Er, no not really. That’s a bit like saying a woman who walked down a dark ally in a short skirt made a free choice to get raped. It might be the consequence of their choice, but they still didn’t choose to get raped.
It also doesn’t solve the problem of a hefty chunk of just about everyone’s loved ones ending up in Hell for being insuffiently pious in word and deed. What kind of tool would live the rest of eternity in the bliss of paradise knowing that their unbelieving son/daughter/mother/father/brother/sister/etc. was burning to a crisp in Hell?
There is also the scenario of a child molestor who turns to Jesus later in life and genuinely repents of his sins, thus ending up in Heaven, whilst his victims, who have been damaged by his actions to the point were they have died ‘in rebellion against god’ and end up in Hell. That isn’t what I would call natural justice.
The only way to reconcile the idea of an omnibenevolent, omniscient and omnipotent God is either that A) Hell is temporary and redemptive, as universalists tend to believe, B) The souls of the wicked are Annihilated, as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and 7th Day Adventists believe or C) It doesn’t exist.
Otherwise, this God isn’t worth praising or worshiping at all except out of fear, which can only be insincere. Fortunately for christianity, the Bible itself suggests in Collosians 1:16 that all things will be reconciled to himself.
It is interesting to note that most schools of early christianity, with the exception of the Carthagian/Roman school, believed in Universalism, but the former, being closer to the centre of power in the known world, got the upper hand over theologians such as Origen, who preached in universalism and whose writings on Christianity predate the earliest known surviving gospels, which were mistranslated by ignorant and bitter scholars like St Augustine who mistranslated the greek and aramaic gospels were words like ‘Aion’ (which roughly means ‘a indefinite period of time’ to the Latin ‘aeternum’ which means ‘forever’.
Some of these scholars just seemed a bit too keen on the idea of ‘heaven’ as an exclusive club for the few who met their own particular standards of piety and correct theological interpretation to be considered ‘christian’ by anyone’s standards....
“Some of these scholars just seemed a bit too keen on the idea of ‘heaven’ as an exclusive club for the few who met their own particular standards of piety and correct theological interpretation to be considered ‘christian’ by anyone’s standards....”
I’m not too clear on what you’re trying to convey. Did Christ lie when He said, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life”? Or “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father but by Me?
“Er, no not really. That’s a bit like saying a woman who walked down a dark ally in a short skirt made a free choice to get raped. It might be the consequence of their choice, but they still didn’t choose to get raped.”
Your analogy escapes me. Are you implying that there’s an alternate route to God? Yes, one could assume that that woman’s choice walking down that dark alley could get her in a heap of trouble, likewise denying Christ as your saviour is going to have consequences....dire consequences, it’s a choice everyone is going to make sometime in their lives.