Looking on this site in many answers involving the problem of evil I see affirmations of belief in free-will.
According to Calvinist Mark Hausam, who presented a paper at a conference on Mormonism, the assertion that God gave us free-will and that God created everything ex-nihilo, beliefs that he asserts are held by many evangelicals, are incompatible. He argues:
Creation ex nihilo implies a radical metaphysical dependence upon God, one that logically guarantees that the creature will not be independent from God or be capable of independent contributions to reality in the ways envisioned in Arminian thought. In fact, creation ex nihilo logically leads directly to Calvinistic determinism.
Hausam continues to argue that Arminian thought is not all that dissimilar from Mormonism. Mormonism explicitly rejects the notion of creation ex-nihilo and as such resolves the problem of evil as well as the paradox: If God created everything, how is our will independent of him? He argues that Arminians, in order to believe in our having free-will, must reject the concept of ex-nihilo creation as well.
My question is directed to those who hold both these views. I am not entirely convinced that these views are irreconcilable as argued, but I cannot produce a good counter-argument. How do you resolve the paradox presented here by Hausam?
Note: I recognize one way to argue this is that God, being all-powerful, created our free wills out of nothing, but this is still the same paradox. How can God determine (create) something that is undetermined? (free-will). If you could present a logical argument for this view, I would gladly hear it.