A Level

‘Critically discuss the theodicy presented by John Hick” [40]

/ vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

John Hick presented his “Theodicy for Today” through “Evil and the God of Love” (1966).  Here, Hick explored the history of the so-called Irenaean Theodicy in the work of Origen and Schleiermacher as well as Irenaeus, then crafting a new version of this theodicy which he felt more suited as a response to the logical problem of evil and suffering than the traditional Augustinian Theodicy given the atrocities of the mid 20th Century.  While Hick’s theodicy is persuasive, it does not provide a complete defence of God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence. 

Firstly, Hick adapted Origen’s idea that human beings were created in God’s image but with the potential to grow into His likeness through a life that is a “schoolroom for the soul”.  While he rejected the “exegetically dubious” distinction between image and likeness in the Hebrew – as this is more probably designed for emphasis in the original poetry than intended to make two separate points – he argued that there is truth in the claim that human beings exist on two levels, as BIOS – sophisticated animals – and as ZOE – morally and spiritually unique beings.  Hick took Keats’ phrase to argue that our lives are a “vale of soul-making”, through suffering we grow and develop from BIOS towards ZOE, meaning that suffering (and Hick includes others’ suffering as well as our own) has a purpose and is spiritually good for us, so plausibly part of the Best Possible World that an Omnipotent, Omnibenevolent God would have created.  Later, Richard Swinburne agreed with Hick, presenting his own Irenaean Theodicy which also contended that we learn from suffering, becoming better people and more able to use the freedom that God has given us.  Swinburne likened God to a parent, allowing his children to suffer in order that they might learn to make decisions independently.  This aspect of Hick’s Irenaean Theodicy seems persuasive, because there is no doubt that people do become stronger and more spiritual as a result of the suffering which is an inescapable part of life, however Hick fails to account for the extent of suffering, which most people would agree is gratuitous.  For example, William Rowe identified suffering which could and should have been eliminated by an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God, suggesting that innocent child suffering (such as in Rowe’s example of Sue) disproves the existence of such a God.  Ivan Karamazov would surely have agreed that the degree to which young children suffer is far beyond anything that could be proportionate to the ends of helping us develop spiritually.  While Hick appealed to the “epistemic distance” between God and human beings and while Swinburne agreed that we are in no position to know that God could have prevented such suffering without causing or permitting something worse, retreating into mystery at the first sign of difficulty is not an adequate philosophical response.  Because of this, Hick’s theodicy fails to defend God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence in the light of his allowing gratuitous, innocent, child suffering.

Secondly, Hick reasoned that God might be justified in allowing some people to suffer more than others – even if some people were broken and afflicted and so unable to develop spiritually as a result – if he provided eternal recompense for unjust suffering after death.  For example, God could be both omnipotent and omnibenevolent, even if some children die embittered and afflicted after suffering years of bone cancer if God made up for it in heaven.  Nevertheless, this is unconvincing because there is no adequate theory of what heaven could be like in order to justify God in this way.  In “Death and the Afterlife” 1978 Hick recognised the problems with standard Christian doctrine in that it relies on future physical resurrection, which is neither scientifically plausible nor fair to those whose bodies are either extremely young, extremely old or dispersed/destroyed.  Instead, Hick chose to focus on St Paul’s teaching, which suggests that resurrection is spiritual before the soul is re-clothed in a spiritual body, which is then rewarded or punished appropriately.  St Paul wrote that “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable… it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” 1 Corinthians 15:42, 44 Nevertheless, as Hick later realised, this account of life after death is problematic because it relies on the soul being separable from the body, albeit temporarily, when there is almost no evidence supporting substance dualism.  It also relies on all our human identity residing in an immaterial “soul”, so that “I” could be re-created into a new body and what happened to that body would still serve as just reward and punishment, incentive and disincentive.  Hick developed his famous Replica Theory to defend the possibility that a person could still be a person despite a break in the spatio-temporal-continuity that philosophers like Derek Parfit rely on to determine identity. Yet so much of human identity relates to our body that even if we accept that a replica could still be me (and ignore the possibilities of multiple replicas etc) this is difficult to accept.  Would our spiritual body be male or female, heterosexual or homosexual, old or young, Black or Asian?  If no, then how can a reward applied to some idealised and unrecognisable form really recompense for my unjust suffering… but if yes, then the spiritual body theory has few advantages over physical resurrection theory because inequalities and injustices would persist after death and heaven would not be an eternal or perfect reward but rather an endurance test which would do little but prolong the memories of suffering in this life in another location.  In the end, Hick abandoned replica theory and belief in spiritual bodies and came to believe in a form of reincarnation, showing that he didn’t believe that this aspect of his own theodicy was convincing.  It follows that because Hick’s theodicy fails to explain how an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God could make up for unjust suffering after death, it fails to provide a complete defence against the logical problem of evil.

