Chapter 14
We have now arrived at the heart of the matter. For the first thirteen chapters of this book, we examined McClymond’s historical methodology—his genealogical approach, his gnostic origins thesis, his handling of the patristic evidence. All of that was important. But the most important question in this entire debate is simpler and more direct: What does Scripture actually say? And the place where that question burns hottest is in three Pauline passages that form the backbone of the biblical case for universal restoration: Romans 5:12–21, 1 Corinthians 15:20–28, and Colossians 1:15–20.
McClymond knows these texts are a problem for his position. He knows that universalist scholars have built detailed, careful arguments from them. And yet, his engagement with these passages is surprisingly thin. In a two-volume work totaling over 1,300 pages, you would expect a thorough, verse-by-verse dismantling of the universalist exegesis of Paul’s “all” texts. What we get instead is a handful of brief responses scattered across the work’s introduction and conclusion.
McClymond’s core argument goes like this. He contends that universalists misread the “all” in these texts by assuming it means “every individual without exception” when it may instead mean “all categories” or “all who believe.”1 He leans on N. T. Wright’s observation that the word “all” in the New Testament has “several clearly distinct biblical uses”—sometimes meaning “all of some sorts” and sometimes meaning “some of all sorts.”2 In other words, when Paul says “all men” in Romans 5:18, McClymond argues that Paul may simply mean “people from all nations”—Jews and Gentiles alike—not literally every human being who has ever lived.
McClymond also raises a broader methodological objection. He charges that universalist reasoning is “abstract” and “a priori”—that it starts from God’s love for all people and then leaps straight to the conclusion of universal salvation “while omitting the messy part in between.”3 By “the messy part,” McClymond means the incarnation, Jesus’s call for faith, His atoning death, the outpouring of the Spirit, and the need for evangelism. He suggests that universalism effectively reduces the gospel to an abbreviated version of John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave eternal life to all.”4 He warns that this kind of reasoning is precisely what led many universalist groups in the nineteenth century to eventually become Unitarian—because if everyone is saved regardless, then the mediator becomes unnecessary and the theology becomes simpler without Him.5
With respect to specific texts, McClymond makes several particular claims. On Romans 5:12–21, he argues that Parry “interprets Romans 5:12–21 out of context,” failing to connect the passage with the earlier declaration in Romans 5:1 that “we have been justified by faith.” McClymond insists that sound hermeneutics requires reading the “for all men” of Romans 5:18 alongside the “justified by faith” of 5:1.6 He also notes the alternating terms “many” and “all” in the passage and points to the phrase “those who receive the abundance of grace” in 5:17 as a possible qualifier that limits the scope of Paul’s universal language.7
On 1 Corinthians 15, McClymond argues that universalists have an even weaker case. He contends that “the ‘all’ who ‘shall … be made alive’ are those who are ‘in Christ’” (15:22), and that the following verse’s reference to “those who belong to Christ” (15:23) clearly limits the scope of Paul’s “all” statement.8 He further argues that references in the Pauline letters to the subjugation of hostile powers (1 Cor. 15:24–28; Col. 2:13–15) “cannot be equated with the notion of a free, glad, or voluntary submission of Satan and demons.”9
On Colossians 1:15–20, McClymond does not engage in detailed exegesis, relying instead on the general argument that Paul’s “reconcile all things” language describes a pacification or subjugation of hostile powers, not their genuine redemption.
That, in summary, is McClymond’s case against the universalist reading of the “all” texts. He has three main moves: (1) “all” doesn’t always mean “all”; (2) the context of each passage limits the universal language; and (3) universalist reasoning is too abstract and skips over the particularity of Christ’s mediation. Each of these arguments deserves careful examination. And as we will see, each of them fails.
McClymond’s treatment of these texts suffers from three major problems: brevity, inconsistency, and a failure to engage the strongest universalist scholarship.
First, the sheer brevity. Romans 5:12–21 is one of the most debated passages in the entire New Testament. Entire monographs have been written on it. Thomas Talbott devotes an entire chapter to it with meticulous verse-by-verse analysis.10 Robin Parry gives it sustained attention in The Evangelical Universalist.11 Ilaria Ramelli traces its universalist interpretation through the entire patristic tradition.12 And yet McClymond’s engagement with the universalist reading of this passage amounts to a few paragraphs. For a work that bills itself as the definitive critique of universalism, this is a remarkable gap.
Second, McClymond does not adequately address the force of the symmetry in these texts. This is the single most important point in this entire chapter, so I want to state it as clearly as I can.
Romans 5:18 says: “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.”
The structure of this sentence is a precise, deliberate parallel. The Greek phrase translated “all men” (pantas anthrοpous) appears in exactly the same form in both halves of the sentence. The word “as” (hοsper) sets up the comparison. The word “so also” (houtοs kai) completes it. Paul is telling us explicitly that the scope of Christ’s saving work corresponds to the scope of Adam’s destructive work. If the first “all” means every human being without exception—and nobody disputes that Adam’s sin affects every human being—then the second “all” must carry the same scope.13
McClymond brushes past this symmetry by gesturing vaguely at the different senses of “all” in other New Testament contexts. But that is precisely the wrong approach. You don’t determine the meaning of “all” in Romans 5:18 by looking at how the word is used in Luke 4:15 or John 8:2. You determine it by looking at how Paul uses it in this sentence, in this argument, where he has deliberately constructed a one-to-one parallel between Adam’s work and Christ’s work.14
Imagine a math teacher writing on the board: “As 2+2=4, so 3+3=6.” Now imagine a student raising their hand and saying, “Well, the number 3 doesn’t always mean three in every context. Sometimes people say ‘I’ve told you three times’ when they mean ‘many times.’ So we can’t assume that 3+3 really equals 6.” You would rightly say: “That is irrelevant. In this context, in this parallel structure, 3 means 3.” The same principle applies to Paul’s use of “all” in Romans 5:18. In this carefully constructed parallel, “all” means all.
