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Course 15 · Lesson 3.3

John Hick and soul-making theodicy

12 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 15 outline

Module 1: Stating the Problem

  1. The ancient problem: Epicurus, the Psalms and Augustine
  2. The logical problem: is God’s existence compatible with evil?
  3. The evidential problem: Rowe, the fawn and gratuitous evil
  4. Defense and theodicy: what each tries to do

Module 2: Moral Evil and the Free-Will Defense

  1. Moral evil and human responsibility
  2. Augustine on evil, privation and the will
  3. Plantinga’s free-will defense
  4. Objections: horrendous evils, determinism and the freedom of the saints

Module 3: Natural Evil and Soul-Making

  1. Natural evil, the laws of nature and animal suffering
  2. Traditional accounts: the fall, fallen powers and the groaning of creation
  3. John Hick and soul-making theodicy
  4. Objections to soul-making: excess, injustice and who benefits

Module 4: Providence and the Limits of Explanation

  1. What providence means: creation, sustaining and governing
  2. Providence in Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant thought
  3. Divine sovereignty, human freedom and open theism
  4. Skeptical theism and the limits of human knowledge

Module 5: Job, the Cross and Silence

  1. The Book of Job: Job, his friends and the rejection of easy answers
  2. God’s answer from the whirlwind and the ending of Job
  3. The crucifixion and suffering: Christ’s cry and the meaning of the cross
  4. Divine hiddenness and the silence of God
  5. Unanswered prayer in Scripture and in Christian life

Module 6: Living with Grief and Writing a Response

  1. Lament and the Psalms
  2. Christian accounts of grief: Lewis, Wolterstorff and the tradition of consolation
  3. Caring for those who suffer: presence, patience and what not to say
  4. Writing a reasoned response to the problem of evil

All courses

Program / Course 15: The Problem of Evil and Suffering / Lesson 3.3

What you will learn

  • State the main claims of soul-making theodicy as John Hick presented it.
  • Explain the idea of epistemic distance and why Hick thought it necessary.
  • Describe Hick’s use of Irenaeus and why scholars of Irenaeus question it.
  • Identify the parts of Hick’s wider thought that many Christians accept and those that many reject.

The big idea

John Hick, a British philosopher of religion, argued in 1966 that God made the world not as a finished paradise but as a place where persons can grow, through free choices made amid real difficulty, into mature moral and spiritual beings. On this view, hardship, danger and even suffering are the setting for that growth. The idea has deep roots in Christian thinking about virtue and discipline, and a wide appeal. It also faces strong objections, which the next lesson takes up. Hick’s wider views also differ in important ways from historic Christian teaching.

Key terms

Soul-making
A phrase borrowed from the poet John Keats, used by Hick for the process in which a person develops moral and spiritual character.
Irenaean type
Hick’s label for theodicies that follow Irenaeus in seeing humans as created immature and meant to grow toward the likeness of God.
Augustinian type
Hick’s label for theodicies that stress a perfect creation, a fall, and punishment for sin.
Epistemic distance
Hick’s term for the gap in knowledge between God and humans, which he thought allowed free choice about whether to trust God.
Image and likeness
In an influential reading of Genesis 1:26, the image is the nature people are given and the likeness is the goodness they are meant to grow into.
Universalism
The view that all persons will eventually be saved. Hick held it and it is a minority view among Christians.
Religious pluralism
The view that the major religions are different responses to one ultimate reality. Hick held it, and the main Christian traditions reject it.

Background

John Hick (1922 to 2012) taught in Britain and the United States. His book Evil and the God of Love (1966) made soul-making the best known alternative to the free-will defense. In it he divided Christian responses into two types. One he named after Augustine, and the other, which he preferred, after Irenaeus, the second-century bishop of Lyons.

