I better 
I think we need a nodding smilie, as I find myself writing “I agree” very often!
Excellent idea. As JP started the topic, I think it should be just Luke & him. What do you think Luke?
No, it’s an important discussion, I’d prefer to keep it open to everyone. If more people jump in I trust the moderators to keep the discussion focused on the original question/s.
Very well, open it is, but I’ll ask everyone to stay targeted and keep the questions to a mim. unless it’s a humdinger 
Seriously Luke can only handle a few at a time so I think posting your ideas would be benfecial but try not to overload with too many questions.
As for Luke, well heak he looks so calm and cool with that cig. in his mouth.
Well, my answer to “Trinitarian Christianity leads [most naturally] to…” would be Kath, for the following reasons:
]Within the Trinity there are only loving relationships and no everlasting conscious torment of any member of the Trinity./]
]There is submission in the Trinity, but only out of love. i.e. God the Father hasn’t suppressed Jesus but Jesus willingly and joyfully submits. Likewise I would expect perfect submission outside of the Trinity to necessarily mirror Jesus’ submission of complete heart, mind and body./]
]God purposely uses the analogy of “Father & Son” in the Trinity to highlight that this type of relationship is extremely important to Him. i.e. so much so that He will eventually bring everyone into this type of relationship with him./]
Alex, we have to be careful reading things back into the Trinity, us human-creatures desire to be loved and to love, however the Godhead is self sufficient, while he loves, He has no need to be loved. This means that even a single redeemed person is a gift from the Father to the Son. Furthermore while the immanent and the economic Trinity are the same, we have to also maintain the “otherness” (holiness being God’s goodness and otherness) of God.
I agree, but I’m honestly not sure which one of these is reading something back into the Trinity? 
I agree He does not need to be loved, that doesn’t mean He doesn’t like/want beings to love Him.
Nods (I still can’t find a good nodding smiley!). How much more a gift is all people, redeemed 
Sure, I think I follow what you mean 
But this implies that God is lacking something, that he needs or wants more than he already has in the Godhead. Even a few redeemed people are unnecessary to make God greater, he is entirely self-sufficient. That’s a really important point. There is no Trinitarian need for God to save everyone.
(What I mean by reading things back into the Trinity is being careful not to say it’s like this on earth therefore it must be like that in the Godhead. Instead we should say it is revealed to us like this therefore it’s like this or should be like this on earth. That’s what I meant by his “otherness”, the parallels between my relationship with my daughter and God with us don’t quite work.)
I was simply expanding on your statement that “even a single redeemed person is a gift from the Father to the Son”. I assume you don’t think that implies God is lacking something? Why would *everyone *being a gift from the Father to the Son imply anything different? God seems to rightfully *want *all sorts of things like justice, praise, glory, etc. but doesn’t need anything.
True, there is no need to save anyone, but thankfully He does.
Sorry, I knew what you meant by reading things back into, but I honestly didn’t & still don’t know where I’ve done that?
I totally agree, and that’s what I’m trying to do 
I agree. However, the relationship between the Father & Son is perfect, and God aims for, and will achieve, perfection in all His relationships, albeit that it takes time, as He want’s people to willingly love Him (again mirroring the Trinity, as that’s what we’re told Jesus does).
But there are plenty of abusive relationships here on earth where a parent will disown their children for petty reasons, or because they’ve gone off the track, and never reconcile with them; are we careful not to read those situations back into the Trinity?
Would it not be proper to assume that the Father/Son relationship in the Trinity exemplifies the ideal? That’s how I think of it anyway!
Sonia
But Sonia, our ideal is not God’s ideal. Our good is God’s bad, because His ways are so much higher than ours. Don’t try to comprehend the fact that God does things He says it would be evil for us to do. The divine is incomprehensible. If God wants to be abusive toward His children, who are we to judge? 