Third, McClymond completely ignores the “how much more” (pollο mallon) logic that runs through Romans 5:15–17. This is not a minor detail. It is the driving engine of Paul’s entire argument. Paul does not merely say that Christ’s work is equal to Adam’s damage. He insists, three times, that Christ’s work is far greater. “But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by one man’s offense many died, how much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to many” (Rom. 5:15). As the New Testament scholar M. C. de Boer has observed, unless you take the universalism of verses 18–19 seriously, the phrase “how much more” gets turned into “how much less”—because death ends up having the last word over the vast majority of human beings, and God’s reclaiming of the world becomes a limited affair.15
Think about that for a moment. If Adam’s sin condemned every human being without exception, but Christ’s righteousness saves only a fraction of humanity, then Adam is more powerful than Christ. Sin is stronger than grace. The trespass outperforms the gift. Paul’s entire argument collapses.
Finally, McClymond fails to reckon with the specific vocabulary Paul uses in Colossians 1:20. The word is “reconcile” (apokatallassein)—not “subjugate,” not “pacify,” not “destroy.” Paul had words available for forced submission. He uses them elsewhere. But here, for the scope of Christ’s cosmic work, he chose a word that is explicitly relational and redemptive. You cannot reconcile someone against their will. Reconciliation requires the restoration of a relationship.16 McClymond either does not notice this or chooses to ignore it. Either way, his case is weaker for it.
We are now going to do what McClymond did not: a careful, sustained exegesis of these three Pauline passages. I want to walk through each one and show that Paul’s logic, taken on its own terms, points powerfully—I would say inescapably—toward universal restoration.
Romans 5 is not an isolated prooftext. It sits at a pivotal hinge in Paul’s letter. In chapters 1–3, Paul has established that all of humanity stands under God’s righteous judgment. In chapter 4, he has argued that justification comes through faith, using Abraham as the model. Now, in chapter 5, he widens the lens to its maximum scope. He steps back from the individual believer and looks at the entire human story—from Adam to Christ, from the fall to the restoration. What he gives us is not a limited statement about the benefits of believing. It is a cosmic drama about the reach of grace.
The passage begins in 5:12: “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.” Nobody disputes the scope of this statement. Adam’s sin affects every human being. Death spread to all. This is the universal tragedy.
Then, beginning in verse 15, Paul introduces the contrast. And notice what he says: “But the free gift is not like the offense.” The gift is not identical to the trespass. It is not merely equal to it. It is greater than it. “For if by one man’s offense many died, how much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to many” (5:15).17
Paul repeats this “how much more” formula three times in verses 15–17. He is not being careless. He is hammering a point: grace super-abounds. The Greek word in verse 15 is perisseuο, which means to overflow, to exceed, to super-abound. And in verse 20, he drives it home with an even stronger word: “where sin abounded, grace abounded much more” (huperperisseusen)—grace hyper-abounded.18
Now we come to the climactic verse. Romans 5:18: “Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life.”
I want to be very precise about what Paul is doing here. He is constructing a parallel comparison using the correlative construction hοs … houtοs (“as … even so”). This construction tells the reader explicitly that the two halves correspond. What is true of the first group is true of the second. The scope of the first “all men” determines the scope of the second “all men.”19
Talbott puts this point with characteristic clarity. In text after text, Paul constructs a contrast between two universal statements, and in each case the first “all” determines the scope of the second. When Paul says in Romans 5:18 that Christ’s act leads to justification and life for all, he has in mind every descendant of Adam who stands under condemnation. When he insists in Romans 11:32 that God is merciful to all, he has in mind every person God has imprisoned in disobedience. When he says in 1 Corinthians 15:22 that all will be made alive in Christ, he has in mind everyone who dies in Adam.20
Even scholars who reject universalism have been forced to concede this point. Neal Punt acknowledges that Romans 5:18 and its immediate context “place no limitation on the universalistic scope of the second ‘all men.’”21 Larry Lacy admits that “taken apart from the context of other aspects of Paul’s teaching,” the most reasonable interpretation of Romans 5:18 “would be that Paul was therein teaching universal salvation.”22 Even the conservative Reformed scholar John Murray concedes the universalistic force of the text and therefore appeals to the broader context of Paul’s thought to escape it.23
That is remarkable. Scholars who strongly oppose universalism are admitting that the plain reading of this text teaches it. Their only escape route is to appeal to other texts that they believe override the clear meaning of this one. We will address that strategy shortly. But first, let me deal with the specific counter-arguments McClymond raises.
McClymond, following Douglas Moo, points to Romans 5:17 as evidence that Paul limits the scope of Christ’s saving work to “those who receive the abundance of grace.” The argument goes like this: Paul says the beneficiaries of Christ’s work are “those who receive”—implying an active human response that not everyone will make. Therefore, “all” doesn’t really mean all.
There are two devastating problems with this argument.
First, the Greek verb lambanο (“receive”) is used here in the passive sense, not the active sense. This is a crucial distinction. Paul is not talking about people who actively reach out and grab grace. He is talking about people who are made recipients of grace.24 The respected Greek scholar Marvin Vincent confirms this reading, noting that the word here means simply “the recipients”—not “those who believingly accept.”25 Think about how Paul uses the same verb elsewhere: Paul “received” thirty-nine lashes (2 Cor. 11:24)—he did not actively choose to take them. He and others “received grace and apostleship” (Rom. 1:5)—they were the recipients of divine action, like a newborn receiving life.26 Throughout this passage, the contrast is between what all people passively receive through Adam and what all people passively receive through Christ. We no more chose to experience the effects of Christ’s righteousness than we chose to experience the effects of Adam’s sin.
Second, even if you take lambanο in an active sense, it does not follow that the scope is limited. The verse does not say “only those who receive.” It says “those who receive”—describing the recipients of grace without placing any cap on how many will eventually be among them. As Parry notes, “those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace could eventually be everyone.”27 The universalist fully affirms that people must receive grace. We simply add that God is patient enough and powerful enough to bring every person to that point—whether in this life or beyond it.
