1 Soul-making: A Description and Critique of John Hick’s Theodicy Billy Jang (Mail Box #160) Introduction How can the omnipotent God allow evil in the world? Where does this evil come from? Theodicy is the theological and philosophical attempt to vindicate “the coherence of THEISM in the face of the problem of EVIL.” 1 There are two major developments on these questions; one traces to Augustine and the Western Church, and the other to Irenaeus and the Eastern Church. 2 Augustinian type of theodicy as a traditional theodicy had dominated Western Christian thought from the fifth century to the eighteenth century; God created man and the world perfectly good, but evil was originated from the misuse of God-given freedom of man. 3 Having rejected the classical Augustinian theodicy, John Hick had developed an alternative theodicy, Irenaean type of theodicy; God created human imperfect and immature, so that he should go through the evolutionary process of suffering to reach into his perfect maturity, which is the “soul-making” process. 4 Hick recognizes the value of suffering for the soul-making process, and he encourages us to reflect the true meaning of suffering and embrace the positive side in our lives. However he fails to adequately explain about the problem of evil in relation to the limitlessly loving and powerful God. This paper is divided into two parts; the first part is to describe the main features of Hick’s theodicy with the concise summary of the thoughts of Irenaeus and Schleiermacher, and the second is to criticize his arguments by proving how inadequately he develops his theodicy. Description of Hick’s Theodicy Hick had been influenced by several theologians, especially Irenaeus and Schleiermacher, to establish the soul-making theodicy, which adopted the concepts of human fallenness and human development. 5 Before moving into the main features of his theodicy, it is meaningful to briefly examine how they argued about the compatibility between the God of omnipotence and the problem of evil. A bishop of the ancient church Irenaeus (A.D. 130-202) sees man as an imperfect and immature creature in contrast to the Augustinian tradition which regards man as a finitely perfect creature, and he also views that our world was created as the fallen state to contain both good and evil in contrast to the Augustinian view that the world was created perfectly 1 Anthony C. Thiselton, A Concise Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2002), 306. 2 John Hick, Evil and the God of Love, 2 nd ed. (London: Macmillian Press, 1977), 210. 3 Gerald Bonner, St Augustine of Hippo: Life and Controversies (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1986), 207. 4 Hick, EAGOL, 214. 5 Thiselton, 131.