The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Gallery for Eric Reitan & Chris Tilling dialogue

I don’t have any comment myself yet per se; I was just setting up a thread for site members to comment among ourselves on the dialogue as it goes. :slight_smile:

(Note to admins: may or may not need to restrict Chris and Eric from this discussion so they won’t be distracted.)

My Brief Opening Thoughts

Reitan outlines two major arguments in GOD’S FINAL VICTORY:
1: If irresistible grace is available to God, then God will use irresistible grace to save all.
2: If irresistible grace is not available to God because of God granting libertarian will, then God guarantees the salvation of all by affording every creature an indefinite number of decision opportunities in an environment congenial to motivating salvation-conducing choices.

My view is close to 2. I firmly believe that God affords every creature an indefinite number of decision opportunities in an environment congenial to motivating salvation-conducing choices. But I don’t go as far as saying that God “guarantees” the salvation of all but I nonetheless believe that God will eventual save all through an indefinite number of decision opportunities in an environment congenial to motivating salvation-conducing choices.

In my case, God gave afforded me numerous opportunities for salvation before I accepted his gracious gift of divine reconciliation.

I suppose most everything that Reitan says about 2 can combine with my view of conditional futurism to support Arminian conditional election with universalism.

I found Eric’s explanation of the relationship between biblical exegesis & philosophy (including the concept of philosophical costs) particularly helpful.

I’m going to ask for God’s Final Victory as my birthday present this year :mrgreen:

Strictly speaking I’m more of a (2) guy myself; but I regard (2) as being a variety of (1), so I actually believe in (1), too. Or (1) (2). Something like that. :mrgreen:

I thought John and Eric picked up Tom Talbott’s case for (1) (in a more particularly ultra-universalist way) and ran with it very well. But I wasn’t very happy with their chapter on penal sub atonement in itself: I thought it voided trinitarian theism too much, despite the fact that they showed they were aware of the problem in their endnotes. I gathered that by being aware of the problem they would try to avoid it (since their book was written explicitly from within an acceptance of ortho-trin theology)–but then they never seemed to try to avoid the problems. They just proceeded as though by affirming ortho-trin and acknowledging the problems there would never be any problems.

I want to read that chapter over again someday before critting them more strongly on it–I don’t want to be unfair to their argument–but I thought several places in their book could have benefited from a much stronger connection to trinitarian theism. (I would say that they were only attempting to demonstrate that, despite its problems in connection to ortho-trin, if someone holds that type of penal sub anyway universalism would be the result (and I would agree, and I would also say they made their case very strongly in principle there)–but they repeatedly state that they themselves do in fact hold to that type of penal sub.)

Since I mentioned some nits I had to pick in their book, I figured I should balance that by saying I’m not sure I could have put ER’s recent post in the dialogue better myself. :slight_smile: