known experientially, committing sin – man had to know about evil only analogously with good; what it means to be without God man had to learn more and more by likening to Him and growing into God up to the Incarnation, or better to say, human-deification – God everything in everything; man was created innocent, pure – “zero on the number line” and had to move to “plus infinity”, to Absolute Life, and the numerical ray from “zero to minus infinity”, to absolute non-being-death by analogy, which was (and now is) possible, because man moved from strength to strength, changed; man chose the path of experiential knowledge of death…).