Evil Shall Never Become the Worst – universalism & efficacious grace
God could’ve have made us all like the BVM.
He is not morally obligated to do that.
He is not blameworthy for the sins we commit, which we would not commit if He gave us graces that would make us impeccable.
My universalism would NOT necessarily need to conclude that God has harmed us by not giving us the graces of the Blessed Virgin or Christ, or in allowing the Fall to have occurred.
My universalism does NOT affirm, either implicitly or explicitly, that God is the cause, directly or indirectly, of evil.
I DO, however, think that if God created us with the possibility of eternal suffering, God would be doing harm to us.
A “remedy” like everlasting perdition would be prima facie disproportionate to any sin of commission or omission by a finite person.
One could be sufficiently knowledgeable to intractably persist in sin, refusing to cooperate with grace, while otherwise neither totally nor definitively rejecting God (lacking the requisite knowledge to freely do that). Such persons could not justly be abandoned to that state everlastingly, as that would also be prima facie disproportionate.
Definitive rejections of God would require an infallible knowledge of Who God really (not apparently) is, e.g. a beatific vision.
For persons who have not eventually & wholly surrendered, pre-mortem, with sufficient grace & only fallible knowledge, efficacious purgative graces will gift them both the annihilation of any vestige of the vicious part of their secondary natures & any illumination needed to operatively know Who God really (not apparently) is.
I have a confident assurance (not presumption) & trust in God, as revealed by Jesus, to be the Trinity of freely loving acting divine Persons. Consistent with the character of Abba as revealed in Jesus, the divine ends of all manner of efficacious graces have been revealed to us as – not necessary, but – “fitting.”
I believe that all will be gifted the beatific vision & eternal well being. Further, God will do this because He is just and it is just to avoid disproportionate remedies
Potuit, decuit, ergo fecit.
Eternal union for all being possible & fitting, ergo, it will be accomplished!
It would be “backwards metaphysics” to believe that God causes any evil of sin whatsoever.
The concept of hell entails that evil, as a parasitic transient existence, will be allowed to become everlasting. That would be tantamount to substantializing it. That would also make divine permission tantamount to divine intent, because that remedy would be disproportional.
Belief in hell is thus backwards metaphysics as the permission of hell – not all sin – is tantamount to believing that God has caused the worst evil imaginable.
As Merton observed [paraphrasing from memory], our faith in God does not mean that we shall never suffer. Being a Christian, in some circumstances can even make our suffering more likely. Our faith in God does mean, however, that evil shall never become the worst.