McClymond endorses N. T. Wright’s suggestion that the “all” in Romans 5:18 refers to “all nations”—meaning Gentiles as well as Jews—rather than every individual person.28
This interpretation has a surface plausibility. After all, Paul is deeply concerned throughout Romans with the inclusion of the Gentiles. But it simply cannot work in this context, for one obvious reason: the first “all men” in 5:18—those who are condemned through Adam—does not mean “all ethnic categories.” It means every individual person. Condemnation through Adam is not a category-by-category affair. Every single human being inherits Adam’s guilt. And Paul’s whole point is that the scope of the second “all” matches the scope of the first.
George Hurd illustrates this nicely. Imagine someone robbed you of everything you owned. You confront the thief and say: “As you took all I had, even so I want you to give it all back.” Would anyone think you were asking for a tithe? The phrase “as … even so” demands that the second “all” match the first.29
McClymond argues that “for all men” in Romans 5:18 should be read alongside “justified by faith” in 5:1. In other words, the universal statements of 5:18–19 should be qualified by the earlier statement that justification comes through faith.
But this argument actually proves the universalist point rather than undermining it. We agree that justification comes through faith. We agree that no one is saved apart from a genuine response to God’s grace. What we deny is that this response is limited to the present life. The postmortem opportunity—which we addressed in earlier chapters and will treat fully in Chapter 21—means that God continues to pursue every person beyond death. The “how much more” logic of Romans 5 does not skip over the mediation of Christ. It celebrates it. Christ’s mediation is so powerful, so effective, so relentless that it will ultimately reach every person.
McClymond accuses universalists of presenting an “abbreviated John 3:16”—“For God so loved the world that he gave eternal life to all.” But this is a caricature. Conservative biblical universalism does not skip the cross, or faith, or repentance, or the work of the Holy Spirit. We affirm all of it. We simply trust that the God who desires all to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4), who gave His Son as a ransom for all (1 Tim. 2:6), and whose grace super-abounds beyond sin (Rom. 5:20) will actually accomplish what He set out to do. That is not abstract reasoning. That is taking Paul at his word.30
Verse 19 reinforces everything we have seen: “For as by one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”
Some readers stumble over the word “many” (hoi polloi, literally “the many”). They assume it means “some but not all.” But as John Murray himself has pointed out, Paul uses “the many” as a functional equivalent of “all” in this passage. He uses it to contrast “the one” (Adam or Christ) with “the many” (everyone else). The scope of “the many” must be the same as the “all men” of verses 12 and 18.31 We readily accept that “the many” who were made sinners through Adam includes everyone. Why do we suddenly shrink the same phrase when it refers to those made righteous through Christ?32
Notice also the verb tense: “the many will be made righteous.” Future tense. No time limit specified. Paul is describing something that will happen. He does not tell us when it will be complete. He simply tells us it will be.33
Paul caps his argument with one of the most sweeping statements of grace in all of Scripture: “Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more” (Rom. 5:20). The Greek word here is huperperisseusen—grace hyper-abounded. It overflowed. It went beyond every boundary. Paul is not speaking cautiously. He is not hedging. He is making a triumphant declaration: no matter how deep the problem of sin goes, grace goes deeper. No matter how wide the reach of the fall, the reach of redemption is wider. Grace does not merely keep pace with sin. It laps it.
And this is not some isolated prooftext. This is the conclusion of a sustained, carefully constructed argument that spans ten verses. Paul has set up his parallel, repeated his “how much more” formula three times, defined his reference class with precision, and now driven home his conclusion with the strongest possible language available to him. If we take Paul seriously as a writer and a thinker—and McClymond surely does—then we must take this argument on its own terms. And on its own terms, it teaches that Christ’s saving work is universal in scope.
I should also note something that often gets lost in the debate. Paul’s argument in Romans 5 is not merely about the offer of grace. It is about the effect of grace. He does not say “the free gift was offered to all men.” He says “the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life” (5:18). He does not say “the many will be offered righteousness.” He says “the many will be made righteous” (5:19). These are statements about what will actually happen, not about what is merely available. Paul is describing accomplished results, not unrealized potential. And the results are universal.65
If Romans 5 gives us the foundation of Paul’s universalism, 1 Corinthians 15 gives us the climax. This is Paul’s great resurrection chapter, and it reaches its dramatic high point in verses 20–28, where Paul unfolds a breathtaking vision of Christ’s ultimate triumph over every enemy—culminating in the stunning declaration that God will be “all in all.”
The critical verse is 15:22: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”
The structure is identical to Romans 5:18. Two universal statements set in parallel. The first “all” determines the scope of the second. Everyone who dies in Adam—which is every human being—will be made alive in Christ.34
McClymond counters with a common objection: the phrase “in Christ” limits the scope. The “all” who will be made alive are only those who are already “in Christ.” And the next verse, 15:23 (“those who belong to Christ”), supposedly confirms this restriction.35
But Talbott dismantles this argument decisively. The inference is fallacious. Even if the second “all” is restricted to “those who belong to Christ,” it does not follow that this “all” is more restrictive than the first. To get that conclusion, you would need the additional assumption that the first “all” includes people who will never belong to Christ—and that is exactly what is being debated. You cannot assume your conclusion as a premise.36
Here is what actually happens in the text. Verse 23 says: “But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.” This is not a limitation on the “all”—it is a description of the sequence. Paul is talking about the order in which the resurrection unfolds, not the number of people who will be included. Christ is first. Then those who belong to Him at His coming. And then—the passage continues—comes the end (to telos), when Christ hands the kingdom to the Father after destroying every enemy.37
Verses 24–28 are extraordinary. Christ must reign “until He has put all enemies under His feet” (v. 25). The last enemy destroyed is death (v. 26). And when everything has been subjected to Christ, “then the Son Himself will also be subjected to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all” (v. 28).
