If God is sovereign in the Calvinist sense, then universalism should be true.

Popculturpooka must be messing with me by waiting until minutes before his time is up to post. :-)I. The problem of arbitrariness1. We're not in a position to say why God didn't save one more person.It doesn't matter whether we're talking about creating more of something for God's glory, or taking more or less from a set that already exists for God's glory. In the case of God's mercy and wrath, he is glorified in the demonstration of both. In any situation in which God designates a fixed number of people for one purpose and the rest for another, we can't say why he chooses the precise number that he does. To attempt to draw significance from the number of people who serve God's purposes in a particular way is to make an argument from ignorance. I grant that I can't say why God doesn't save one more person than he does, but I equally can't say why he doesn't save one less (after all, nobody deserves to be saved). In both cases, he would be glorified by the demonstration of both his mercy and his wrath.Originally, Pro argued that if God doesn't save as many as possible without sacrificing his glory, then "God is not essentially good," and that it "generates a problem of evil." But now, he has changed goodness to benevolence, saying that if God doesn't save everybody he can, then he would not be "very benevolent - much less omnibenevolent!" I'll say address that under the third point.2. Pitting God's goodness in saving people against his goodness in displaying his wrath.Pro doesn't dispute that both saving people and demonstrating his wrath are good. He acknowledges that they are both good. But then when he goes on to say that the benevolent and loving thing to do is to save as many as possible, it is implicit in his argument that if you have a choice between making somebody an object of wrath and making them an object of mercy, the good thing would be to make them an object of mercy and not wrath, which is implicitly to say that making them an object of wrath is evil. After all, that's why he thinks Calvinism causes a problem of evil. He thinks it's evil for God to punish sinners when he could have saved them. But that contradicts what he said about wrath being good. If both wrath and mercy are good, then Pro is inconsistent to turn around and say the good thing for God would be to show mercy as far as possible, and it's evil if God shows wrath instead.3. It ignores the fact that everybody who is damned deserves it, but nobody who is saved deserves it.This is the biggest problem with Pro's argument. He wants to argue that if God damns somebody when he could have saved them, then he's evil. But it's only evil to damn people if they don't deserve it. But everybody deserves it. This point alone refutes Pro's entire case in this debate.Pro doesn't dispute my point that God has no moral obligation to save anybody. If God has no moral obligation to save anybody, then he cannot be considered evil for not doing so.So Pro changes his argument. Instead of arguing that goodness entails that God save people as far as he is able, he now argues that God's "infinite love" and "omnibenevolence" entail that he save people as far as he is able.Before Pro can make the case that God's sovereignty in salvation, combined with God's "infinite love," entails universal salvation, he first needs to make the case that God's love is infinite in the sense that he means. After all, Calvinists think God's love is discriminatory. He doesn't love everybody in the same way. He certainly didn't love Jacob and Esau the same (Romans 9:13). The Bible is clear in many places that God does not love indiscriminately (e.g. Psalm 11:5). Just as husbands are to love their wives in a way they don't love other men's wives, so also is Christ's love for his bride (i.e. the church) special (Ephesians 5:25). God loved the patriarchs and Israel in a way that he didn't love other nations. He loves Christ specially (Matthew 12:18). Etc.II. Calvinistic universalism1. It again neglects the fact that people are sinners who deserve damnation and nobody deserves salvation.See I.3 above.2. It could be that God's wrath poured out on the reprobate enhances our appreciation of Christ's sacrifice.Pro makes the modest point that his speculative scenario holds up better than mine. But his point is too modest to carry his burden of proof, which is that under the assumption of God's sovereignty in salvation, his unwillingness to save as many people as possible creates an "intractable problem of evil." The problem of evil is solved by the mere possibility that God's glory is more manifest in pouring his wrath out on actual sinners rather than on Christ alone (or on non-humans, or virtual reality). Pro will have to do better than offer a speculative scenario that he thinks holds up better than mine. He will have to say it's not even possible that God could be more glorified in his wrath toward sinners than without it. Otherwise, the problem of evil is not intractable as he said.Moreover, even though he claims this his scenario holds up better than mine, mine actually has the advantage of being Biblical. In Romans 9:21-24, it says, "Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? What if God, although willing to demonstrate his wrath and make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And he did so to make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom he also called, not from among the Jews only, but also from among the Gentiles." That is precisely the scenario I offered. I only speculated about how the vessels of wrath enhanced the demonstration of God's glory.III. The sovereignty of God in salvationPro may not have understood my argument here. Let me try to clarify. If Pro and I agree that the Bible presents a consistent theology, then whatever theological points can be accurately derived from scripture must be consistent. If the Bible teaches that (1) God is sovereign in salvation, (2) God is perfectly good, and (3) not everybody is saved, then we must conclude that these three points are consistent even if we don't know how to reconcile them. That, in turn, means that universalism doesn't not follow from 1 and 2, and that affirming 1 and 3 does not create a problem of evil.Pro agrees with 2 and 3 (as far as I know, anyway). I gave an argument for 1. It follows that there is no problem of evil under Calvinism, and universalism doesn't follow from the Calvinist view of God's sovereignty. It should be noted that Pro gave no refutation of my argument for God's sovereignty in salvation.IV. God has a purpose in not saving all peopleThe Bible tells us explicitly that God has a purpose in not saving all people. In Proverbs 16:4, it says that God made everything for a purpose, including "the wicked for the day of evil." In Romans 9:17 it says that God raised Pharaoh up in order to demonstrate his power and make his name known. He demonstrated his power in Pharaoh by pouring his wrath out on him. There is also Romans 9:21-14, which tells us that's God's purpose in vessels of wrath is to demonstrate his glory.ConclusionThere are three points I want to emphasize in conclusion. First, because we are all sinners, God would be perfectly good even if none of us were saved. Second, that God's sovereignty in salvation is taught in scripture, as I have demonstrated and Pro has not challenged. Third, Pro has changed the debate over whether God is good/evil under Calvinism to whether God is infinitely loving/benevolent under Calvinism. He must argue that God is morally obligated to save as far as possible before his argument from evil can go through. And he must argue that God loves indiscriminately before his argument for universalism can go through. I've challenged both.