 However one might answer such a question, the Christian universalist’s understanding of the nature and scope of God’s irresistible grace is very different from the Augustinian understanding of it. For Christian universalists not only reject the Augustinian idea that God’s irresistible grace extends to a limited elect only; they also hold that God’s judgment of sin is essentially a matter of permitting sinners to experience the very condition of separation they have confusedly chosen for themselves. Many Christian universalists are thus fond of quoting St. Paul’s remark that “God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all” (Rom. 11:32—NIV), and they interpret this as a declaration that divine judgment, however harsh it may seem, is itself an expression of divine mercy and is therefore part of what makes God’s grace irresistible in the end. If, as a last resort, God should allow a sinner to live for a while without even an implicit experience of the divine  nature,[11]  the resulting horror, they believe, will at last shatter any illusion that some good is achievable apart from God; and such a discovery will finally elicit a cry for help of a kind that, however faint it may be, is just what God needs in order to begin and eventually to complete the process of reconciliation. 