Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Thomas Talbott 0:00
Actually I don't think that our eternal destiny is a matter of choice. I mean, people present it that way. But Paul seems to explicitly deny that in Romans 9, he says, “So it depends not on human will or exertion” now this is the new RSV translation and the King James reads a bit differently, but “so it depends not on anyone will or exertion but God who shows mercy, because all God's actions are merciful”. The kindness that he speaks of in Romans 11 is an expression of His mercy towards the obedient. His severity, his judgment, hardening of a heart, blinding the eyes of the unbelieving Jews is an expression of mercy and therefore you have no choice. God's going to be merciful to you no matter what you do, but the problem is people think of mercy as some kind of sentimental kind of happiness—mercy is what God does in order to meet your true spiritual needs.
Seth Price 1:30
Hello, my friends and welcome back to the Can I Say This At Church podcast, I am Seth. I'm very excited that you're here. We're going to talk about salvation, and hell, and some of those topics. And so as I look back month over month over month through like the last almost two years, the most popular episodes have been on hell. So way back in the day, of 2017, I was able to talk by phone with Thomas Talbott, who is the Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Williamette University in Salem, Oregon. And he was one of the first people that I actually reached out to and I couldn't find an email address. And so I just called the number that I found listed for him on the internet. And I believe I got his wife, I left a voicemail. And I got his wife and I left a message. And I said, “Hey, here's what I want to do can I talk with your husband”. She said, “He's out now. Let me get with him and see if he'll call you back”.
And then he called me back and we kind of discussed it over the phone with him coming on. And at the time, I had not recorded any episodes. So the first episode that I recorded was with Jared Byas and Robin Parry on the same day. And so to be honest, when he asked me what I was trying to do, I really struggled to tell him what but I'm glad that he could hear the intentionality in my voice. So he called me back later and decided to come on. And then I just let it sit.
So I talked about evangelical universalism with Robin Parry, and I talked about annihilationism with John Stackhouse. And then I did annihilationism again, with Chris Date. And as I thought back on it as like, I've had this sitting here. I've listened to it a few times, I've been entirely pleased with it, but I just felt like it wasn't time yet to revisit that topic, but I feel like it is now. And so some caveats with this episode. I still didn't really know what he was doing. But it doesn't make my questions and his answers any less important or any less impactful for me and matter of face as I listened back to it, I find I'm still struggling with some of the same things and other things. I hear myself and I go, oh, man, Seth, you've grown.
There are things that I am more comfortable with now, or I have more knowledge about now or just through contemplative prayer or meditation or just regular prayer I am at a more healthy place now than I was in December of 2017. And so I really hope that you like this. And so for Patreon supporters, this will be a repeat for you. A lot of you heard this months ago, in a totally unedited form with no music. And so I'm really grateful for humans like Thomas that would take a risk talking with a random yahoo out in Virginia. I'm so sorry that it's taken this long to get it out. But I feel like it's time to revisit hell and salvation and so I hope that you enjoy this episode with Thomas Talbot.
Seth Price 4:40
My guest today is Dr. Thomas Talbott. And Dr. Talbot I just wanted to thank you very much for making the time to come on to the Can I Say This At Church podcast.
Thomas Talbott 4:50
Well, thank you for having me. Could you repeat one more time what the podcast name is?
Seth Price 4:57
Sure so it's Can I Say This At Church.
Thomas Talbott 5:01
Oh, that's great. I like that!.
Seth Price 5:03
Yeah. So for those of my, you know, of the listeners that that aren't as familiar with you, I was hoping you could maybe give us a brief. Just a quick snapshot of of who you are and kind of how you came to the positions that you hold now.
Thomas Talbott 5:20
Yeah. Well, I suspect I may have come from the same background as you did well, or at least a similar one, a very conservative evangelical church. I went to a very conservative Christian High School. The church I attended when I was in high school in college was closely associated with Dallas Theological Seminary and was into dispensationalism a lot, something that I subsequently rejected. I first encountered Calvinism when I was in college, and I rejected it immediately. I just couldn't believe that anyone could believe that before the foundation of the world God forordained that some people would suffer eternally and hell.
