EVIL AND THE GOD OF LOVE

By the same author

* FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE

ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

GOD AND THE UNIVERSE OF FAITHS

DEATH AND ETERNAL LIFE

GOD HAS MANY NAMES

FAITH AND THE PHILOSOPHERS (editor)

THE MANY-FACED ARGUMENT (editor with A. C. McGill)

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

THE SECOND CHRISTIANITY

WHY BELIEVE IN GOD? (with Michael Goulder)

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD (editor)

CLASSICAL AND CONTEMPORARY READINGS IN THE

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION (editor)

TRUTH AND DIALOGUE (editor)

THE MYTH OF GOD INCARNATE (editor)

CHRISTIANITY AND OTHER RELIGIONS

(editor with Brian Hebblethwaite)

PROBLEMS OF RELIGIOUS PLURALISM

JOHN HICK

EVIL AND THE GOD

OF LOVE

M MACMILLAN

©John Hick 1966, 1977, 1985

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1985 978-0-333-39557-8

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended).

Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

First edition 1966 Second edition 1977 Reissued with a new preface 1985

Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG2l 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Hick, John Evil and the God oflove.-2nd ed. I. Theodicy I. Title 231'.8 BT160 ISBN 978-0-333-39483-0 ISBN 978-1-349-18048-6 (eBook) DOl 10.1007/978-1-349-18048-6

To Hazel

CONTENTS

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Preface to the First Edition

Preface to the Second Edition

Preface to the 1985 Reissue

List of Abbreviations

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PART I

Introductory

I. The Problem and its Terms 1. Defining the problem 2. Is theodicy permissible? 3· The kinds of evil

II. The Two Poles of Thought - Monism and Dualism

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3 6

12

1. Monism and Dualism 15

2. The pure monism of Spinoza 17 3· A contemporary view of evil as illusion - Christian

Science 23 4· Plato's dualism 25 5· The external dualism ofj. S. Mill 27 6. The internal dualism of E. S. Brightman 30

PART II

The Augustinian Type qf Theodicy

III. The Fountainhead: St. Augustine - Evil as privation of good stemming from misused freedom

1. Evil as privatio boni 1. Augustine and Manichaeism 2. The Plotinian theodicy 3· The goodness of the created order

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Contents 4· Man mutable because 'made out of nothing' 46 5· Evil privative and parasitic 4 7 6. The identity of being and goodness 49 1· The logical character of Augustine's doctrine 53

11. 'The Free-Will Defence' in St. Augustine 8. Sin as the basic evil 59 g. The self-creation of evil 'ex nihilo' 62

1 o. Sin and predestination 64

IV. The Fountainhead: St. Augustine- The prin­ciple of plenitude and the aesthetic theme

III. The principle of plenitude 1. The problem 2. Augustine's Neo-Platonist answer 3· The principle of plenitude in Plotinus 4· Emanation and creation 5· The pre-existing pattern

IV. The aesthetic theme 6. The aesthetic theme in Augustine 7. Animal pain in a perfect world 8. Hell and the principle of moral balance

70

72 75 76 79

V. Catholic Thought from Augustine to the Present Day 1 • Augustine's theodicy writ large: Hugh of St. Victor go 2. Thomas Aquinas 93 3· A contemporary Thomist presentation: Charles

journet g8 4· Journet on sin and hell 107

VI. The Problem of Evil in Reformed Thought 1. Augustine and the Reformers

I. Calvin 2. Fall and predestination in Calvin 3· Predestination versus theodicy

11. Karl Barth 4· Barth's method 5· The 'shadowside' of creation 6. 'Das Nichtige' 7· The origin of 'das Nichtige' 8. Criticism: (a) the origin of 'das Nichtige' g. Criticism: (b) the status of 'das Nichtige'

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115

117 Ul

u6 u8 130 133 135 137

Contents

VII. Eighteenth-Century 'Optimism' 1. A product of the Augustinian tradition 145 !1. King's 'Origin of Evil' I..,S 3· Leibniz's 'Theodicy' 154 + The 'best possible world' 16o 5· 'Best possible' - for what purpoae? 167

