but hey, what can a deity do?
Anything He wants. Isn't Omnipotence one of the defining criteria of godhood?
According to your theology, God created everything--and I do mean everything. Including Good and Evil, cause and effect, free will, the whole enchilada. The flow of history. Time. Everything. He didn't just see all of time, He created it.
Which means--also, according to your own theology--that He saw those souls damned because they were born before Jesus...because that's exactly how He planned it to begin with.
Everything was created to be exactly as it is.
Those people, then, were created specifically to be damned. Just like--according to your own theology--99% of the human race. The only thing they did wrong was be born, and they didn't have any say in THAT, either.
He's perfectly free to do anything, right? Which means that He could easily purify those souls of sin and evil after death and send them on to Heaven if He wanted. He could reincarnate them and send their souls back until they get it right, or simply send them somewhere else. He could simply let them cease to exist on death. An eternity of torture doesn't even have to be an option that's on the table.
And yet, according to your theology, that's exactly what He wanted. Everything is exactly the way He wanted it.
Don't pretend His hands are tied. By definition they can't be.
