John Sanders is a well-known Christian theologian and philosopher at Hendrix College, and is perhaps known most for his advocacy of open theism. He is a freewill theist, and so his philosophical and theological expertise was brought into the discussion to engage Thomas Talbott’s case for universalism in the book, Universal Salvation?: The Current Debate, edited by Robin Parry (aka, Gregory Macdonald) and Christopher Partridge.

In my last post from this book I cobbled together three observations from Eric Reitan’s chp in order to engage in a conversation about the conditions for hell, but I admit that I didn’t do justice to Reitan’s own interests in that chp (and didn’t intend to). In this post I want more to discuss what Sanders is arguing, and it will be difficult because to do full justice to Sanders we have to summarize Talbott, and to do both of those things would take a post too long to read. So, I will do my best to sketch some of Sanders’ major points.

Talbott argues the case for universalism, arguing in essence that humans, if they are fully rational etc, will eventually choose God and that God’s love means God will seek their best and that God’s love and the endless opportunity to choose, and the justice of making humans fully capable of a reasonable choice combine to create a condition in which universalism is certain.

Does Talbott’s view of being fully rational respect human choice adequately? Do you consider free will essential to how God made us? Does God “risk” when God makes humans and gives them free will? Or, does a libertarian sense of free will entail that God had to take risks when God made humans? Why do you think God made a world in which humans could rebel against God? Is that the best of all possible worlds? Why?

Followers of this academic debate will not be surprised to learn that Sanders doesn’t think Talbott takes freewill theory seriously enough. In the end, Sanders thinks Talbott robs choice of power because God makes conditions that virtually require, or at least necessarily entail, a choice for God.

He begins with a smaller point: Talbott’s belief that humans in heaven can’t be happy knowing the suffering of those in hell. Sanders’ big point is that we don’t know the heavenly condition or ourselves well enough to render such a judgment.

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Erasing Hell – A Response (Jeff Cook)

I have deep respect for the work of both Francis Chan and Dr. Preston Sprinkle. In their recent book Erasing Hell: What God said about eternity, and the things we made up, the authors move the discussion of hell through a few chapters of Bible study and into the realm of philosophic thought: discussing the nature of love, God’s goodness, and our ability to conceptualize God’s priorities. I continue to appreciate Chan and Sprinkle’s hearts, and unlike some recent works seeking to display what is best to believe about God’s future, Erasing Hell is worthy of discussion and critique.

Dress it up however you wish, Erasing Hell is a response book to Rob Bell’s Love Wins, yet despite replicating Bell’s style in their cover art and promotional video—the primary problem in my mind with Erasing Hell is that the authors do not speak to the same audience.

Recall the motivation behind Bell’s book, “I’ve written this book for all those, everywhere, who have heard some version of the Jesus story that caused their pulse rate to rise, their stomach to churn, and their heart to utter those resolute words, ‘I would never be a part of that’ You are not alone. There are millions of us.” (viii).

This is primary. Bell wants to speak to a large number of people who reject the Jesus faith because of the way Christians have interpreted and displayed hell. [Read more...]