your achievement makes it easier for others to follow.
Besides eternal life is an outgiving thing, and generosity would demand that someone who believed he had eternal life did his best to share it with others. If a number of people became immortal, either in the sense that their lives became manifestly full of grace and truth, or in the sense that their lives became manifestly endless due to their perfectly relaxed consciousnesses (it is quite unimportant which), then they would want to form themselves into a society. Man is gregarious, and men and women who have the same interests in common, or who look at things in the same way, club together. How would such a society be organised? Things would inevitably go wrong, as the writer of Genesis saw. They always do. What would happen then? Suppose one immortal person robbed or raped another, would he have to appear before a Vehmegericht to be stripped of immortality, before he appeared before the Crown Court to be deprived of his liberty? I hardly think so. It is true that the 1st Chapter of Isaiah may be likened to a Court scene with God as prosecutor and judge; but very soon, if he does not become the accused's advocate, he signs a deed of indemnity to payoff all his transgressions. So Isaiah, who wanted justice as well as mercy, had no great confidence that legal proceedings would reach the desired result. It is also true that Christ speaks of judgment, and even condemnation, but he always makes it sound on a man to man basis. The condemnation is the master dismissing the servant in private, or Abraham speaking to Dives in a very rational way, although the one is in heaven and the other in hell. The accused is never put in the dock.
However there is a more serious objection to a Vehmegericht than mere personal distaste. It would not work. The ecclesiastical courts, which once flourished in this country, represented a human attempt to administer a court of…