VIII. Dividing the Light from the Darkness 1. The main features of the Augustinian type of theodicy 16g

I. The theological thenus !1. The goodness of the created univene 170 3· Human suffering as a punishment for sin 17!1 4· '0 felix culpa . . . ' versus eternal torment 176

n. The philosophical thenus 5· Evil as non-being 179 6. Metaphysical evil as fundamental 187 7· The aesthetic perfection of the universe 191 8. A basic criticism 193

PART III

The lrenaean Type of Theodicy

IX. Sin and the Fall according to the Hellenistic Fathen 1. The biblical basis of the fall doctrine 201 !1. From Paul to Augustine 205 3· The beginnings of the Hellenistic point of view 2o8 4· Irenaeus !II 1

5· Eastern Christianity 215

X. The Irenaean Type of Theodicy in Schleier-macher

1. Schleiermacher on 'original perfection' 220 !1. Schleiermacher's account of sin 2!12 3· The relation between sin and suffering 226 4· God as ultimately ordaining sin and suffering 228 5· Schleiermacher and the instrumental view of evil 231 6. Man's beginning and end !134

XI. The Two Theodicies - Contrasts and Agreements 1. The contrast between the two types of theodicy 236 2. Points of hidden agreement 238

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Contents

PART IV

A Theodicy for Today

XII. The Starting-point I. The negative task of theodicy 243 2. The traditional theodicy based upon Christian myth 245 3· The 'vale of soul-making' theodicy 253

XIII. Moral Evil I. The shape of sin 262 2. The traditional free-will defence 265 3· The recent critique of the free-will defence 266 4· Divine-human personal relationship 271 5· Freedom as limited creativity 275 6. The virtual inevitability of the fall 277 7. Man created as a fallen being 28o

XIV. Pain I. Pain and suffering 292 2. Physical pain 294 3· Has pain a biological value? 297 4· Pain and the structure of the world 304 5· Animal pain 309

XV. Suffering 1. Suffering as a function of meaning 318 2. Pain as a cause of suffering 319 3· A paradise without suffering? 322 4· Excessive or dysteleological suffering 327 5· The traditional answer: nature perverted by fallen

angels 331 6. Soul-making and mystery 333

XVI. The Kingdom of God and the Will of God 1. The infinite future good 337 2. Theodicy versus hell 341 3· The intermediate state 345 4· Some residual probleJDS 350 5· The biblical paradox of evil 352 6. Its source in the duality of the Christian life 357 7· Its eschatological resolution 362

XVII. Recent Work on the Problem of Evil 365

Index 387

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PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

THE fact of evil constitutes the most serious objection there is to the Christian belief in a God of love. It is also probably the hardest objection to write about. For in this field it is equally disastrous to say too little or too much. On the one hand, it will not do to remain passively silent in the face of so grave a challenge to one's faith- a challenge that was bitingly summed up in Stendhal's epigram, 'The only excuse for God is that he does not exist' ! The enigma of evil presents so massive and direct a threat to our faith that we are bound to seek within the resources of Christian thought for ways, if not of resolving it, at least of rendering it bearable by the Christian conscience. But, on the other hand, in seeking to justify the ways of God to man, one is inevitably tempted to extend faith's dim sense of a hidden divine purpose and sovereignty into an open map of providence such as could be available only to the Creator Himself. It is this almost inevitable pretension of theodicy to a cosmic vantage point that provokes the thought that any solution to the problem of evil must be worse than the problem itself!

In this dilemma I have felt compelled to risk saying too much rather than enjoy the shelter of an inoffensive but un­helpful agnosticism. For the world has the right to hear Christian voices, however inadequate, on the theological problem of evil ; and the recent Christian literature on the subject, although extensive, contains major gaps. There are some important historical works : Friedrich Billicsich's three­volume Das Problem des Ohels in der Philosophie des Ahendlandes ;• the first and longer volume of the late Pere A. D. Sertillanges' Le Prohlbne du Mal ;2 and R. A. Tsanoff's The Nature of Evil ;3

as well as Charles Werner's slighter but excellent Le Problbne du Mal dans la Pensle Humaine.' But these books, especially the larger ones, offer a series of articles in chronological order on the work of individual thinkers without attempting to dis-

r Vienna: Verlag A. Sexl, •936--59· a Paris: Aubier, •948--S•· • New York: The Macmillan Co., 1931. ' Lausanne: Libraire Payot, 2nd ed., 19¥).

