The Metaphysics of Modality and Plantinga's Free Will Defense: A Tension

Very rough draft.

An aspect of Plantinga's free will defense (FWD) -- in particular, his doctrine of possible universal transworld depravity (PUTD) -- has been bothering me for a good while. The worry can be put in terms of a dilemma: Either PUTD assumes the distribution of possible worlds is prior to God's will, or it assumes the distribution is posterior to it. But if PUTD relies on a distribution of possible worlds that's prior to his will (as with, say, straight Platonism), then sure, it might, for aught we know, turn out that God's hands are tied with respect to the distribution of creaturely essences across the space of possible worlds, and that distribution includes at least one world in which every creaturely essence is transworld depraved. But that assumption leads to other problems that are costly to traditional monotheists. First, it's a weird take on omnipotence: There are a lot more impossible things that we antecedently thought were possible (e.g., some actualizable creaturely essences or other at every possible world who always freely choose to do what is right of their own accord). The threat of modal skepticism looms, and in its train, skepticism about the possibility premise in Plantinga's modal ontological argument. Second, it's incompatible with Plantinga's acceptance of theistic conceptualism. Third, the existence of a distribution of possible worlds and creaturely essences that are prior to God's will (as abstract possibilia lurking in platonic space) seems incompatible with the aseity-sovereignty doctrine. 

On the other hand, suppose the distribution of possible worlds, and the distribution of creaturely essences at each world, is posterior to God's will (as seems to be the case with theistic conceptualism about abstracta, including possible worlds). Then an undercutting defeater looms for Plantinga's PUTD, and thereby his version of the FWD. For then it seems that God could've generated the space of possibilities such that PUTD is false (e.g., by generating a distribution of the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom so that it conforms to a pattern of intraworld plenitude, rather than one that conforms to one of interworld plenitude), in which case PUTD is false, in which case Plantinga's version of the FWD fails and the logical problem of evil comes roaring back.

So dilemma: Either: (i) reject theistic conceptualism, accept modal skepticism, and reject the aseity-sovereignty doctrine), or (ii) reject Plantinga's FWD. Unsavory choices all around for traditional theist.