Seth Price 6:20
What college was that?
Thomas Talbott 6:22
Portland State University
Seth Price 6:23
Okay.
Thomas Talbott 6:24
It was through Intervarsity, the pastor of the woman I eventually married, came and gave a talk and he and I ended up with a huge argument; and later on he married us (laughs).
Seth Price 6:40
So I take each of you off move past that then?
Thomas Talbott 6:43
We’ve always actually had a good relationship. We started off with a with a huge argument. And of course, he would go into things like Romans 9 and I didn't know what to say about that. And anyway, he felt that I was honest enough, I guess, to deservedly married the woman that I married. But the high school I went to sort of identified a “good Christian” as someone who didn't smoke, drink, dance, rollerskating kind of iffy, play cards or attend Hollywood movies. So it's a very conservative cultural background.
My parents, however, were much more open. My dad rarely went to church, but he felt that his kids needed to be raised in the church. And my mom became a Christian during her college days, but had an incredibly loving nature. Anyway, during my college and seminary days I went to Florida Theological Seminary, my aim was to work out as best I could, basically Arminian theology. And I was very attracted to people like CS Lewis. And I was attracted to a freewill theodicy of hell. Actually, during all those years, it never even occurred to me that someone might take the doctrine of universal reconciliation seriously. I mean, it just never even…I never even thought about it. And you asked, “Well, how did I make the transition”? It's interesting, my younger brother, while I was in seminary, came under the influence of George MacDonald. And at this time, the works of MacDonald weren't really available. But the library at Wheaton had TypeScript copies of a lot of MacDonald's unspoken sermons.
And he gave a couple of them to the one on justice and one called the consuming fire and they didn't bowl me over right at the start. But the more I thought about MacDonald's perspective and how different it was from the perspective that I had been inculcated with during my younger days, and how it put things together in a way that just seemed radically different from what I had heard, and everything seemed to start making sense, even Romans 9 started to make sense to me. And so that was very influential in my starting to toy with the idea of universal reconciliation. But it didn't take long…it didn't take long until it just blew me away. I couldn't read the Bible in any other way right now.
Seth Price 10:13
Right? So was that while you were at Fuller, or…
Thomas Talbott 10:18
No, actually, I think after. I graduated from Fuller (and) I went to University of California at Santa Barbara, in the philosophy department. And I think it was probably right after I graduated from Fuller that I started thinking that, you know let's just see whether an interpretation of the Bible as a whole from a Universalist perspective would make as much sense as interpreting it from the perspective of the Calvinist or interpret it from the perspective of an Arminian.
And as it turns out, if you take a proposition that all Calvinists defend and you take a proposition that all Arminians defend and put them together, you're going to have universalism. The proposition that all Arminians defend, has to do with the extent and nature of God's love. That God, sincerely desires, He wills are sincerely desires, the salvation of all. The propositions that the Calvinist defends has to do with the nature of Christ's victory or God's victory in Christ. The nature and extent of that victory God will successfully redeem all of those whom he elects who he chooses to redeem, who you will or sincerely desires to redeem.
Seth Price 12:14
And that's what you rejected early in high school was was that early in college?
Thomas Talbott 12:23
College.
I was assuming that the doctrine of everlasting separation from God was true. And if that's true, then either you're going to have to reject the claim that God's love extends to all human beings, his redemptive love is elected love, and that's what the Calvinists do—or you're going to have to reject the claim that God's victory is complete in the sense that he will successfully redeem every One whom he wills or desires, sincerely desires, to redeem. So your choices between a God who is limited in love or a God whose victory is limited.
Seth Price 13:17
Well I guess there's always the other option for he's just fine with some people never been with him at all.
Thomas Talbott 13:27
Yeah, that's true. Sorry…you mean…I mean, but he is fine with some people never been with him at all? Does this include annihilating them…tormenting them...punishing them?
Seth Price 13:43
Yeah, the eternal conscious torment that I was raised in, you know, he's fine with you're not with me and not only for that I'm fine for you to not be with me for forever, which has never set right with me very much.
Thomas Talbott 13:58
Yeah. What? Yeah, well Yeah, that's that's the issue here.