Alex,
I believe we’re on the same page, I think I just unnecessarily complicated it with my second comment, sorry about that! My first comment though is an important one, that’ll be good to hear how Jason answers it. “What is it about the Trinity that makes it necessary for God to save everyone?”
The thing is, we do get to judge. For better, for worse, we must choose the God we will serve.
My little terrier was mangled by the rottweiler next door. I took Topsy to the vet to patch up, and though he was as gentle as he could be, I’ve no doubt he hurt her. I think a good deal of human suffering is like this. What seems to be abuse from our point of view is mercy from God’s.
I don’t want to put words in Luke’s mouth, but don’t Calvinists think we don’t choose, that if we do it’s because God first put it in us to do so?
Those darn rottweilers! Sorry about your dog! Poor thing. Thanks for the analogy. It’s like we get the hand of God, that is really the vet’s, confused with the rottweiler’s. But, if we really can’t be sure of anything, as God is just too above us, it may be that God really is a rottweiler and we should still give him all the praise. Even if God is a rottweiler it’s not our place to judge? It’d almost be like we can’t know anything, not even right from wrong.
While I wouldn’t mind dialoguing with Luke in a separate thread on this or some other topic, I agree with him that this one should be open for anyone to contribute to. I really didn’t even set it up for ME to contribute to, since I talk about this topic so freaking much everywhere else. (I’m almost unique around here as “the guy who arrives at universalism from ortho-trin theism”.) I wanted opponents to have the opportunity to make the same case, if possible, for Arm or Calv soteriology.
Though in my experience it’s typically Calvs who come closest to at least trying this, which is why I lead off with them in the thread title. (Also I thought Luke was trying to make this claim in another thread.)
Then again, maybe this does mean I should dialogue with Luke on this in another thread, so that I won’t swamp this one–since I created it for people other than myself to go this route if possible. (And since Luke doesn’t seem to be trying to go this route after all, where ortho-trin leads logically to Calv soteriology per se.)
Jason,
perhpas you could write a opening statement at a level which many of us uneducated folk might understand. That would be a good thing for must of us
Oy… humorous self-deprecation notwithstanding, I am entirely unsure how to do that.
I mean, I’m pretty sure I can come up with a statement taking the theme that God is (essentially) love, and explaining how this leads to universalism, and do so in a way that most uneducated people will understand enough to have at least an initial opinion about whether they agree or disagree.
But hasn’t Luke already written a reply, as if I had done that instead of writing theologically more complex and nuanced statements???
Isn’t that already an answer to an uneducated / unsophisticated application of “God is love”?–at the very least complaining that (in effect) it’s too simple and unsophisticated to be true?
If you mean an opening statement about how trinitarian doctrine leads to universalism, again I don’t know how to do that for uneducated readers so as to avoid complexity: ortho-trin is a very detailed and rather large set of doctrines! (Some of which are still debated among trinitarian scholars and authorities!)
JP, ok ok lay off will you 
(LOL!)
As for Lukes quote. The problem I have with his statement is often people will hear the argument made by Universalists and argue just as Luke does that love is only one characterstic of many.
But the statement - God is love - should not be in opposition to ANY other characteristic except one - HATE.
For example, if I say "Jason Pratt is entertaining, it would not have any reference to whether or not he is a talented singer. My statment is only in contrast to Jason not being boring. With this in mind then God would not be hate which I think forces everyone who disagrees with us Universalists into such a position. That is to say, they agree that God is hate. The reason being is because Love is only one characteristic of 2 contrasted (excluding whether God is funny, or God is clever, or God is intelligent). And indeed that is exactly what both Calvinists and Arminians endorse - namely that God HATES the wicked.
We Universalists see a fuller revelation that God loves his enemies and reconciles that enemy (mankind) to himself by shedding his blood upon the cross.
