3.3.2 - Free will defence and soul-making

The Problem These Responses Answer

The problem of evil presses a simple but severe question: if God is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good, why is there evil at all?

This lesson is not about proving that God exists. It is about two ways a theist might respond once evil has been raised as an objection. Plantinga and Hick both try to show that evil need not defeat belief in God, but they do different philosophical jobs.

So the first exam skill is to match the response to the problem it is meant to answer. Plantinga is usually best understood as answering the logical problem: he aims to remove the alleged contradiction. Hick is usually best understood as offering a theodicy: he tries to explain why a loving God might make a world containing both moral and natural evil.

The shared target can be reconstructed like this:

Claim at issue: evil creates a serious challenge to classical theism.

1. P1: If God is omnipotent, God has the power to prevent evil.
2. P2: If God is omniscient, God knows about every evil.
3. P3: If God is wholly good, God wants to prevent evil unless there is a morally sufficient reason to allow it.
4. P4: Evil exists.
5. Therefore, C: either God does not exist, or God has a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil.

Hidden assumption: a perfect God would not permit evil unless permitting it served, or was inseparable from, some greater good.
Inference type: conceptual and evaluative pressure on theism; it can be developed in logical or evidential form.
Main pressure point: whether Plantinga or Hick can supply a sufficient reason, or at least a possible reason, without making God morally suspect.

This is why "free will" and "soul-making" must not be used as vague slogans. Each response has to explain exactly what kind of evil it addresses, what assumption it challenges, and what problem remains.

Plantinga's Free Will Defence

Plantinga's free will defence is a defence rather than a full theodicy. He does not need to prove that free will is God's actual reason for allowing evil. He needs to show that it is possible for God and evil to co-exist without contradiction.

The central idea is significant freedom.

If God causally determines every choice so that the person always chooses the good, the person is no longer significantly free in Plantinga's sense.

Plantinga's modal move concerns possible worlds. A possible world is a complete way reality could have been. The key point is that an omnipotent God can do whatever is logically possible, but that does not mean God can actualise any possible world involving free creatures. If a creature's action is genuinely free, then God cannot determine that action while leaving it free.

Plantinga introduces transworld depravity to make this sharper.

Plantinga's claim is not that everyone definitely suffers from this. The claim is that it is possible that every creaturely essence suffers from it. If that is possible, then it is possible that God could not create significantly free creatures who produce moral good without also permitting some moral evil.

Plantinga's free will defence reconstructed:

Claim at issue: God and moral evil are logically compatible.

1. P1: A world containing significantly free creatures capable of moral good is a great good.
2. P2: If God causally determines creatures always to choose rightly, they are not significantly free with respect to those choices.
3. P3: It is possible that every world God can actualise with significantly free creatures and moral good also contains some moral evil.
4. P4: Omnipotence does not include the power to do what is logically or metaphysically impossible.
5. Therefore, C: It is possible that God is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good, yet cannot create moral good through significantly free creatures without permitting moral evil.

Hidden assumption: significant freedom is valuable enough that a wholly good God could have a reason to create free creatures despite the risk of evil.
Inference type: modal consistency defence.
Main pressure point: whether P3 is a genuine possibility and whether significant freedom has enough value to justify the permission of moral evil.

The defence is initially attractive because it makes evil the result of creaturely misuse of freedom rather than something directly willed by God. It also explains why the demand "God should make everyone freely do the right thing" may be incoherent. If the action is made inevitable by God, it is not significantly free in the relevant sense.

Notice the modesty of the conclusion. Plantinga does not yet show that God exists, or that God probably exists, or that every actual evil has been explained. He tries to show that the set of claims "God exists" and "evil exists" is not internally inconsistent.

Issues For Plantinga

Plantinga's defence is powerful when the target is the logical problem of moral evil. Its weaknesses appear when the target shifts to natural evil, evidential evil, or the value of significant freedom.

The natural-evil issue is especially important for AQA because the specification requires both moral and natural evil. Plantinga can extend the defence by saying that it is possible natural evil is also due to free personal agency beyond human beings, or that natural evil provides occasions for courage, compassion and other moral goods. But this extension has a different feel from the moral-evil case. Human cruelty is easily connected to human freedom. Cancer, earthquakes and animal pain require extra assumptions.

The best judgement is therefore precise:

Plantinga is strong as a reply to the logical problem because a possible consistent story is enough to block contradiction.
Plantinga is weaker as a full explanation because the amount, distribution and natural forms of evil still look evidentially troubling.

This is not a failure by Plantinga's own standard. It is a warning about essay wording. If the question asks whether the logical problem is solved, Plantinga has a strong answer. If the question asks whether evil is fully explained, the defence is much less satisfying.

Hick's Soul-Making Theodicy

Hick's soul-making response is more ambitious than Plantinga's. It is a theodicy: it tries to explain why God might be justified in creating a world that contains evil and suffering.

Hick develops an Irenaean-style approach. Instead of saying that humans were created perfect and then fell from perfection, Hick treats human beings as created immature and unfinished. The purpose of earthly life is moral and spiritual development. Human beings are not meant to begin as complete saints; they are meant to become mature persons through free responses to a challenging world.

Two ideas matter here.

First, Hick appeals to epistemic distance.

God is not overwhelmingly obvious in a way that forces belief and obedience. The world can be interpreted in religious or non-religious ways. This distance allows a free response to God rather than automatic submission.

Second, soul-making requires a stable, challenging environment. A world with real danger, regular natural laws, other free people, pain and vulnerability is the kind of world in which courage, compassion, forgiveness, patience and moral responsibility can develop. A painless world arranged for immediate comfort would not train the same kind of character.

Hick's soul-making theodicy reconstructed:

Claim at issue: a loving God could be justified in allowing moral and natural evil for the sake of moral and spiritual development.

1. P1: Mature goodness freely developed through struggle is more valuable than ready-made innocence or automatic pleasure.
2. P2: Mature moral and spiritual development requires real freedom, real challenges, epistemic distance, and a stable natural order.
3. P3: A world with those conditions will include the possibility and reality of moral evil, pain and natural suffering.
4. P4: God can be justified in allowing such evils if they are conditions of, or are outweighed by, the good of soul-making.
5. Therefore, C: The existence of moral and natural evil can be reconciled with a loving and powerful God as part of a soul-making world.

Hidden assumption: it is morally permissible for God to allow suffering as part of a process through which persons can reach a greater good.
Inference type: theodicy using teleological and practical reasoning.
Main pressure point: whether the actual amount and distribution of suffering are really necessary or proportionate for soul-making.

Hick covers moral and natural evil differently.