Theodicies

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

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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. 

Critically evaluate St Augustine’s theodicy.

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St Augustine is often blamed for bringing the problems of evil and suffering to the forefront in Christianity.  Certainly, responding to the problems was a major theme in his writings – as well they might be given his own experiences of persecution.  Yet in fact the tension between the Christian concept of God and the existence of evil and suffering in the world He created was apparent well before St Augustine was born.  The Nicene Creed (325AD) affirmed the omnipotence of “the Father Almighty” and the full divinity of Jesus Christ.  The doctrine of the Trinity, developed in response to Christological controversies such as Arianism, made the logical problems of Evil & suffering inescapable for Christians. St Augustine is best understood as the first very substantial, systematic attempt to resolve these problems on behalf of the orthodox Church.   Of course, the logical problem of evil was well-known to Greek Philosophy.  Epicurus wrote “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.  Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”  Later, David Hume claimed that Christian belief rests upon an “inconsistent triad” of beliefs and JL Mackie went further, claiming that the co-beliefs God exists and is omnipotent and omniscient, God exists and is omnibenevolent and Evil exists are “positively irrational.”  St Augustine attempted to defend God in several different ways.  In the 1990s American Philosopher Robert Adams listed four separate ways to approach theodicy and it is fair to say that Augustine tried all of them.  Given the constraints of time, this critical evaluation will focus on the three best-known of Augustine’s approaches, namely his definition of evil as “privatio boni”, his free-will defence and his doctrine of original sin.  In relation to these, it seems that St Augustine’s theodicy was rationally successful (at least when taken as a whole) it ultimately yielded a pastorally unsatisfying God.

St Augustine sought an answer to the problems of evil and suffering for a long time.  Unconvinced by the efforts of Christian leaders he engaged with Manichaeism and then the writings of the Platonists before eventually returning to Christianity.  It is fitting, therefore, that St Augustine’s most important theodicy is rooted in Greek Philosophy, which defined goodness in terms of actuality and fulfilment of purpose and evil in terms of potentiality and falling short of purpose. For St Augustine, evil is privatio boni and has no existence in itself.  Evil is parasitical and can only affect things that in themselves are good.  The extent to which something fulfils its nature and God’s purpose is good and the extent to which it falls short and retains potential it is evil.  All created things move, change and are contingent on other things therefore all are affected by evil to some extent.  God is the only wholly good being, unaffected by evil because, being outside time and space, fully actual and necessary, God cannot fall short and has no potential.  In this world-view, the problem of evil shifts from being about why God created evil things to why God created anything when its existence would necessarily entail being affected by evil to some extent.  This, Augustine answers by arguing that God cannot be held responsible for creating something which has no existence in itself and by arguing that the goodness in creation greatly outweighs the evil within it.  Of course, the first point is semantics and the second is a subjective judgement.  For Christians affected by horrendous evils – whether natural or moral – neither explanation is likely to be pastorally satisfying.  People do not pray to a wholly simple, necessary being… and it is difficult to square the Bible with such a being either.  Put bluntly, the parent of a terminally ill child is not going to be comforted by St Augustine’s “privatio boni” theodicy, however philosophically brilliant it might be.  This shows that St Augustine’s theodicy, although rationally successful, yielded a pastorally unsatisfying God.

St Augustine’s Free Will Defence is probably the best known of his theodicies.  The work of Alvin Plantinga has re-awakened scholarly interest in it in recent decades.  Free-will is intuitively appealing and fits beautifully with the Biblical narrative, which seeks to blame human beings for the horrors visited on them by the creation God supposedly controls and to use this as a reason to worship Him.  Nevertheless, this theodicy remains philosophically unconvincing. As JL Mackie pointed out in his famous essay “Evil and Omnipotence”, the God of the Free Will defence is limited and far from being the omnipotent being that the Creeds claim He must be.  It seems that God either CANNOT or WILL NOT create a world in which significantly free beings always choose to do right and is subservient to the laws of logic. St. Augustine (and later Plantinga) assumes incompatibilism without arguing for it.   If as St Luke and St Matthew affirm “anything is possible with God”, why can’t he create free beings AND determine (or at least limit) the outcomes?  Christian Philosophers of Religion have tried to extricate St Augustine from this mess.  St Thomas Aquinas and later Descartes both tried to argue that God is limited by logic only within this-world and that (for all we know) our omnipotent God could have created a different world in which free beings are compatible with determined outcomes.  We can only infer from the existence of this world that it must at least be part of what Richard Swinburne called the best-possible-world type – because an omnipotent God would only create such – and be satisfied on this basis that the best possible world must contain evil & suffering, that it must be better than it would be without it…  This line of argument is philosophically inadequate because it is circular.  This world suggests that God cannot be omnipotent but because God is omnipotent we must accept that this world is the best possible.  Not very convincing, at least when the Free-Will Defence is taken in isolation. 