Now JP, if my post is confusing, let be known I’m not educated like you nor do I know ANYTHING about metaphysics. I know music, I know star wars (heehe), I know nintendo wii mario bros because of my kids. But metaphysics? I know NOTHING
** I’m on break so I might have written this better and smoked JP, but as usual - I took another whooping from JP **
Yes, but they don’t endorse the position that God is essentially hate. (Anyway, I am aware of no Christian anywhere, at any time, who has ever endorsed that, though I’m hardly omniscient on the topic. 
And I fully and entirely expect that no Christian anywhere has ever done so.)
This leads to an important comparison, though (which I’ve often brought up in other threads).
God can do wrath without being essentially wrath; everyone admits this (except maybe some people who refuse to acknowledge that God can do wrath at all. But I don’t know any such Christians who do. Even the ultra-universalists here on the forum all acknowledge, so far as I’ve ever read, that God can and does or at least did do wrath.)
Calvinists, for the most part (there may be some who profess that God is essentially love, as I have heard Augustine did), would say similarly that God can do love without being essentially love.
When God can do an action without being essentially that action, then there is no incoherency in also claiming that God may either cease doing this action toward an object or never does that action toward some object. Everyone, including all Calvs and Arms, believes that God can and does stop doing wrath to at least some people (to those He successfully saves from sin, for example), and that God never does wrath to at least some persons (to unfallen angels, for example.)
But if God is essentially an action, then God cannot cease doing that action toward an object without ceasing to exist as God. To borrow an uncontroversial example from Luke earlier: if God is essentially “being” (in active existence–and I’ll have a lot more to say about that later in another thread ), then God cannot cease actively “being” toward an object without ceasing to exist.
This is obviously the significant point to God being essentially love, or not. If God is essentially love, then even if He does wrath toward a person even that wrath must be primarily an expression of love toward the person with a goal of accomplishing love toward the person sooner or later. He may stop doing wrath toward the person, but He cannot stop doing love to the person and still exist as God. (Nor can God cease to exist as God and begin existing as something only not-God instead; that isn’t something the ground of all existence can do, it would be contradictory to claim so.)
On the other hand, if God is not essentially love; if love is only one of many non-essential characteristics of God, or if (somehow) love is even merely an essential characteristic of God but isn’t what God essentially is in God’s own inherent self-existence?–then God could stop doing love toward a person (Arm theology broadly speaking with variants) or never do love toward a person at all (Calv theology broadly speaking with variants, some of which would involve God accidentally doing love to the non-elect as part of an unavoidable inadvertence for example, which how they would interpret “sending sun and rain on the good and evil alike” and letting the tares grow up with the wheat). In either case, a punishment of God could then be hopelessly final for a sinner in any of various ways (annihilation, eternal direct torment, abandoning the sinner to their fate, etc.)
But if God is essentially love instead, then there could be no hopeless punishment from God toward any sinner, nor would God ever abandon the sinner.
Calvinists are typically more aware of this point than Arminians, in my experience; although when pressed I’ve seen some Arms deny God to be essentially love in order to keep the doctrine of some kind of hopeless punishment from God instead. (I recall at least one time this happened while I was watching a discussion between Arms and Calvs, when the Calvs pounced quite rightly on the acknowledgment–since this immediately contravened the typical Arm grounds for affirming that God acts in saving love toward all sinners instead of only to a chosen elect!)
Meanwhile, I would rather keep this thread open for Calv or Arm theologians to try deriving their position from the doctrinal set of trinitarian theism, if they want to do so. (To give an example, and altering a question from Luke in the direction I intended the topic of the thread, “Does the Calvinistic concept of reprobation follow logically from trinitarian theism?”)
Rather than distract from that by getting into more discussion here with Luke (or anyone else) on whether (or how) I derive a Kath position from trinitarian theism, I’ve created another thread here to dialogue with Luke (with relatively brief but extremely incomplete answers on my part , insofar as possible) and so to reply to his questions and comments to me on this topic.
Also, in order to return the thread to its intended purpose, I’ve ported the subsequent discussion on God loving but not being love (or not ) to a new thread in the “Discussion Negative” subcategory.