How far reaching are God's powers?

[Angrboda]

That's rather interesting.  I must ask how that squares with our being made in the image of God if he possesses such a fundamental attribute as free will and we don't?

It applies because God can't sin.  It would seem a consequence of Plantinga's argument then that God's choices have no moral significance, including Christ's sacrifice.  Do you see it now?

I realize now that I may not have answered you clearly/correctly. Just because we don't have free will now doesn't mean we will never have free will. Once we are One with Jesus Christ, our will is free, being aligned with His will, which is free.

And I'm not sure about how Plantinga's argument is framed. Does he apply his moral choices of significance to God the same as human beings? If so, why? We're not the same as God, not in the same boat at all, really. Two completely different situations I think.

What might God’s reason be for allowing evil and suffering to occur? Alvin Plantinga (1974, 1977) has offered the most famous contemporary philosophical response to this question. He suggests the following as a possible morally sufficient reason:

"(MSR1) God’s creation of persons with morally significant free will is something of tremendous value. God could not eliminate much of the evil and suffering in this world without thereby eliminating the greater good of having created persons with free will with whom he could have relationships and who are able to love one another and do good deeds."

(MSR1) claims that God allows some evils to occur that are smaller in value than a greater good to which they are intimately connected. If God eliminated the evil, he would have to eliminate the greater good as well. God is pictured as being in a situation much like that of Mrs. Jones: she allowed a small evil (the pain of a needle) to be inflicted upon her child because that pain was necessary for bringing about a greater good (immunization against polio). Before we try to decide whether (MSR1) can justify God in allowing evil and suffering to occur, some of its key terms need to be explained.

To begin with, (MSR1) presupposes the view of free will known as “libertarianism”:

"(22) Libertarianism [is] the view that a person is free with respect to a given action if and only if that person is both free to perform that action and free to refrain from performing that action; in other words, that person is not determined to perform or refrain from that action by any prior causal forces."

Although the term “libertarianism” isn’t exactly a household name, the view it expresses is commonly taken to be the average person’s view of free will. It is the view that causal determinism is false, that—unlike robots or other machines—we can make choices that are genuinely free.

According to Plantinga, libertarian free will is a morally significant kind of free will. An action is morally significant just when it is appropriate to evaluate that action from a moral perspective (for example, by ascribing moral praise or blame). Persons have morally significant free will if they are able to perform actions that are morally significant. Imagine a possible world where God creates creatures with a very limited kind of freedom. Suppose that the persons in this world can only choose good options and are incapable of choosing bad options. So, if one of them were faced with three possible courses of action—two of which were morally good and one of which was morally bad—this person would not be free with respect to the morally bad option. That is, that person would not be able to choose any bad option even if they wanted to. Our hypothetical person does, however, have complete freedom to decide which of the two good courses of action to take. Plantinga would deny that any such person has morally significant free will. People in this world always perform morally good actions, but they deserve no credit for doing so. It is impossible for them to do wrong. So, when they do perform right actions, they should not be praised. It would be ridiculous to give moral praise to a robot for putting your soda can in the recycle bin rather than the trash can, if that is what it was programmed to do. Given the program running inside the robot and its exposure to an empty soda can, it’s going to take the can to the recycle bin. It has no choice about the matter. Similarly, the people in the possible world under consideration have no choice about being good. Since they are pre-programmed to be good, they deserve no praise for it.

(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Plantinga didn't apply his concept to God, but it would seem to follow that if a human is not worthy of moral praise or blame if the only choices available to them are morally good ones, that God is therefore not deserving of moral praise or blame for his actions either, as God is restricted to only making good choices as well. If that's true, then God is punishing people for not acknowledging the value of Christ's sacrifice when, in fact, Christ's sacrifice has no moral value. It would be like punishing people from not praising a thermostat for turning on the heat. God's punishing us would be immoral, which is inconsistent with a good God.