My Weak Argument for an Indicative Universalist Eschatology

I wonder if universalists should even ambition throwing over the majority position on either logical or evidential grounds?

For my part, I’ll only ever aspire to advance an indicative universalism to theologoumenal status, alongside the subjunctive, as a valid minority opinion.

I am not entirely over against logical defenses & evidential theodicies, but they only play what I think is an appropriately undersized role in how I engage the problem of evil, existentially, logically & evidentially.

For starters, I am very deeply sympathetic with the stance of Marilyn McCord Adams, who sees great deficiencies in free will theodicies of both evil & hell.

See these excerpts, below, from
Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God: An Essay on the Problem of Hell by R. Zachary Manis, Oxford University Press, 2019.

While I suspect that others could very well show that, as an eschatology, universalism is neither logically unreasonable nor evidentially improbable, I’ve only ever aspired to argue, informally, that it’s the most plausible.

Because the claims of a logical defense of hell are relatively weak, ISTM that, generally, they should be easy enough to defend? At any rate, those are beyond my ken. My impasses with them are generally located in the very definitions those arguments employ in their premises, including some concepts & terms I reject because, in my account, they wouldn’t even be considered successful references.

Evidential arguments against hell’s probability seem to rely on certain noseeum inferences over against the various mysterian appeals of skeptical theism as used in arguments defending the reality of hell. Universalists must account for how they justify those inferences in arguing over against theodicies of hell, while denying them to atheologians, who argue over against theodicies of evil. For all sorts of reasons, like epistemic humility & metaphysical size gaps, I hesitate to press any noseeum inference case too hard. Precisely because of the points made by Marilyn Adams & as set forth in how I approach getting God out of the dock, I am reluctant to deny any of my fellow theists their mysterian appeals & skeptical theist arguments.