Program / Course 8: God, Trinity, and Creation / Lesson 7.4
What you will learn
- Describe the free will response, the privation account of evil and the soul-making response, with their sources.
- Explain the idea of a suffering God and how the cross figures in Christian responses.
- Identify the role of the final defeat of evil and the hope of resurrection.
- State the main strength and the main weakness of each response.
The big idea
Christian thinkers have not offered a single answer to evil but a set of responses that work together. The free will response says that God made creatures able to love freely, and that this meant they could turn away. The privation account says that evil is not a thing but a lack or corruption of good. The soul-making response says that a world with trials can form persons. The suffering God response points to the cross. And the hope of final victory looks to the end. None answers every question, and most Christian writers combine several.
Key terms
- Privation
- The absence of a good that ought to be present. Blindness is a privation of sight. The tradition says evil is a privation of good.
- Free will response
- The argument that moral evil arises from the misuse of free will, which God gave because freedom is necessary for love.
- Soul-making
- The idea, associated with Irenaeus and John Hick, that a world with difficulty is a place where persons grow toward maturity.
- Best of all possible worlds
- The view of Leibniz that God, being perfect, created the best world possible. Criticized by Voltaire and by many theologians.
- Passibility
- The view that God can suffer. The cross is taken by many as evidence that God shares suffering.
- Eschatology
- The study of the last things: judgment, resurrection and the renewal of creation.
- Theosis
- In the Eastern tradition, the goal of human life: sharing by grace in the life of God.
- Fall
- The Christian teaching that humanity turned from God and that the world has been damaged as a result.
Background
The responses discussed here have different roots. The free will account and the privation account come mostly from Augustine, who was drawn to Manichaean dualism in his youth and left it after concluding that evil is not a substance. The soul-making account is drawn from Irenaeus, who held that humans were created immature and meant to grow, and was revived in the twentieth century by John Hick, a philosopher of religion. The suffering God account has roots in the Gospels and the fathers but became prominent in modern theology after the world wars.
These responses are best treated as parts of a larger picture and not as separate theories. The New Testament itself gives no systematic treatment. It speaks of sin and death entering the world through Adam (Romans 5:12), of the creation groaning (Romans 8:22), of Christ as the one who bore sins (1 Peter 2:24) and of a final day in which God will wipe away all tears (Revelation 21:4). The Christian answer to evil is told as a story with a beginning, a middle and an end.
It is also important to distinguish what each response claims. Some are theodicies, offering reasons God might have. Others are defenses, showing that no contradiction is proved. Others are pastoral, speaking of what God has done in Christ. Some theologians, such as Karl Barth, doubted that human reason can justify God, and preferred to point to the cross.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: Free will
The free will response says that God wished to create beings who could love him freely, and that love cannot be forced. So he made them free. Freedom brought the possibility of rebellion, and rebellion happened. Augustine laid out this account in On Free Choice of the Will, written against the Manichaeans. On this view God is not the author of moral evil, which comes from the creature’s choice. God permits it for the sake of the greater good of free love.
The strengths are that it accords with the biblical account of the fall and takes human responsibility seriously. The weaknesses are well known. It does not clearly explain natural evil. It seems to place a great deal of weight on freedom when the cost has been so high. And it is difficult to reconcile with views of God’s sovereignty in which God determines all things, which is one reason Reformed thinkers use it more cautiously. Some, including C. S. Lewis, extend it to natural evil by speaking of a cosmic fall, which many find speculative.
Step 2: Privation
Augustine held that evil is not a thing that God created, since God created only good things. Evil is a lack of good, as blindness is a lack of sight. It is real in its effects, but it has no being of its own. Sin is a turning from a higher good to a lower one. Aquinas followed this line. The point is to deny that evil is a second principle, as in dualism, and to deny that God made it.
Critics say this is a verbal solution. The pain of cancer is not an absence but a presence, and a person is not consoled by being told that it is only a privation. Defenders reply that the claim is not meant to console but to clarify what evil is, and that the sufferer is really harmed because a good is lacking: health, life, love. The account is better seen as a part of the metaphysics of creation than as a full response to suffering.
Step 3: Soul-making
Irenaeus taught that Adam and Eve were created as children, not as perfect beings, and that humans are meant to grow into the likeness of God. Hick developed this into an account in which the world’s difficulties are the setting in which free persons are formed. Courage, compassion and trust cannot be developed without danger, need and loss. On this view God made a world suitable for growth, not for comfort.
The objection is that much suffering seems to crush people rather than form them, and that some suffering, especially of infants and animals, serves no apparent growth. Hick answered that the full account requires an afterlife in which all are brought to maturity. Many Christians find this universalist. Others use the soul-making idea in a limited way, as part of the story. Some Eastern writers find it close to the idea of theosis, though they do not adopt Hick’s system.
Step 4: The suffering God and the final defeat of evil
The Christian claim at the center is that God has entered the suffering of the world in Christ. The cross is not an argument but an event, in which, in the words of the creed, he suffered and was crucified. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing in a Nazi prison, said that only the suffering God can help. Jürgen Moltmann built a theology of the cross in which God is no spectator. Classical theologians reply that God truly suffers in the Son’s human nature, while some hold to divine impassibility, as discussed in an earlier lesson. In either case the cross is the Christian answer to the question where God is when people suffer.
The final part of the response is hope. The New Testament promises resurrection, the judgment of evil and the renewal of creation (Romans 8:18 to 23, Revelation 21 to 22). Many writers hold that a full answer to evil cannot be given in the present life, and that God will in the end make things right. This is a claim about the future and not a proof, but it shapes the way Christians face evil. Marilyn Adams argued that the evils of a person’s life will be defeated within that person’s own life in the end, by the closeness of God.
