I cannot prove God isn’t Bozo, the Tooth Fairy or the Spaghetti Monster, but if he is, we’re doomed. Knowing this, only an idiot or a knave would bow the knee to such a God.
For me, I have determined only to love the God who is worth loving. God agrees. He also is determined only to love the God worth loving.
I would rather get back to the topic of the actual thread, which Oxy has managed to hijack to no purpose (rather than actually discussing the topic of the thread.)
I suspect Oxy is trying to make a hidden rhetorical point about philosophy being totally worthless: he has complained from the day he got here that all he sees are philosophical arguments, which he doesn’t even acknowledge as arguments but only as ‘presuppositions’ or ‘opinions’ (while basically ignoring our threads on scriptural exegetics). This thread, of course, would be one such discussion on the metaphysics of the Trinity and whether trinitarian Christian universalists (such as myself) over-emphasize the unity of the Trinity in order to arrive at universalism: a claim Luke has directly challenged me on myself in other threads (since, to be fair, I have occasionally argued, and more often claimed, that the doctrines of trinitarian Christian theism necessarily imply as a logical consequence that at least minimal univeralism is true).
Recall Oxy’s original post in this thread: while his own train of thought (at least in the grammatic composition of the paragraph) is far from coherent, he’s clearly enough trying to contrast what ‘the Bible says’ to ‘what philosophy says’. In order to do that with any kind of parallel counter-point, he would have to try to present what ‘philosophy’ ‘says’ in some definite way that even we could see that ‘philosophy’ goes against ‘the Bible’ and moreover against what we ourselves are willing to believe is true. Thus pitting us-and-the-Bible (since obviously none of us here believe that evil must exist for good to exist) against the “philosophy” we are (supposedly) foolishly putting up against the Bible in other regards.
So Oxy throws out a philosophical position as his own ‘opinion’, not because he actually believes it to be true (thus voiding the meaning of an opinion at all in passing, btw), but because he happens to think that ‘philosophy’ inevitably leads to cosmological God/Anti-God dualism (or perhaps to a lesser ethical cosmological dualism, although the precepts of that would eventually imply God/Anti-God) which he rejects.
Or perhaps he doesn’t actually (and ineptly) think that philosophy necessarily leads there; but since he (even more ineptly) does not even factor logic into ‘philosophical opinion’, he (extremely ineptly) thinks all philosophical positions are equally worthless and incapable of being decided between on their own merits: which would be parallel to his “Bozo the Christ” challenge.
(It’s also possible that Oxy, in total logical ineptitude, thinks either that Christian universal reconciliation does not involve, rightly or wrongly, the claim that God in Christ persists in saving all sinners from sin, simply ignoring for his own convenience our constant statements on this topic that this is what we are talking about here; or, in equally total logical ineptitude, thinks that the notion of God in Christ persisting in saving all sinners from sin must therefore necessarily also involve the position that good cannot exist without evil. As he wrote, or tried to write, “[T]herefore if God brings all to Him then the ‘affects’ of evil won’t exist because no one will be able to resist God’s will but will evil still exist.” No doubt at the end of that part of his run-on sentence he meant to write “but evil will still exist”.)
Thus he simply ignores or assertively denies answers which clearly indicate by logical analysis of principle (i.e. metaphysics, without even needing scriptural authority, though the scriptures say the same thing) that the good (much moreso God) does not need evil to exist as a comparative opposite–which, not incidentally, is why few if any serious philosophers have held this position in the past few centuries (popular entertainment fiction notwithstanding), and which is also why Christian philosophers per se (as well any any other monotheistic philosophers, regardless of whether they have also had, or thought they had, scriptural revelation to the same point) have never held this position.
For example, I could easily add to the rebuttals against cosmological ethical dualism by noting, first, that ultimately this would have to involve a proposition of multiple Independent Facts equally but oppositely existing (God and Anti-God); second, that such equally opposing Facts would have no ability to affect a system together (since anything one did in the common system would be perfectly and instantly countered by the other one to zero-sum effect), meaning that for all practical purposes they might as well not exist at all; third, that even the claim of equal existence would necessarily imply a shared field of reality within which they existed together–and this shared field of reality would be the real Independent Fact on which they were dependent after all. So the whole concept is logically self-refuting in the end. We can be logically certain that there is only one Independent Fact of reality, not two or more such Facts (whether those are supposed to be God/Anti-God, God/Nature, a cosmological tri-theism of three Gods Most High Father/Son/Spirit, or whatever.)
