The Outer Darkness: Its Interpretations and Implications - Paperback

by Marty Andrew Cauley (Author)

Volume two of "The Outer Darkness" contains the remaining 6 chapters, plus 19 appendixes, and houses the endnotes and indexes for the entire two-volume set. Indexes are provided for author, subject, extrabiblical, biblical, Greek, Hebrew, and Slavonic citations. To help the visually oriented reader, over 375 illustrations are provided within the set, covering a wide range of topics and a wide assortment of illustrative techniques, such as: pictures, graphs, flow charts, and syllogisms. Surprisingly, perhaps, not all defenders of unconditional security within the Free Grace camp would regard the outer darkness as a misthological issue. They would see it as being a strictly soteriological issue (thus pertaining to salvation from eternal damnation). Their arguments have been addressed as well. Some writers within the Free Grace community interpret some of the passages regarding the outer darkness soterically but acknowledge that at least one passage is mistholic (and thus applicable to believers as a reward issue). Although Cauley prefers an exclusively misthological view of the outer darkness, he does entertain the plausibility of such a soteric-mistholic duality under the auspices of his Principle of Correlativity. This principle allows him to integrate divergent points of views held by various kingdom writers regarding the outer darkness. For example, what impact does one's understanding of the outer darkness have within kingdom circles upon one's interpretation of the Bride of Christ, Gehenna, and the Second Death? Presently, kingdom writers are disagreed among themselves as to the exact nature of these potentially intertwined issues. Does a misthological understanding of the outer darkness necessarily infer a misthological understanding of the Bride? In other words, will all believers compose the Bride even if some of them are cast into the outer darkness? Does being cast into the outer darkness necessarily entail being cast outside of the kingdom into Gehenna for a thousand years before being allowed into the eternal kingdom? Might a believer be hurt by the Second Death? For many years, Joseph Dillow's book, The Reign of the Servant Kings, was the most comprehensive treatment of such matters within the Free Grace community. He took what might he termed a classical view of the above issues. More recently, Dillow has performed a synthesis between the classical view and the more extreme views of Gehenna, into what The Outer Darkness refers to as a Preteristic Gehenna-Bema. However, this neo-Dillowian perspective might be further synthesized with the classical Dillowian perspective into what The Outer Darkness refers to as a Neoclassical Position. Therefore, The Outer Darkness not only interacts with both the classical Dillowian and neo-Dillowian perspectives but also provides the foundation for what comes next.