Parallels between Logical & Evidential Problems of Evil & of Hell

There’s are some parallels between how theologians & atheologians talk about the logical & evidential problems of evil and how universalists & perditionists talk about the same problems of hell.

All the most reasonable accounts are arguing w/a greater good logic in a way that, per each’s own definitions, aspires to be consistent in its axioms, logically valid & conclusively sound. But b/c of the very nature of our conversations, our accounts remain ineluctably incomplete.

re the problem of evil, all are entitled to mysterian appeals & those shouldn’t necessarily be labeled ad hoc. And atheologians are entitled to inquire evidentially & to challenge our theo-skepticism w/noseeum inferences (show me the greater good!) which aren’t terribly compelling to believers.

re the problem of hell, universalists shouldn’t have one, at least, if they reject perdition as a successful reference. But they can inhabit a perditionist stance, for argument’s sake, in an attempt to show how it self-subverts. And, even stipulating to perditionist definitions to which a universalist may otherwise reject, in principle, the universalist may inquire, beyond any alleged logical validity, about the evidential problem of hell. The perditionist will then make a mysterian appeal, using a skeptical theism. I hesitate to reflexively call that an ad hoc maneuver, since I make it re the problem of evil. And I also suspect that the perditionist may not be wholly impressed by the universalist’s noseeum inference (show me the greater good), as I didn’t find same wholly compelling when lobbed by atheologians at our defenses & theodicies. [I do otherwise describe & employ a weseeum inference, but that’s not my immediate concern.]

At this stage of evaluating competing accounts, it does seem to come down to dueling moral intuitions, parental instincts, aesthetic sensibilities & common sense reductios. For my part, I find perditionism parentally abhorrent, morally unintelligible, aesthetically repugnant & nonsensically absurd.

And that takes me full circle back to where I started re the problem of evil, which is with – not a formal defense & definitely w/o an evidential theodicy, but – a trust relationship with the God I’ve known through both general & special revelation. That’s best conveyed through storytelling, homiletics, liturgy and works of mercy, both corporal & spiritual. Those of you who are pastors have helped me the most. I love when y’all tell the Story.

Noia’s “universalism problem” & Wahlberg’s “autonomy defense” are moves in the right direction. They see the conceptual incompatibilities. Stump and others, who’ve conscientiously softened perditionism, divorcing it from ECT, see the evidential implausibilities. Stump champions storytelling & Franciscan knowledge over against any otherwise sterile analytical approach. I welcome all of these above developments. I don’t ambition setting their type of majoritarian take aside as much as I hope to just have my indicative universalism accepted as theologoumenal.

If we as universalists have too often felt caricatured, well, for my part, I’m not an academic & my talk too often lapses into dense & idiosyncratic prose, so – no harm no foul. I earn being misunderstood. But, another part of the problem is not arguing our universalism using our own definitions, not rejecting perditionist premises up front when they contain concepts that, in our account, do not even successfully refer.