Hick’s argument is a theodicy, in the sense of the previous module. It does not only claim to show a possibility. It claims to say what God is probably doing. For that reason it is open to testing against the facts of suffering, and its critics have tested it hard. Keep in mind throughout that Hick’s account of evil is only one part of a body of thought, and that later in life he departed from the doctrine of the Trinity and from the claim that Christ is uniquely the way of salvation. A student can study his theodicy without adopting those positions.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Two types of Christian theodicy

Hick described the Augustinian type as picturing a perfect world, damaged by a sudden fall, with suffering as the penalty for sin and hell as its final justice. He thought this type was in trouble with modern science and with moral intuition. The Irenaean type, he said, sees humans as made in an early stage of development, to grow through experience, struggle and choice toward the full likeness of God.

Many scholars of the early church think Hick’s contrast is too sharp. Augustine also wrote of growth through grace, and Irenaeus also held to a real fall. Hick’s use of Irenaeus, who wrote that Adam and Eve were like children, is a selective reading of a text whose meaning is argued. The label is best treated as a useful sketch rather than a historical report.

Step 2: The vale of soul-making

Hick starts from a thought about value. A virtue that was simply given, with no struggle, seems less valuable than one that is won. Courage means something only where there is danger, and compassion only where there is pain. If God wanted persons who freely love the good, and not mere pleasing automata, then God might make a world in which such character must be formed through effort.

Hick takes the phrase vale of soul-making from a letter by Keats, who called the world a place for making souls out of intelligences. On this view the world is a workshop and not a showroom. It is hazardous because that is what character requires. Natural dangers, such as disease and disaster, are part of the setting in which people learn to care for one another and to rely on God.

Step 3: Epistemic distance

Hick adds that God must remain at some distance from humans in knowledge. If God’s presence were overwhelming and undeniable, belief would not be free, and obedience would be coerced by fear or awe. So the world must be such that one can reasonably deny that God exists. This, in Hick’s view, explains why suffering is allowed to seem to count against God.

The idea has an ancient echo in writers like Pascal, who thought that God hides himself enough that those who seek him with their whole heart may find him, and no more. Critics reply that an enormous amount of suffering is not needed to preserve the possibility of doubt. They also ask why God would hide from persons who sincerely seek him. Lesson 5.4 returns to this.

Step 4: The end of the story

A theodicy of growth needs an end. Hick argued that most persons die before their growth is complete, and so soul-making must continue after death. He also held that a loving God would eventually bring everyone to fulfillment, so that no one is lost forever. In this way the sufferings of the present are justified by a final good for each person, not only for the human race.

This is where many Christians part company with Hick. The historic churches teach that growth continues in some form after death (Catholic teaching on purification, Orthodox teaching on the journey into God), yet they have generally held that final rejection of God is a real possibility. Some Christians, such as Gregory of Nyssa in the early church, are cited by supporters of a hope of universal salvation, but most traditions have not made it a doctrine.

Step 5: What soul-making gets right

The theory gets several things right. Scripture speaks of suffering producing endurance and character (Romans 5:3-4) and of God as a father who disciplines his children (Hebrews 12:5-11). Many people can testify that hardship formed in them patience, courage and compassion that ease could not. The theory treats humans as unfinished, and it takes seriously that God wants more than comfort for people.

It also marks a limit. It speaks of what suffering can do in a person who survives and grows. It does not speak, at least not without further steps, of those whom suffering destroys. That is the first of the objections in the next lesson.

  1. Why does Hick think a world without difficulty could not produce deep virtue?
  2. What is epistemic distance, and why does Hick think it necessary?
  3. Is Hick fair to Augustine and to Irenaeus? What would you need to read to judge?
  4. Where does Scripture support the idea that suffering forms character?
  5. Why does Hick need an afterlife for his theory to work?
  6. Which of Hick’s later views make you more or less willing to use his theodicy?

Examples

Courage

A firefighter runs into a burning building. People call this courage because the fire is dangerous. In a world where fire never hurt, there could be no such act. Hick argues that many of the virtues most admired depend on the existence of real evils.

The athlete’s training

An athlete trains with pain and fatigue, and later gains strength and joy that rest would not have given. Teachers of the spiritual life have often used this image, as Paul does of running a race (1 Corinthians 9:24-27). The illustration shows how pain can serve growth, though it does not settle whether all pain does.

