An Evidential Challenge to Efficacious Grace

Abstract

This paper develops a new evidential challenge to a contemporary universalist account grounded in the doctrine of efficacious grace. Drawing primarily on the work of John Kronen and Eric Reitan, I argue that if God possesses a morally legitimate and effective means of transforming even the gravest sinners without violating rational freedom, then the continued existence of apparently gratuitous moral evils becomes especially difficult to explain. The challenge does not consist in the traditional claim that evil is incompatible with divine goodness, nor does it attempt to refute universalism as such. Rather, it asks why transformative grace capable of healing distorted agency is reserved for the eschaton if its earlier application could plausibly prevent at least some of history’s worst atrocities. After reconstructing the evidential problem of evil in Rowe and Russell, I examine the universalist account of efficacious grace and develop what I call the Evidential Challenge to Efficacious Grace. I then consider several possible universalist responses, including skeptical theism, appeals to the Fall, and arguments from divine sovereignty. I conclude that efficacious grace intensifies the explanatory burden generated by apparently gratuitous evil and therefore introduces a distinctive internal challenge for one influential form of contemporary universalism.