That is what a competent philosopher would say (as well as saying several other similar things mentioned previously by other posters against cosmological ethical dualism.) And the same thing has been revealed in the Judeo-Christian scriptures: God, even in three distinct Persons, is singly God Most High, with none even beside Him, not three separate Gods Most High; even the greatest opponent of God is not “like God” (despite his desire to be so) but is only a rebel created servant of God; and the system of Nature is not a separately existent entity but is a creation of God which continues to exist by God’s direct action in holding it together and which does not exist in some other equally-existent dimension ‘over there’ but somehow exists “in” God (yet being a not-God creation instead of being God Himself). God, Who is love, the One Who is Good, does not need evil or anything else to exist for Himself to exist, but is self-sufficiently existent.
So much for that. Will I really have to answer the Bozo the Christ challenge now? Or can we get back TO THE ACTUAL TOPIC OF THE THREAD ANYTIME SOON! 
I would be overjoyed. 
As for EU “overemphasising” unity in the trinity, if the unity in the trinity is an infinite factor how can one overemphasise the infinte? The Pslamist liked to “overemphasise” other infinite attributes of God, such as his mercy and in this particular example - his omnipresence.
“If I make my bed in Hell you are there, if I rise up to the highest Heaven you are there” (paraphrase)
And under a less scriptural base; ETC proponents have no trouble overemphasising God’s “justice” as they call it, and many will stretch their imagination to the finite limit in order to emphasise just how awful Eternal Hell is.
Why is it then such a terrible thing to “overemphasise” the unity, the good? Are we not supposed to think or put our minds on what is pure, lovely, good, and wholesome? Are we not supposed to put our minds on all of these things, except for when it comes to God, then we must not think too much on them? Overemphasis on anything to the neglecting of the rest is a bad idea. But the same goes for overemphasis on not giving due reverence of awe to God’s benevolent attributes (and all of his attributes are, but the especially obvious benevolent ones) or “overemphasising” - such attributes like his unity, love, mercy, grace, and redeeming justice. Things which are all too often neglected, downplayed, or outright forgotten.
Alright, back to the OP. 
I have not read the full context and I’m replying only to the quotes Alex provided–I hope I’m aiming my replies in generally the right direction.
"]One of the distinctive features of the Trinity is the perfect balance of unity and diversity. I think Universalism as a theological system overemphasizes “unity” while also failing to recognise that evil is an irreconcilable degree of difference.
I agree entirely that evil is irreconcilable, and say that universalism has nothing to do with promoting unity at the expense of righteousness. As long as we are evil we are not in unity with God and cannot be. The unity of the Trinity is a complete unity that embraces the diversity of the individuals. Evil would destroy the unity.
Evil is not a manifestation of “difference” or diversity, but a manifestation of wrongness like disease, impurity, and contamination are wrong – a state of “otherness” that is decay and death and should not be. To call it “diversity” gives it a kind of legitimacy, but evil has no legitimacy at all, there is no place for it, it is corruption and rot.
Unity is the final destination of all things, not it’s current state. Not everyone is in union with Christ, and cannot be until they are made righteous. Evil can have no part in Christ. Diversity will always exist, even within unity, but evil is not a legitimate form of “diversity” any more than cancer cells are a form of diversity in the body, and it will be completely done away.
Sonia
I don’t understand how Luke seems to forget that saved people were (or still are) evil too. If it works for the saved people, why not the unsaved who will be saved just as we were saved?
I have noticed this very peculiar precept, too, from Calvs and Arms both.
I suspect the underlying problem is that they forget we’re talking about salvation from sin, and imagine (because this is how ‘universalism’ has been popularly sold for about a hundred years) that we’re only talking about people ‘going to heaven’ without sin in the accounting at all. If that was the case, then we logically would be talking (as whiffly popular universalists have essentially been chirping) about God reconciling Himself to accepting or at best merely discounting evil. Then Luke’s critique rationally and entirely properly follows.
But of course that kind of salvation (to the sanctioning in favor of whatever we happen to prefer and feel like doing right now in our lives) is NOT what evangelical Christian universalists are talking about (whether trinitarian or modalist or dogmatic unitarian). We’re talking about salvation from sin.
Consequently, complaining that such salvation would involve God’s final acquiescence with evildoers as evildoers, is so far off base as a category error, that it ends up being (inadvertently) a complaint about any salvation from sin by God at all.
Luke has shown some tendency in the past at having trouble remembering (or perhaps believing) that we’re talking about and really meaning salvation from sin; and I suspect that this is his problem here, too.
