The problem of evil - Hick and soul-making

Image, likeness and development

John Hick develops an Irenaean approach in which humanity begins immature rather than morally complete and then ruined. Irenaeus, in Against Heresies IV.38, connects human immaturity with growth towards perfection. Hick reworks that developmental theme; his modern theory should not be attributed word for word to Irenaeus.

Hick distinguishes creation in God's image, with capacities for rational and moral life, from growth into God's likeness, a mature, freely formed goodness. A character developed through choices has a value that an automatically programmed character lacks. A person who freely learns generosity becomes good in a way that a mechanism compelled to behave generously does not.

This shifts the purpose of the world. It is not primarily a place of uninterrupted pleasure, but a setting for soul-making. Difficulty can provide opportunities to develop courage, compassion, patience and responsibility. The purpose is prospective growth, whereas Augustine's account explains disorder retrospectively through a Fall from original goodness.

The difference is more than whether one thinker is optimistic. It changes the explanation of natural evil: conditions of danger and difficulty belong to an environment in which incomplete people can develop, rather than being explained only as consequences of a prior human fall. Hick's claim is that such conditions can serve a good purpose, not that sufferers should welcome harm or that human beings should refrain from relieving it.

Epistemic distance and natural evil

Hick argues for epistemic distance: God is not so overwhelmingly evident that human response is effectively compelled. The distance concerns knowledge and awareness, not kilometres. A world open to both religious and natural interpretation allows a person to develop trust, care and moral responsibility without an irresistible divine presence determining every response.

A regular natural order also makes responsible action possible. If fire always stopped burning whenever injury threatened, people could not learn its ordinary consequences or make the same serious choices about care. Stable processes enable science and practical agency, but also permit accidents and disease. Natural danger provides occasions for courage and compassion; moral agency supplies the possibility of harmful choices.

This is a reason for some difficulty and risk. It is not yet a reason for every degree of suffering. A critic can grant that a safe world with no meaningful challenge would restrict growth, then ask why less extreme conditions would not suffice. A defender must connect the required environment to the actual evil, rather than treating a general purpose as an automatic explanation of each case.

Hick also needs a perspective beyond one earthly lifetime. Many people die before growth is completed, and some lives are dominated by suffering. His account envisages continued development after death and eventual fulfilment in relation to God. This universal completion is characteristic of Hick's approach; it is not a belief held by all Christians. It makes the proposed justification depend partly on claims that the observed world cannot directly verify.

Extent and the cost to persons

The strongest criticism targets the extent and distribution of evil. A difficult task can develop perseverance; overwhelming trauma can destroy a person's capacity to choose or trust. Some sufferers never receive an apparent opportunity for growth. Infants and non-human animals complicate a theory centred on deliberate human moral development.

Suppose a rescue worker develops courage while helping a severely injured child. That development does not by itself justify the child's injury. The objection is that one person is being treated as a means to another's maturity. A benevolent justification must address the sufferer's own good, not merely benefits to observers. Hick's appeal to eventual fulfilment responds to that demand, but its promised completion remains contested.

A defender may argue that genuine moral life requires serious stakes, and that suffering can acquire meaning within a completed life beyond present observation. A critic can reply that compensation does not necessarily justify permitting avoidable harm: later benefit is different from consent, necessity or proportionate means. The debate concerns justification, not only whether good can sometimes follow evil.

Epistemic distance also faces a question of degree. Some clearer awareness of God need not remove every free choice, just as knowing a parent exists does not force obedience. Conversely, a coercively overwhelming revelation might change the conditions of agency. Hick needs an account of the distance appropriate for freedom; the phrase alone does not establish that the actual distribution of hiddenness and suffering is ideal.

Defending monotheism and weighing evil

Augustine and Hick offer different theodicies, but both relate evil to goods such as freedom and an ultimate divine purpose. They can be used in a defence showing that permitting some evil need not contradict goodness. Their full explanations carry stronger burdens: historical and inherited responsibility for Augustine, and the actual necessity of suffering and eventual completion for Hick.

The logical challenge is severe if the attributes cannot coherently coexist with any permitted evil. A possible morally sufficient reason can weaken that challenge by rejecting its connecting premise that perfect goodness must eliminate every evil. The evidential challenge can remain stronger because it grants possible compatibility and focuses on seemingly gratuitous, unequal or destructive suffering in this world.

A defender may place evil within a cumulative case that includes cosmological reasoning or credible religious experience. Those considerations can alter the overall judgement, but their conclusions have limits. An ultimate ground alone does not establish benevolence; a comforting experience does not explain every sufferer's fate. A connected argument states which attributes its other evidence supports and how they bear on the challenge.

One defensible judgement is that monotheism can survive a strict inconsistency claim while its benevolent governance remains evidentially difficult. Another is that the combination of agency, a stable order and eventual fulfilment gives sufficient reason for trust despite unknown details. The latter must defend its eschatological and moral assumptions; the former must distinguish absence of an available explanation from proof that no reason is possible.

Successful defence is therefore relative to the question asked. Coherent possibility, a plausible explanation of actual suffering and a complete justification of every event are different standards. A reasoned judgement specifies its standard, compares the strongest objection and reply, and recognises the continuing need to relieve suffering regardless of which theory is adopted.