Tom Talbott's Site

First Paragraph:
In a section entitled "The philosophical universalism of Thomas Talbott," which is but a tiny fraction of his massive two-volume work The Devil's Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism, Michael J. McClymond illustrates the danger, as I see it, of trying to cover way too much ground way too quickly. His entire work of over 1300 pages is a monumental piece of historical scholarship, at least interms of its breadth of coverage; one would be hard pressed, indeed, to identify a single name or topic relevant to the history of Christian universalism that escapes his attention altogether. But in some cases at least, his incredible breadth of coverage also comes at the expense of a careful presentation and evaluation of arguments, of any real depth, and even of simple accuracy. And his discussion of The Inescapable Love of God illustrates the point nicely.

I here make available the presentation I made at the Door Standing Open Conference in Providence, Rhode Island, on April 28, 2018. I argue in particular that a universalist reading of the Bible as a whole is far more reasonable than either a Calvinist reading or an Arminian reading. I also tackle the question of Just what it might mean to interpret the Bible from a given theological perspective.

Part I (Original Facebook post): I here examine two theological claims of a restrictivist kind: Jeff Jordan's claim that “if God has deep attachments [with some people], it follows that he does not love all [people] equally"; and Jonathan Edwards' claim that the everlasting torment of those in hell contributes greatly to the blessedness of the redeemed in heaven.
Part II (Original Facebook post): I here examine more fully Jordan's published rejoinder to my critique of his original paper, "The Topography of Divine Love" (see footnote 6 of Part I for the relevant bibliographical information). I argue that, without any justification at all, Jordan changes my own words in order to set up an utterly irrelevant objection to the argument I actually gave.

This was my keynote address at the same conference metioned above. The address includes some previously published material from the second edition of The Inescapable Love of God.

First paragraph (sans footnotes):

The crusading atheist John Loftus, formerly a fundamentalist preacher who left the faith of his youth and set up the Debunking Christianity website, has made quite a splash in the blogosphere with his so-called Outsider Test for Faith. He first articulated his understanding of this test in his book Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity, and he defended it further and also responded to criticisms in “The Outsider Test for Faith Revisited.” The upshot is that he and others, many of whom frequent his website, seem to think that the Outsider Test represents a formidable challenge to faith of any kind. Frank Zindler, editor of American Atheist Magazine, has thus written: “If John Loftus never wrote anything else, he will be remembered a century from now for his Outsider Test for Faith.” But is Zindler right about that? Do we really have here a serious challenge to religious belief? For my own part, I seriously doubt it.

Although much of the initial firestorm on the web over Rob Bell's book, Love Wins, now seems to have faded, I have observed with both astonishment and considerable amusement the near hysteria that this book has provoked in some evangelical circles. I therefore record here three short items that I have written: a brief customer review at Amazon Books, a comment on a long critical review of the book, and an analysis of Martin Bashir's unjustly celebrated interview of Bell in which Bashir, not Bell, merely shoots himself in the foot, so to speak.

For two reasons, this is my favorite unpublished paper. First, I love the parable of Morg and Nivlac, which begins "Long ago in ancient Atlantis...." For you see, I always wanted to write a fantasy story. But the first sentence would always come out, "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit," and that, of course, has already been done. Second, though the paper was written several decades ago, I still find utterly compelling its critique of.....oops, I better not say, or that will spoil the fun! My thanks to Gene Pineda for the work he has done in formatting this paper as a PDF file.

Occasionally, I have been inspired to enter an electronic forum and to engage others on some theological topic, and once in a while I may even have managed to address an issue in ways that may be of interest to a larger audience. So here I reproduce a few "discussion starters" that I have employed and a few exchanges as well. Some of these were first posted decades ago even before the advent of the world wide web. So many of the ideas represented here also receive further elaboration in various published writings of my own.

• A Simple Argument for Universalism
• Universalism, Calvinism, and Arminianism: Some Preliminary Reflections
• The Essential Role of Freewill in Universal Reconciliation
• Are Some Sins Unpardonable?
• Does Matthew 25:46 Teach Unending Punishment? In this post, which originally appeared on the Evangelical Universalist website, I explain why a popular interpretation of Matthew 25:46 is quite fallacious.
• A Question about Hitler. In an electronic forum I once asked how many felt that in Hitler's shoes they would have fared any better than he did. It was not at all a precise question, but it did spark an intriguing discussion. So I reproduce here both my original question and my response to the replies I received.
• Concerning Revelation and the Bible. These four posts, one of which appeared in the old newsgroup soc.religion.christian and the other three of which appeared in the Society of Christian Philosophers Listserve, deal with the way in which some Christians employ the Bible in support of morally repugnant doctrines.