Closing Thoughts on Universalism

I think that I'll most likely end my posts on Universalism here (although, Scott, if you want to talk about any other articles in the Talbott book, let me know). Here is Talbott's case for universalism in a nutshell:

1. If we take all the the Bible on its surface level, we seem to have the following inconsistent triad:
   1. God wills that everyone would be saved.
   2. God's will will be accomplished in the end.
   3. Some people will be eternally damned.
2. Arminians reject the second option, and Augustinians the first.
3. However, each group seems to care more about their own choice from the top two, than about the third, and they have done some solid exegesis to show that "God wills everyone to be saved," on the one hand, and "God's will will be accomplished in the end" on the other.
4. Given this, it seems plausible to say that the verses which should be taken in a non-apparent fashion are those which support the third option.

Of course, Talbott also does Biblical work to back up his view, though I will not cover that here due to space and lack of competency.

Now, I see some force to this argument, However, I've had to come a bit further before settling (somewhat unstably) on Universalism myself. Jerry Walls has an essay in the book in which he argues that given non-compatibilist free will, God cannot save everyone; someone could always be too stubborn for redemption. Talbott himself thinks that in order to be just, God must give everyone full knowledge of what their actions entail; given this, Talbott claims, how could people not choose God? Walls responds that we can only respond to so much of the truth at a time; it would be perfectly just for God to give us some truth which would be relevant to our present actions, and then more from there. If we reject the truth given to us, then that is our own fault. So, on Walls' view, some people could reject God, because they never have to be shown a full-on view of God and thereby know fully what they are rejecting.

As far as I can see, I think that these two on their own are at a stalemate. Eric Reitan responds that the chance that this possible world is one in which everyone would stay in Hell for all eternity is infinitesimally small; assuming that people in Hell could chose to leave (a point on which Talbott and Walls seem to be in agreement), the probability that Hell is empty would be continually increasing, reaching 1 as time goes to infinity. Therefore, the chance that we have such rum luck as to be in the, say, one possible world in which Hell is perpetually non-empty is so small that we can assume that this is not that world.

Against Reitan, one could point out the hardening effects of sin. One could say that the longer one is in Hell, the less likely one is to want to leave, and so the probability does not actually approach 1 that Hell will be empty. Against this, one could point out the breaking effects of Hell and sin, and how even a hardened sinner would eventually have to face their own choices. Again, there seem to be reasons to hold both sides.

There are a couple other arguments which I could go through, but here is my conclusion: it is logically possible (and on the grounds presented so far, not holly implausible) that Hell will be non-empty, but I can't affirm this. The reason is that I can't accept exclusivism (see various earlier posts), and the more I try to work out inclusivism, the more Pelagian I seem to become (loosely speaking; I still hold that Arminianism is neither Pelagian nor Semi-Pelagian). So, in order to account for God's grace, I am leaning toward universalism and the view that divine Goodness is powerful enough to eventually win over the most determined sinners. Of course, this is not a detailed argument (or perhaps any at all), but it's the reasoning I see in front of me currently.