On the other hand, Hick’s theodicy is more persuasive than the classical Augustinian Theodicy.  It does not rely on a literal interpretation of Genesis 2-3, avoids focusing on Original Sin and allows for evil to be real and not only “privation boni”, all of which make Hick’s approach more palatable in the 20th Century.  Further, Hick draws on modern science in his account of how we develop from BIOS into ZOE and in his beliefs about life after death and the impossibility of standard physical resurrection, which makes his theodicy more acceptable to a broader audience than standard Christian doctrine.  Nevertheless, a big weakness of Hick’s approach is that it fails to account for the suffering of animals.  As Rowe pointed out, the suffering of animals like the fawn he used in his example is endemic in nature.  The whole evolutionary process, which Hick accepts as characterising creation, depends upon the intense and gratuitous suffering of life-forms who have no possibility of growing or developing spiritually as a result, or of experiencing a heavenly recompense.  Hick seems to ignore and then sidestepped this question completely.  While Swinburne confronted the issue of animal suffering and included it in his version of the Irenaean Theodicy, he did no more than to speculate that animals might suffer less intensely and/or learn something from suffering, showing the inadequacy of this type of theodicy with respect to animal suffering.  Another weakness of Hick’s approach is that it defends a very limited version of omnipotence in God if he had to use suffering – and such intense suffering – as the means for human beings to grow from BIOS into ZOE.  As JL Mackie had already pointed out in “Evil and Omnipotence” (1955) theodicies which suggest that we learn from suffering assume that God could not have designed a better and more efficient way for humans to learn or created human beings with no need to learn in the first place. A God with such limitations would not reasonably be described as omnipotent.  While Hick is far from being alone in limiting God’s omnipotence to being able to do what is logically possible, Mackie’s objection to his theodicy is reasonable. 

In conclusion, Hick’s theodicy is more persuasive than many older theodicies, but does not provide such a complete defence of God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence as even St Augustine did.  Hick’s God may be benevolent, but He is extremely limited in power.  Further, while Hick’s theodicy gains strength from avoiding Biblical literalism, in moving away from the Bible and Christian doctrine in some respects, it is also weakened by not being acceptable to the mainstream Church.  Also, Hick fails to explain the extent and unfair distribution of suffering or provide an account of the afterlife that would serve as “eschatological justification”, making up for unfairness in this life, both of which leave this theodicy open to criticism. 

RE for REal… or what’s in a name?

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Last week the “RE for REal” report was launched and attracted some comment in the press… comment which merged with that generated by the High Court’s ruling that Nicky Morgan’s justification for the exclusion of Humanism from the new GCSE Religious Studies was based on an error of law and by the British Humanist Association‘s attempts to convince people that that meant that the new GCSE would have to be re-written to include Humanism.

The politicisation of teaching about Religion and belief in schools has reached fever-pitch and threatens to destroy what is left of the subject, when schools are pushed to the very limits by real terms cuts, a corrosive culture of blame and a tsunami of paperwork generated by the well-meaning initiatives of politicians whose knowledge of ordinary schools is either limited to their own experience in the 1970s or totally non-existent.

Religious Education is not protected by the National Curriculum or clear standards in OfSTED inspection.  The Religious Studies GCSE is not part of the so-called English Baccalaureate (and has no prospect of becoming part of it either), the A Level is not a so-called Facilitating Subject, trained teachers are in short supply and so (as OfSTED confirmed) the quality of teaching is often questionable.  Even experts disagree about the purpose of Religious Education and Religious Studies in schools and confusion about what should be happening in the classroom is apparent from the huge variety of different names that teachers have given to their subject, whether that might be to disguise what it is that they are caught up in and hide it from students, parents, colleagues or even themselves… or to impose their own agenda on what might otherwise be blank space on the timetable.

It is no use denying that teaching about Religion and belief is in an extremely vulnerable position and is likely to be shunted out of the curriculum at KS4 and KS5 and then, in time, at KS3…

perhaps to be replaced by the odd collapsed curriculum day, visiting speaker or trip to a museum coordinated by a harassed Geography teacher?

It seems a tragedy that many young peoples’ opportunities to reflect on some of the biggest questions that affect humanity, opportunities which can be right at the heart of quality education, might disappear because of poisonous competition between vested-interest-groups and the desire to meet fleeting financial targets.

