That’s a great sign-off by the way. (And glad you were able to register in; I saw your message at Gregory’s blog, but by then you had already posted once, so I didn’t bother answering.)
I hope to put up an essay on the various difficulties later, somewhere else. (This is Gregory’s particular category, and I feel like I’m intruding as a co-host when I post much here.)
I also think it would be a good idea to create a whole discussion category for ‘conversion’ stories, so to speak, either to UR or away from it. (We want to be fair, and that might be useful, too. The category would be more for giving a witness story, than for technical discussion, which ought to happen elsewhere.)
As for me, I have always been a universalist at heart, but for many years I couldn’t in good conscience teach it or argue for it because I simply couldn’t see enough scriptural data in favor of it (not having studied enough) and didn’t know of any rationale for legitimately interpreting one apparent type of verses in light of another apparent type. (Though that cut both ways, of course.) After I studied trinitarian theism more closely, in terms of logical coherency, I came to understand that hope for God to always be acting toward saving all sinners from sin, follows as a logical corollary from trinitarian theism. With that, I had an overarching rationale for interpreting one set in light of another; but I didn’t want to simply force interpretations into disparate data so I held back promoting it scripturally for several years until I could study the scriptural issues much further on their own testimony.
One thing that impresses me now, is that the witness for it is scattered so widely and pervasively throughout the scriptures (just like ortho-trin), and yet there is (even for me) a tendency to block out the meaning of what’s being said. In personal scrutiny, I’m sure that this is caused by my intrinsic uncharity; though it may be different for other people. (In many cases, I think it happens from reading scriptures atomistically instead of looking for narrative and thematic contexts. I’m still routinely discovering new data that I had missed before precisely for that reason, too.)
Anyway, I would be glad to send you a copy of Gregory’s EU, through an Amazon wish list, gratis. You can also page through his book online for free at Amazon, a few pages at a time, with some persistence and Amazon’s “Search Inside The Book” feature.
Back to work…