I could turn it around and say "neither should we assume that God's desire that all come to Him is an insurmountable barrier to God honoring Man's free will." Again, I am not saying that universal salvation is impossible. I am just saying it is currently unknowable to us.
I agree.
Since I haven't followed this thread from the beginning and there are over 150 posts already, I would appreciate that.
[URL="https://www.christianforums.com/threads/is-it-okay-to-simply-assume-that-god-saves-all.8248902/page-6#post-76730572"]#107[/URL] was the post I was thinking of.
I thought I'd also send you an accessible analysis by Keith DeRose of the issues that arise in reconciling universalism with free will. It's a philosophical treatment and so doesn't very directly involve the Biblical case for or against universalism but, though quite long, it's an interesting read.
"Many who have e-mailed me have been concerned about free will. Doesn’t one have to freely accept Christ in order to be saved? This is an extension of strong exclusivism. Strong exclusivism, as I have used it above, says that in order to be saved, one must somehow explicitly accept Christ. Now, we’re adding to this that the accepting must be free. Let’s call this new position fervent exclusivism. If we accept fervent exclusivism, how can we say that universalism is true?
I don’t know of any serious scriptural support for fervent exclusivism itself. Still, it’s worth taking seriously and thinking about, because it is, for those who think human freedom is very important, the natural extension of strong exclusivism, for which there is in my view significant scriptural support. If you think that one must accept Christ to be saved, and if you think that human freedom is important, you’re likely to think that the free acceptance of Christ is very valuable and important — perhaps important enough that one’s ultimate destiny might ride on it.
So, for those who are attracted to this fervent variety of exclusivism: First note that even fervent exclusivism is compatible with universalism. The first of these says that to be saved one must freely accept Christ. The second says that, eventually at least, all will be saved. It’s easy to see how these can both be true: If all will eventually freely accept Christ.
But even if it is possible for both positions to be true, is it all plausible to suppose they will be? Supposing there is nothing barring further chances — that the free accepting may take place after death (see sections
6 and
7 above) — I don’t see why not. After all, there is an omnipotent and infinitely resourceful God, whom we know “desires everyone to be saved” (I Timothy 2:4), and has as much time as He needs to bring everyone around. I certainly wouldn’t want to bet against Him! We know that some in this life have been only been moving further and further away from accepting Christ. And some people can be very obstinate. And some have become incredibly evil in this life. But, on the other hand, even in this short life, we all know of instances in which people having all three of these problems to a great degree who were brought around and were saved. So, again, I see no grounds for pessimism that an infinitely resourceful God, who is able to take as much time as He needs, will be able to win over everyone eventually.
(If you think that the most dramatic turn-arounds in this life have involved an infringement on the freedom of the people involved, but agree that they were saved nonetheless, then you you are not a fervent exclusivist, and you should have no objections to such non-free savings taking place after death. I am here addressing only fervent exclusivists.)
But some seem to have a different worry — not that fervent exclusivism is incompatible with universalism, but that, if fervent exclusivism is true, then nobody, not even God, can know (or at least know for certain) that all will be saved, since nobody can know what people will freely do. So, even if universalism will turn to be true, we cannot know that now, and God would not have revealed that to us already. According to this worry, fervent exclusivism doesn’t show that universalism won’t be true, but it does undermine the position that universalism is revealed in the scriptures.
This new worry, then, is based on the assumption that free will is incompatible with foreknowledge: that it is impossible, even for God, to know (or at least to know for certain) ahead of time what someone will freely do. Note that God can still be omniscient despite not knowing what we will freely do. Omniscience is a matter of knowing all truths. And if you deny that God knows what creatures will freely do, you’re likely to also believe that there aren’t now any truths to be known about what creatures will freely do in the future. God’s “failure” to know what you will freely do then would count against his omniscience no more than does his “failure” to know that 2+2 = 796: In neither case is the proposition in question (now) true and so in neither case is it the kind of proposition that can (now) be known. But while the assumption that freedom is incompatible with foreknowledge doesn’t undermine God’s omniscience, it is highly debatable. In fact, my sense is that most theists reject this assumption. Indeed, traditionally, many theists have supposed that free action is not only compatible with foreknowledge, but also with divine determinism: That one can be free even if God’s decrees causally determine you do the action in question. How can one be free if divine decrees, issued long before one is born, causally determine what one does? I don’t know. That position — compatibilism about freedom and determinism — has always seemed very implausible to me. But even among those who join me in rejecting compatibilism about freedom and determinism, many (and I think most) accept the compatibility of freedom and foreknowledge.
If you believe that God knows ahead of time who will freely accept him in this life, then you must not really be an incompatibilist about freedom and foreknowledge, and you should have no objection to supposing that God can know ahead of time who will freely accept Him in the life to come. Thus, this objection will have carry no weight with you.
If, on the other hand, you hold that foreknowledge is incompatible with freedom, and thus hold that God does not know what people will freely do even in this life, then you should be aware that you are holding a minority opinion (at least among Christians, but I think also among philosophers, both Christian or non-Christian), and if you use this incompatibilism — let’s call incompatibilism regarding freedom and foreknowledge zealous incompatibilism, to distinguish it from the milder view that freedom is incompatible with pre-determination –, together with fervent exclusivism, in objecting to the universalist stance, then you should be aware that your argument is resting on an assumption that is highly debatable, to put it rather mildly. So it certainly isn’t anything of a “killer” objection to the universalist stance. As far as assessing the strength of the objection to universalism that can be obtained by these worries about freedom goes, that’s the important point: There is no strong objection here, since the objection is based on such a controversial position — indeed, on two highly debatable positions: fervent exclusivism and zealous incompatibilism.
