 First, he may argue, even if the free will defense does not violate God’s omnipotence, it still violates his sovereignty. If God were fully sovereign over the universe his rule would be complete. All that occurs would be under his direct control, down to the smallest detail. According to the free will defense, however, this is not so. Rather, as we have just seen, proponents of this kind of theodicy insist that some of what goes on in the world is not under God’s control, but under that of his creatures. To be sure, God need not have created free beings, and when they engage in sinful willing he can always thwart their ends by manipulating natural causes. But he cannot stop them from sinning (or, for that matter, from willing well), for both of these lie with the will itself. So in creating free creatures God relinquishes part of his sovereignty over the universe (Mackie 1955, 209–10; Flint 1998, 84–85). Furthermore, unless God regularly interferes with his creatures achieving their own objectives—that is, unless he deprives them of a meaningful and efficacious freedom—his own objectives in creating the universe are likely to be thwarted. However great a good it may be to have in the universe creatures who exercise libertatian freedom, this would seem a high and unseemly price for an otherwise sovereign God to pay for their existence.