We are in a silver age of Universalist Christian writing: new works and reprints, for popular and academic readers and from across the confessional spectrum. I’ll be posting book notices, partly to spread the word and partly to keep a record for myself. (I sometimes forget where I see books.)
Here are two that came on the radar:
- Weighing in at 1376 pages, in two volumes, we have
Michael J. McClymond’s The Devil’s Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism (2018). Of the two, the second volume looks more interesting to me; the first chapter’s themes being well traveled. I’ll look for critical reviews, as I’m always suspicious of proffered praise for books.
- The newly-published Hope for the Lost: The Case for Evangelical Universalism, written by William Brennan, the manager of biblicaluniversalism.org. It appears to be a general theology. You would order it from the website, but I couldn’t tell how much it would cost.
With this article, I open the category Universalist literature.
I haven’t heard of William Brennan before so can’t speak to that, but I did do some reading round McClymond’s book. My personal conclusion was that there wasn’t enough there relevant to where I’m coming from to make it worth the substantial price tag (not saying the price tag is inherently bad – just that it is more than was worth it for me)
Some links I had saved:
– An interview with the author at The Gospel Coalition https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/interview-author-definitive-treatment-christian-universalism/
– Thomas Talbott’s (author of Inescapable Love of God) response:
https://www.willamette.edu/~ttalbott/McClymond4.pdf
– Robin Parry (author of The Evangelical Universalist) response:
https://www.academia.edu/37667049/A_Response_to_Michael_McClymonds_Theological_Critique_of_Universalism
It’s a bit sad that universalism is an almost entirely intra-Evangelical discussion at the moment. All I can do personally is look at it from the outside. Arguments over whether Ballou’s universalism must be wrong, because necessarily it led to such evils as (quoting from Robin Parry’s response) “unitarianism, unorthodox Christologies, and exemplarist atonement theologies” don’t have much meaning when translated to my own situation. I feel neither inclined to prosecute or defend.
(Though I will defend Ballou himself from the charge that his atonement theory was examplarist – it wasn’t)
One book to add to your list that people seem to be talking about: David Bentley Harts “All That Shall be Saved”.
The world maybe has a superfluity of books arguing theology though.
The new Christian Century has this article, as you mentioned Hart: https://www.christiancentury.org/article/critical-essay/final-judgment-really-final
Thanks for pointing out his book.
That said, there’s an inter-Orthodox read, though more subtle.
There is also a new book (published 2019) by a popular evangelist named Santo Calarco entiled “Amazed by Grace.” He has reached many evangelicals on Facebook and YouTube with the message of universal salvation.
As far as I know, McClymond is against Universalism, not for it.
I don’t support his conservative agenda in promoting limited atonement, and a limited Jesus Christ.