JOHN HICK'S THEODICY Also by C. Robert Mesle FIRE IN MY BONES: A Study of Faith and Belief THE BIBLE AS STORY AND STRUGGLE John Hick's Theodicy A Process Humanist Critique C. Robert Mesle Professor of Philosophy and Religion Graceland College Lamoni, Iowa With a Response by John Hick Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978-1-349-21437-2 ISBN 978-1-349-21435-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21435-8 © c. Robert Mesle 1991 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1991 All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 First published in the United States of America in 1991 ISBN 978-0-312-05706-0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mesle, C. Robert John Hick's theodicy: a process humanist critique / C. Robert Mesle ; with a response by John Hick. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-05706-0 1. Theodicy-History of doctrines-20th century. 2. Hick, John­ Contributions in theodicy. 3. Theodicy-Controversialliterature. 4. Process philosophy. 5. Humanism. I. Hick, John. II. Title. BT160.M47 1991 214' .092-dc20 90-48509 CIP To Sarah and Mark, who taught me what matters, and whose welfare I try to put before the niceties of metaphysics. And to Barbara, for many creative distractions and insights Contents List of Abbreviations viii Introduction: Theodicy, Mythology and Values xi An Irenaean Theodicy by John Hick XVI Part I Constructive Reflections 1 The Smallpox Fallacy: Struggling with Suffering and Meaning 3 2 Does God Hide From Us? 16 3 Freedom, Values and Theodicy 23 Part II Critical Studies 4 The Problem of Genuine Evil 47 5 Does God Hide From Us? Faith, Freedom and Theodicy 66 6 Hick's Interpretation of Religion 86 Part III Conclusion and Response 7 Considering Alternatives 97 8 Response to Mesle by John Hick 115 Notes 135 Index 139 Abbreviations Where these works by John Hick are cited I use the following abbreviations and the page numbers. The reference is given in the text, for example (EGL 317). Other references are numbered and provided as notes at the end of the book. AEG Arguments for the Existence of God, London: Macmillan, 1971; New York: Herder & Herder. DEL Death and Eternal Life, London: Collins; reissue: London: Macmillan, 1985; New York: Harper & Row, 1976. EG The Existence of God, New York: Macmillan, 1964. EGL Evil and the God of Love, London: Macmillan; New York: Harper & Row, 1966. EGL 1977 Evil and the God of Love, 2nd edn, London: Macmillan. This r~vised edition adds a chapter reviewing the literature since 1966 and drops one chapter to make room for it. Otherwise there are no changes. I cite the 1966 edition except when referring to the added chapter. FK Faith and Knowledge, 2nd edn, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967, reissued with a new preface, London: Macmillan, 1988. FP Faith and the Philosophers, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1964. GMN God Has Many Names, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1982. IR An Interpretation of Religion, London: Macmillan: Yale University Press, 1989. viii Abbreviations ix PR Philosophy of Religion, 3rd edn, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1983. PRP Problems of Religious Pluralism, London: Macmillan; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985. WBG Why Believe in God? (with Michael Goulder) London: SCM Press, 1983. Introduction Theodicy, Mythology and Values ' ... it must be a theology which puts the welfare of children above the niceties of metaphysics. d The impact of Robert McAfee Brown's proposal for a new starting point in theology will be obvious throughout this book. Finally this is a book about values and about how we ought to approach life. Thinking about children is often a powerful way to clarify these problems. THE PLACE OF VALVES IN THEODICY A 'theodicy' is a 'defense of God' (or perhaps, Reality) in the face of the reality of evil, and will inevitably involve a set of values. A theodicy is persuasive only for those who share the values it attributes to God. At the end of the last chapter of the 1977 edition of Evil and the God of Love, Hick puts the problem of theodicy very well. Quoting Dostoevsky, he asks us to consider whether any possible outcome could justify a God who put so many people through such horrible torture, or even' "one tiny creature - that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance .. ." , (EGL 1977, 385) Hick believes that such an outcome is possible. (EGL 1977, 286). In contrast, I believe that an omnipotent God with values anything at all like my own could find a better way. But how are my values relevant to such a debate? Many debates about theodicy spin hopelessly about the central error of assuming that the universe is the way we want it to be. We