Stop and let that sink in. The goal of the entire cosmic drama is that God will be “all in all”—panta en pasin. Not all in some. Not all in most. All in all. This is the telos, the goal, the endpoint of everything. And Paul says there is but one exception to the “all things” subjected to Christ: the Father Himself (v. 27).38
Ramelli notes that this passage was the single favorite text of both Origen and Gregory of Nyssa in support of universal salvation. They understood that when Paul envisions the destruction of the last enemy, death, and the resulting state where God is “all in all,” he is describing a reality in which all separation from God has been overcome. Every will has been brought into joyful subjection to Christ in exactly the same way that Christ places Himself in subjection to the Father—voluntarily, gladly, lovingly.39
And this is the key that McClymond misses. He argues that the subjection of hostile powers in 1 Corinthians 15 is a forced subjugation, not a willing submission. But Paul himself draws a parallel between the subjection of all things to Christ and Christ’s own subjection to the Father (v. 28). Is Christ’s subjection to the Father forced? Is it unwilling? Of course not. It is the most perfect, joyful obedience imaginable. And Paul explicitly uses it as the model for the subjection of all things. The subjection of the Son to the Father is the pattern for the subjection of everything else.40
Talbott makes the further point that if Paul had in mind merely a forced pacification of enemies—not their genuine reconciliation—then his triumphant language makes no sense. What kind of victory is it if the enemy remains hostile, unreconciled, merely beaten into submission? A Hitler might take pleasure in forcing defeated enemies to bow against their will. But a God who honors truth could not participate in such a fraud. Praise and thanksgiving can come only from the heart. If every tongue is to confess (exomologeο) that Jesus is Lord, as Paul says in Philippians 2:11, then every tongue must do so willingly—because the Greek verb Paul chose implies not merely confession but voluntary praise and thanksgiving.41
The Colossian hymn is one of the most magnificent passages in all of Scripture. It is an early Christian creed, quite possibly predating Paul’s letter, that celebrates the absolute supremacy of Christ over all creation. And it reaches its climax in verse 20: “and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, making peace through the blood of His cross.”
Let me highlight several features of this text that are devastating for McClymond’s position.
First, the scope. The “all things” (ta panta) that are reconciled in verse 20 are the very same “all things” that were created in Christ in verse 16: “all things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through Him and for Him.” There is no category of creation excluded. Everything that was made through Christ will be reconciled through Christ. Paul could not have been more explicit.42
Second, the vocabulary. Paul uses the word “reconcile” (apokatallassein). This is a relational word. It describes the restoration of a broken relationship. It is the same word Paul uses in Colossians 1:21–22 to describe what happened to the Colossian believers: “And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, He has now reconciled in His body of flesh by His death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before Him.”43 Paul identifies the kind of reconciliation he means—not subjugation, not pacification, but the full redemptive transformation of enemies into friends through the blood of the cross. And he says this will happen to “all things.”
Third, the means. The reconciliation is accomplished “through the blood of His cross.” This is not the language of brute force. This is the language of sacrificial love. The cross is the instrument of reconciliation. And the cross has power to do what armies cannot: it transforms hearts. It turns enemies into worshippers. It melts rebellion into gratitude. That is the kind of victory Paul envisions.44
Some interpreters, like Peter O’Brien, have argued that “reconcile” in verse 20 really means “pacify”—that hostile powers are forced into submission, not genuinely reconciled. But as Talbott points out, this interpretation attributes to Paul an incoherent idea. You cannot “reconcile” someone by force. The word simply does not mean that. And Paul immediately follows verse 20 with an illustration from his readers’ own experience: “You who were once alienated and hostile … He has now reconciled … so as to present you holy and blameless.” That is genuine reconciliation. And Paul says the same thing will happen to “all things.”45
When you read these three passages together—Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 15, and Colossians 1—the cumulative force is enormous. Paul is telling us the same story from three different angles:
In Romans 5, grace super-abounds beyond sin. What Adam ruined, Christ restores—and more. The scope of redemption matches and exceeds the scope of the fall.
In 1 Corinthians 15, Christ reigns until every enemy is destroyed. Death itself—the last and greatest enemy—will be abolished. And when it is done, God will be “all in all.”
In Colossians 1, everything that was created in Christ will be reconciled through Christ. Not destroyed. Not annihilated. Not abandoned in endless torment. Reconciled.
Ramelli demonstrates that the earliest church fathers read these texts exactly this way. The Pauline vision of Christ overcoming all things and God being “all in all” was the foundational scripture for the doctrine of apokatastasis—the restoration of all things—from Origen through the Cappadocians and beyond. Eusebius of Caesarea, commenting on 1 Corinthians 15:24–28, describes a “rectifying and therapeutic reign” in which Christ “will rectify those who will be still imperfect and heal those who will still need healing.” When this healing work is complete, “all, once sanctified, will submit to the Son of God in a salvific submission.”46
This is not modern liberal theology reading universalism into the text. This is the ancient Greek-speaking church reading Paul in its own language and finding universal restoration there. And they found it because it is there.
I need to address head-on the argument that McClymond relies on most heavily: that “all” doesn’t always mean “all” in the Bible.
Yes, that is true. When a storefront sign says “Everything must be sold!” we know it doesn’t include the cash registers. When Jesus said “you will be hated by all” (Luke 21:17), He didn’t mean John would hate Peter.47 Nobody disputes that “all” sometimes has a limited sense in everyday speech and in narrative contexts.
But here is what McClymond misses. The question is not whether “all” can ever have a limited sense. The question is whether it has a limited sense in these specific passages. And the answer is clearly no, for a simple reason: in each of these texts, Paul has constructed a precise, deliberate parallel between two uses of “all,” and the first use is indisputably universal. The first “all” determines the scope of the second.
Talbott makes the further point that the examples McClymond and others cite are drawn from entirely different kinds of contexts. Moo, for instance, cites Romans 14:2 (“one person believes he may eat all things”) and Romans 8:32 (“He who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all”) as examples of “all” with a limited sense. But in Romans 14:2, the reference class is not even human beings—it is food! And in Romans 8:32, the question of who “us all” includes is itself debated. None of these examples come from contexts remotely similar to the tightly constructed Adam-Christ parallels of Romans 5:18 and 1 Corinthians 15:22.48
As Talbott observes, if Paul were so sloppy a writer that he would repeatedly shift the reference of “all” within a single compound sentence of parallel structure, one wonders why anyone would trust him as a source of accurate theological information.49
We have already noted that the early Greek-speaking church fathers read these texts as supporting universal restoration. But it is worth underscoring just how central these passages were to the patristic universalist tradition.
