One of the defenses of infernalism is that in order for human beings to be human, to be worth something as opposed to being simply robots, we must have free will. We cannot truly be with God unless we freely accept him. And if our will is truly free, then it must be possible for us to reject God. And the rejection of God must necessarily lead to damnation. Therefore, we are told, universalism must violate free will, since it states that all shall be saved and this seems impossible if everyone is free to reject God.
Let me deal with just one element of this whole argument here. According to the standard Christian view, we are all fit for hell to begin with. Our own sins, or original sin inherited from Adam and Eve or something of the sort, has made it just and fitting that we be damned.
No exceptions are acknowledged here. Simple justice, we are told, means that of all the billions of human beings existing or who ever existed they all deserve to be damned, and would be damned but for the mercy of Christ.
It seems peculiar that of the billions of humans who lived or ever will live, they all chose or will choose to sin badly enough to be damned. For surely, to deserve such a horrible fate one must have at least freely chosen the wickedness one is damned for.
Now this is a very strange free will indeed. Apparently, without exception, we have all freely chosen a path of sin bad enough to deserve hell. You would think that at least a handfull would have chosen to be sinless.
But one laughs at this of course. Sinless? Impossible. Even the greatest saints sin and sin seriously, as they are the first to admit.
So where is that famous free will then? How is it that when universalism wishes to storm the gates of hell and liberate all, we are told this violates free will; but when each and every one of us is born in a world where we are inevitably doomed to freely merit damnation one hears not a peep about how our free will is violated, and that therefor God cannot tolerate the situation to exist?