Nevertheless, I myself am somewhat attracted toward these controversial views. For those of you who join me in finding these positions appealing, despite their zealous/fervent nature, here are a couple of options for how to put zealous incompatibilism together with fervent exclusivism (or at least something close to it), and universalism (or at least something close to it) into a coherent package of views. A way to think about these two options is that one (perhaps) compromises a bit on universalism, the other on fervent exclusivism.
Option 1: Holding very firmly to both zealous incompatibilism (freedom is incompatible with foreknowledge) and fervent exclusivism (in order to be saved, one must freely accept Christ), one can hold that, while it may not be absolutely certain, it is OVERWHELMINGLY probable that all will eventually accept Christ and be saved, and the probability that any will resist forever is VANISHINGLY small. After all, God will be on the case, and will have as much time as He needs. While it is true that some are heading in the completely wrong direction, and give no sign that, left to their own devices, they will do anything but accelerate their progress in that wrong direction, they will not be left to their own devices. There are actual instances in this life of breathtakingly dramatic turn-arounds, and God does intervene to bring people around in this life (without violating their freedom, according to the fervent exclusivist). So once we jettison that disastrous and quite unsupported view that death is the end of one’s chances, there’s no reason to doubt that such divine activities will continue in the life to come, nor that they will (eventually, at least) be successful in yielding free acceptance.
If one takes this option, I think one can still be counted as a universalist. After all, you believe it is overwhelmingly probable that all will be saved, and in contested theological matters, we can’t expect to reach beyond that level of certainty anyway. (Indeed, due to the usual causes — human fallibility on such tough questions — we’re not even going to get up to that level of certainty, nor even close to it, on this or any other tough matter, anyway.) But this does seem to compromise on universalism a bit, because one is not only admitting that one could (of course!) be wrong about the matter in question, but also that according to the position one holds (however firmly or tentatively), there is some (VANISHINGLY small, but still existent) objective chance that not all will be saved. Not even God knows absolutely for certain that all will be saved.
And this gives rise to a sticky question about whether God would have revealed that all will be saved if He was not absolutely certain that this would be so. It’s easy to feel uncomfortable about saying that’s what God did — even if He was amazingly close to being absolutely certain that what we was revealing to us is true.
Option 2: God could pick some time in the distant future — a time far enough off that it is overwhelmingly probable that all will have freely accepted salvation by then, given the (non-freedom-violating) means of persuasion God intends to employ — and resolve to at that time compel acceptance of any hold-outs that are then left. These would then be saved by their acceptance, though their acceptance might not be as valuable, given that it was not free. Thus, God can be absolutely certain, and can therefore responsibly reveal to us, that all will be saved. (There are many variations of this story that you might think up and think about for yourself. For instance: God could pick different times for different individuals, etc. Of course, any such story will be highly speculative, and so one probably shouldn’t invest any confidence in any such tale. Still, these can be helpful stories in that they show various ways that certain combinations of views can be made true, and thus can show the views themselves to be compatible, even if one can’t be certain of the details of just how it will be worked out. In this case, these stories illustrate ways that zealous incompatibilism and universalism — and even foreknown universalism — can both be true even while the value and importance of human freedom is respected to a great degree.)
Now, this position does give up on fervent exclusivism (though not on strong exclusivism or exclusivism simpliciter), since it holds that one can be saved even if one does not freely accept Christ. Nevertheless, it does go a fair way toward accommodating the motivation behind fervent exclusivism — the importance of human freedom — in that it has God adopting a plan by which He goes to tremendous lengths to attain free acceptance from every person. And those who hold this view can still maintain that it is far better and more valuable for a person to freely accept than for this acceptance to be coerced in a freedom-negating way. But it does deny that one must freely accept in order to be saved, and thus it does deny fervent exclusivism. Still, it’s worth considering, for it gives those who might otherwise insist on fervent exclusivism a compromise position which doesn’t simply write free acceptance off as unimportant. This potential compromise position is especially valuable if I’m right about how one would likely come to be a fervent exclusivist in the first place: That there’s no substantial scriptural support for fervent exclusivism itself, but that fervent exclusivism is the likely result of combining strong exclusivism (for which there is significant support) with a belief one might have that human freedom is important. Since the compromise position respects the importance of human freedom, it is likely to be an attractive compromise.
[Some fine print about a very tricky matter I just skated over above: It is worth noting that this view does depend on God’s being able to foreknow with complete certainty what He Himself will do. Many who hold that God cannot foreknow what we will freely do seem to suppose that He can know what He Himself will do. This gets too complicated for me to go into in detail here. But whatever else you believe, if you think that God cannot know with complete certainty what He Himself will do, then, so long as you think that God will always have the power to make us miserable (which His omnipotence seems to assure), then you will be stuck with thinking that God cannot know with certainty that we won’t be miserable at some later time. Thus, even those who hold that God cannot foreknow with complete certainty what we will freely do are very strongly motivated to hold that He can foreknow what He Himself will do. This can be because God’s freedom is in important ways different from ours. In any case, when I speak of “zealous incompatibilism,” I mean the position that God’s certain foreknowledge is incompatible with human freedom.]
The above options are sketched out as potentially helpful guides for those who are attracted to certain combinations of views involving freedom, foreknowledge, and salvation. It’s important to reemphasize in closing the important point reached several paragraphs above: that there is no strong objection to universalism that can be squeezed out of these thoughts — at least not in any way that I can see."
