Thanks, I appreciate your self motivated efforts to benefit others here 
I agree also. It is soooo frustrating to be casted into just one very broad definition of universalism.
Thanks revdrew for your good work.
Here, finally is my transcription of the question and answer session. Very revealing about how the gospel coalition leaders see themselves and others. Some challenging points are made and there is some good advice about how debates about doctrinal truth should be conducted. But often they betray an attitude which goes against their own advice, in my opinion.
Gospel Coalition panel discussion following Don Carson.pdf (92 KB)
Thank you, revdrew! Look forward to reading through this. 
After hearing Carson and then reading this, I’m extremely saddened that our brothers here think that it’s demeaning to Christ and his work if we deny that God’s wrath requires many people to be eternally tormented. Emphasizing Christ and his work (and believing what the Bible says about it) was what led me to seriously consider UR in the first place!
Is it more glorifying to Christ or less glorifying if we say that he actually is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world?
Is it more glorifying to Christ or less glorifying if we say that he is the propitiation for the whole world? 
Maybe the idea is that saving everyone would make salvation too common, cheapening it. Kinda like economic theory…supply and demand. Salvation is valuable because only a few receive or achieve it.
I’m puzzled by the thinking that an ultimate universal salvation somehow devalues the cross… and it really shouldn’t puzzle me because I know one of the first questions I asked when faced with the prospect of universalism was, “Then why did Jesus need to die?” And it seems like most people ask that question at first, but just now I cant’ remember why that seemed so relevant to me at one time… it must have something to do with the “death deadline” and the idea of salvation as being from hopeless hell rather than from sin and death (separation from God).
Now, in my current mindset, the reputation–the glory and honor–of Jesus rides on the effectiveness of His salvation. Anything less than universal reconciliation would dishonor His name (“Yahweh saves”) and diminish the glory of His sacrifice. The shepherd failed to find the lost sheep and came home empty handed, the woman couldn’t find the lost coin and her friends mourned with her, the prodigal son left the pigpen but it was too late: his father turned away saying “my son is dead.” The arm of the Lord was too short to save. The hope of the world failed and death and destruction take their toll. The ages come to an end in tragedy, loss, sorrow without hope, although He wanted to save all—alas! the arm of the Lord was too short to save but a few. As in Adam all die, so in Christ a few will live. Where sin abounded, grace fell short.
May the Name of the Lord be lifted up–exalted above every name!
Sonia
Amen 
Look up at the night sky. This is a dark ocean of chaotic water held up by the firmament, a crystal dome. We know it’s an ocean because when the sun rises, the sky is blue. We know the firmament is a dome because the sun’s path is curved. God has placed the sun in the firmament to give us light, but every night, darkness falls. (Darkness falls because it’s up there, in the sky.) Above this dreadful ocean, God dwells in heavenly light. Perhaps some of that light seeps through the water as stars. Water exists also beneath the ground (we dig wells), and deeper still, beneath the water, we find fire.
This dark ocean and everything in it is “the earth”. (In the beginning… the earth was formless, void, watery and dark.) Monsters (dragons, leviathans, demons) live in this sea. (Satan was cast down from heaven to earth.) When Jesus prayed that God’s will be done on earth as in heaven, he didn’t have in mind a small rocky planet orbiting a star, he was referring to the whole ocean of darkness that you feel pressing down on you every night. He was praying that God bring order to every inch of that chaos. And when he does, when he turns that dark churning water into clearest glass, we will no longer need the sun because the light of heaven will reach down and illuminate us. (Perhaps the dragons will have nowhere to go but the fires beneath the earth?)
Though we no longer accept this ancient cosmology, the ideas embedded in the myth are as true as ever. God will bring absolute order to near-universal chaos. No corner of hell will escape God’s creative and reconciling power. Heaven and earth will be united. This peace will be made through the “blood of Christ”. ie. through the faithful, sacrificial, loving work of God and his servants. Our task is to do our part in bringing order to chaos by loving God and neighbor. As` Jesus said, Blessed are the peacemakers.
I’ve had Carson’s blasphemy accusation ringing in my head for days. The more I contemplate it the more wrong it seems, and the more wrong seems to be all the nay-saying re: UR as of late. I mean, here is Carson, a recognized NT scholar and theologian, saying that you’re a blasphemer of God if you think that what Carson agrees is true about faith and salvation now (namely, that we are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone) will continue to be true about faith and salvation and that what is the case now (that many are saved through faith) will some day be universally the case. The mere universalizing of this thoroughly biblical state of affairs (people saved by grace through faith) is blasphemous? It’s not blasphemous when it describes a PART of the whole but it’s blasphemous when it’s claimed that it shall some day describe the WHOLE?
Tom
I agree Tom, but I also think we have to be careful about how we respond to these accusations. I have admired Don Carson’s writings over the years and I’m very saddened by his attitude on this issue. The assumption by the GC panel of something like papal infalibility (with apologies to the present and previous Popes - both humble and ecumenically sensitive leaders) is also ironic. They often warn of the dangers of individual interpretation of scripture, yet one of the key battles of the Reformation - Luther, Tyndale etc - was to make the Bible available to the common man, so he could understand it for himself and not have to accept what the bishops and priests said it meant.
To be fair, I did sense in Don’s final comments in the Q&A part some awareness that he and the other panelists might be open to accusations of arrogance.
Well said, Tom! I knew it sounded “off” when he said it, but you put your finger on it. How can something be good, and the right thing to believe, but then it’s blasphemous to earnestly desire and believe that ALL people will someday come to believe that good and right thing ? Absurd.
Thank you, Andy. Quite right. I want to be careful how I manage my emotions and responses to statements like that of Carson. I just see so much theological warfare going on inside the Body of Christ. Disagreement is fine. But that Christian universalists (of ALL stripes) are by definition blasphemers of GOd? It grieves me.
Tom
That really nails it Tom! Thanks!
I guess what also troubles me is that he seems to believe he owns the word “Blaspheme” and is solely responsible for discerning it! And as the sole discerner and detector of it, he imagines he is immune from it himself!
Oh My!!
Yet here I am quite certain that it’s incredibly irreverent to accuse God of tending a place like ECT hell! That Hell makes God less sacred doesn’t it? Not more…
I will say however that I must cut these men some slack in that I can give them the benefit of the doubt in that in their minds what they are doing is lovingly trying to warn people away from those terrifying fires of ECT. IF ect were true, warning folks of it would be the kind/loving thing to do after all right?
However, it’d be really nice to have them recognize even a glimmer of hope that maybe it is ECT Hell that contains the blasphemy!! (It’d go such a long way for one of these men to say to Bell “man, I sure HOPE you’re correct!”)
Not holding my breath though…
TotalVictory
Bobx3
There’s also the irony that, as 5-point Calvinists, surely they believe that all of the “elect” will be saved regardless and all the “non-elect” won’t stand a chance no matter how many sermons they hear or books they read - books by Carson or Bell or whoever. So who exactly do they think is threatened by our message?
Themselves? Their own belief is now being self-questioned? They’ve begun to “doubt”?