The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Michael McClymond vs Dr. Ramelli on patristics

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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TOM TALBOTT AND THE TREATISE ON THE RESURRECTION

As well as attempting to critique Tom Talbott’s logic of universal salvation, Michael McClymond also tries to draw Tom into a web of guilt by association with ‘’’Gnostic universalism’’ in The Devils Redemption. (Note that whatever else it was, Gnosticism was the first Christian ‘heresy’). One way he does this is by attempting to draw an analogy between something that Tom has written and something found in a translation of an early Gnostic writing. I’ll give you my thoughts on this.

The Treatise on the Resurrection (also known as the Letter to Rheginus ) is a Gnostic scripture from the collection of Gnostic texts found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945. Mike McClymond quoted from Myers translation thus:

‘’Surely the visible parts of the body are dead and will not be saved. Only the living parts that are within will arise.’’ In the same passage we read: ‘’Leaving this [body] behind will profit you, for you will not give up the better part when you leave. The inferior part will suffer loss, but there is grace for it. Nothing redeems us from this world, but we are of the All, and we are saved’’. ( Treatise on the Resurrection 47.30-48.19, Meyer, Nag Hammadi Scriptures ). 1

McClymond comments -

‘’To use biblical language, if there is a winnowing of the wheat from the chaff, or a separation of sheep and goats, it occurs more with a human person than between human persons. Judgement has thus become internalised and made into a separation within the human self.’’ (McClymond, Volume I, Chapter 2. Section 3, paragraph 10)

He then draws the analogy with Tom Talbott in his foonote 72 on this comment -

‘This theme became prominent in later universalism – a non-literal reading of Matt. 25 in which the ‘’sheep’’ that go to heaven represent the good side of the human self. Thomas Talbott suggests something similar in his interpretation of 2 Thess. 1, whereby the evil self is destroyed and the good self is preserved: ‘’the destruction of the false self is clearly a good thing: it is liberation, salvation itself’ (Talbott, Inescapable Love of God , p. 102).

MY CRITIQUE OF McCLYMOND’S ANALOGY

The separation spoken about in the Treatise on the Resurrection concerns the separation of pure spirit from imprisoning and contaminating matter in a purely spiritual resurrection – a theme that all of the second century schools of Christian Gnosticism have in common in some sense or other in opposition to the orthodox Jewish and Christian idea of the essential goodness of material creation.2 By way of contrast, Tom Talbott and other Christian Universalists who use this type of exegesis are referring to a moral separation of the good from the evil, and the false from the true in a person while believing in the resurrection as being inclusive of both matter and spirit. So the correlation of Tom Talbott and this Gnostic treatise is false because the two separations are so very different.

I also would argue that while Tom Talbott is very obviously a believer in universal salvation, there is no reason to think that the author of the Treatise on the Resurrection was. The Treatise is a Valentian Gnostic text addressed to the gnostic elect and not to the common and the ignorant –

‘’We are chosen for salvation and redemption, since from the beginning it was determined that we would not fall away into the folly of the ignorant, but we would enter into the understanding of those who know the truth’’ (Treatise on Resurrection 46, 19-47)

Footnotes

  • The phrase, ‘’ but we are of the All, and we are saved’’ will need some clarification if you are ‘new’ to Gnosticism (because it sounds a bit ‘universalistic’). ‘All’ in Gnostic texts does not mean either ‘all people’ or ‘the whole cosmos’. Rather ‘All’ (which translates the Greek ‘Pleroma’) means the unified spiritual reality which is ‘All’ that has real existence. The material cosmos is not part of this ‘All’, neither is the material part of human beings. Indeed according to the key Valentian Gnostic text ‘The Tripartite Tracate’ there is a whole class of human beings who are purely material and have no part in the ‘All’.
  • For expert confirmation I note that in his Introduction to Meyer’s translation of The Treatise on the Resurrection Einar Thomassen, the renowned specialist in Valentian Gnosticism, writes that ‘’… the soteriology of the Treatise on Resurrection differs notably from later orthodox doctrine with regards to its views about the condition from which the Saviour saved humanity. The ‘’death’’ that the Saviour brought to naught is not primarily a state of sin, but the condition of physical existence in a material world… The fact that he entered the world and assumed a human body means that he accepted death. When the Saviour later rose from the dead, he also freed himself from the body he had put on when he descended into the world and became once more a purely spiritual being… Because the Saviour assumed the physical existence of humans, they on their part acquired access to his spiritual form of being. This is their spiritual resurrection’’ (Meyer, Nag Hammadi Scriptures).

Bibliography

McClymond, Michael J., The Devils Redemption, Two Volumes, A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism , Grand Rapids, Baker Academic 2018 (Kindle DX version retrieved from Amazon.co.uk)

Myer, Marvin W. and Robinson, James M., The Nag Hammadi Scriptures, The International Edition , New York, Harper Collins 2009 (Kindle DX version retrieved from Amazon.co.uk)

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Yes Qaz :slight_smile: I think in this instance he certainly is and I am being fair to him in saying this - even though Mike annoys me greatly for a number of reasons :smiley: I’ve read exactly the same translation of The Treatise on the Resurrection as Mike has and I’ve read exactly the same introduction to this as him too. But we have both come away with completely different things. Mike accuses Ramelli of ‘selection bias’ in his book. Of course we are all guilty of that - and he and I have both made our own selections in this case. I find Mike’s argumentation heavy going and often obscure - but I have done my best to attend to what he is saying in my post above; and I do think in this instance he is definitely committing the error of guilt by association. Will post again next week on this matter.

All good wishes

Dick