I think I misunderstood you just before. Because when you say, Well, he's fine with not being with me as well. Okay, you guys go on and do your own thing and I won't harm you or anything like that. But the idea of separation, it's either going to include annihilation, or it's going to include punishment, or it's going to include God providentially providing a place for these people that live sort of without any conscious interaction with him. It's gonna be one of those three. Right?
Seth Price 14:44
Yeah. So how do you…so how can I…so from reading portions of your book, I find that you make the argument that you can't scripturally support all three of those that you have to reject one of them to sit with.
Thomas Talbott 15:02
Yes, in other words, we've got here three propositions that are logically inconsistent. And even if a person comes to me and says, “Well, I don't think they are logically inconsistent”, I think I can, you know, symbolize them and prove that they are logically inconsistent. But even if somebody says they aren't named me a single theologian who accepts all three. I don't know of any theologians that would accept all three.
The majority of theologians, in the Western tradition anyway, would accept the claim that some people will be eternally separated from God. But I don't know.
Sorry…ask me a question here.
Seth Price 16:00
Sure. So let me get it back to Scripture. So can you give me some of the ways that the there are just Scriptural references to support, or not necessarily support, to support each and then how they just have that can't go together? I guess as I read your book, I read through that portion a couple times, I think it's chapter four, where you kind of break down all three suppositions and then and then go on to say, you know, two of these are fine, but scripturally the third can't hold any weight. And that's the problem.
Thomas Talbott 16:36
Actually, what I argue is that if you just pick up an English Bible and read it naturally without bringing any theological presuppositions to the text, you will find Biblical texts that seem to support each of these propositions. But they can't all be true, that's the problem. In support of the claim that God's love extends equally to all, and that he wills or desire that all the saved. You know, a naive reader of the English Bible might appeal to text like 2 Peter 3:9. “The Lord is not willing to any should perish but wills instead, that all should come to repentance”.
1 Timothy 2:4 “God's desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth”. Ezekiel 33”11 “As I live, says the Lord I have no pleasure the death of the wicked, but desire said that the wicked turn away from their ways and live”. And you know a very interesting Old Testament texts as Lamentations 3:22 and 3:31-33. “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. For the Lord will not reject forever. Although he causes grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of His steadfast love. For you to not willingly afflict or grieve anyone.”
All of these texts seem to suggest that God really does want to achieve the reconciliation of all sinners. And, you know, then a text like 1 John 2:2 suggests further that Jesus Christ suffered and died precisely in order to achieve that end. When it says that Jesus Christ is the atoning sacrifice for our sins and not for us only but for the sins of the entire world. And then of course in 2 Corinthians, it's clear that God's attitudes toward us doesn't have to change, our attitude towards him has to change. But anyway, so there are plenty of texts that the Arminians would appeal to, in order to suggest that God really does love all human beings in the sense that he wills or sincerely desires, that each of them be reconciled to him and achieve some sort of union with him.
But now, we can turn texts that the Calvinists like, which suggests that God is going to achieve all of his redemptive purposes. Ephesians 1:11 “God accomplishes all things according to as well and counsel”, Job 42:2 “I know that you the Lord God can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted”. Or Isaiah 46:10-11. “My counsel shall stand, I accomplish all my purpose. I have spoken, I will bring it to pass, I have purpose, and I will do it. I mean, these texts seem to imply that God is able to accomplish all of his purposes, including his redemptive purposes. And then, of course, in 1 Corinthians 15, God ultimately brings all things into subjection to Christ.
But then, of course, we've got the issue of eternal separation. And if you pick up an English Bible and read it sort of, naively, without bringing a lot of theological assumptions to it, you will probably come across Matthew 25:46, which says, “and they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” 2 Thessalonians 1:9, “they shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord, as from the glory of his might”. Revelation 21:8. “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their lot shall be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is a second death” and these texts may seem to imply that at least some persons will be lost forever and therefore never reconciled to God.
