Many Ministry Matters readers will remember when, in 2011, Rob Bell's book Love Wins raised the profile of the intra-Christian debate about universal salvation. This is a conversation with an ancient pedigree in the Christian church, and also an intermittent conversation within evangelicalism, though one could spend one's whole life in many neighborhoods of the Christian family without ever hearing about it.

After all, doesn't the Bible teach that only a few are saved, while the many suffer eternally in hell?

The vigor and depth of Christian arguments for universal salvation — meaning the eventual salvation of everyone, i.e., no one suffers in hell forever — has been opened to me recently. It happened like this. (Sorry, Rob.) I discovered David Bentley Hart's lecture "God, Creation, and Evil: The Moral Meaning of creatio ex nihilo," only a little while after he delivered it at Notre Dame. (There's a link below.) It is an erudite theological throw-down if there ever was one, and it got my attention.

I'm a third year theology Ph.D. student at Boston College, which means I have comprehensive examinations this year. The timing was right such that I've been able to devote one of my exam research questions to several of the church fathers Hart cites: Origen of Alexandria and Gregory of Nyssa (both universalists), and Maximos the Confessor (not a universalist, though this has been disputed).

Yet one very interesting result of this research is that I've come across some strands of universalism within contemporary evangelical Christian thought of which I wasn't aware. For example, there's Thomas Talbott, a philosopher at Willamette University in Oregon. As a philosopher, Talbott does a good job of defining his terms:

"Universalism, as I shall here define it, is the religious doctrine that every created person will sooner or later be reconciled to God, the loving source of all that is, and will in the process be reconciled to all other persons as well. There will thus be, according to this doctrine, a final restitution of all things in which all the harm that people have done to themselves and others will be canceled out, and all broken relationships will be healed. But Christian universalism, as I shall here define it, is more specific than that; it is the Christian doctrine that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the divinely appointed means whereby God destroys sin and death in the end and thus brings eternal life to all. As St. Paul himself put it, "in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself" (2 Corinthians 5:19)."

Of course, merely by defining his terms and quoting St. Paul, Talbott won't have convinced any of his fellow evangelicals that his position is correct. John Piper too has read 2 Corinthians 5:19. But what comes next is very interesting. It turns out that if you mix a Calvinist evangelical and a Wesleyan evangelical in the right way, you get a trinitarian universalist. Talbott again:

"I would also point out that universalism (or at least the salvation of the entire human race) follows as a deductive consequence of two respectably orthodox ideas. The first, fully embraced by the Arminians, the Wesleyans, various Pentecostal and charismatic groups, and a majority of Catholics, concerns the loving nature of God. Because God not only loves, but is love (1 John 4:8, 16), he at least wills or desires the salvation of all humans (1 Tim. 2:4) and is not willing that any of them should perish (2 Pet. 3:9); and because he wills or desires the salvation of all, he sent his Son into the world to be "the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the entire world" (1 John 2:2). The second idea, fully embraced by the Augustinians, the Protestant Reformers, and the Jansenists in the Catholic tradition, concerns the triumph of God's salvific will. Because God is almighty, not to mention infinitely wise and resourceful, his grace is irresistible in the end; our salvation therefore "depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy" (Rom. 9:16). When Jesus declared: "For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible" (Matt. 19:25), he was speaking of salvation in a context where a person's own choices and moral character had made it seem utterly impossible, like a camel passing through the eye of a needle. And his meaning was clear: there are no obstacles to salvation in anyone, not even in the most recalcitrant will or the hardest of hearts, that God cannot eventually overcome if he so chooses."

Maybe you see where Talbott is taking us. If one fully affirms both the "Wesleyan" conviction that God really is love and so really does desire to save everyone, and also the "Calvinist" conviction that, because God is almighty, divine grace is ultimately irresistible, then it clearly follows that, as Talbott puts it, "God will eventually accomplish the salvation of each and every sinful human being."

In short, a Wesleyan conviction of God's universal saving love in Jesus Christ + a Calvinist conviction of God's universal power = Christian universalism.

Of course, Talbott knows this is not the end of the conversation. Wesleyans generally think that grace can be ultimately resisted by human free will, and Calvinists nuance God's saving will to mysteriously include some but not others. But Talbott's argument turns the tables on his opponents in an interesting way. To oppose Talbott, a Calvinist/Augustinian will have to argue that it is more certain that God consigns some to hell eternally than it is that God loves and desires to save everyone; or a Wesleyan will have to argue that it is more certain that humans have the power to reject God's grace than it is that God is all powerful and so able to save everyone he desires.

So, agree or disagree with him, Talbott has a really interesting argument going.

Below I'm listing some accessible online resources. If we're honest with ourselves, this is just an extremely important topic to read, think and pray about.

A few Christian universalism links and books:

Thomas Talbott's essay "Universalism" (which I have been quoting above). Talbott has also written a book called The Inescapable Love of God.

David Bentley Hart's lecture "God, Creation, and Evil: the Moral Meaning of creatio ex nihilo" in audio or text.

Eclectic Orthodoxy's list of "Essential Readings on Universalism" — very helpful.

Gregory MacDonald's book The Evangelical Universalist. Gregory MacDonald is the clever (Gregory of Nyssa + George MacDonald) pen name of Dr. Robin Parry, who can also be found on YouTube.

Clifton Stringer is a Ph.D. student in Historical Theology at Boston College and the author of Christ the Lightgiver in the Converge Bible Studies series.