Dear KKJ,
Thank you for your thoughtful response. Later I will take time to fully digest and respond to your thoughts. Here are a few of my immediate thoughts. One of the supporting arguments for my universalist beliefs is that “ultimately” God is the “cause” of everything, and because God is loving and “good” by nature, then the result of all history must be a good one. Whether my decisions are “freely” made or not is irrelevant to this argument, if you look at it in this perspective. The point I was making is that nothing that happens in our “space-time” world is “self-caused.” Every decision we make is a result of antecedent “causes” which led up to it. All our choices are “predetermined,” if not directly by God, then they must be determined by “random processes” which were set in motion by God. The way God views the future, whether as “probabilties,” or “possibilities,” or as “certainties,” certainly would affect the ways in which He relates to us, ie. whether or not He is genuinely “suprised” by our responses and changes His actions in response to ours. The Scriptures definitely describe God’s interactions with us as “open” to change, and our actions as beeing “freely” made, as we are held accountable for them. However, even if our actions are “freely” made, and even if the future is subject to change, even when viewed from God’s perspective, that still does not answer the question, “why do I choose “differently” from you.” Why am I different from you? Did God make me different, or is my uniqueness a result of random processes which were initiated by God? The point is that although I am “free” to make what ever choices I desire, was I really “free” to choose my own uniqueness?
I wrote an essay about this, called “The Twinkie Defense,” in which I explain this dilemma. The court was lenient to Dan White, who killed Harvey Milk and Mayor Mosconi, because his actions were affected by “diminished capacity” which was a result, in part, of his poor diet, ie. lots of cokes and twinkies. Technically, all of our bad choices in life are a result of some form of “diminished capacity” and can be traced to antecedent “causes,” many of which where not under our direct control. Technically, no decision we make is “self-caused.” Therefore, why does God hold us “accountable” for our actions? My conclusion is that He holds us accountable for the sake of our personal growth & development and for the sake of those who are affected by out actions. Ultimate responsibility for our “bad” choices, or credit for our “good” choices, however, belongs to God. In a sense, God did assume that responsibility at Calvary. He no longer holds our bad choices against us. And, He wants us go give Him credit for the good in our lives.
If you look at it a certain way, it is a sin of “pride” to “judge” others as being “deserving” of God’s judgments (or Hell), because, but for the grace of God, we would find ourselves in the same position as they, given the unique set of circumstances which led to their decisions.