So, (how) can we get out of this mess?

The RE for REal report makes some very sensible suggestions but I can’t see that (even in the unlikely event that the DfE adopted the report, implemented and funded its recommendations) we would see a big improvement in the situation in schools.  The one glimmer of hope that I see in the report is Recommendation 7

“GCSE Religious Studies should remain as an optional subject for schools, and consideration should be given to clearly demarcating the boundary between academic study of the real religious landscape, and other religion and belief learning associated with citizenship and SMSC (spiritual, moral, social and cultural development) outside of the GCSE.”

There are hints of this issue in others of the recommendations, and

I wish that the authors of the report had recognised that it is the confusion over the purpose of the subject in schools which needs sorting out before the content of each Key Stage or the constitution of the panel who might decide it.  

To me it seems obvious that there are two distinct subjects being taught in our curriculum.

  • RELIGIOUS EDUCATION is mandated and protected by statute, must reflect the make-up of the population – whether locally or nationally – and aims to increase religious literacy, tolerance and cross-community engagement in British society.
  • RELIGIOUS STUDIES is an optional academic subject which prepares students to embark on undergraduate courses in subjects related to Theology and Religious Studies and aims to build the critical skills that prospective Arts or Humanities undergraduates will need to earn their II(i).

While both RE and RS involve teaching about Religion, their aims and approaches are different and arguably, to some extent, incompatible.  

For a few examples…

  1. The depth that is required for meaningful RS pulls against the breadth that is required to do justice to the aims of RE.
  2. The focus on quantities of factual knowledge about multiple religious traditions in RE can pull against the need to build skills in critical evaluation – and question the very nature of “factual knowledge” – in RS.
  3. The need for critical engagement in RS can pull against the need to promote tolerance of unreasoned belief in RE.

To use an analogy… (like RE) Citizenship is compulsory (at least in theory), but nobody would doubt that it is very different from A Level Politics, let alone A Level History.  One is designed to ensure that young people understand “British Values”, how to vote and how the police work in their area while the other demands academic engagement with political theory and the critical evaluation of different hypotheses concerning the relationship between political actions and events.  People wouldn’t take kindly to a partisan DfE determining the content of Politics or History in order to promote its own political agenda – we have seen the outcry generated by relatively minor changes to A Level Politics recently, or when Gove suggested reinstating “Our Island Story” as a GCSE text in History!

Why do people just accept the DfE rewriting GCSE and A Level Religious Studies in consultation with religious groups and experts in Religious Education whose experience is predominantly with KS2&3 – while completely excluding academic Theologians and teachers who specialise in teaching academic Religious Studies in the 14-19 age-range?  Some of those who were consulted by the DfE showed how out of touch they are by talking about how GCSE RE would change – when it does not and has never existed – and sadly, this terminology started to be adopted in the press only adding to the confusion.

As I have suggested before, I think that real improvement in the situation would be signalled by the recognition that GCSE and A Level Religious Studies have little to do with fulfilling a school’s statutory obligations to provide Religious Education.  

The authors of RE for REal are absolutely right that we need clarity in terms of the law and how it should be interpreted.  It needs to be understood, for once and for all, that an optional GCSE (and A Level) course in Religious Studies cannot be understood to fulfil statutory obligations to provide Religious Education to all students in full-time education.  Either the law needs to change so that the obligation ceases at age 14 or provision for RE in the 14-19 bracket needs to be made through the core curriculum, alongside PSHCE perhaps.

Certainly, this clarity would trigger a dramatic decline in numbers sitting GCSE Religious Studies (and to some extent A Level Religious Studies) examinations – but it would mean that we could restore academic rigour and relevance to HE TRS courses to the examination specifications, which would remove the hobble that has been the compulsory focus on a very minority area of study at HE level which students are not particularly interested in to the exclusion of richer and more engaging aspects of the subject-area which lend themselves to building the requisite skills for higher level academic study.

It might be that changing the name of one, or both, of Religious Education and Religious Studies would help to make the point that they are not synonyms, but we cannot assume that a name-change will do the job on its own.  

In the 1970s schools changed from Divinity, Scripture Knowledge or Religious Instruction to Religious Education… and soon after the government caught up in 1988 they pushed to change again to Philosophy and Ethics. Nevertheless, the problem did not go away.

“What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet…”

Romeo and Juliet (Act II, Scene ii)

As I see it, we need to think more deeply and well about the nature and purpose our subject and not get distracted by names, the constitution of national panels, lists of facts that will probably be ignored or fanciful requirements to study cutting-edge theory and data that 90% of teachers have no knowledge or understanding of themselves.