At the same time, I think it’s important to recognize that, even though such criticisms are aiming off in the wrong direction, they are aiming at something worth shooting at. It just isn’t us–we’re being misidentified (or maybe conveniently lumped in?) with those other people over there.
Why can people not see the simple point then when we say clearly; “Salvation for all from Sin”? I myself am growing annoyed with people (even in other theological areas, not only EU) who conveniently ignore everything for the sake of upholding an interpretation of an English translation - with tooth, claw, and nail; calling that interpretation “The Bible” and of course, all that implies when one dares to question an interpretation - or worse, bring in the “old heathen Greek”.
I don’t understand the complaint, but I may not be seeing enough context. Then again, it isn’t like Luke and I haven’t gone round on this topic ourselves.
“Evil” per se may be (I would agree is) an “irreconcilable degree of difference”, but “evildoers” are obviously not intrinsically irreconcilable to God. Otherwise the complaint would amount to a denial that God saves any sinners at all! Not only would evangelical universalism be too evangelical (which I suspect is the underlying complaint here anyway), but Arminianism and Calvinism (and their non-Protestant analogues) would be too evangelical. Any evangelism at all would be too evangelical!
Evildoers are reconciled to God in being led to not do evil anymore. The irreconcilable evil itself is not reconciled to God but ends by evildoers being reconciled and so no longer being doers of evil. I don’t have to appeal even to the Trinity, much less to universalism, to note this.
So, what emphasis of the unity the Trinity would be an overemphasis of the unity of the Trinity in relation to the idea that God acts persistently and competently to save all sinners from sin?
One such over-emphasis of the unity would involve an obliteration of the distinction of the Persons at all; which would then be modalism, not trinitarianism. There are some interesting arguments to universalism from modalistic Christianity, but they tend to proceed along the line of the obliteration of derivative persons so that we are all only modal expressions of God. (This isn’t necessarily naturalistic theism, i.e. pantheism, but it shares some precepts often found in pantheism regarding the reality of persons, or the lack thereof rather.)
The trinitarian Christian universalist, as such, denies modalism and affirms the real distinction of the Persons. We also affirm the single substantial unity of the Persons–otherwise we would be cosmological tri-theists (at best)!
But if God’s own intrinsic self-existence is a self-begetting self-begotten unity of Persons, then God’s own fundamental action is the fulfillment of fair-togetherness between persons. Which goes the farthest extent toward explaining what sin is (“unrighteousness”, “non-fair-togetherness”) and why sin must be irreconcilable to God: sin involves acting against the fulfillment of fair-togetherness between persons, thus acting against in principle against the Living Principle Himself Who grounds all existence (including the existence of the person thus rebelling in abuse of her derived power).
But the Ever-Living Trinity also goes the farthest extent toward a theological expectation of why sinners must be reconcilable to God: because the sinners are real persons whose existence as persons depends ultimately and foundationally on God acting to fulfill fair-togetherness between Persons. For God to create persons who couldn’t be reconciled to God if they sinned, much moreso to keep such persons in existence as sinners for even an instant, would be for God to act in direct contravention to Himself as the ground of all reality–just as the sinner does as a sinner!
It might be technically possible for God to create or even to sustain such irreconcilable persons; just as it is technically possible for God to sin (which is why sinners are not doing something impossible for God, although the greatest sinners might flatter themselves by wanting to believe so). But it is not technically possible for God to sin and still to remain in existence, nor for anything else to remain in existence if God did so. Yet here we are, so we can be sure that God never chooses to do this: hasn’t done it, isn’t doing it, never will do it!
Nor would God create a person, then, or bring it about in regard to a person, that such a person would be irreconcilable to God. The Unity of the Trinity acts in self-existence that the Persons may fulfill fair-togetherness with one another; the Unity of the Trinity must similarly act in creating not-God persons (so long as the entities are indeed real persons, though derivatively real): that the Persons of God may fulfill fair-togetherness with those created persons, too.
If I am over-emphasizing the Unity of the Trinity, then this must be how I am over-emphasizing that Unity. But I find that to say anything different would be to deny key doctrines of the Trinity per se.
Luke, or any other opponent (trinitarian or otherwise, but especially trinitarian), will have to establish my emphasis as over-emphasis along this line, because this is the emphasis I emphatically insist upon as an orthodox trinitarian theist.
And, frankly, he just ain’t doing it.
(More to come later after lunch, hopefully.)