John Hick's Reformulation of the Irenaean Theodicy

1. John Hick’s reformulation of the Irenaean theodicy Hick’s theodicy is a reformulation of the Irenaean theodicy. It is based on the idea that free choice is better than compulsion. • For human beings to love God, they have to be free to do so. • Love cannot be forced. • The capacity to love God is a capacity that has to be developed.

2. In order to allow for this development humans must have been created imperfect. • There has to be room for improvement in order for this development to be possible. • Hick calls this distance between God and man an epistemic distance. It is a distance in knowledge and understanding. • This distance allows humans to develop – if God were too close, humans would find it impossible not to be influenced. • They would be unable to make a free choice, and would not benefit from the developmental experience of being morally free.

3. For humans to be free to make moral choices, there must be a full range of alternatives to choose from. The world must include the possibility for suffering, or moral choices would be meaningless. • Hick therefore proposed that suffering is a necessary condition in this process of free choice. The world is a forge in which humans are changed – it is a world in which the soul is refined. Hick illustrates with a phrase from a letter by John Keats: • ‘Call the world if you please a Vale of Soul-Making’.

4. A world without problems, difficulties, perils and hardships would be morally static, for moral and spiritual growth comes through responses to challenges; and in a paradise there would be no challenges. Hick J. ‘Evil and the God of Love’ 1968

5. One way in which humans can develop is through their response to suffering. • One of the ways in which this ‘test’ is carried out is through faith – God’s purpose cannot easily be discerned (the epistemic distance), but believers continue to believe despite the evidence. This faith becomes a virtue