God has given mankind choice from the very beginning. He could have left the tree of knowledge out of the garden but he didn’t. It would have avoided more than headaches. It would have avoided murders, rapes, and all manner of evil to have left that tree out. Was God wicked for putting it there in the first place? It only makes sense that God was purposeful in placing the tree in the middle of the garden. It was to give them choice. But choice isn’t choice unless it results in varying outcomes. Let’s say you give your kid the option of a ham sandwich or PB&J. He says Ham but you slap a PB&J down every time. Why give him the choice to begin with if it means nothing in the end?
Love requires choice. If the results are fixed and all options lead to the same destination then why on earth did God give the appearance of choices to begin with? Why say “you will surely die” if the end result of obedience and disobedience is really “you shall surely live”?
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Universalism seems to generally deny that men have free will. It seems that many of them start with the position of Calvinism and then proceed to take it one step further to its logical conclusion, including factors such as:
1) If God can save anyone who wants regardless of their will, and if God really is willing that all men come to the knowledge of the truth and not willing that any should perish, therefore everyone that has ever lived shall come to a knowledge of the truth and will not perish.
2) If men do not have free will, then they are not really responsible for their actions and do not deserve punishment.
I am engaged in a discussion with a Universalist that is producing a movie called “Hellbound” and one of his primary arguments seems to be that no one has free will. My point is that if you are trying to address Universalism, you cannot assume that they accept that we are free moral agents that make choices.
The materialists here also say we have no free will: https://chronicle.com/article/Is-Free-Will-an-Illusion-/131159/
God wanted us to choose to love as He chooses to love. What makes us different is that God created us in his image. Problem was… we weren’t God. We weren’t holy. Now, God has not only restored us in Jesus, but he’s also given us His Spirit so that we can be like Him and make the right choices.