The Inescapable Love of God

Will the love of God save us all? In this book Thomas Talbott seeks to expose the extent to which the Western theological tradition has managed to twist the New Testament message of love, forgiveness, and hope into a message of fear and guilt. According to the New Testament proclamation, he argues, God's love is both unconditional in its nature and unlimited in its scope; hence, no one need fear, for example, that God's love might suddenly turn into loveless hatred at the moment of one's physical death. For God's love remains the same yesterday, today, and forever. But neither should one ignore the New Testament theme of divine judgment, which Talbott thinks the Western theological tradition has misunderstood entirely. He argues in particular that certain patterns of fallacious reasoning, which crop up repeatedly in the works of various theologians and Bible scholars, have prevented many from appreciating St. Paul's explicit teaching that God is merciful to all in the end. This second edition of Talbott's classic work is fully revised, updated, and substantially expanded with new material.


About the Author
Thomas Talbott is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Willamette University in Salem, OR. He received his PhD from the University of California at Santa Barbara and his MDiv from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA. His evolving academic interests include philosophy of religion, philosophical theology, and, most recently, the ways in which Christian theologians have traditionally interpreted the Bible as a whole; and his published writings include The Doctrine of Everlasting Punishment (1990), an entry on universalism in The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology (2007), and an entry entitled Heaven and Hell in Christian Thought in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.