Thomas Talbott 21:40
So my point is that you've got prima facia support in the Bible for all three propositions, the proposition about God's love, the proposition about his success in achieving his will, and the proposition that some people will be eternally separated from God. And you know, this is something maybe I have liked to read here, it's just two or three lines. Because the point is that various texts in the Bible initially appear to support and the fact that they decided on behalf of each of our three propositions with respect to each of them. Some theologians and Bible scholars have concluded that it is a fundamental, not a peripheral, but a fundamental teaching of the Bible.
Seth Price 22:44
When you say “it” is fundamental, you mean, you mean the conversation about eternal separation, is that what you say it?
Thomas Talbott 22:52
No each proposition.
Let me back off here and give a clearer explanation of total strategy. In order to have an interpretation of the Bible as a whole, you have to interpret some things in light of other, some texts in light of others. And so my strategy is to set up three propositions that cannot all be true, but can all receive initial support from texts in the Bible. And therefore that's going to dictate how you're going to proceed.
For example, the Calvinists believes in eternal separation, and he believes that God's will can't be thwarted. Therefore, he rejects the claim that God sincerely desires or wills, the salvation of all. The Arminian believes in eternal separation, but believes that God sincerely wills or desires the salvation of all. So the Arminian rejects to claim the God's will, his redemptive purpose, as expressed, for example, in the 1 Timothy 2:4, I think it is, he rejects the claim that God's will can't be thwarted. He rejects the claim that God's redemptive will will eventually be achieved. The Universalist accepts the Calvinist claim that God's redemptive will can't be thwarted and accepts the Arminian claim that God wills that all be saved and he concludes the third proposition.
Seth Price 25:24
Switching a little bit of gears, but I think it's something that I've always had a question about. So, when you were going through some of those Scriptures a minute ago, and you have like the Calvinists talking about, you know, eternally separated and burning in eternal fire and whatnot, there seems to be a big contention on how those are translated. And so how can someone like myself, with limited theological training, know how to infer those texts if I was to just pick it up or if I was to hear someone speak about it at church or just in talking in passing?
Thomas Talbott 25:57
Yeah, that's a great question.
As you know, The word translated “eternal” is debated by a lot of parties. What does it mean? Does it mean age enduring? Does it really mean everlasting? And my strategy is to let whoever I'm discussing with to say what that person thinks. If I was holding a discussion with a pastor of a church that wants to say this really does mean eternal, or at least everlasting. What we're talking about in Matthew 25:46 is eternal punishment.
Well, what I would say there is, you got to be clear that we're talking about an adjective. And I don't care how you translate that adjective. It's the very nature of an adjective that it can vary, sometimes greatly, particularly when it's referring to different categories of things in different contexts. Forget the Greek, take the English word everlasting. An everlasting struggle would literally be a struggle that goes on forever and ever never ends. Think of an everlasting change, or an everlasting transformation, or an everlasting correction. That might be an event that almost instantaneous it could be or it might be longer. But it depends on the noun that it is correlated with.
Now an everlasting correction might have effects that endure forever. But it doesn't follow that the correction is going to take place over an indefinitely long period of time. So we got to look at the noun. Now the noun “Colossus” is a word that, at least in ancient Greek, was a word for correction, remedial punishment. So translate the word aiónios as everlasting if you wish. It's still going to be very different if it's an everlasting correction than it will be if it were everlasting retribution. So my claim about Matthew 25:46 is that what we're talking about is a certain kind of correction.
But, you know, actually that doesn't really get to the heart of it because I think that in the Bible, the word aiónios really is somewhat platonic. You know, we read, I guess 2 Corinthians (2 Cor 4:18) “things that are seen are temporal and the things that are unseen are eternal”.
That sounds a bit platonic to me. But the point is that when it comes to God what is eternal is God and His gifts, his actions in time, various possessions are eternal in a secondary sense that they have their causal source is eternal God Himself. This gets pretty complicated and I talk about it in my chapter on eschatological punishment and interpretation in New Testament teachings.
Seth Price 30:30
In a universalism, or Christian universalism, view of the be all and end all at the end of everything. What is hell?
Thomas Talbott 30:43
Hell is the way that we experience the love of God when we are in a state of disobedience.
Seth Price 30:54
So it's not a future place to be. It's right now?
Thomas Talbott 30:58
There could be a future place called hell, I don't rule that out. But hell would exist for the purpose of the ultimate redemption of those in it. But what we have to understand, I think, is how to put together two themes, the theme of Christ's victory over sin and death and the theme of God's judgment. And one can either interpret God's judgment in light of his victory and triumph over sin and death, or one can interpret triumph, or his limited victory, in light of the theme of justice. My view is that we should start with the victory and triumph, especially since Paul makes it so clear in his theological essay Romans 9-11 that in the end, justice and mercy are the same. The hardening comes upon part of Israel in order that all of Israel will be saved. And when he talks about the Jews being disobedient, so that the Gentiles can come in and then this sort of strategy of jealousy where all the Jews will then come in that is clearly an indication that the non remnant Jews…I mean, what he's talking about is a non remnant Jews there.
And just in case you don't get the point, he sums it up with his magnificent statement in 11:32 “for God has imprisoned all in disobedience in order that he might have mercy upon all,” the whole thing is the outworking of a merciful purpose. Everything God does: what he judges, when he hardens the heart, when he blinds the disobedience, all of that is in the surface of a more basic, merciful purpose-couldn't make it clear. And the interesting thing is that if you look at Paul's theological discourse in Romans 9-11 it starts out in despair at the beginning of 9. I'm speaking the truth. My conscious bears with me. I’m in great agony over the state of my brother, my kin. And it ends in joyous exaltation.
And what explains that sudden Joy? To use an expression that I borrowed from JRR Tolkien who says “that the essence of a good fairy tale is a sudden joy has stirred. I mean, we've been talking about the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, the hatred of Esau, and vessels of wrath, and all of that. But now we find it is all in the service of a more fundamental purpose. Mercy, God has imprisoned all of us in disobedience, so that he may be merciful to us all. I don't see how he could get any more explicit than that.
Seth Price 34:50
So I guess one of the questions that I struggle with is my participation in this. So if I'm formed with is the ability to embrace whatever I want to…how do I have any say so in my ultimate result of anything? I guess, for lack of a better word, and I think I read it in your book and you talk about how Zachary Mannus references Kierkegaard and defends that people are just so damned and filled with hatred. And then if we want to remain in that state that we can choose to do so. So how, if that's correct, and I'm able to do that, how does that sit with a possibility that no eventually everything's going to be reconciled to Christ? Eventually, whatever determined amount of time that is.
Thomas Talbott 35:53
Yeah. I think the crucial thing here, Seth, is that the consequences of our actions are a source of Revelation. You know, I can choose to put my hand in fire, but I cannot choose to put my hand in fire and not be burned. Our actions have consequences. And when we act in a disobedient way those consequences are going to be instances of some people call God's severity. You know, Paul says, in the first part of Romans 11 “note severity and the kindness of God.” If you act disobedient Lee, you will experience God's love and severity. If you act obediently, you will experience it as kindness.
And so, the general point is that the consequences of our actions are themselves a source of Revelation. I may suffer from, you know, we humans suffer from all kinds of illusions, our disobedience is a result of a host of illusions. But if I suffer from the illusion that I have the skill to ski down a treacherous slope and so I go ahead and try and do it. A fall on a broken leg or maybe repeated falls and repeated disasters are going to reveal to me the fact that no, I don't have that skill; that was an illusion.
When we act disobediently, we think we can benefit ourselves, oftentimes at the expense of other people. But if we act upon that illusion, we will find again and again that we have not benefited ourselves. And at some at some point, my own view is, the purpose of the lake of fire is actually to purge us of all the evil impulses. But if in the lake of fire, someone still refuses to learn proper lessons, you can always leap into the outer darkness where you got a soul suspended alone in sheer nothingness. George MacDonald has a beautiful description of that horrific state.
Seth Price 38:38
Can you go into that a little bit with George MacDonald? Because I understand. He's like, early 1800s. And so I'm not familiar.
Thomas Talbott 38:47
No he’s late 1800s.
Seth Price 38:49
I got it wrong. I apologize. But I'm not familiar with that, can you go into how he describes that a bit?
