Recommended Resources

[steve]

Has anyone read this book, The Restitution of All Things?

I have not yet, though I intend to. A friend of mine who recommended it to me apparently found it pretty persuasive.

[Danny]

Here's a couple more:

Hope Beyond Hell - Gerry Beauchemin
http://www.hopebeyondhell.net/
You can download the book for free or purchase hardcopies for a very low price.

Universal Salvation? The Current Debate - Edited by Robin Parry & Christopher Partridge
http://www.amazon.com/Universal-Salvati ... 0802827640

[mattrose]

I have read 3 UR books so far

1. Talbott's "Inescapable Love of God"
I read this maybe 6 years ago. I remember enjoying it in the sense that I was glad to have access to a different perspective. I remember thinking some points were strong and some weak. I remember thinking that his universalism seemed like a reaction against hard-core calvinism and didn't really confront my arminianism very much. But overall a good book.

2. Bonda's "The One Purpose of God"
This book was recommended by my thesis advisor. It was OK. He builds his argument through Romans, but I disagreed with quite a bit of what he was saying and he was very long-winded at times. Still, some good food for thought.

3. MacDonald's "The Evangelical Universalist"
This was probably my favorite. It would have definitely been my favorite except that the end wasn't quite as good as the beginning or middle in my opinion. I just finished it this morning, but I definitely enjoyed reading his attempts to take the Scriptures seriously (Talbott was more philosophical).

At the end of the book he said one of his goals was that Evangelicals, even if they disagreed with him, would consider evangelical universalism a live option for evangelical christians. I already agreed with that, but I think he made a good case.

[Perry]

The Restitution of All Things, by Andrew Jukes, is, I believe available to be read online and is supposed to be excellent.

Found it at the link below:

http://www.alampthatburns.net/

[mattrose]

I just finished John Wesley Hanson's "Universalism: The Prevailing Doctrine of the Christian Church During Its First Give Hundred Years (1899)." Well argued collection of quotes from the leading 1st century historians of his time.

I'm getting ready to write the 'history' section of my thesis paper. I will divide this into 3 sections (early church, middle ages, post-reformation). My aim is to show that there was a wide variety of thoughts on 'Hell' in the early church (and a healthy realization that being dogmatic on this issue wasn't super important), that the middle period was dominated by dogmatizers and this is when everlasting misery took over and cemented itself in the west, and that in the post-reformation period there has been a slow return flexibility on this issue.

[backwoodsman]

Matt, if you haven't already, you might also want to look at Edward Beecher's "History of Opinions on the Scriptural Doctrine of Retribution." It's available on archive.org and Google Books.

[Homer]

Here is a very interesting discussion between Thomas Talbott and Glenn Peoples:

http://evangelicaluniversalist.com/foru ... f=55&t=434