Future probation is a point of view within
Christian
Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...
teaching dealing with the fate of the dead in the
afterlife
The afterlife (also referred to as life after death) is a purported existence in which the essential part of an individual's identity or their stream of consciousness continues to live after the death of their physical body. The surviving ess ...
. It might also be described as the belief concerning individual
eschatology
Eschatology (; ) concerns expectations of the end of the present age, human history, or of the world itself. The end of the world or end times is predicted by several world religions (both Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic), which teach that negati ...
. The general scope of the subject encompasses many variants that range from the
Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
doctrine of
invincible ignorance through
Mormon
Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement started by Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. After Smith's death in 1844, the movement split into several ...
practices of
postmortem baptism.
It is unique to Christian and Jewish belief and can be viewed as a way of extending salvation to all people without being dogmatically
universalist.
The subject attained great prominence in the second half of the 19th century and has continued into recent times. Prior to 1800, the teaching is difficult to distinguish from universalism as many of the questions involved were framed by different cultural, prophetic and ecclesiastical issues.
A treatise on this subject by Albert Hudson, editor of the Bible Study Monthly, was published in 1975 by the Bible Fellowship Union in England. It contains both an appendix describing the history of this doctrine and a bibliography.
[Albert Hudson (1975). ]
Future Probation in Christian Belief
'
See also
*
Fate of the unlearned
The fate of the unlearned, also known as the destiny of the unevangelized, is an eschatological question about the ultimate destiny of people who have not been exposed to a particular theology or doctrine and thus have no opportunity to embrace it ...
*
Invincible error
Vincible ignorance is, in Catholic moral theology, ignorance that a person could remove by applying reasonable diligence in the given set of circumstances. It contrasts with invincible ignorance, which a person is either entirely incapable of remo ...
*
Universal opportunity
Universal opportunity is an aspect of Christian theology.
Under the fate of the unlearned debate, Universal Opportunity (or God Does All He Can Do) is the exclusivist view.
Two vital points specify universal opportunity:
* God is all-powerfu ...
*
Vincible ignorance
Vincible ignorance is, in Catholic moral theology, ignorance that a person could remove by applying reasonable diligence in the given set of circumstances. It contrasts with invincible ignorance, which a person is either entirely incapable of re ...
*
Willful blindness
Willful blindness is a term used in law to describe a situation in which a person seeks to avoid civil or criminal liability for a wrongful act by intentionally keeping themselves unaware of facts that would render them liable or implicated. In ' ...
References
Christian soteriology
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