Thomas Talbott 38:58
Well, I don't have the text here to read, I mean in front of me, all I can say is that what he talks about the outer darkness and the horrific state of living without any, even, implicit experience of God. Think of it as a soul suspended alone in nothingness. Think of John Milton's Satan, what he said about better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. Well in the outer darkness is nobody to reign over. Because if you have other people there, you're all of a sudden going to start getting implicit experiences of God. As I recall, MacDonald's description is God is still there with you, however much you despise god, he's there warming your heart making life a good thing for you. But if he withdraws all of that, the suggestion is that no one who's rational enough to be a free agent could possibly see that as a good thing.
You know, CS Lewis said that “union with God” is with a divine nature's way put it “is bliss. separation from it is an objective horror.” Well, no one who's rational enough to qualify as a free agent could possibly freely choose an objective horror, over bliss. So what we have to do is learn the difference over our lifetime between the consequences of submitting to God and the consequences of resisting and rejecting God. And I can understand how somebody could freely choose hell. What I can't understand is how somebody could freely choose hell and continue to choose it after experiencing.
Seth Price 41:13
Yeah, I can't either.
Thomas Talbott 41:15
So the purpose of experience and even hellish conditions is to teach us and therefore, God's judgment even if He were to send somebody to help temporarily, would itself be the expression of mercy. It's not merciful to protect people from the consequences of their rebellion. That's why Universalist, Christian Universalist, do not so many people in charge, have a sentimental conception of love. They see God's mercy as a severe mercy. He will require us to learn the lessons we have to learn; not by just changing our mind, but allowing us the freedom to choose and then letting you have the horrific condition that many of us choose to experience.
Seth Price 42:09
That's hard, though. And I guess to oversimplify it, the best way that I could bring that metaphor down to me is a well, a cosmic version of when I'm teaching my son to ride a bike, and I know that first time that I let go of the training wheels that he's gonna fall and it's gonna be horrible. And so I guess you're saying that, I know you're gonna fall, and when you do, I'll be here when you get back up. And we're going to embrace and then we can move forward, or we can continue to try again until we get it correct. That may be an oversimplification, but…
Thomas Talbott 42:46
But that doesn't involve, you know, selfishness to the benefit oneself at the expense of others. And my vision of how we all come into this life is we come into circumstances in which illusion, ambiguity, and ignorance, play a huge role. And, as a result, we are bound to go astray. I mean, sin is missing the mark, we are bound to go astray. And God does permit us to because we have to learn the lessons. So it is a source of Revelation, the consequences of our actions.
Seth Price 43:36
I've been gifted with the ability to be born in America. So what would you say to those who have in this view of salvation that were just born in the wrong country or in the wrong time period, and never heard the redemption story of Christ? And so how would you reconcile someone that's never heard the gospel, dying the first death? How do they have the ability to be reconciled without even knowing the name Christ?
Thomas Talbott 44:04
Well, I guess the issue here is, is there a time limit on God's love? Suppose I were to say that you have to have heard and received Christ before the age of 30, or your lost. Or you have to do so before the age of 40, or your lost forever. Or you have to before the age of 70, or you have to before the time of your death. Why would anyone want to accept that idea!? There's nothing in the Bible that suggests that that's true. I just don't see a problem there with other religions and other cultures. We aren't responsible for the culture that we are born in. And those who have never heard of the gospel are not required to believe something that they'd ever even heard of. Why would anybody want to say that!
Seth Price 45:00
But there will come a time I guess then that they have the the option, the everlasting option to make that choice. And ultimately everyone will.
Thomas Talbott 45:09
Actually I don't think that our eternal destiny is a matter of choice. I mean, people present it that way. But Paul seems to explicitly deny that in Romans 9, he says, “So it depends not on human will or exertion”. Now this is the New RSV translation and the King James reads a bit differently, but “so it depends not on human will or exertion but God who shows mercy,” Because all God's actions are merciful. The kindness that he speaks of in Romans 11 is an expression of His mercy towards the obedient. His severity is judgment, hardening of a heart, blinding the eyes of the unbelieving Jews is an expression of mercy and therefore you have no choice. God's going to be merciful to you no matter what you do, but the problem is People think of mercy as some kind of sentimental kind of, happiness, mercy is what God does in order to meet your true spiritual needs.