Origen treated 1 Corinthians 15:28 as the key text for the doctrine of apokatastasis. He connected Acts 3:21—Peter’s announcement of “the times of the restoration of all things”—with Paul’s vision of God being “all in all.” He wrote: “What will take place at the universal restoration, when all beings will achieve their perfect end, must be understood as something beyond all aeons. Then there will be the perfect accomplishment of all, when God will be ‘all in all.’”50
Gregory of Nyssa built his entire eschatology on the same Pauline texts. For Gregory, the destruction of the last enemy (death) meant the elimination of all evil and all separation from God. When death is destroyed, nothing remains that is not in communion with God. And therefore God is “all in all.”51
Eusebius of Caesarea, commenting on 1 Corinthians 15, describes the eschatological reign of Christ as a healing and purifying work that makes all people worthy of God. He interprets the eventual submission of all in specifically salvific terms: “He will subject all beings to himself, and this must be understood as a salvific submission.”52
Ramelli also points out that Paul’s phrase in 1 Corinthians 15:28—God will be “all in all”—implies that God will dwell not in a few select individuals but in every rational creature. She writes: “After the end and perfection of all, at the constitution of the new aeon, God will no longer inhabit few, but all, who by then have become worthy of the kingdom of heavens.”53
These are not fringe figures. Origen was the most influential biblical scholar of the first three centuries. Gregory of Nyssa was one of the three Cappadocian Fathers who shaped Trinitarian orthodoxy. Eusebius was the father of church history. They all read Paul’s “all” texts as teaching universal restoration. McClymond’s treatment never comes to grips with the weight of this tradition.
I want to press one more point about 1 Corinthians 15:28 before we move on, because it is so important. Paul says that when the final victory is complete, “God will be all in all.” Stop and ask yourself: what does that actually mean? If billions of human beings remain permanently alienated from God—whether in eternal conscious torment or annihilated into nothingness—then in what sense is God “all in all”? Is He all in what’s left? All in the survivors? That is not what Paul says. He says “all in all”—panta en pasin. The phrase envisions a reality in which nothing remains outside God’s life-giving presence. No corner of creation is still in rebellion. No rational creature is still in bondage. God’s presence fills everything and everyone. That is the goal. That is the telos. That is where the story ends.
Hart develops this point with great force. If even one rational creature remains permanently lost—if even one soul that God created in love remains forever alienated from its Creator—then God is not “all in all.” He is “all in some.” And that would represent not a victory but a defeat—a permanent, unredeemed pocket of his creation where His love never prevailed. For a God who is love (1 John 4:8), whose very nature is self-giving goodness, such a defeat would be a defeat of His own being. It would mean that evil, in some corner of reality, permanently triumphed over good.66
I want to step back from the individual verses for a moment and consider the theological logic of Paul’s argument in Romans 5. Because the logic, when you follow it honestly, leads to only one conclusion.
Paul’s argument is built on a comparison between two federal heads: Adam and Christ. Adam’s sin brought condemnation and death to all humanity. Christ’s righteous act brings justification and life. But the comparison is not symmetrical. Paul insists, repeatedly and emphatically, that the second is greater than the first. Grace doesn’t merely match sin. It super-abounds beyond it.
Now, if Christ’s saving work is greater in scope and power than Adam’s destructive work, then what must we conclude? If Adam’s sin reaches every human being without exception, and Christ’s grace is “much more” than Adam’s sin, then Christ’s grace must also reach every human being—and more. Any limitation on the scope of Christ’s work to fewer people than Adam’s work would contradict Paul’s explicit “how much more” claim.54
Arland Hultgren, a Lutheran New Testament scholar, puts it plainly: “As Adam was the head of humanity in the old eon, leading all to destruction, so Christ is the head of humanity in the new age which has dawned, leading all to justification and life. The grace of God in Christ amounts to ‘much more’ than the trespass of Adam and its effects. All of humanity is in view here without exception.”55
Let me put this in the simplest terms I can. If Adam breaks everything, and Christ fixes only some of it, then Adam wins. The fall is more powerful than the redemption. Sin gets the last word. And that is exactly what Paul says will not happen. “Where sin abounded, grace abounded much more” (Rom. 5:20). Grace gets the last word. Not sin. Not death. Grace.
Before we move on, I want to note one additional point about Colossians 1:15–20 that is often overlooked. Many New Testament scholars believe that this passage is a pre-Pauline hymn or creedal statement—one of the earliest Christian confessions of faith, possibly dating to within a decade or two of the resurrection itself.56 If that is the case, then the cosmic scope of Christ’s reconciling work—reconciling “all things, whether on earth or in heaven”—was not a late theological development. It was part of the church’s earliest understanding of what Christ had accomplished. The very first Christians, reflecting on the meaning of the cross and resurrection, saw its reach as universal. They put “all things” into their creed because they believed “all things” was what Christ had come to save.
There is also a structural feature of the Colossian hymn that deserves attention. In verses 15–17, Paul (or the hymn-writer before him) describes Christ’s role in creation: “All things were created through Him and for Him.” Then in verses 18–20, the hymn describes Christ’s role in redemption: “Through Him to reconcile to Himself all things.” The symmetry is intentional. The same Christ who created all things will redeem all things. The scope of redemption matches the scope of creation. Nothing that was made will be left unredeemed. This is not the language of a limited atonement or a partial reconciliation. It is the language of cosmic completeness.67
Consider also the phrase “making peace through the blood of His cross.” Peace in the biblical tradition is not the absence of conflict. It is the Hebrew concept of shalom—wholeness, completeness, the flourishing of all things in right relationship with God and one another. When Paul says Christ is making shalom through His cross, he is describing the restoration of the entire created order to its intended wholeness. Every broken relationship healed. Every alienated creature reconciled. Every tongue confessing. Every knee bowing—not in defeat, but in gratitude.