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Priface

tinguish types of solution (though here Werner's book is an exception) or to trace persisting patterns of thought on the subject. However, a typology emerges quite clearly from the history of Christian thought, and I have presented it here in terms of the two divergent responses to the mystery of evil which I have called the Augustinian and Irenaean types of theodicy. One of the lessons of these historical chapters is that there has been continual interaction between theodicy and theology. The alternative ways of thinking about God and evil are connected with alternative ways of thinking about several other topics, such as the fall of man, the nature of sin, providence, redemption, predestination, heaven, and hell.

Having thus opened up the resources of past Christian thought, one should be willing to use them in formulating a contemporary response to the challenge of evil to the Church's faith. This has been done on Augustinian lines by Pere Sertillanges in the posthumous second volume of his book ; and again more recently and in a fresh way by Austin Farrer in Love Almigh~ and Ills Unlimited, 1 one of the best recent books on the problem of evil. However, my own reflections have led me along the other, lrenaean, path of Christian theodicy. There are numerous contemporary ver­sions of this in relatively brief compass, but it has not recently been set forth at length or in a way that takes account of con­temporary philosophical criticisms. I have therefore tried in Part IV to formulate systematically a way of thinking about the mystery of evil that is basically Irenaean in character, although with modifications and corrections suggested by study of the Augustinian tradition. The attempt is addressed both to Christian believers and to the agnostics, sceptics, and humanists who are the more characteristic citizens of the intellectual world of today. These chapters do not seek to demonstrate that Christianity is true, but that the fact of evil does not show it to be false : those who have some degree of Christian faith should not abandon it in face even of this agonizing problem, nor should those who lack Christian faith rule it out on this account as a possibility for themselves.

1 Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1g61 ; London: Collins, 1g62.

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PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

DESPITE the long-term slow decline of religious institutions in the West there continues to be a high level of interest in religious beliefs, centring upon the question of the existence or non-existence, reality or non-reality, of God. In the debates and discussions about this the problem of evil continues to have a crucial place. It has always been seen by sensitive spirits and perceptive minds to lie at the heart of the God-question, and so long as men live in this religiously ambiguous world the fact of evil will continue to haunt faith in the reality of an all-loving and all-powerful Creator.

This book is one of many which attempt to face this challenge from the Christian point of view. During the decade since it was first published the discussion, both among Christians and between believers and sceptics, has continued unabated, and in this situation it has been thought worth while to keep this book available and at the same time to bring it up to date. I have, therefore, added a chapter on some of the most important recent work in the field of theodicy. Such a chapter is necessarily selective, and many writings are not referred to which might also have been discussed. For it has been a consideration to avoid making an already long book even longer. Indeed, in order to make room for the new chapter, and even slightly to reduce the over-all size of the volume, I have sacrificed the former Chapter XI, on 'Recent Teleological Theodicies', as well as two sections from Chapter I and two from the original Chapter XII. These were not essential to the argument of the book, although by no means irrelevant to it. But I think it better to offer the reader a slightly shorter, rather than a longer, second edition.

There is a large-scale historical question which deserves a good deal more investigation than it has received in this book: namely, what happened to the Irenaean type of

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Preface

theodicy between its beginnings in the wntmgs of the Hellenistic Fathers and its re-emergence in the work of Schleiermacher in the nineteenth century. Since I was not concerned with historical questions as such, but rather with the kinds of theodicy and their comparative validity, I looked along the surface of history and saw virtually no trace of the Irenaean approach during that intervening millennium and a half. But several scholars have suggested that there may be an underground stream waiting to be more fully traced; and in the meantime Patrick Grant has drawn attention to the seventeenth-century revival of interest in Irenaeus, and his theological anthropology, in The Trans­formation of Sin (Montreal and London: MeGill-Queen's University Press, 1974).

In making room for this new Preface, I have omitted a page of thanks to many people who, and institutions which, contributed. in various ways to the writing of the book; but I remain no less grateful to them, as also to the critics of the first edition, some of whose contributions are discussed in the new final chapter.