Seth Price 46:12
I'm good with that. I think I'm good with that.
Thomas Talbott 46:15
You may be good with that; more than some of your listeners.
Seth Price 46:19
Just full disclosure. So as I've done this, a lot of the people that I'm asking questions of they're not…t's not scripted. They're real questions that I've always wondered if I could say out loud, and the older I get, I'm finding that it's, it's fine to do. So I want to be respectful of your time. So I do have one last question. And it's not necessarily related to universalism, but it is a question that I'm curious to get everyone's opinion on. So in your view, in the church the way that it exists currently, either globally or nationally. What is what is the one thing that you feel as Christians that we could and should do in a generative practice that would help move the church forward or the cause for Christ forward day to day that maybe we're not doing now?
Thomas Talbott 47:13
Yeah. That's a hard one because I don't want to dictate politics or even religion to anybody. My sense would be just really practice love. You know the two great commandments love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. And love your neighbor as yourself. And I know, the high school I went to, we were always being told that we needed to witness and all this, but a lot of that witnessing wasn't really anything but sort of response to a sense of duty. Just love the people around you? And that may involve saying no, to some people, I mean, if somebody starts acting in a racist way, you can lovingly and severely say, “no, that's not right!”
Seth Price 48:18
No, I agree one of my favorite ministers from one of my wife, a nice first church used to say, you know, Christian, if you would do this, it's not a euphemism, and you could actually change the world and he spoke often of what you just said. So, I would agree wholeheartedly. Very wholeheartedly. So while we wrap up, where would you point people to learn more about yourself, obviously, there's your book but more importantly, to just educate themselves in such a way that as they wrestle, there's a good place to to go with with text that has been well researched and maybe the Scripture is presented from the way that you do where the Calvinists or something would say it this way and Arminists would say it this way, and I would say it this way. So what is what is a good place for people to go as they're as they're searching?
Thomas Talbott 49:09
My Willamette University website, you could probably just Google my name, but I'll just real quickly read it. www.Willamette.edu.ttalbott.
Seth Price 49:30
Okay, I'll put that in the put that in the notes as well. I appreciate it very much. I'm thankful for your time.
Seth Price 49:57
That episode still speaks to me. When I'm honest, I lean, still, towards annihilationism. I feel like that is the best way hermeneutically to read the Scriptures, but I am ever hopeful that I'm wrong. I am so hopeful that what, folks like Thomas Talbott and many, many others that what they argue, is a good look at what the future holds for creation, not just humanity. I'm really hopeful that they're right. I just don't know that I can hold that yet. But who knows where my faith will take me? I do know this…on Palm Sunday, I with my church, a Baptist church we gathered with Methodists, and Lutherans, and Episcopalians and our Catholic Brethren, and the Church of God and Christ Brethren, and we marched through downtown of where I live, and I just kept thinking, I don't know what the afterlife looks like, but I really hope that it's that people of all races, every gender nuanced beliefs. Who knows I'm sure and there there would be also, you know, statistically they would have had to have been people that are, you know, LGBTQ in that group but we all marched in celebration of the coming of Easter and in remembrance of Palm Sunday together. Nobody argued nobody bickerd we just exuberantly sat in community with each other. We sang a bit, we prayed a bit, and it was beautiful. And I hope that that's what we're all going to do.
But I really, really hope you enjoyed this conversation with Thomas I would highly recommend getting his book The Inescapable Love of God it is a very even approach and holds everything in a way I think that is respectful.
Today's music is from Andy Squires. I got turned on to him from John Mark McMillan when I asked him who he was listening to and he told me this person and I was like, I don't know who that is. And then I went to Spotify or iTunes or wherever and started finding found his music and just heard so much in it that I could relate to and it's beautiful and it's haunting. It's gripping. But mostly it's truthful. And that's what I really appreciate. So I hope that you enjoyed it. You'll find links to his music from this show on the playlist at Spotify for the show and you'll find links to that at the website. Please remember to rate and review the show on iTunes.
Talk to you next week.