No Way, No How, No Hell?

Comments Due: 11:59pm March 19, 2013.

Stephen T. Davis (Claremont McKenna College) considers the following to be one of the five best arguments for universalism that he can think of:

"How can the Blessed experience joy in heaven if friends and loved ones are in hell? Obviously (so universalists will argue), they can't. People can only know joy and happiness in heaven if everyone else is or eventually will be there too. If the Blessed are to experience joy in heaven, as Christian tradition says they are, universalism must be true."

(Note that Talbott seems to offer a similar line of reasoning in the essay you have read. He also more explicitly offers that reasoning here: http://www.willamette.edu/~ttalbott/basic.shtml.)

Now, Davis is no universalist. But regarding the above line of reasoning he writes:

"How can the Blessed be joyous if friends and loved ones are in hell? I do not know an adequate answer to this question. I expect that if I knew enough about heaven I would know the answer, but I know little about heaven. The problem is perhaps less acute for me than for those seperationists who believe hell is a place of permanent torture. If I am right, the Blessed need not worry that loved ones are in agony and are allowed to hope that God's love can even yet achieve a reconciliation. But there is still the question how, say, a wife can experience joy and happiness in heaven while her beloved husband is in hell. And that is the question I am unable to answer satisfactorily. It would seem to be unjust for God to allow the wrong choices of the damned--i.e., their rejection of God--to ruin the joy of the Blessed, who have chosen to love God. But how God brings it about that the Blessed experience the joy of the presence of God despite the absence of others, I do not know."

How might you respond to this particular universalist line of reasoning? Do you find it compelling? If so, why? If not, can you do better than Davis here? Consider what others say and be sure to respond to each other.