The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Michael McClymond vs Dr. Ramelli on patristics

More ironically (as we’ve noted upthread or on one of the related threads), Calvinists like Dr. McCly have a strong relation to Gnosticism in the idea of only some people specially chosen to be saved. While Calv/Augustinian election doesn’t overtly promote the idea that these are a spiritually elite minority, but rather what might as well be a random selection from God’s entirely inscrutable but gracious purpose, it isn’t hard to elide into having that attitude.

To be fair, Calv theologians do recognize and warn against lapsing into that attitude: on Gnostic plans (generally speaking) the idea of spiritual elitism makes inherent sense because those who shall be saved are fractions (roughly speaking) of that-which-is-God, all other reality being dross or worse. Their return to the monad divine nature is even a natural inevitability, akin to the Greco-Roman ideas of the never-ending cycle of natural development, breakdown, and recapitulation, albeit filtered through a Platonic application of such ideas (thence via early Middle Platonism). But even on Calv soteriology, there is no natural progressive necessity in the return of the elect, but rather God’s gracious choice when, theoretically, He could have let them burn hopelessly (whether eternally or in annihilation) in their sins.

The assurance of Christian salvation by contrast (and this is a point relevant to us, too, since universalists per se share the Calv gospel assurance of persistence to victory) isn’t a mechanical inevitability but rooted in God’s personal skill and omni-capability worthy of our personal trust even when things are temporarily going badly for us (and very badly).

On the other hand, I’ve run across one or two Calvs before who regard the hopelessly lost as not even being really persons but only what philosophers now call philosophical zombies, indistinguishable from real people by us from our perspective but really only just fictional creations puppeted into existence by Satan, or perhaps by God to serve dramatic purposes, like non-player characters created by a game-master for players to interact with in a game. Those Calvs would actually be universalists somewhat like the sort of Gnostics mentioned above who regarded the finally lost as only animals and not really people, all real people being restored eventually. (But most Calvs realize this would make a hash of moral warnings lodged against the apparently hopelessly lost.)

Amen! As well as His “eudokia” (good will/kind intention) towards all men, especially those who believe.

3 Blessed [is] the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who did bless us in every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,
4 according as He did choose us in him before the foundation of the world, for our being holy and unblemished before Him, in love,
5 having foreordained us to the adoption of sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to** the good pleasure of His will**,
6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, in which He did make us accepted in the beloved,
7 in whom we have the redemption through his blood, the remission of the trespasses, according to the riches of His grace,
8 in which He did abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence,
9 having made known to us the secret of His will, according to His good pleasure, that He purposed in Himself,
10 in regard to the dispensation of the fulness of the times, to bring into one the whole in the Christ, both the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth – in him;
11 in whom also we did obtain an inheritance, being foreordained according to the purpose of Him who causes all things to work according to the counsel of His will,

Aha – yes thanks (I stand by the rest but nuance it all in the light of your comments Jason). Yes that’s good clarification; and the return to one note sounds like all human beings absorbed back into the monad and ceasing to exist as people.

And it’s good to know about the more extensive use of ‘Apocatastasis in the Nag Hammadi texts than the Gospel of Phillip. I have read a paper on Pagan apocatastasis by Dr Ramelli and in this she says that the apocatastasis spoken of is about the return of the philosophical soul to the monad – often envisaged as an ascent to above the stars (so Dr McClmond has a partial point but the Gnostics don’t speak about the apocatastasis panton). In this paper she said that pagan Apocatastasis panton is first found in late antiquity in the Neo-Platonist Macrobius (although the idea is certainly not found in Plotinus and his immediate followers). Macrobius thinks the idea was taught by Plato – but it was not. So she speculates that he has mistaken Plato for Origen.

Well, in the Tome (during in her brief overview specifically dedicated to apokatastasis in contemporary Gnostic and Gnostic Christian writings, though she talks about them more farther on throughout the book I think), Dr. R does say they refer {ta panta} to the apokatastasis, and also… I forget the grammatic form but it’s the Greek word for “the whole” which she allows means “all beings” synonymously with {ta panta} the all. But again, it’s really more about everything ceasing to exist as “everything” and becoming the monad again or else going out of existence altogether.

Also, I should make a slight correction that the Gnostics regarded most people as not even having animal life! – it was the psychic or soulish people who were basically only animals, and the Gnostic groups disputed about whether they would be annihilated or absorbed back into the monad, and whether that would be all or only some. There doesn’t seem to have been any dispute about whether the less-than-animal people would be annihilated, any more than they disputed about whether any of the spiritual pneumatic people would fail to be resolved back into the monad: obviously the absolute trash wouldn’t have any (Gnostic version of) salvation.

