Evil and the God of Love by John Hick

First published: 1966

Edition(s) used:Evil and the God of Love. Rev. ed. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977

Genre(s): Nonfiction

Subgenre(s): Critical analysis; theology

Core issue(s): Doubt; the Fall; freedom and free will; justice; problem of evil; suffering

Overview

The problem of evil has bedeviled religious thought since antiquity. Its ancestry can be traced back to Democritus, the Greek philosopher who lived in the fourth century b.c.e. Although the problem has often been stated philosophically, it has received powerful literary presentation in, for example, Fyodor Dostoevski’s Bratya Karamazovy (1879-1880; The Brothers Karamazov, 1912). Basically, the problem of evil can be articulated as the incompatibility of the following three statements:

(1) God is omnipotent.

(2) God is wholly good.

(3) Evil exists.

Given the benevolent and almighty nature of God, how can God permit the occurrence of evil in the world? Indeed, nonbelievers have taken the fact of evil as evidence against the very existence of God. To resolve the conflict, a variety of theodicies have been proposed by religious thinkers. The term “theodicy” was first coined by the German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), from the Greek theos (god) and dike (righteous), to represent any religious attempt to solve the problem of evil and thereby to absolve God of malicious intent and incompetent creatorship.

John Hick’s own theodicy, inspired by the work of Saint Irenaeus (120/140-c. 202 c.e.), is an explanatory attempt to meet the conceptual and empirical problems of suffering in the world, yet (Hick insists) it is not an attempt to justify the ways of God—as if God owed humans an explanation or had obligations to humans in creation. Others may persist in seeking a divine justification for the unsolicited and nonconsensual sufferings they endure and thus turn the onus of justification into an indictment of God. Hick’s aim is, rather, to understand how it is that evil—in the amounts, kinds, and distribution found in this world—can coexist with God, who is omnipotent and omniscient by nature and whose character is love. In keeping with most traditions of theodicy, Hick thinks this understanding will be found in moral considerations that explain why God would permit such evils.

Central to Hick’s theodicy about the divine goal for the presence of evil in this world is the idea that humans are significantly free creatures. He parts company, however, with the traditional theodicy of the Fall as first formulated by Saint Augustine (354-430 c.e.). According to the Augustinian approach, the misuse of freedom by humans was the cause of the Fall and the emergence of evil; thereby God can be exonerated from responsibility for the origin of evil and suffering. In opposition, Hick argues that the notion of perfect free creatures introducing evil by perverse misuse of free choice is implausible and even unintelligible. He maintains that a close examination of rational agency undermines free Fall theodicies that attempt to shift responsibility for the origin of evil off divine shoulders onto those of humans. Moreover, Hick points out, the notion of a historical Fall runs contrary to the findings of evolutionary biology.

In the Hickian theodicy, the idea of free will is subordinated to the goal of “soul-making,” where God’s primary creative project culminates in a process of spiritual development in which autonomous created persons, with their own free participation, are perfected, fashioned into God’s likeness, and formed toward the pattern of Christ. He sees God’s choice of such a developmental process, with all its pains, as underwritten by one or both of the following assumptions. According to the metaphysical presupposition, human persons cannot be ready-made perfect by divine fiat, but only through their uncompelled responses and willing cooperation in their actions and reactions in the world in which God has placed them. However, if “divine fiat” is limited in the way that the assumption suggests, does not this show that God may not be omnipotent after all? The second assumption is Hick’s “value-judgment” stipulation that one who has attained goodness by meeting and eventually mastering temptations—and thus by rightly making responsible choices in concrete situations—is good in a richer and more valuable sense than would be one created ab initio in a state either of innocence or of virtue.

On these bases, Hick attempts to explain divine permission for suffering to take place in the world in terms of its being necessary for the spiritual growth and development of souls. By a piecemeal examination of the major types of evil—moral evil, pain, and higher forms of human suffering—he tries to show how each is a consequence of the soul-making project and the requisite condition for it. Still, how can we account for the inordinate amounts, kinds, and distribution of suffering happening in the world? Hick faces the challenge by asserting that the very occurrence of dysteleological evils (Hick’s phrase for unjust, undeserved, unnecessary, or excessive misery) creates a context of mystery that, in his reckoning, is conducive to soul-making. Nevertheless, even if such evils contribute to (their amounts, kinds, and distributions being necessary for) the environment of soul-making, a cost-benefit analysis would have to be done to show how permission of them could be compatible with the omnipotent love of God. Prima facie, so far from facilitating spiritual progress, conditions in this world severely deface the image of Christ and effectively frustrate growth into God’s likeness.

What, then, will happen to the souls of individuals with stunted spiritual growth as a result of, for example, dysteleological misery? Hick resorts to the eschatological scenario that the process of soul-making continues beyond the grave. Still, if souls make better progress in alternative postmortem environments, why did not God place humans in such settings from the beginning? Here, Hick’s value judgment, or metaphysical assumption, may come to his aid; that is, God puts a positive value on the moral struggle engendered by our present environment, or it is impossible for mature human beings to exist apart from beginnings in this sort of environment. However, the metaphysical claim about human nature not only casts a shadow on the omnipotence of God but also would be difficult to establish. Moreover, both answers would still be subject to renewed cost-benefit analyses as to whether the soul-making project could be worth all the suffering it involves.

Christian Themes

In the Irenaean theodicy of Hick, there are two stages in God’s creation of the human race. In the first stage, God acts alone or through an evolutionary process to produce human beings as personal moral beings, capable of entering into relationship with God and thus bearing the image of God (Genesis 1:26). In the second stage, God acts in consort with the free human and a stable physical environment in order to nurture the individual into a character that can be intimately related to God and thus become the likeness of God (Genesis 1:26). In this process, God fashions the rest of the world with a view to creating an environment favorable to soul-making. A world without evils in the amounts, kinds, and distribution found in the actual world, in Hick’s argumentation, would not be conducive to soul-making. Eventually, God’s creation will be completed in the life to come, and evil will not last forever, because an infinitely resourceful God will ultimately win the collaboration of all rational free human beings.

Sources for Further Study

Cheetham, David. John Hick: A Critical Introduction and Reflection. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2003. Cheetham examines Hick’s views on various problems of the philosophy of religion, including the problem of evil.

Geivett, R. Douglas. Evil and the Evidence for God: The Challenge of John Hick’s Theodicy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995. Geivett offers a critical counterargument of Hick’s Irenaean attitude toward evil in favor of an Augustinian approach.

Griffin, David R. Evil Revisited. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991. Griffin compares and contrasts various Irenaean responses, including Hick’s, to the existence of evil.

Hewitt, Harold, ed. Problems in the Philosophy of Religion: Critical Studies of the Work of John Hick. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991. The collection critically covers the gamut of Hick’s work in the philosophy of religion, including the problem of evil.

Mesle, C. Robert. John Hick’s Theodicy: A Process Humanist Critique. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991. Mesle mounts a challenge to Hick’s treatment of evil from the perspective of Christian process philosophy.

Puccetti, Roland. “The Loving God: Some Observations on John Hick’s Evil and the God of Love.” Religious Studies 2 (1967): 255-268. Puccetti presents a trenchant tally of the shortcomings of Hick’s solution to the problem of evil.