John Hick Analysis

John Hick transformed the shape of thinking about theodicy in contemporary philosophical theology with his conception of the world as a “vale of soul-making” (1973).

This supports that an all-powerful, all-knowing and maximally good god might allow some evil for the sake of a greater good, that is, a man has to experience suffering for greater redemption later.

People were not created morally and spiritually mature and perfect; instead, people are “still in process of creation” ( Hick 254c) .Men were created at an “epistemic distance” from God, with the potentiality for knowledge of and relationship with God, but these were not fully actualized at the outset of our existence ( Hickb 44b).

Suffering as a character-building solution is one

Mark Scott describes this life as a world of “special providences” preventing every mishap and deed of violence: children would never fall, cars would never collide, knives would never pierce, and bullets would never kill. Under these conditions, however, Hick (1983) avers that the cultivation of character and virtue would be impossible: “Courage and fortitude would have no point in an environment in which there is, by definition, no danger or difficulty. Hick (1983) further posits that generosity, kindness, the agape aspect of love, prudence, unselfishness, and other ethical notions that presuppose life in an objective environment could not even be

And its value is to be judged, not primarily by the quantity of pleasure and pain occurring in it at any particular moment, but by its fitness for its primary purpose, the purpose of soul-making. ”Without danger, difficulty, and temptation we would never achieve moral victories or strive for excellence. Man’s development as a person requires the presence of obstacles to overcome and incentives to grow: “In a world devoid of both dangers to be avoided and rewards to be won, we may assume that virtually no development of the human intellect and imagination would have taken place, and hence no development of the sciences, the arts, human civilization, or culture. According to Hick’s theory, then, the perilous conditions and tragic features of the world that give rise to the problem of evil actually confirm God’s goodness rather than call it into question. God knows, like a good parent, what will be best for us in the long run, even if it exceeds our noetic grasp in the midst of