OK Jason :slight_smile: - so I’ll drop the ‘panton’ bit to make the distinction (Leibniz made it - and he’s erm slightly dated :-/ :smiley:). Did I suggest somewhere that the psychics were not animals? We’ll that was careless of me - animal means having an anima or soul. Good to talk precision with you Jason :slight_smile: :slight_smile: It’s the only way I can focus on these things :slight_smile:

No, I was the one that said the Gnostics didn’t treat the psychics as animals. They did, but they had differences between themselves about whether animals could also be persons or not, which came out in their differences between whether the soulish/psychic humans could become spiritual persons or not.

Aha :slight_smile:

According to Amazon, “The Devil’s Redemption…” will be available in April, 2018:

amazon.com/Devils-Redemptio … 0801048567

Here is Ramelli’s 890 page tome on Universalism in the early church for free reading & download:

www.faulknerfornewyork.com/library/down … &type=full

It’s due to be released electronically & by paper in 2 volumes on the 5th:

http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/the-devil-s-redemption-2-volumes/340801

https://www.christianbook.com/the-devils-redemption-2-volumes/michael-mcclymond/9780801048562/pd/048562

For a free preview:

https://books.google.ca/books?id=HXQ1DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT1155&lpg=PT1155&dq=Henri+Crouzel,+a+leading+Origen+scholar&source=bl&ots=p2DUz8kzOH&sig=lgtReb_jnz-ER9-PV6bZPH0QJzM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjut9K-g7TbAhVmw1QKHQcADeMQ6AEILzAC#v=onepage&q=Henri%20Crouzel%2C%20a%20leading%20Origen%20scholar&f=false

A related thread is:

I’ve read parts of it and I’ve had a chat with Dr Mike at Patheos. Hmmmmm

Dick - you big tease! Could you give us a bit more than hmmmm? :wink:

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It’s very, very long at over 1,300 pages and is actually the work of more than one person. I’m not bowled over by it - but what do I know …

Hi Dave old china -

It is such a long book that it will take time to do justice to – and I guess there is no rush because we’ve had to wait four years for it to come out (and Mike has had a whole team of Phd students working on it with him, plus an Origen scholar). I think it may well become the standard authority on universalism for a time among evangelical scholars who are anti-universalist (and the intention is for it to have an even wider appeal).

However – yeah I’ve lots of misgivings about his historical arguments in the chapters I’ve read, certainly. I may try and tell you about the details when summer is over (busy at the moment because I’ve been retraining to do creative arts and reminiscence work with people with dementia). But I think this book does need some sort of response – and I the big hitters, including Robin Parry, are on the case.

So do I. It would be interesting to know :sunny:

I’ve no idea Qaz. I think it’s probably best if a response is made at some point. However, again I think it’s probably better if a number of people respond to different portions of the book because the book is so long (and a number of people were involved in it too).

Wow, I’m at Vancouver’s Regent College and just realized that McClymond’s two thick tomes are sitting on their new books shelves. I hope to at least read his sections on Parry and Talbott’s approach. Perhaps more feasible would be for them to respond to those shorter sections.

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Dr. Talbott posted his first response to Dr. McClymond on his Facebook Inescapable Love site:

Reply to Michael J. McClymond—Part I
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,[i] 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 1,300 pages is a monumental piece of historical scholarship, at least in terms 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.

An Unfortunate Confusion
McClymond gets off to a rough start in discussing my book when he confuses a set of three propositions, which I claimed to be logically inconsistent, with “a philosophical argument for universalism.” As set forth in the first edition, which is the focus of his attention, here are the relevant propositions:

(1) It is God’s redemptive purpose for the world (and therefore his will) to reconcile all sinners to himself.
(2) It is within God’s power to achieve his redemptive purpose for the world.
(3) Some sinners will never be reconciled to God, and God will therefore either consign them to a place of eternal punishment, from which there will be no hope of escape, or put them out of existence altogether.

The inconsistency implicit in this set of propositions, as presented in the first edition, rested on a particular understanding of God’s redemptive purpose for the world. According to that understanding, God’s redemptive purpose for the world includes everything he considers most important and thus by definition overrides every other purpose he might have (see note 1 on page 44 for the full explanation). But whether these specific propositions really do comprise an inconsistent triad need not concern us here, since I later revised them in a way that puts the issue beyond dispute, or at least so I believe.[2] The important point for our purposes is that we have here a rather simple schema for classifying theologians; as I put it in the context, “a good way to classify Christian theologians and their theological systems, I want to suggest, is according to which of our three propositions they finally reject” (p. 46). In general, the Augustinians or Calvinists will reject proposition (1), the Arminians, Wesleyans, and most Roman Catholics will reject proposition (2), and we Christian universalists will reject proposition (3).

