ABSTRACT
According to Alvin Plantinga’s celebrated free will defence, although there are “sinless worlds”, it isn’t within God’s power to actualize any of them. For it is entirely possible that all suffer from transworld depravity, a curious modal/moral malady according to which if God tried to actualize a world in which all were free and always did what was right. This chapter attempts to show that if Plantinga’s defence succeeds, his theodicy fails. At the heart of Plantinga’s defence is his much-discussed notion of transworld depravity. This initially obscure concept gets unpacked in terms of essences and worlds. Plantinga is a serious, Christian pro-theist. On his view, all possible worlds are good, those in which God exists are better than those without, and the best worlds all involve incarnation and atonement. These claims constitute the basic working parts of the theodicy, that is, Plantinga’s actual explanation for the presence of evil in the world.