Department of Theology, Universiry of Birmingham

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JOHN HICK

PREFACE TO THE 1985 REISSUE

THE sheer crushing weight of the pains suffered by men, women and children, and also by the lower animals, including that inflicted by human greed, cruelty and malevolence, undoubtedly constitutes the biggest obstacle that there is to belief in an all-powerful and loving Creator. Other considerations, pro and con, are finely balanced: on the one hand the existence of a law-governed universe, beginning with the 'big bang' some fifteen billion years ago and so structured as to produce the human mind and spirit, and on the other hand the explicability of each aspect of the functioning of the universe without reference to a divine Creator. Thus we find ourselves in a religiously ambiguous environment whose complex operations can, in principle, be fully described in naturalistic terms, but the very existence of which nevertheless remains a mystery which invites the thought of an uncreated Creator- but which nevertheless does not absolutely require this since we can instead choose to leave the mystery unresolved. Given this cosmic ambiguity the main ground for religious belief is to be found in religious experience, for here as elsewhere our experience constitutes the final basis for both action and belief; whilst on the other side the main challenge, even for those who participate in one of the great historic streams of religious experience and thought, is the fact of evil in its many forms.

The subject thus lies at the heart of the fundamental question of the reality or unreality of the Transcendent. This fact justifies the reissue of the present treatment of the problem of evil. Its main contribution is to establish historically and to defend theologically the kind of 'person­making' theodicy whose foundations were laid by the earliest systematic Christian thinkers, such as St Irenaeus, before the formation of what, under the influence of St.

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Preface

Augustine and others, became for some fifteen centuries established Christian orthodoxy. Both types oftheodicy are today live options. The Irenaean type has proved attractive to many. At the same time the Augustinian type has been powerfully advocated again in recent years by contem­porary thinkers such as Alvin Platinga, whose work is discussed in chapter 17. Since that chapter was written little new has happened in the theodicy debate, although there has been continued elaboration of the two main existing options. One new development however has been the first full-scale work on the subject from the point of view of process theology in David Griffin's God, Power and Evil: a Process Theodicy (1976). I have not written about this here, but have examined it critically in my Philosophy of Religion, 3rd edn (1983), chapter 4.

Evil and the God if Love was written before most of us had become aware of the way in which our customary language ignores the female half of the human race. Unfortunately economic factors have forbidden a purging of non-inclusive language from the text. All that I can do is to apologise for the systematic inappropriateness with which I have used 'man' and 'he' when I mean to refer to all human beings.

The problem of evil is not a special technical issue relevant only to theologians who choose to take an interest in it. It is an immense, ever-present challenge to religious faith, and no theologian who intends to engage with contemporary atheism and scepticism can avoid it. Further the way in which it is treated inevitably has far-reaching implications throughout any systematic theology. I hope therefore that the reissue of this book may do something to draw attention again to one of religion's most profound and pressing problems.

Department of Religion Claremont Graduate School Claremont, California 91711

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John Hick

A.B. C.D. C.F. e.G. Con f. En. En& h. Essay F.F.F. F.W. Inst. J.G. L.A.I.U. M.E. N.E.

N.G. P.T. S.c.G. S.T.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Against Heresies, by Irenaeus. Church Dogmatics, by Karl Barth. The Christian Faith, by Friedrich Schleiennacher. The Ci~ of God, by St. Augustine. Confessions, by St. Augustine. Enneads, by Plotinus. En&hiridion, by St. Augustine. An Essay on the Origin of Euil, by William King. For Faith and Freedom, by Leonard Hodgson. On Free Will, by St. Augustine. Institutes of the Christian Religion, by John Calvin. The Justification of God, by P. T. Forsyth. Love Almigh~ and Ills Unlimited, by Austin Farrer. The Meaning of Euil, by Charles Joumet. New Essays in Philosophical Theology, edited by A. Flew

and A. Macintyre. The Nature of the Good, by St. Augustine. Philosophical Theology, by F. R. Tennant. Summa contra Gentiles, by St. Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica, by St. Thomas Aquinas.

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