In addition, St Augustine extended His free-will defence argument to a broader critique of Human Nature which sought to show that human beings deserve whatever natural – or moral – punishment they receive in this world.  For Augustine, the story of the Fall in Genesis 2-3 suggests that human beings fell from grace not individually but collectively and that we all inherit sin from Adam because we were all “seminally present” in him when He betrayed God in Eden.  St Augustine did not invent the idea of original sin, but he used it as a major part of his theodicy and as his main way of explaining apparently innocent suffering such as infant mortality.  For St Augustine there is no such thing as innocent suffering.  God is just and justly punishes the guilty – including infants who bear the stain of original sin.  Christ’s atoning sacrifice and the sacrament of baptism offers evidence that God is good and offers those who believe a chance to be redeemed and saved to eternal life.  For St. Augustine, God’s justice and God’s mercy is amply defended through his Doctrine of Original Sin.  Nevertheless, St Augustine’s approach is pastorally unsatisfying.  Why would a good God punish an unbaptised baby with all the horrors of cancer or starvation to satisfy His vengeance for the sin of Adam… in eating an apple?  Can St Augustine – who generally approached Biblical interpretation with such humility – really have taken the ancient and troubling story of the fall so very literally?  It is not surprising that atheists find this argument distasteful and even ridiculous.  Muslims and Jews reject Augustine’s approach and uphold the innocence of infants, despite Augustine’s claims to have seen evidence of their corruption in twins fighting over their mother’s milk.  Again St Augustine’s theodicy, although arguably rationally successful as a whole, yields a pastorally unsatisfying God.

Clearly, St Augustine’s theodicies are more convincing when taken together than when examined in isolation.  The philosophical strength of seeing evil as privatio boni does something to offset the shortcomings of the free-will defence and the pastoral strength of free-will tempers the doctrine of original sin, yet the fact that St Augustine had to have so many attempts at defending God against charges of creating or allowing evil suggests that he himself remained unconvinced.  In the Enchiridion, written towards the end of St Augustine’s life c.420AD, Augustine confronted the reality of the situation, writing “Nothing, therefore, happens unless the Omnipotent wills it to happen. He either allows it to happen or he actually causes it to happen.”  It seems that St Augustine was not unaware of the shortcomings of his own theodicies and he had to fall back on faith and prayer in the end.

In conclusion, although St Augustine’s theodicy was rationally successful (at least when taken as a whole) it ultimately yielded a pastorally unsatisfying God.  Christians have struggled with this ever since.  There is no way to acquit God of all charges when it comes to having created or at least allowed evil and suffering, and the only possible response is to pray for understanding and continued faith.  This is the message at the heart of the book of Job.  As Holocaust-survivor Elie Weisel remarked,

“I was there when they put God on trial… at the end they used the word “chayev” rather than guilty.  It means “he owes us something”.  Then we went to pray.”

Irenaeus successfully defends God against charges of creating or allowing evil and suffering. Discuss (40)

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The problem of evil and suffering continues to trouble all those with conventional Christian faith.  If God is, as Christian doctrine suggests, both omnipotent and omnibenevolent then why would evil and suffering exist within His creation?  David Hume pointed out an “inconsistent triad” of beliefs underpinning Christian faith and in the 1980s JL Mackie went so far as to call anyone basing faith on the propositions

  • P1: God exists and is omnipotent (and omniscient)
  • P2: God exists and is omnibenevolent
  • P3: Evil exists

“positively irrational.”  Because of this it is of the utmost importance for Christians – at least those with propositional faith – to address the problem of evil and suffering and defend God against the charge of creating or allowing either.  Such defences have traditionally been called theodicies, from the Greek words for God and defence.  One attracting attention in the past few decades is the Irenaean theodicy, as developed by John Hick and more recently by Richard Swinburne.  However, while the Irenaean theodicy might offer Christians ways of reconciling their faith with the real experience of suffering, Irenaeus’ original arguments offer little to the modern believer because they are unsuccessful in defending the concept of God that most Christians uphold. 

Back in the 2nd Century AD at a time of persecution and pogrom St Irenaeus was one of the first Christian writers to attempt a theodicy and explain why God would allow good people to suffer along with – and often more acutely than – sinners.  In Against Heresies, published around 186AD, Irenaeus argued that human beings were created by God in an infantile state and had to grow and develop through experiencing suffering, to fulfil their God-given natures.  In Book IV Chapter 38, Irenaeus explained how

“created things must be inferior to Him who created them, from the very fact of their later origin; for it was not possible for things recently created to have been uncreated.”

