St Augustine was one of the most influential thinkers in the Christian church and his theodicy goes towards justifying the evil which exists whilst allowing the traditional views of God to remain. St Augustine’s theodicy is largely based on the Bible and especially the Fall in Genesis. He viewed creation as wholly good in that God created a perfect world but that evil was the breakdown of some aspect of creation caused by something else. In this theory evil is considered to be a “privatio bonni,” a privation of good rather than a substance in itself and therefore God can not be held responsible as he did not create it. If a human being causes evil then the individual is evil to the extent that he or she falls short of their full potential of goodness. He used the analogy of blindness being the absence of sight. This is a clever way around the problem but has a certain number of incongruities, the main one being why God created these voids or why he did not make attempts to destroy evil and suffering once it had occurred. Augustine continues to explain that God gave all humans and angels free will and therefore evil came from a deliberate choice to disobey God. Love demands a free response and so God had to take the risk that human beings would inflict suffering.
The possibility of evil is necessary in Augustine’s view, as only the uncreated God Himself can be perfect because created things are susceptible to change. A pivotal theme in this theodicy is that everyone God created is guilty and deserves to be punished because
everyone was seminally present in Adam. By this, Augustine meant that we are all
genetically descended from Adam but a modern interpretation would be that we all share a
common human nature and would have done the same as Adam or Eve if in the garden of Eden for eternity. Natural evil is a fitting punishment and came about because the human action destroyed the natural order. God does not intervene because he is not responsible for the evil. However, God did show his mercy through Jesus when he gave us a second chance through sending down his son from heaven.
The free will defence deals with the problem of natural evil by again laying blame on the Fall in Genesis, he claims the loss of order within nature occurred when the first human sin destroyed the delicate balance of the world and also caused the world to become remote from God. F.D.E Schleirmacher argued against Augustine’s theodicy and pointed out a logical error, how could the perfect world God had created have gone wrong? Whether evil is a real feature or an absence of one it has been created and therefore must be attributed to God eventually. Another logical problem is posed in the idea of a perfect creation having a potential for evil as for angels and humans to disobey God they must have had a knowledge of evil in the first place. There are also scientific discoveries since Augustine’s death, namely evolution, which contradict certain aspects of the theory. We are not all seminally present in Adam which means we are not in fact guilty for Adam’s sin. This could mean that God is making us pay for other people’s sins unjustly. The other main scientific discrepancy is the theory of natural selection which proves that the story of Adam and Eve was just that, a story, and not a factual event with the potential for genetic repercussions.
An important question raised is why God created hell. It implies the anticipation of evil to follow. The anticipation therefore of its imperfection. The creation of heaven, contrarily, along with the second chance he gave us through Jesus, demonstrates God’s irrational inconsistency. Although Augustine’s theory goes some way to justify God’s reasons for allowing suffering it has many irregularities and contradictions which are its downfall and it does not in my opinion give a convincing argument.
A potentially more convincing theodicy is John Hick’s Irenaean theodicy. This is based on ideas set by St Irenaeus in 120-202 AD and developed by Hick at a later point. Irenaeus based his theory on Genesis chapter 1:26, the phrase “let us make man in our own image, after our likeness.” His interpretation is that the creation of mankind was a two fold development. We are all born in the image of God, in that we are all intelligent beings and have the capacity or potential for moral and spiritual development. Our aim is therefore to grow towards the likeness of God. We are transformed through free responses, and suffering is a challenge evoking such a response and development of character. Irenaeus recognised that in order to develop we need to maintain an epistemic distance from God. This distance in our knowledge and understanding of God encourages us to get close to him and leaves the relationship down to the individual. Hick considered the world to be a “vale of soul-making.” By this he meant that we could not develop in a perfect world, we therefore need challenge and struggles. Humans will be rewarded for their suffering eventually in heaven and those who do not reach the likeness of God before death can continue to develop in purgatory.
Hick assumes that in order for humans to be truly free that must have liberty of indifference, a main basis for his theodicy. Similar to Augustine, Hick understood that free choice also meant the potential to disobey God. There would be no such potential if there were never any possibility of evil. For God to remove evil he would need to compromise our freedom. Unlike Augustine, Irenaeus admitted that God is partly responsible for evil because he created imperfection in anticipation of them reaching perfection independently.
He claims that although evil “multiplies the perils” we face, it is ultimately beneficial, “how, if we had no knowledge of the contrary, could we have instruction in that which is good?” Without evil, qualities such as courage, honour and love would be impossible.
Peter Vardy understood that humans needed free will to have a love for God with any value. He clarified this in an analogy of a king who falls in love with a peasant girl. The king has the power to order her to marry him but chooses to allow her to love him of his own accord. God therefore keeps a distance so people do not feel obligated to believe in him, but want to.
Although there are fewer discrepancies in this theory compared to Augustine’s, many remain. God’s justice is put into question with the introduction of the concept of heaven. It contradicts religious texts which state that the unrighteous will be punished. And also leaves us with little incentive for moral development, possibly causing us to question the point of moral behaviour if we will be rewarded in heaven regardless. Another main problem with this theory is the severity of suffering with wars and starvation killing billions throughout the ages. Wouldn’t a lesser form of evil have allowed us to learn from our failings? We could also begin to question how God’s love was demonstrated in events such as the holocaust.
The free will defence seems the most likely explanation for evil. There would be little point in a world without the potentiality of improvement. It explains God’s distance from the human race and the reasons why some people are able to have complete faith in God at the same time that someone else refuses that he exists. Evil to a certain extent seems necessary for us to learn. However, as D.Z. Phillips argues, the extent of suffering seems unjustifiable in many situations. This therefore does not completely solve the problem why a omnipotent and omnibenevolent God would allow such pain to be inflicted through thousands of years.