- Which of these responses speaks most to my own experience of evil?
- What would I want to say to a person in grief that does not explain too much?
- Is privation a helpful or an evasive description of evil?
- What does it mean that God shares suffering, and what difference does it make?
- How does hope for the future bear on present pain?
- Which response has the hardest weakness, and how might it be answered?
Examples
The blind and the lame
A person who is blind lacks sight. Augustine used this kind of example to say that evil is a lack of good. A hearer might say that the person feels the lack as real pain and loss. The privation account does not deny the loss. It says that the loss is the absence of a good that is rightly present.
A parent and a child
A parent who teaches a child to walk lets the child fall, though the parent could carry the child. Hick used such pictures to suggest that God allows struggle for the sake of growth. Critics ask what the picture implies about a child who is run over, and respond that the example works only for suffering that can be borne.
The cry from the cross
In Mark 15:34 Jesus cries, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Christians have read it as the Son entering the depth of human desolation, and as a use of Psalm 22, which ends in trust. Many have drawn from it that God has not stayed outside suffering.
Different perspectives
Catholic
Catholic thought follows Augustine and Aquinas on privation and on free will. It holds that God permits evil to bring greater good, and that the cross and the Eucharist are the center of the response. The Church speaks of suffering as capable of being joined to Christ’s, as Pope John Paul II wrote in Salvifici Doloris in 1984.
Orthodox
Orthodox writers stress the fall, death as the enemy and the resurrection as victory. The Easter liturgy proclaims that Christ has trampled death by death. The Orthodox generally prefer not to explain evil, and are cautious about theodicy, though they affirm that God is not its author.
Protestant
Reformed Protestants usually combine sovereignty with the free will of creatures as secondary causes, and hold that God has wise purposes beyond human sight. Lutherans speak of the theology of the cross, in which God is hidden in suffering. Many evangelicals use the free will defense. Moltmann and other liberal and ecumenical theologians stress the suffering God.
Critical and non-Christian views
Critics argue that these responses defend God at the cost of making human suffering a means to an end, or that they are not testable. Some atheist philosophers hold that no response is adequate. Some Christians agree that no argument is adequate and prefer lament and witness to theory.
Why it matters
Facing evil honestly is part of mature faith. The responses of the tradition do not remove the pain, but they give a person ways to think and to pray. Knowing them helps a student see that no single answer is sufficient and that the tradition has used several at once. It also prepares for the final lesson, which asks what can be said when all the responses have been tried.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: Christians say that evil is just an illusion.
Correction: The tradition holds the opposite: evil is real and does real harm. Calling it a privation is a claim about what kind of thing evil is. It is not a denial that people suffer.
Misunderstanding: The free will response blames victims.
Correction: It attributes moral evil to the free choices of wrongdoers, not to their victims. It does not say that suffering is deserved by those who suffer.
Misunderstanding: A suffering God means God is weak.
Correction: Defenders hold that the cross shows divine love and power in a different mode, and that the resurrection shows God’s victory. Classical theologians who hold impassibility think the question is more complex. The matter is debated.
Misunderstanding: Hick’s soul-making is the only Christian view of growth through trial.
Correction: It is a modern development of an Irenaean theme. Other traditions hold that trial can purify or form without claiming that this explains all suffering. Many Christians reject the idea that suffering is sent in order to teach.
Knowledge check
State the free will response and one weakness.
God made creatures free so that they could love him, and freedom brought the possibility of turning away. Moral evil results from that misuse, so God is not its author. A weakness is that it does not obviously account for natural evil, and the cost of freedom seems very high in some cases.
What does it mean that evil is a privation?
It means that evil is not a thing God created but the lack or corruption of a good that should be present, as blindness is a lack of sight. It denies that evil is a second principle and that God made it. Critics say that this does not address the felt reality of suffering.
What is the soul-making response and who developed it?
It holds that the world is a place where persons are formed toward maturity, and that trial is necessary for virtues such as courage and compassion. It draws on Irenaeus and was developed by John Hick. Critics say much suffering destroys rather than forms, and Hick answered with the hope of an afterlife.
How does the cross figure in Christian responses to evil?
Christians believe God entered human suffering in the Son, who died on the cross and rose. Many say this shows God does not stand apart from pain. Traditions differ about whether God suffers in his divine nature or only in the Son’s human nature, but all see the cross as central.
Think it through
- Which of the responses would you offer to a friend, and which would you keep to yourself?
- Is it right to ask whether a response is true and also whether it is kind?
- How does the hope of resurrection change the way you view suffering that cannot now be explained?
Independent assignment
A table of responses
In your own notebook, write about 450 words. Make a table of the five responses in this lesson: free will, privation, soul-making, the suffering God and the final defeat of evil. For each, give a source, the main claim, the main strength and the main weakness. Then write a short paragraph on whether you think they work better together than apart. Do not send this to anyone.
Further study
- Augustine of Hippo, The City of God Read Book 11, chapters 9 to 22 and Book 12, chapters 1 to 9, on the nature of evil.
- Augustine of Hippo, Confessions Read Book 7 for Augustine’s account of finding that evil is not a substance.
- C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain A Christian author’s reflection on suffering and growth.
- Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ Read selectively for a modern account of the cross and its meaning.
- Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies Read Book 4, chapter 38, on the growth of humanity.
- Eleonore Stump, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering Read selectively for a Thomist approach to suffering.
- Romans 8:18 The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory.
- Revelation 21:4 God shall wipe away all tears.
- Isaiah 53:4 Surely he hath borne our griefs.