![ThomasTalbott](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/ThomasTalbott.jpg)
Thomas Talbott is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at
Willamette University
Willamette University is a private liberal arts college with locations in Salem and Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1842, it is the oldest college in the Western United States. Originally named the Oregon Institute, the school was an unaffiliated ...
,
Salem, Oregon. He is best known for his advocacy of
trinitarian universalism
Trinitarian universalism is a variant of belief in universal salvation, the belief that every person will be saved, that also held the Christian belief in Trinitarianism (as opposed to, or contrasted with, liberal Unitarianism which is more usua ...
. Due to his book ''The Inescapable Love of God'' and other works he is one of the most prominent Protestant voices today supporting the idea of
universal salvation
In Christian theology, universal reconciliation (also called universal salvation, Christian universalism, or in context simply universalism) is the doctrine that all sinful and alienated human souls—because of divine love and mercy—will ult ...
. The 2003 book ''Universal Salvation?: The Current Debate'' presents Talbott's "rigorous defense of universalism" together with responses from various fields theologians, philosophers, church historians and other religious scholars supporting or opposing Talbott's universalism. Talbott contributed the chapter on "Universalism" for ''The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology''.
Universalist argument
Talbott has offered three propositions which many traditional Christians believe are biblically based but Talbott considers can not all be true at the same time:
# God is entirely loving and wills that all people be reconciled to Him in relationship.
# God is totally sovereign over human destinies.
# Most people will experience endless, conscious torment in hell.
[Talbott, Thomas. ''The Inescapable Love of God''.1999..]
Talbot challenges this tri-part vision of divine-human relations and expresses instead the early Christian view of Christian Universalism.
Arguments against Talbott's views
However those objecting to Talbott's view note that there are multiple biblical verses describing
hell as the fate of the wicked. Traditionally;
#
Calvinists resolve this by disagreeing with #1. God graciously elects some to be saved and either passes over the rest in their sin (single predestination) or elects others to be damned (double predestination)—those who are to be everlastingly punished according to the doctrine of
double predestination
Predestination, in theology, is the doctrine that all events have been willed by God, usually with reference to the eventual fate of the individual soul. Explanations of predestination often seek to address the paradox of free will, whereby ...
.
#
Arminians
Arminianism is a branch of Protestantism based on the theological ideas of the Dutch Reformed theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609) and his historic supporters known as Remonstrants. Dutch Arminianism was originally articulated in the ''Rem ...
resolve this by disagreeing with #2. Some people will resist the grace of God and choose a life-path that results in everlasting separation from God.
# Christians who believe in
Christian mortalism
Christian mortalism is the Christian belief that the human soul is not naturally immortal and may include the belief that the soul is “sleeping” after death until the Resurrection of the Dead and the Last Judgment, a time known as the in ...
and
conditional immortality
In Christian theology, conditionalism or conditional immortality is a concept in which the gift of immortality is attached to (conditional upon) belief in Jesus Christ. This doctrine is based in part upon another biblical argument, that the human ...
, for example
Seventh-day Adventists
The Seventh-day Adventist Church is an Adventist Protestant Christian denomination which is distinguished by its observance of Saturday, the seventh day of the week in the Christian (Gregorian) and the Hebrew calendar, as the Sabbath, and i ...
, typically disagree with #3, and propose the doctrine of
annihilationism
In Christianity, annihilationism (also known as extinctionism or destructionism) is the belief that after the Last Judgment, all unsaved human beings, all fallen angels (all of the damned) and Satan himself will be totally destroyed so as to not ...
as an alternative solution to Talbott's proposed problem.
Problem of evil
In the September 1987 edition of the periodical ''Christian Scholar's Review'', Talbott sought, as he explains in a more recent comment, "to make some ideas then current in the philosophical literature available to a wider audience of non-philosophers." He sought to explain, for example, how
Alvin Plantinga
Alvin Carl Plantinga (born November 15, 1932) is an American analytic philosopher who works primarily in the fields of philosophy of religion, epistemology (particularly on issues involving epistemic justification), and logic.
From 1963 to 198 ...
's Free Will Defense had transformed the way in which contemporary philosophers approach the so-called
problem of evil
The problem of evil is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God.The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,The Problem of Evil, Michael TooleyThe Internet Encycl ...
and why, in particular, even atheistic philosophers came to abandon the claim that evil is ''logically inconsistent'' with the existence of God. But at the end of this article, Talbott also ventured into more controversial territory, suggesting ways in which even the tragic suffering of innocent children might contribute, in the end, to the future blessedness of all people (including the children who suffer). In accordance with his affirmation of universal reconciliation, he thus expressed the hopeful belief that "every innocent child who suffers will one day look upon that suffering as a privilege because of the joy it has made possible: the joy of knowing that one has been used by God in the redemption of others, the joy of that final union or reunion in which love's triumph is complete and all separation from others is finally overcome. I would ask but two things of those who
ight understandablyreject such a view: first, that they resist the temptation to moralize, and second, that they consider the alternatives carefully."
Others have, not surprisingly, roundly criticized and even ridiculed such a view. According to John Beversluis, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at
Butler University
Butler University is a private university in Indianapolis, Indiana. Founded in 1855 and named after founder Ovid Butler, the university has over 60 major academic fields of study in six colleges: the Lacy School of Business, College of Communic ...
, for example, Talbott's view is "so outrageous...that I will not dignify it with a reply....If Talbott is right, he is logically committed and morally obliged to oppose everyone dedicated to alleviating world hunger, ridding the world of terrorism, finding a cure for cancer...and so forth." But in an equally hard-hitting reply, Talbott dismisses this claim by comparing it to a more precise claim of the following form: "If Talbott is right in accepting
roposition''p'' (where ''p'' is specifically identified), then Talbott is logically committed to ''q''." He then points out that a cogent argument in the present context would require two things of Beversluis: "first, that he identify a relevant instance of ''p'', and second, that he make some attempt to deduce ''q'' from ''p''. But Beversluis," Talbott insists, "does not so much as identify the proposition that he claims logically commits me to the moral obligation he alleges; much less does he make the required deduction."
Talbott acknowledges, however, that his optimistic view could be regarded as a case of wishful thinking. But he goes on to contrast hope with despair, arguing that, unlike despair, hope is compatible with a healthy skepticism. For whereas despair typically rests upon a set of dogmatic beliefs about the future, hope does not.
Works
*
*Thomas Talbott (2022). Understanding the Free-Will Controversy.
Cascade Books. ISBN 1-7252-6836-1
Notes
References
*
*
External links
*http://www.thomastalbott.com/
*http://www.willamette.edu/~ttalbott/
{{DEFAULTSORT:Talbott, Thomas
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
Willamette University faculty
21st-century Protestant theologians
American Christian universalists
20th-century Christian universalists
21st-century Christian universalists
Christian universalist theologians
20th-century Protestant theologians
Portland State University alumni
Fuller Theological Seminary alumni
University of California, Santa Barbara alumni
American Christian theologians
Protestant philosophers
Philosophers of religion