Now the pluralist might concede the logical possibility of God’s being all-powerful and all-loving and some people’s never hearing the gospel and being lost but insist that these two facts are nonetheless improbable with respect to each other. People by and large seem to believe in the religion of the culture in which they were raised. But in that

Even more radically, why didn’t God create a world in which everyone freely believes the gospel and is saved? Such a world must be logically possible, since people are free to believe or not believe. So why didn’t God create a world in which every person freely chooses to place his faith in Christ and be saved?

More fundamentally, why did God even create the world, when He knew that so many people would not believe the gospel and be lost? Since creation is a free act of God, why not simply refrain from creating any free creatures at all?

Second, why think that every sin does have only a finite punishment?

But, again, this doesn’t seem to me to be the real problem. For the objection seems flawed in at least two ways: First, the objection equivocates between every sin we commit and all the sins we commit.

The objection charges that God is unjust because the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.

The fact that your beliefs depend upon where and when you were born has no relevance to the truth of those beliefs.

Finally, and even more fundamentally, this objection is a double-edged sword. For the pluralist also believes that his view is right and that all those adherents to particularistic religious traditions are wrong. Therefore, if holding to a view that many others disagree with means you’re arrogant and immoral, then the pluralist himself would be

The truth of a position is independent of the character of those who hold it.