Is Randal's God the ultimate utilitarian?

On the one hand:

[Randal Rauser] The standard answer is that the first outcome is on the whole preferable and more glorifying because it allows God to manifest the full range of his attributes in a deeper way than would otherwise be possible. This is because God can exercise his sovereign wrath at the same time that he manifests his merciful love by damning some and saving others. In this way those who are saved have a fuller apprehension of God’s goodness than would otherwise be possible.

This strikes me as bizarre and indefensible. But I’ll hold those comments for now and simply note that this interestingly makes God look like the ultimate utilitarian, that is as one for whom the end justifies the means...A Calvinist can argue this way. Apparently many do. But let us not miss the irony, for if there is any ethical theory that is maligned among contemporary evangelical Christians it is utilitarianism. And yet God, we are to believe, is the ultimate utilitarian? Go figure.

On the other hand:

[Randal Rauser] The question has a problem in that it assumes one could simply refrain from creating all the non-elect and still have all those remaining be elect. But why think that’s the case? It could be that refraining from creating the non-elect would change the world so radically that many of those who would exist and be elect in the world God did in fact create would either not exist at all or they would exist but would not be elect (i.e. they’d reject the gospel). So God made a world with the maximal number of his beloved subjects who ultimately choose to enter freely into relations with him.

But as Paul Manata points out, Randal’s explanation makes God the ultimate utilitarian. God sacrifices the welfare of some for the benefit of others. The hellbound must suffer for the sake of the common good. Their doom is price God pays (or makes them pay) to get more people saved. They must lose so that others will win.