And notice what the text does not say. It does not say “through Him to reconcile some things to Himself.” It does not say “to reconcile all things that are willing.” It does not say “to reconcile all things except the really bad ones.” It says “all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven.” Every qualifier Paul adds expands the scope rather than restricting it. This is a writer who wants to make sure his readers understand that nothing is excluded.
McClymond might respond: “Even if these three texts seem to teach universalism when read in isolation, other Pauline texts clearly teach a different outcome. Second Thessalonians 1:9 speaks of ‘eternal destruction.’ Paul warns that some will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9–10; Gal. 5:21). These texts must qualify the universal language.”
This is the strongest counter-argument, and I want to treat it honestly. Yes, Paul also uses language of judgment and destruction. The universalist does not deny this. What we deny is that “destruction” in Paul’s thought means annihilation or eternal torment. We will treat the specific judgment texts in later chapters (especially Chapters 15–17). But for now, let me make one crucial observation.
When two sets of texts appear to point in different directions, the proper hermeneutical move is not to let the seemingly restrictive texts override the universal texts. It is to find the interpretation that does justice to both. And the universalist reading does exactly that. The universal texts tell us the destination: God will be all in all. The judgment texts tell us the process: getting there involves real, severe, purifying judgment. The fire is real. The destruction of sin is real. The agony of facing God’s holy love while still in rebellion is real. But it is remedial, not terminal. It burns away the dross. It does not annihilate the gold.57
Talbott makes the point that it is deeply uncharitable to Paul to assume he contradicts himself. If the plain reading of Romans 5:18, 1 Corinthians 15:22, and Colossians 1:20 teaches universal restoration, then an interpretation of 2 Thessalonians 1:9 that contradicts that conclusion should be questioned. Perhaps “eternal destruction” does not mean what the English phrase initially suggests to modern ears. Perhaps the word aionios means “age-long” rather than “everlasting”—a possibility we will explore fully in Chapter 15.58
Here is an analogy that may help. Imagine a father who says on Monday: “I love all my children, and I will never rest until every one of them is safe at home.” Then on Tuesday he says: “If my children keep running into the street, they will face serious consequences.” Would you conclude that Tuesday’s statement contradicts Monday’s? Of course not. The warning about consequences is part of the father’s love, not a contradiction of it. The father warns precisely because he loves. And the consequences are designed to get the children safely home, which was the goal he stated on Monday. In the same way, Paul’s universal texts describe the destination—God will be all in all—while his warning texts describe the painful process of getting there. Both are expressions of the same divine love.
Beilby acknowledges the force of the universalist reading of these texts while noting that the most effective response may simply be to point to the different senses of “all” in different contexts. But he also concedes that Parry and other universalists have strong answers to this objection, and that the parallel structure of Romans 5:18 creates a formidable challenge for any non-universalist reading.68
Someone might object: “You’re reading universalism into these texts. Paul was not a universalist. He was a first-century Jewish apostle who believed in the final division between the saved and the lost.”
This objection begs the question. Whether Paul “was a universalist” is precisely what we are trying to determine by looking at his texts. And when we do, we find that his most carefully constructed theological arguments—the Adam-Christ typology in Romans 5, the resurrection sequence in 1 Corinthians 15, the cosmic hymn in Colossians 1—all point in the same direction. Multiple universalist scholars have demonstrated this with painstaking exegetical care. McClymond has not refuted them. He has mostly just waved them away.
Moreover, the earliest readers of Paul who shared his language and cultural context—the Greek-speaking church fathers of the first five centuries—included some of the most brilliant theological minds in the history of Christianity. And a disproportionate number of them read Paul as teaching universal restoration. That doesn’t prove they were right. But it does mean we cannot dismiss the universalist reading as a modern invention.59
McClymond might press further: “If grace ultimately reaches everyone, then it is irresistible grace—and that violates human freedom. People must be free to say a final no to God.”
We will address the free will objection at length in Chapter 25. But for now, notice two things. First, Paul himself describes grace in Romans 5 as something that overwhelms and surpasses sin. He uses the language of super-abundance, overflow, excess. This is not the language of a cautious, limited offer that respects a polite no. This is the language of a love that will not stop until it has won.60
Second, the universalist does not deny human freedom. We affirm it. We simply deny that anyone, fully seeing God as He truly is, fully understanding their own condition, fully experiencing the depth of Christ’s love—would freely choose eternal rebellion. As Talbott argues, sin is bondage, not freedom. A truly free choice requires true knowledge, and no one who truly knew God could reject Him forever. The movement from bondage to freedom, from darkness to light, from rebellion to surrender—that is the most profoundly free act a human being can perform. And God’s grace is powerful enough to bring every person to that point, not by overriding their will, but by healing it.61
Consider Paul’s own testimony. Before his conversion, he was an enemy of Christ—a persecutor, a blasphemer, the “chief of sinners” by his own reckoning (1 Tim. 1:15). Yet God’s grace broke through his resistance on the Damascus Road. Was Paul’s freedom violated? Was his will overridden? Paul never says so. He describes his conversion as the most liberating thing that ever happened to him. Grace did not destroy his freedom. It set him free from the bondage of his own blindness. If grace can do that for Paul, the universalist simply asks: why can it not do the same for everyone? Is anyone more resistant than Saul of Tarsus was?
We should return to McClymond’s charge that universalist reasoning is “abstract” and “a priori.” Having now walked through the actual exegetical arguments, I hope the reader can see how unfair this charge is. We did not start with an abstract principle (“God loves everyone”) and deduce universal salvation from it. We started with three specific Pauline texts and examined their grammar, vocabulary, structure, and context. We engaged with both universalist and non-universalist scholars. We traced the patristic reception history. And we arrived at a conclusion that is driven by the texts themselves.
