Introduction:
Thomas Talbott is well known as a philosopher who has published books and articles in defense of universalism. He is generally well regarded in universalist circles. In an online article called How to Read the Bible from a Universalist Perspective, he discusses why he thinks Romans 5:18 is clear support for universalism. My goal in this article is to evaluate the reason he gives in his positive case for his reading of this verse.
Talbott’s argument:
Talbott begins by quoting Romans 5:18 in the following way.1Talbott uses the NRSV here. Unless otherwise indicated I will be using the ESV.
Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for
all [humans],
so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life
for [them] all.
Talbott obviously chose to present the verse like this to highlight the parallelism in this verse. He then explains the significance of this.
The whole point of such a parallel structure, so typical of Paul, is to identify a single group of individuals and to make two parallel statements about that single group of individuals, and the practical effect is therefore to eliminate any possibility of ambiguity. The very ones who came under condemnation, as a result of the first Adam’s act of disobedience, will eventually be brought to justification and life, as a result of the second Adam’s act of obedience. Or, as Paul put it in verse 19: the very ones who were constituted sinners, as a result of the first Adam’s act of disobedience, will eventually be constituted righteous, as a result of the second Adam’s act of obedience. I do not know how Paul could have expressed himself any more clearly than that.
Analysis of Talbott’s argument:
His entire case for the universalist reading of Romans 5:18 rests on the premise that the parallelism of the verse means both ‘all’ clauses refer to the exact same group of people. There is some merit to this in the sense that the use of parallelism means a similar basic notion is in view. In Romans 5:18a, there is one man’s act that has had consequences for ‘all’, and this is mirrored in Romans 5:18b where the one act of Christ has consequences for ‘all’. However, it does not follow that since Romans 5:18a refers to all humans who will have ever lived then Romans 5:18b does too.
Reasons why Talbott is incorrect:
For one thing, biblical parallelism generally is rooted in Hebrew poetic literature where parallel statements were not intended to be read as A = B.
The term “parallelism” has, unfortunately, spawned a common misunderstanding. Many people understand it to mean that a second poetic line merely restates or contrasts the point of the previous line in different words. They assume that an equal sign (=) links the lines together. Actually, parallelism is that phenomenon whereby two or more successive poetic lines dynamically strengthen, reinforce, and develop each other’s thought.2Emphasis by Klein et al. William W. Klein, Craig L. Blomberg & Robert L. Hubbard, Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, 3rd ed., (Zondervan Academic: 2017), 373-374.
Being heavily influenced by the OT, the NT authors used parallelism to express aspects of their theology. This often occurred because the NT author would draw from OT passages containing parallelism but this is not always so. One example is found in Romans 4:25 which is structurally a parallelism.3It is tempting to list the many examples I have found over the years but this would be an unneeded digression since Talbott notes that Paul typically used parallelism in his writings.
who was delivered up for our trespasses
and was raised for our justification
ὃς παρεδόθη διὰ τὰ παραπτώματα ἡμῶν
καὶ ἠγέρθη διὰ τὴν δικαίωσιν ἡμῶν
Διὰ is polysemous so can be understood in several ways, which has led Pauline scholars to discuss the many possible ways Romans 4:25 could be interpreted. Most scholars do not think the Greek preposition διὰ (dia) has exactly the same meaning each time it is used in this verse. This is because interpretations where διὰ has the same meaning have significant problems.4For a discussion on the various problems facing those interpretations of Romans 4:25 which take διὰ as having the same meaning in each line of the verse see Michael Bird, ‘“Raised for Our Justification”: A fresh look at Romans 4:25’, in Colloquium, 35 (2003): 31-46; Douglas Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (William B. Eerdmans Publishing: 1996), 288-289. This shows that when Paul used polysemous words in parallel statements he did not necessarily intend the exact same meaning to apply in both lines of that statement.5This is in contrast to the parallelism of Matthew 10:28 where the way ἀπόλλυμι is used means it lacks its normal range of meaning (it can only mean ‘to slay’ there). In this case ἀπόλλυμι and ἀποκτείνω (‘to kill’) are synonymous. The parallelism there serves to develop an a fortiori logic through the use of synonyms. On this, see Glenn Peoples’s article The meaning of “apollumi” in the Synoptic Gospels Like διὰ, πᾶς (pas, ‘all’) can take on different senses in various contexts, depending on the referent being modified.6J. William Johnston, The Use of Πας in the New Testament, (Peter Lang: 2004), 57-58. This means any given passage where πᾶς is used could be taken in more than one way, even where parallelism is used. This is something that even Talbott tacitly admits as he does discuss possible contextual indicators that might impinge on our interpretation of Romans 5:18.