It seems that Irenaeus conceived of a God whose omnipotence does not include the ability to do what is logically impossible.  Atheist philosophers like JL Mackie would dispute this and ask why an all-powerful God could not create a world in which the laws of logic ran differently, especially if doing so would make the world a better place?  Of course, Irenaeus would not be alone in arguing that God could not create a world that is so substantially different from this one. St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas would both agree that because God’s creation must have been single and simple and this world exists it follows that God would not have created multiple different types of world.  Further, if God is perfect it follows that God would only have created worlds of the best-possible type and as this world exists, this world must be of this type.  Nevertheless, the atheist objection to the supposed compatibility between God’s omnipotence and his being constrained by the laws of logic still seems persuasive.

Irenaeus continued by arguing that as mankind depends on God, human beings are contingent and necessarily less than perfect.  It is fair to say that this point betrays Irenaeus’ anthropomorphic understanding of God and His act of creation.  He wrote…

“Because, as these things are of later date, so are they infantile; so are they unaccustomed to, and unexercised in, perfect discipline.”

For Irenaeus, God’s creations are like God’s children and are affected by the type of imperfections that we know that children are affected by.  While this is appealing on one level, it is difficult to maintain the idea that the atrocious suffering of the 20th century could be justified as consequences from childish mistakes or opportunities to develop resilience.

To push the analogy that Irenaeus suggests, what sort of parent would allow the Holocaust to happen… whatever message it might send to their children about making sensible choices? Surely there are limits.  Irenaeus has difficulty in accounting for the extent of suffering in the world without supposing that inequalities in our experiences could be made right through the afterlife.  John Hick later develops this aspect of Irenaeus’ thinking, but even in his account it is difficult to accept that the appalling and apparently pointless suffering of a young child with an agonising cancer or animals undergoing vivisection can be justified as part of some lesson that God is trying to teach people. Any amount of heavenly bliss would be inadequate – if the person or animal in heaven remembered their former agonies then an eternity in heaven might be a continuance of their suffering and if their memories were erased then it is difficult to see how heaven could be any sort of mitigation for the unjust pointless suffering that individuals experience.  If a wrongly-convicted prisoner was told that somebody else would be compensated for their suffering – or that they would receive compensation only after they had advanced dementia and could not connect the compensation with the miscarriage of justice – they would hardly be satisfied.

Irenaeus argued…

“For as it certainly is in the power of a mother to give strong food to her infant, [but she does not do so], as the child is not yet able to receive more substantial nourishment; so also it was possible for God Himself to have made man perfect from the first, but man could not receive this [perfection], being as yet an infant.”

The implication is that God could have created human beings perfect but chose not to because human beings could not cope with the weight of perfection.  This makes little sense.  If it was within God’s power to make man perfect from the start, should it not be within God’s power to create man with the capacity to receive perfection?  God is supposed to be omnipotent and not just like any human mother. Either God is as limited as anybody, in which case He is probably not worthy of worship, or God is culpable for the consequences of creating substandard human beings.

John Hick, in his “Evil and the God of Love” (1966) argued that Irenaeus’ writings offer the germ of a Theodicy which might satisfy modern Christians better than the traditional Augustinian Theodicy.  It might be argued that Hick’s development of Irenaeus’ ideas shows that they might offer a successful defence of God against charges of creating or allowing evil and suffering.  However, Hick’s “Irenaean Theodicy” draws on Origen and Schleiermacher as much as on Irenaeus and anyone who takes the trouble to read Against Heresies for themselves will see the distance between what Irenaeus argues and what Hick’s Irenaean Theodicy argues.   Irenaeus focusses on God’s justice and the idea that human beings deserve any amount of hell-fire and is far from being the gentle, comforting writer that Hick was.  For Irenaeus, life is less a “vale of soul making” than an annealing process, the human body being like iron quenched in fire and icy water to make it hard. In its original form, it is probably fair to say that Irenaeus’ Theodicy is at least as abhorrent as Augustine’s to the modern reader.

In conclusion, it seems that Irenaeus fails to defend God from charges of creating or allowing evil and suffering.  Firstly, unlike Augustine, Irenaeus leaves the nature of evil open and fails to head off the argument that God actively created evil.  Secondly, Irenaeus offers no convincing explanation for the inequality in our experience of suffering or for its pointless and unjustifiable extremes.  John Hick had a good go at reawakening interest in Irenaeus, but that interest is unlikely to survive the process of going beyond Hick’s account of Irenaeus to the original work.

Further Reading

Irenaeus: Against Heresies (New Advent)