Providence, Freedom, and God’s Creation of the Damned

Abstract

In the view of many anti-universalists, human free will is both a great good and that which poses the greatest obstacle to universalism. If created persons have free will, then it seems it is finally up to those persons, and not up to God, whether all will be saved. This is the most popular argument against universalism, but it turns out to be complicated by the fact that the metaphysical assumptions that drive it themselves generate problems for anti-universalists. For a variety of reasons, anti-universalism turns out to be ill-wed to each of the standard accounts of providence—viz., compatibilism, Molinism, and open theism—as none provides the anti-universalist with an adequate explanation of why God creates the damned. The chapter closes with a discussion of why the author is nevertheless unwilling to embrace universalism.