A grieving parent

A father who lost a child later founds a support group for other bereaved parents. He says that his compassion grew out of his loss. Many people tell similar stories. Soul-making theodicy builds on such cases, though it must also face cases where grief only crushes.

Different perspectives

Catholic

Catholic teaching affirms that God allows trials for the good of his children and that suffering united with Christ can be redemptive (Colossians 1:24). It also teaches purgatory as a purification after death. It does not teach that suffering is needed in order for virtue to exist, and it rejects universal salvation as a certainty, though it permits hope for all.

Orthodox

Orthodox theology emphasizes growth in the likeness of God, theosis, which gives it an affinity with the Irenaean idea. Yet Orthodox writers do not usually argue that evil is necessary for growth, and many resist explaining evil by its results. Some Orthodox thinkers hope for the salvation of all, as Gregory of Nyssa seems to, while the church has not made this teaching.

Protestant

Protestants widely teach that God uses trials to refine faith (1 Peter 1:6-7), and many sermons and hymns draw on this. Reformed writers stress the sovereignty of God in these trials. Many Protestants reject Hick’s universalism and his pluralism, and some say his theodicy underplays sin and the need for atonement.

Critical and scholarly views

Scholars of Irenaeus argue that Hick overstates the contrast with Augustine. Philosophers such as D. Z. Phillips question whether suffering can be justified by its results for the sufferer. Others, like Richard Swinburne, defend the idea of a world with serious choices.

Why it matters

Soul-making is perhaps the most common popular explanation of suffering, often heard in sermons and in conversation. A student who knows its source, its real strengths and its limits is better able to use it with care and to see when it should not be said.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Soul-making says that every sufferer is being improved by their suffering.

Correction: Hick did not claim that. He said that the world as a whole is set up so that growth is possible. He admitted that many people are broken by suffering, and he used the afterlife to answer that.

Misunderstanding: Hick’s theodicy is the Christian teaching on evil.

Correction: It is one influential proposal by a philosopher whose wider views differ from the creeds. Many Christians use parts of it and reject others.

Misunderstanding: Irenaeus taught exactly what Hick says he taught.

Correction: Irenaeus did write of humans as immature at creation and growing. Scholars debate how far this supports Hick, since Irenaeus also taught a real fall and the need for redemption in Christ.

Knowledge check

What is the central claim of soul-making theodicy?

It claims that God made the world as a place where free persons can develop moral and spiritual maturity, and that this development requires real challenge, risk and suffering. Virtues like courage and compassion are valuable partly because they are won. On this view the world’s difficulties serve the growth of persons toward the likeness of God.

What does epistemic distance mean for Hick?

It means that God does not make his presence overwhelmingly plain, so that humans can freely choose to trust or not. If God’s existence were beyond doubt, obedience might be forced by fear. Hick therefore saw the ambiguity of the world, including the presence of evil, as part of what lets faith be free.

Why do scholars question Hick’s contrast between Irenaeus and Augustine?

They find that Augustine also wrote about growth through grace, and that Irenaeus also taught a real fall and the need for Christ’s saving work. Hick’s contrast draws on selected passages and turns tendencies into types. It is a helpful classification, but it should not be treated as a full account of either writer.

Why does Hick appeal to life after death?

Many people die with little growth, or are broken by suffering. If soul-making is the purpose of life, it must be able to continue and be completed after death, so that the process reaches its goal for every person. This is where Hick’s universalism comes in, and where many Christians part from him.

Think it through

  1. Has hardship ever formed you in a way ease could not? Does that experience support the theory, or only your own case?
  2. Is there a difference between saying that God uses suffering and saying that God intends it?
  3. How would you explain soul-making to someone who has lost a child?

Independent assignment

Weighing soul-making

In your own notebook, write about 450 words. Summarize Hick’s theory in a paragraph. Then list three experiences from literature, history or your own life that seem to support it and three that seem to count against it. Do not use cases that are too painful for you to write about. End with a short judgment of how much of the theory you can accept. Keep the work private.

Further study