If anything, it is McClymond’s counter-arguments that are abstract. His appeal to the different senses of “all” is a general linguistic principle imported from unrelated contexts. His appeal to the “messy middle” of the gospel is a theological abstraction that does not engage with the specific arguments Paul constructs. His reliance on the universalism-to-Unitarianism trajectory is a historical generalization that has nothing to do with exegesis. The universalist case for these texts is more exegetically grounded, more attentive to Paul’s actual arguments, and more engaged with the scholarly literature than McClymond’s response to it.
McClymond argues that when Paul speaks of subjugating hostile powers in 1 Corinthians 15:24–28, he is talking about demons, and that “demons do not become angels—or at least not in the Old and New Testaments.”62
The scope of demonic salvation is a question that conservative biblical universalists handle in different ways. Some, like Hart, argue that the logic of apokatastasis extends to all rational creatures, including fallen angels. Others focus the argument on human beings and bracket the question of demons. For the purposes of this chapter, the key point is this: even if one holds that Paul’s language about hostile powers refers to demonic forces, Colossians 1:20 explicitly describes the reconciliation of “all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven.” The language is cosmic in scope. And the word “reconcile” implies genuine relational restoration, not mere subjugation. As we noted earlier, Paul himself draws a parallel between the subjection of all things to Christ and Christ’s own loving subjection to the Father. Whatever the final state of demonic powers, the trajectory Paul describes is one of genuine, willing reconciliation—not forced capitulation.63
Let me draw the threads together. McClymond’s treatment of the “all” texts fails at every level. He does not adequately address the symmetry of Paul’s Adam-Christ parallel. He ignores the “how much more” logic that drives Paul’s argument. He overlooks the passive sense of “receive” in Romans 5:17. He glosses over the explicitly relational and redemptive meaning of “reconcile” in Colossians 1:20. And he never seriously engages the patristic tradition that read these texts as supporting universal restoration.
What we have seen in this chapter is that Paul’s three greatest texts on the scope of Christ’s saving work—Romans 5:12–21, 1 Corinthians 15:20–28, and Colossians 1:15–20—form a massive, consistent, carefully argued witness for universal restoration. Grace super-abounds beyond sin. Christ reigns until every enemy is defeated and God is all in all. Everything created in Christ will be reconciled through Christ.
This is not abstract theological reasoning. This is exegesis. This is Paul’s own words, in Paul’s own arguments, read in their own context. The universalist is not importing a foreign idea into the text. The universalist is simply reading what Paul wrote and believing it.64
And I want to say something directly to the reader who may be encountering these arguments for the first time. You may have been told your whole life that universalism is a liberal fantasy, a sentimental wish, a theology for people who don’t take the Bible seriously. I understand. I heard the same things. But what you have just read is not sentiment. It is grammar. It is vocabulary. It is the careful analysis of parallel structures, verb tenses, and reference classes. It is the same kind of exegetical work that any faithful Bible student would do with any other passage. And the conclusion it points to is not the conclusion many of us were taught—but it may well be the conclusion Paul intended.
The three passages we have examined are not peripheral texts. They are not obscure verses plucked from context. They are among the most theologically dense, carefully constructed, and widely discussed passages in Paul’s entire corpus. Romans 5 is the hinge of Paul’s greatest letter. First Corinthians 15 is the capstone of his resurrection theology. Colossians 1 is arguably the highest Christological statement in the New Testament. If the universalist reading of these texts is correct—and I believe the evidence strongly supports it—then universal restoration is not a marginal idea in Paul. It is central. It is the beating heart of his theology.
McClymond deserves credit for raising the question of how these texts should be read. But his answers are insufficient. He has not given these passages the attention they deserve. He has not engaged the strongest universalist scholarship. And his alternative readings—“all” means “all categories,” the context limits the universal scope, the reasoning is too abstract—have each been shown to be inadequate to the evidence.
In the next chapter, we will turn to the language of eternity itself—the word aionios—and show that the key “eternal punishment” texts, when properly understood, do not contradict the universal hope that Paul so powerfully articulates. But the foundation has been laid. Grace is greater than sin. Christ’s victory is total. And God will be all in all—not some in some, not most in most, but all in all.
↑ 1. McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption, V 1, pp. 2, 22.
↑ 2. N. T. Wright, as cited in Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, p. 287.
↑ 3. McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption, V 1, p. 22.
↑ 4. McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption, V 1, p. 22. McClymond calls this the “abbreviated John 3:16.”
↑ 5. McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption, V 2, pp. 1037–38. See the fuller discussion in Chapter 6 of this book.
↑ 6. McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption, V 2, p. 963.
↑ 7. McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption, V 2, p. 963.
↑ 8. McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption, V 2, p. 963.
↑ 9. McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption, V 2, p. 963.
↑ 10. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5, “The Pauline Theology of Universal Reconciliation.”
↑ 11. Parry, The Evangelical Universalist, chap. 4.
↑ 12. Ramelli, A Larger Hope, vol. 1, chap. 3, “Paul.” See also Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
↑ 13. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5, “Paul’s Precision in Fixing His Own Reference Class.”
↑ 14. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5. Talbott demolishes the examples cited by Moo and Boettner by showing that none of them come from contexts remotely similar to the tightly constructed Adam-Christ parallels.
↑ 15. M. C. de Boer, as cited in Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5.
↑ 16. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5, “And Through Him God Was Pleased to Reconcile to Himself All Things.”
↑ 17. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations in this chapter follow the NKJV and ESV.
↑ 18. Hurd, The Universal Solution, chap. 3, “All in Christ Is the Same ‘All’ That Was in Adam.” Hurd highlights the force of perisseuο (“super-abound”) in Romans 5:15.
↑ 19. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5, “Paul’s Precision in Fixing His Own Reference Class.”
↑ 20. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5. Talbott identifies this pattern across Romans 5:18, Romans 11:32, and 1 Corinthians 15:22.
↑ 21. Neal Punt, as cited in Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5.
↑ 22. Larry Lacy, as cited in Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5.
↑ 23. John Murray, as cited in Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5. Murray appeals to the broader Pauline context, particularly 2 Thessalonians 1:8–9, to override the plain meaning of Romans 5:18.
