What Is the Soul-Making Theodicy?

What Is the Theodicy?

The soul-making theodicy, developed by John Hick in Evil and the God of Love (1966) and elaborated in later work, is a theodicy in the full sense—an attempt to identify God's actual reasons for permitting evil. Its central claim is that the world is designed not as a paradise for the maximization of pleasure but as an environment for soul-making, the development of moral and spiritual character. A world without challenge, suffering, difficulty, or risk would produce no courage, no compassion, no patience, no moral growth. The goods at stake in the formation of virtuous souls require the possibility of evil, and the actual evils we observe are the conditions under which those goods develop.

The theodicy has a distinctive shape. It doesn't treat evil as the result of a Fall that corrupted an originally perfect world (the Augustinian approach). It treats the world as always having been the kind of place that involves suffering and difficulty, because that's the kind of place that can produce mature moral agents. Humans are created, on this view, immature and in need of development, and the world is the school in which that development happens. The theodicy draws on the early church father Irenaeus, who described humans as created in the "image" of God but needing to grow into the "likeness."

The Irenaean Background

Hick's theodicy takes Irenaeus (c. 130–202) as its theological ancestor. Irenaeus distinguished the "image" and the "likeness" of God in Genesis: the image is the rational and free nature humans are created with; the likeness is the moral and spiritual maturity they are to grow into. Humans, on this view, are not created perfect but created as children, with the potential for mature relationship with God. The process of growth requires a world with real challenges, real possibilities of error, and real consequences—the conditions under which moral agency develops.

This contrasts with the Augustinian view, which holds that humans were created perfect and fell, corrupting themselves and nature. The Irenaean view holds that humans were created immature and the world has always been the kind of place that involves suffering and difficulty, because that's the condition of growth. Hick argued that the Irenaean view is both theologically defensible (it's an old tradition, not an innovation) and philosophically better positioned to handle the problem of evil, especially natural evil, which the Augustinian tradition struggles with.

The Argument from Soul-Making

The core argument runs roughly:

1. God's purpose in creating is to bring into existence beings who can freely come to love God and the good—mature moral and spiritual agents.
2. The development of such agents requires a world with real challenges, real risk, real consequences.
3. A world with such features will contain suffering, difficulty, and evil.
4. Therefore, evil is the necessary condition of soul-making, and God permits evil for the sake of the greater good of mature moral agents.

The key premise is the first. Hick argues that the greatest good God can create is not a world of programmed pleasure-seekers or innocent automata but a world of beings who can freely choose the good, who can love God from the inside. Such beings require moral agency, and moral agency requires a world where choices matter—where cruelty causes real suffering, where honesty has real costs, where compassion is really needed. A world without the possibility of evil would be a world without moral agency, and that would be, for Hick, a lesser world.

This is why the theodicy handles natural evil better than the Augustinian free will approach. Natural evil—disease, earthquake, animal suffering—doesn't result from human free choice, but it does provide the conditions for soul-making. Disease creates the opportunity for compassion and medical heroism; earthquake creates the opportunity for solidarity and courage; the harshness of nature creates the conditions for the development of practical virtues. The theodicy treats natural evil as part of the design, not as a corruption, and this allows it to address the part of the problem the free will defense struggles with.

Epistemic Distance and Eschatological Verification

Hick added two distinctive moves. The first is epistemic distance: God created the world at an "epistemic distance" from Godself, so that humans are not overwhelmed by the divine presence and have genuine freedom in their response. If God were too obviously present, free response would be impossible—we'd respond to God the way we respond to an overwhelming force, not freely. So the world has the character of a place where God is not obvious, where the question of God is genuinely open, and where humans can choose to love God or not. The hiddenness of God, on this view, is a condition of freedom, not an absence.

The second move is eschatological verification. Hick acknowledges that the soul-making theodicy can look unconvincing from within the present life, given the scale of suffering. His reply is that the theodicy is verified eschatologically—in the afterlife, when the soul-making process is completed and its fruits are visible. The person who has grown into mature relationship with God will see, in the end, that the evils of this life were worth it. Hick treats this as a matter of religious trust, not philosophical proof, but it's a crucial part of his view: the theodicy's plausibility depends on an eschatology in which the goods of soul-making are realized for everyone, which requires universalism (all are eventually saved).

The Main Objections

Several objections press on the theodicy. The first is the scale of suffering. Even if some evil is necessary for soul-making, is the amount we observe necessary? Does the fawn's suffering in the forest fire really produce moral development in anyone? Does the Holocaust? The theodicy seems to require a lot of evil for the goods it produces, and critics argue that a loving God could produce the goods with less. Hick's reply is that we can't judge, from within the process, what's necessary—that's part of the epistemic distance—but the critic replies that this is hand-waving.

The second objection is that the theodicy treats humans as means to God's ends. If suffering is permitted for the sake of soul-making, the sufferers seem to be instruments of a process whose beneficiary is the mature soul—perhaps the same person, perhaps not. If the beneficiary is the same person (the sufferer grows through her suffering), the theodicy has some force; if the beneficiary is someone else (one person's suffering produces another's growth), the theodicy looks morally troubling. Hick's universalism helps here, because everyone eventually benefits, but critics argue the instrumentalization remains.

The third objection concerns the universalism the theodicy requires. Hick is a universalist: he holds that all will eventually be saved, because the soul-making process wouldn't be just if some were lost. But universalism is a minority position in Christian theology, and many theists who might accept the soul-making framework don't accept universalism. If you reject universalism, the theodicy faces the question of what happens to those whose soul-making doesn't succeed—are they damned, after a process designed by a loving God? Hick's theodicy is tightly bound to his universalism, and this limits its appeal for some theists.

Why It Matters

The soul-making theodicy matters because it's the most serious attempt to give a positive account of why God permits evil—to identify the actual reasons, not just a possible consistency. It handles natural evil, which the free will defense struggles with, by treating it as part of the design. It takes seriously the moral seriousness of human life, the idea that character matters and that the development of character is a great good. And it has a coherent theological structure, rooted in Irenaean anthropology and a universalist eschatology, that gives it internal integrity.

The theodicy also matters because it forces a choice. Do you think the world is a paradise spoiled, or a school for growth? Do you think the highest good is pleasure or moral character? Do you think God's love is compatible with permitting suffering for the sake of growth? These are deep questions, and the soul-making theodicy gives them a disciplined formulation. Even if the theodicy doesn't fully succeed—and most philosophers think it doesn't—it clarifies what's at stake in the problem of evil and gives the theist a positive story to tell. The IEP and SEP entries treat it as a major theodicy, alongside the Augustinian, with its own costs and benefits.

Sources

• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "The Problem of Evil" — https://iep.utm.edu/evil/
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "The Problem of Evil" — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil/
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Philosophy of Religion" — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-religion/
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "John Hick" — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hick/

Related Topics

• What Is the Problem of Evil? — the challenge the theodicy replies to.
• What Is a Theodicy? — the general project.
• What Is the Free Will Defense? — the Augustinian alternative.
• What Is Natural Evil? — the part the theodicy handles best.
• Philosophy of Evil — the wider framework.