ABSTRACT
Alvin Plantinga’s ‘Free Will Defense’ is intended to establish that it is logically possible both that God exists and that evil exists. Each creature that exists in any possible world has a unique property E such that any existing thing that has that property simply is that creature and any existing thing that lacks that property isn’t that creature. A creaturely essence, being a property, exists in every possible world. For properties are necessarily existing entities. Given certain moral and metaphysical assumptions, Plantinga’s argument for this conclusion is fairly compelling. Plantinga’s celebrated free will defense is an ambitious project. Not content merely to display defects in arguments that purport to show the incompatibility of God exists and evil exists, he proposes to establish the compatibility of God exists and evil exists by finding a third proposition that is compatible with God exists and which in conjunction with God exists entails that evil exists.