In any case, given that the above set of propositions has no conclusion and no premises, and given that it is lifted from a chapter entitled “Three Pictures of God in Western Theology”—a chapter in which I do not argue for (or against) any of the positions identified therein—how on earth, I wonder, could McClymond have confused this inconsistent triad with a philosophical argument for universalism. He points out, correctly, that I reject proposition (3), even as I would point out, correctly, that many Calvinists reject proposition (1). But that no more makes these three propositions an argument for universalism than it makes them an argument for Calvinism. I would consider this a minor slip-up, one not even worth mentioning, had McClymond not repeated this claim several times and had he not written the following: “we may be suspicious of Talbott’s argument for universalism [i.e., my inconsistent triad] because the argument proves too much—that is, more than Talbott might wish.” But again I must ask, what on earth does McClymond think the above set of propositions in fact proves? If it does indeed entail a contradiction, as I still believe it does, then that proves one thing and one thing only; it proves only that at least one of the three propositions is false.[3]

Things get even crazier when McClymond tries to justify his strange claim that my supposed argument for universalism proves more than I might wish. Incredibly, he switches to an entirely different set of propositions, as if that could be relevant to the propositions I actually set forth. He thus wrote, “let us revise the argument slightly, without changing its basic format,” and he then set forth the following propositions (whose numbers I have changed):
(4) “An all-loving God wills for there to be no sin, evil, or suffering in the universe he has created.”
(5) “An all-powerful God is able to prevent any sin, evil, or suffering from existing in the universe he has created.”
(6) “Sin, evil, and suffering exist in the universe that God has created.”

Now there are, of course, many similarities between the problem of hell and the more general problem of evil. But that hardly justifies the absurd claim that McClymond’s set of propositions does not change the “basic format” of my own. In the first place, whereas I claimed that my set of propositions was logically inconsistent, so that not all three of them could be true, McClymond treats his set of propositions as logically consistent, so that an Epicurus or a David Hume could claim that all three of them are true and then deduce from them that God cannot be both all-loving and all-powerful. McClymond then tries to foist this same conclusion on me, which is “more than Talbott might wish” to prove; he maintains, in other words, that my inconsistent set of propositions likewise commits me to the conclusion that God cannot be both all-loving and all-powerful. That leaves me almost speechless—almost anyway! Suffice it to say that no inconsistent set of propositions could prove any substantive conclusion at all, and neither could it prove, therefore, that an all-loving and all-powerful God does not exist (see again note 3).

Note also that an inescapable hell, whether understood as a horrific place of everlasting torture or as an everlasting separation from every possible source of joy and meaning in life, represents an utterly unique kind of suffering unknown on earth. With respect to the temporary sufferings of this life, however severe they might be over the short run, St. Paul could write: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us” (Rom 8:18). That future glory, he evidently thought, will more than compensate for all of the travails experienced along the way. But consigning someone to an inescapable hell would clearly be an instance of God inflicting irreparable harm upon someone, where irreparable harm is a kind of harm that not even omnipotence could both permit someone to experience and do anything to alleviate or repair it at some future time. Accordingly, it is logically impossible that an omnipotent God should love someone even in the minimal sense of willing the good for this person over the long run and, at the same time, subject this person to an inescapable hell.[4] So either God does not love all human beings, as consistent Calvinists have always acknowledged, or he does not subject any of them to an inescapable hell. It is as simple as that.

[1] Michael J. McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018).
[2] For my most recent expression of this inconsistent triad, see section 1 of my entry entitled “Heaven and Hell in Christian Thought” in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which is available at the following URL: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heaven-hell/. The revised version of proposition (2) now reads: “Almighty God will triumph in the end and successfully reconcile to himself each person whose reconciliation he sincerely wills or desires.” Note that this makes no reference to God’s power or ability. That’s because it suddenly occurred to me a couple of decades ago that virtually every biblical text one might cite on behalf of the weaker claim that God has the power to accomplish his redemptive will for someone could also be cited on behalf of the stronger claim, as the Calvinists have always insisted, that he will in fact satisfy that redemptive will in the end.
[3] A point that may be more familiar to a philosopher than it would be to a non-philosopher is that a formal contradiction entails any proposition you please; that is, using the techniques of mathematical logic, you can validly deduce from a contradiction any proposition you please. So if my set of three propositions entails a contradiction, then it also entails the proposition that an omnipotent and maximally loving God exists; it likewise entails the proposition that such a God does not exist. But of course no such deduction would qualify as a sound argument, much less as some sort of a proof.
[4] Because some recent proponents of a free will theodicy of hell hold that a loving God would never place a time-limit on the opportunity to repent, not even in hell, this particular point does not pertain to those whose view includes the possibility that an occupant of hell may escape from it at some future time.

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I love Tom’s distinction between breadth of coverage and genuine depth of knowledge and attention trtouth.

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Space saving

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PDF of Talbott’s response part 1 and 2:

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