know, however, that our values do not tell us what is true. We are not justified, either rationally or morally, in believing in a loving God just because we want to. If we do, however, step inside the Christian faith (or Christian mythology, as Hick would allow) then ques­ tions of coherence arise. Are certain claims about God's behavior coherent with other claims about God's values? Rules forbidding Xl xii Introduction self-contradiction apply to theodicy in this way. But even when this is understood, grave difficulties may arise. When people make claims about what God must value aren't they just identifying their own best and noblest values (values they may admittedly fail to live out)? Isn't that what it means to affirm that God is good? Yet, our values change, or undergo clarification. We may discover conflicts between our values and be forced to choose between them. What happens when we discover that the values we have assigned to God as justifications for God's allowing evil actually conflict with other values which, upon reflection, we realize we hold higher? Most Christians assume that there exists a loving God and recognize that their accounts of why God allows evil must be consistent with the values of a loving God. But how do we decide what a loving God values? Debates over theodicy quickly run into difficulty when we find that we have different or changing intuitions about the answer to that question. While it is still meaningful to look for coherence between these further clarified explanations of God's values, the more extensive our disagree­ ments about fundamental values are the more difficult it becomes to decide just what the arguments prove. And as our own values change, the persuasive power of theodicies built on them changes, too. The mythological character of theodicy is relevant to this confu­ sion. For debates over theodicy are excellent arenas for drawing our basic values out into the open, and for showing conflicts between values we hold even within ourselves. Hick makes an important point in saying that theodicies are 'mythologically true' as they evoke appropriate responses to our human situation. By challenging the values underlying Hick's theodicy, I call for a world view which may more coherently elicit what I consider to be appropriate responses to life. There are times, then, when it is appropriate in these debates to outline one's own values clearly and argue that they conflict with the values underlying a specific theodicy. If others find those different values compelling, the theodicy loses persuasive power. Such a strategy does not prove what is true about God - either the existence or values of God - but it does cast the discussion into a helpful new light by challenging old assumptions about what God must value. Most importantly, however, it challenges the adequacy of such mythical theodicies to evoke appropriate responses to life. Introduction xiii In the long run, it seems that theodicies fail not because of precise logical arguments, but because they appeal to values which are no longer tolerable. John Hick, for example, cannot accept the idea of hell as an expression of divine love. So hell plays no role in his theodicy. I have no doubt {and every hope) that many Christians have been led by his discussions of hell and his positive alternative to it to realize that the idea of hell really is incompatible with their own best sense of what authentic human love (and hence divine love) must be like. To this extent, Hick's theodicy, whether literally true or not, provided an ethical mytho­ logy which I applaud. In the same way, then, it is my intention to challenge some values underlying Hick's Irenaean theodicy and suggest other worldviews. So while issues of logic and coherence remain vital, and I intend to offer such logical arguments, issues of imagination and values are inescapable and appropriate in theodicy. JOHN HICK'S THEODICY John Hick's massive and majestic work on theodicy, Evil and the God of Love, firmly established him as a major theologian and philosopher. It is an important work because of his success in pulling together some dimly perceived but deeply felt values and beliefs of a wide range of people struggling with evil, and giving them clear expression. Thirty years later, in An Interpretation of Religion, he has had the courage to declare that theodicies, including his own Irenaean theodicy, are myths. A theodicy is mythological, Hick says, 'in the sense that the language in which it speaks about the Real, as a personal being carrying out intentions through time, cannot apply to the ultimate transcendent Reality itself'. (IR 359) It might seem simply irrelevant and anachronistic to follow such a startling proclamation by Hick with a book devoted to his theodicy.