Hick on Soul-Making: The World as a Place of Moral Growth

The Quote

"Men are so made that they are capable of attaining, through their own free responses, the greatest possible individual and personal fulfilment... The world is not a paradise of hedonistic happiness... but a place of soul-making, in which the human person, through the discipline of moral effort, through struggle and suffering, may be brought from the self-centredness of primitive human nature to the other-centredness of the fulfilled child of God." So John Hick, in Evil and the God of Love, named the structure of his Irenaean theodicy.

Context

Hick's Evil and the God of Love (1966) was the most ambitious theodicy of the twentieth century. Hick distinguished two traditions within Christian theodicy. The Augustinian tradition, dominant in the West, traces evil to the misuse of free will — the Fall of humanity and the angels — and treats evil as a privation of good. The Irenaean tradition, named for the early church father Irenaeus of Lyon, takes a different shape: human beings are created in two stages, first as the image of God (the capacity for relationship with God), then in the likeness of God (the actual fulfillment of that capacity). The world between the two is the place of soul-making, in which the human person, through struggle, effort, and suffering, is brought from self-centeredness to other-centeredness. Hick argued that the Irenaean theodicy avoids the difficulties of the Augustinian — particularly the problem of how a perfect creature could fall — and gives a more satisfying account of why a loving God would permit evil.

Meaning

The passage makes three claims. First, that human beings are made for fulfillment — the "greatest possible individual and personal fulfilment" — and that this fulfillment is attained through free response, not imposed. Second, that the world is not designed for comfort — "not a paradise of hedonistic happiness" — but for character: the forging of souls through discipline, effort, struggle, and suffering. Third, that the structure of this forging is a movement from self-centeredness to other-centeredness — from the primitive human nature of self-concern to the fulfilled nature of the child of God, whose life is oriented toward God and others. The three claims together form the theodicy: the permission of evil is the condition of the moral and spiritual development that gives human life its point, and a loving God would create such a world rather than a paradise of effortless pleasure.

Philosophical Interpretation

Hick's theodicy is the most philosophically ambitious of the modern responses to the problem of evil. It does not deny that suffering is real or evil; it argues that suffering has a point — that it is the condition of the moral and spiritual growth that a loving God would want for God's creatures. The argument has two key philosophical moves. The first is the rejection of hedonism as the measure of the good life: if the good life is the maximization of pleasure and the minimization of pain, then a loving God would create a paradise; but if the good life is the development of moral and spiritual depth, then a loving God would create a world with difficulty. Hick argues, following William James and the moral tradition, that the second is the better account of the good life — that we admire courage, compassion, and moral heroism more than we admire effortless pleasure, and that these virtues require a world in which they can be exercised. The second move is the claim that the development of these virtues requires free response, not imposition: a creature who is programmed to be good is not good; the goodness must be the creature's own, attained through free choice in the face of real difficulty. This requires a world with genuine evil, in which the choice for good is a real choice.

The Critique of Soul-Making

Hick's theodicy has been criticized from two directions. The first is that it justifies too much: if any suffering is justified by the soul-making it produces, then no suffering could be objected to — and this seems morally monstrous. The Holocaust, the death of a child, the slow wasting of a parent by disease — would these be "justified" because they produce soul-making? Hick himself was aware of the danger and insisted that the theodicy does not require us to call suffering good, only to acknowledge that a loving God might have reason to permit it. The second critique is that the theodicy justifies too little: much suffering does not produce soul-making but destruction. The child who is tortured to death does not become a "fulfilled child of God"; she is destroyed. The theodicy seems to work for some suffering and to fail for the suffering that simply breaks. Hick's response invokes the afterlife: the soul-making is not complete in this world but extends beyond it, and the sufferings that here seem pointless may, in a longer perspective, be part of a soul-making that we cannot now see. This is a theologically rich but philosophically controversial move, since it rests theodicy on a hope that cannot be verified.

Legacy

Hick's Irenaean theodicy has become, with Augustine's free will defense, one of the two main theodicies in the philosophy of religion. Its strength is its willingness to take the depth of the moral life seriously — to insist that a world designed for soul-making would not be a paradise, and that the permission of evil is the condition of the goods that make human life worth living. Its weakness is its struggle with the suffering that does not make souls but destroys them — a struggle that, on Hick's account, can only be resolved by an appeal to the afterlife. The debate between the Augustinian and Irenaean theodicies is one of the abiding conversations of the philosophy of religion, and it turns on a deep question: is the world best understood as a place where evil entered through a fall, or as a place where souls are being made through struggle? Hick's answer has shaped the conversation ever since.

The Deeper Lesson

The deepest lesson of Hick's theodicy is not that suffering is good but that the question of suffering cannot be answered without a view of what human life is for. If life is for pleasure, then suffering is an unmitigated evil, and a loving God would not permit it. But if life is for something deeper — for the development of love, courage, compassion, moral depth — then suffering has a different place, and the question of its permission takes a different shape. The theodicy does not "solve" the problem of evil; no theodicy does. It reframes it: not "why does a loving God permit suffering?" but "what is human life for, and does that purpose make sense of the world as it is?" Hick's answer is that life is for soul-making, and that a world for soul-making would not be a paradise. The wisdom of the theodicy is the wisdom of confronting evil without despairing of meaning — of seeing, in the struggle, a structure that may, in the longest view, justify even what now seems pointless.

Relations

This quote articulates the soul-making theodicy and stands, with the free will defense, as one of the two main responses to the problem of evil. It belongs to Hick, develops the Irenaean tradition against the Augustinian, and draws on James's pragmatist account of the moral life. It bears on the wisdom of confronting evil and the wisdom of God.

Sources

1. "Problem of Evil." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil/
2. John Hick. Evil and the God of Love. London: Macmillan, 1966; 2nd ed. 1978. Part IV.
3. "John Hick." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hick/