I didn’t read the original post until today, and I thought I would be the first respondent. But no, there was at least 6 others before me! People jumped into this discussion pretty fast! It must be an important topic, as indeed I consider it to be of paramount importance with relation to Christianity, or even morality. I am unable to believe in moral responsiblity in the absence of free will
That is precisely the way I define “free will”. But before discussing your statements which immediately follow, I would like to address your first words from the OP:
Arminians and other free will theists typically suppose that, if we are genuinely free in relation to God, then the following rejection hypothesis (RH) is at least possibly true:
(RH) Some persons will, despite God’s best efforts to save them, freely and irrevocably reject God and thus separate themselves from him forever.
First let me say that I believe in the ultimate reconciliation of all people to God, and so I am not merely “a hopeful universalist”. And yet I believe in libertarian free will. I do not see these two positions as contradictory.
While I think that RH is theoretically possible, I don’t see it as practically possible. I would compare it with tossing a thousand coins and asking whether it is possible that everyone of them could turn out to be heads. As unlikely as that would be, it is definitely a possibility. But what if, when they didn’t all turn out to be heads, and one decided to continue tossing them until they did. It is likely that one might toss them for the rest of their lives and never get all heads. But what if they were tossed endlessly by someone until all became heads. Theoretically and conceptually, the coins could be tossed forever without turning up heads. But practically, the time would come when all of the coins turned up heads.
So it is with RH. Theoretically, some would never submit to God throughout eternity. But practically with God continuing to work on them, and possibly the perfected saints as well, the time will come when every last one of them submits to the authority of the Lord.