Regarding the parallelism in Romans 5:18, Paul has already stated twice that Adam’s trespass is not like the free gift of grace (Rom 5:15a, 16a). Adam’s sin allowed death to reign through him, but the gift is not simply the reversal of this result. A simple reversal would be that death no longer reigns over sinners. However, Paul goes out of his way to say that the gift brings ‘much more’ (Rom 15, 17) than this. Whereas Adam’s sin resulted in death reigning over those who sin, the free gift means those receiving the free gift will themselves continually reign through Christ. My point here is that Paul has gone out of his way to emphasize the two scenarios are not identical in terms of the result. This opens the door to the possibility that Paul did not intend εἰς πάντας ἀνθρώπους (‘for all men’) to be read as referring to the exact same ‘single group of individuals’ each time the phrase is used in the verse as Talbott supposes. Since the parallelism of Romans 5:18 is the only argument Talbott makes in his positive case for his reading of the verse, his argument has failed.
One of the ways we can know that Paul did not think all will receive the gift and reign in life is he tells us so in Romans 2:6-8:
For he will repay according to each one’s deeds: to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury.
Only one group of people will be given eternal life. They actively seek glory, honor and immortality through their actions. Later, Paul writes that the redemption that is in Christ is received through faith (Romans 3:24-25, c.f. 4:24-25). This is the context for his statement that ‘those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness’ (Rom 5:17). These are the people who are in view when Paul says ‘one act of righteousness leads to justification and life to all men’.
Conclusion:
Talbott, like many universalists, thinks that his particular reading of Romans 5:18 is the obvious one. His argument fails because he relied on a single positive argument on the structure of Romans 5:18. He does not defend his assumption about Paul’s use of parallelism in this verse. He simply asserts it. However, an awareness of the way parallelism is used by the biblical authors shows this is mistaken. This means Talbott needs to do much more to show his reading of that verse is warranted. As such, conditionalists can continue to be confident in our conclusion that Romans 5:18 does not support universalism.
| ￪1 | Talbott uses the NRSV here. Unless otherwise indicated I will be using the ESV. |
|---|---|
| ￪2 | Emphasis by Klein et al. William W. Klein, Craig L. Blomberg & Robert L. Hubbard, Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, 3rd ed., (Zondervan Academic: 2017), 373-374. |
| ￪3 | It is tempting to list the many examples I have found over the years but this would be an unneeded digression since Talbott notes that Paul typically used parallelism in his writings. |
| ￪4 | For a discussion on the various problems facing those interpretations of Romans 4:25 which take διὰ as having the same meaning in each line of the verse see Michael Bird, ‘“Raised for Our Justification”: A fresh look at Romans 4:25’, in Colloquium, 35 (2003): 31-46; Douglas Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (William B. Eerdmans Publishing: 1996), 288-289. |
| ￪5 | This is in contrast to the parallelism of Matthew 10:28 where the way ἀπόλλυμι is used means it lacks its normal range of meaning (it can only mean ‘to slay’ there). In this case ἀπόλλυμι and ἀποκτείνω (‘to kill’) are synonymous. The parallelism there serves to develop an a fortiori logic through the use of synonyms. On this, see Glenn Peoples’s article The meaning of “apollumi” in the Synoptic Gospels |
| ￪6 | J. William Johnston, The Use of Πας in the New Testament, (Peter Lang: 2004), 57-58. |