Here is the shortest and best argument (in my opinion) for Universalism: God either a) knew before He created the universe that some would be eternally damned, or b) He did not know. If a), then why would a God of self-sacrificing love create the souls He knew would be lost? If b) then how could He ever give up in trying to save them? The common rebuttal to a) is that He wanted to display His ‘justice’. I find this very hard to square with the actions of the greatest conceivable being, or the essence of Christ as found on the cross. It seems to make God the ultimate user of people to promote his own ends. Also, if this is true, it means God cannot be love. For love is described in 1 Cor 13. You must, then, go about redefining love and emptying of its meaning if you’re to hold that God intentionally created some knowing they would be lost. The common rebuttal to b) is that there comes a point where the creature is ‘metaphysically built’ into a state of ultimate evil. But, given the understanding of evil as privation, is it not impossible to ever reach a state of absolute evil? And if it is not absolute, then there is some good, some ‘potentiality towards good creaturely becoming’, is there not?
Yep. Philosophically speaking, universalism is established by thinking for five minutes about the absurdity of God creating those whom He knew would be forever damned.
Believing that creating such a soul would be somehow “good” leads one to void any knowledge of what the word “good” means. Consider:
Perhaps it is “good” for God to damn only those who believe in Him and/or do good works. Only murderous, athieistic rapists go to Heaven, and everyone else spends forever in Hell. That’s “good”. The only reason you don’t believe it is because your fallen reason can’t grasp it. Too bad for you.
Someone might say, “Ah! But the Bible says otherwise.” Exactly. That’s part of the plan, you see. Our damnation is the more exquisite in that we THINK we’ll go to Heaven, but in fact we’re going to Hell. God foreordained it all this way to display and give glory to His sovereignty. If you don’t like it, that just means you’re damned.
Or perhaps NOTHING and NO ONE will escape damnation, and that’s “good”.
As soon as one imagines that it is “good” to create even a single being destined for damnation, then the word “good” has been emptied of all meaning. One could then posit any repugnant thing imaginable and call it “good”.
“To say that God’s goodness may be different in kind from man’s goodness, what is it but saying, with a slight change of phraseology,
that God may possibly not be good?” ~John Stuart Mill