It doesn't avoid modal collapses, and it doesn't need to. Modal collapse is implied in every honest, classical treatment of the matter. If the will and decree of God is eternal and immutable, part of his very essence, then it is necessarily the case that God's decree could not have been otherwise, and is necessary, at least as far as his essence is concerned. This isn't really a problem for the Reformed. We have always said that God has immutably decreed all things, including the salvation of the elect. What we need to avoid is making God dependent on creatures, so that anything in creation necessitates anything in God. God is absolutely free from creation; no created thing constrains or compels him; only his own will. If God does as he wills, that is hardly servile, even if the will is immutable.
Most Reformed theologians deny necessitarianism (e.g. Richard Muller's
Post Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. III, pg. 412ff). I used to affirm necessitarianism but have abandoned it for the very reason that I think it entails what you say we need to avoid:
Consider what it would mean for God and creation to be ontologically distinct yet for the latter to be necessitated by the former. This would be analogous to a particular understanding of the doctrine of eternal generation - which, even if untrue, highlights the point. If the Father necessarily generates the Son, the Father and Son would be mutually dependent upon one another. Obviously, the Son would depend upon the Father, being necessitated by Him. In turn, however, the Father could be who He is ("Father") without a Son.
So, too,
a necessitated creation would mean that the Creator and creature are mutually dependent such that God cannot be who He is ("Creator") without a creation. If necessitarianism is true, then God not only needs to create to be Creator, He needs to be Creator. Creation is no longer contingent, so God as Creator isn't a contingent predicate either. Indeed, it's essential or necessary that He be Creator. There is, then, a real dependence on creation in order for one to be able to refer to God as what He essentially and necessarily must be - Creator.
The point needn't be that the Father-Son relationship is exactly the same as the Creator-creature relationship. One could maintain (as I did and do) that the Father and Son are of the same nature, whereas God and creation are not. In both cases, however, necessitation entails mutual dependency, and this is what changed my mind.
[Side note: on a theistic-contingentarian position, God is still the Creator, but such is not essential to who He is. There is no mutual dependency, guarding divine sufficiency. On theistic-necessitarianism, on the other hand, there is no apparent reason why being "Creator" would be any less integral to the essence of God than any commonly regarded divine attribute. Indeed, perhaps this line of reasoning begins to show that Karofsky's reductive monism does follow from necessitarianism (and, hence, why Christians must disagree with Karofsky).]
In short, for a Christian, theistic-necessitarianism is caught on the horns of a dilemma: 1) a pantheistic concession (such as a theistic-Karofskyan necessitarian would make) would salvage the doctrine of divine sufficiency at the expense of the Creator-creature distinction; 2) on the other hand,
a concession that there is a mutual dependency between an ontologically distinct Creator and creation would salvage the doctrine of the Creator-creature distinction at the expense of divine sufficiency. (
https://unapologetica.blogspot.com/2022/07/necessitarianism-and-eternal-omniscience.html)
Nevertheless, the "mind of God" is generally understood in classical theism to be singular, just like his will. "For who has known the mind of the Lord?" 1 Cor. 2:16. I don't think it's helpful or wise to speculate on the distinct persons having distinct thoughts, except perhaps metaphorically.
I would not say it is clear that the pre-incarnate Son literally prays or speaks to the Father, any more than God literally has hands or feet.
Well, I suppose here is where you and I would disagree. I would argue that Paul is quite consistent in referring to the Father as "God" and the Son as "Lord" in 1 Corinthians 1-2. You left off the last part of the question in 1 Corinthians 2:16, viz. "...so as to instruct
him?" Paul is talking about the mind of a person, not an essence. I would also point out that Paul talks about the thoughts of God and
persons in 2:11.
This isn't speculation, and the prayer of the Son to His Father is no metaphor: it's a literal, historically recorded event (although I never said the pre-incarnate Son was praying - I said that "the Son prays to His own Father
about His own, pre-incarnate person," which is a big difference). So I would argue that if a commitment to a rather abstract, philosophical view tends to deny biblical history, that is what is unhelpful or unwise.
Ok, I think I understand what you are saying. My position is that the will of God is expressed an covenantal language, from which the idea of the covenant of redemption is derived. There is one will of God, but in the language of Scripture, the Son in his divine person is said to agree to things to represent the truths that 1) while there is one will of God, that will subsists distinctly in the person of the Son, 2) that the Son willed to undertake things the Father would not in the plan of redemption, and 3) that the Son did so freely. All of those truths are compatible with classical theism.
The bold is probably as close as we have come to agreeing. But this would mean that the Son's operations, activities, free exercises of will, etc. are not identical to those of His Father. While this would be compatible with a softer view of divine simplicity for which I, for example, would have more sympathy, it would not be compatible with the sort of divine simplicity to which classical theists typically hold (e.g. God is Pure Act).