↑ 24. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5, “The Passive Recipients of Divine Grace.”
↑ 25. Marvin Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament, commentary on Romans 5:17. Cited in Hurd, The Universal Solution, chap. 3.
↑ 26. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5. Talbott lists multiple Pauline uses of lambanο in a passive sense, including 2 Corinthians 11:24 and Romans 1:5.
↑ 27. Parry, The Evangelical Universalist, chap. 4. See also Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, pp. 286–87, where Beilby presents Parry’s argument.
↑ 28. McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption, V 2, p. 963, citing N. T. Wright.
↑ 29. Hurd, The Universal Solution, chap. 3, “All in Christ Is the Same ‘All’ That Was in Adam.”
↑ 30. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5. See also Hart, That All Shall Be Saved (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), chap. 3.
↑ 31. John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, as cited in Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5. Murray concedes that “the many” is coextensive with “all men.”
↑ 32. Universalism: Fact or Fiction, “All and Many,” commentary on Romans 5:18–19.
↑ 33. Universalism: Fact or Fiction, “A Compendium of Major Proofs,” commentary on Romans 5:18–19.
↑ 34. Ramelli, A Larger Hope, vol. 1, chap. 3, “Paul.” Ramelli emphasizes that the vivification Paul describes is not merely bodily resurrection but justification and salvation.
↑ 35. McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption, V 2, p. 963.
↑ 36. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5, “So All Will Be Made Alive in Christ.”
↑ 37. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5. Talbott argues that to telos (“the end”) in verse 24 refers to the final act of a cosmic drama, not a third group of people.
↑ 38. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5. Talbott notes that Paul’s second “all” in 1 Corinthians 15:22 is actually less restrictive than the first, because in the following verses he expands the scope to include not only descendants of Adam but every competing will and opposing power.
↑ 39. Ramelli, A Larger Hope, vol. 1, chap. 3, “Origen and the Fullness of Apokatastasis.” See also Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis.
↑ 40. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5, “And Through Him God Was Pleased to Reconcile to Himself All Things.”
↑ 41. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5. Talbott cites J. B. Lightfoot’s observation that the Greek verb exomologeο throughout the Septuagint implies praise and thanksgiving, not forced confession. See Lightfoot, Epistle to the Philippians, 115.
↑ 42. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5. Even if Paul were not the author of Colossians (as some scholars suggest), the hymn in 1:15–20 is widely regarded as pre-Pauline and as representing a view Paul would have endorsed.
↑ 43. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5. Talbott notes that Paul’s immediate illustration of the reconciliation he means is the transformation of the Colossian believers themselves from enemies to friends.
↑ 44. Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, chap. 3. Hart develops the argument that the cross represents God’s definitive victory over evil—a victory that works by love, not compulsion.
↑ 45. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5. See Peter T. O’Brien, Colossians, Philemon, Word Biblical Commentary (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), 56–57.
↑ 46. Ramelli, A Larger Hope, vol. 1, section on Eusebius of Caesarea, citing Ecclesiastical Theology 3:15–16.
↑ 47. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5, “When ‘All’ Really Means All.”
↑ 48. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5. Talbott notes that in Romans 14:2, the reference class is food, not human beings, and in Romans 8:32, the scope of “us all” is itself debated.
↑ 49. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5.
↑ 50. Ramelli, A Larger Hope, vol. 1, chap. 3, “Origen and the Fullness of Apokatastasis,” citing Origen, De Principiis 2:3:5.
↑ 51. Ramelli, A Larger Hope, vol. 1, chap. 4, “Gregory of Nyssa and the Fullness of Apokatastasis.” See also Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis.
↑ 52. Ramelli, A Larger Hope, vol. 1, section on Eusebius, citing Ecclesiastical Theology 3:15.
↑ 53. Ramelli, A Larger Hope, vol. 1, section on Eusebius, citing Ecclesiastical Theology 3:15–16.
↑ 54. Hurd, The Universal Solution, chap. 3. Hurd observes that if the particularist reading were correct, Paul’s words in Romans 5:15 would need to be inverted: “if the grace of God abounded to many, much more abounded one man’s offense and resulting death.”
↑ 55. Arland J. Hultgren, as cited in Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5.
↑ 56. Universalism: Fact or Fiction, “A Compendium of Major Proofs,” commentary on Colossians 1:19–20: “These verses are part of the creed of faith of the very first believers.”
↑ 57. Parry, The Evangelical Universalist, chap. 5, “Hell as Remedial Judgment.” See also Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 7.
↑ 58. Ramelli and Konstan, Terms for Eternity: Aionios and Aidios in Classical and Christian Texts (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2013). See also Chapter 15 of this book for the full aionios word study.
↑ 59. See Chapters 8–13 of this book for the full treatment of the patristic evidence.
↑ 60. Hurd, The Universal Solution, chap. 3. Hurd emphasizes the force of huperperisseusen (“hyper-abounded”) in Romans 5:20.
↑ 61. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 8, “Freedom and the Irresistible Power of Love.” See also Chapter 25 of this book.
↑ 62. McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption, V 2, p. 963.
↑ 63. Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, chap. 3. Hart argues that if God creates rational beings and they remain permanently alienated, this represents a defeat of God’s creative purpose. See also Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5.
↑ 64. Ramelli, A Larger Hope, vol. 1, chap. 3, “Paul.” Ramelli observes that “the Christian doctrine of apokatastasis was never a way of ignoring sin, or bypassing the salvation wrought by Christ in his death and resurrection or the importance of faith in Christ.”
↑ 65. Universalism: Fact or Fiction, “All and Many,” commentary on Romans 5:18–19. See also Hurd, The Universal Solution, chap. 3.
↑ 66. Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, chap. 1. Hart argues that if God freely creates rational beings out of love, a failure to bring even one of them to final beatitude would represent a defeat of God’s creative purpose and a victory for evil.
↑ 67. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5. Talbott notes that the very same “all things” created in Christ in Colossians 1:16 are the “all things” reconciled to God in 1:20.
↑ 68. Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, pp. 286–88.