Evaluating Theodicies: A Comparative Assessment
This final lesson brings together the major theodicies and critical perspectives studied throughout this course, providing a systematic comparative evaluation. For AQA A-Level Religious Studies, the ability to evaluate and compare theodicies — weighing their strengths and weaknesses, identifying shared assumptions and fundamental disagreements, and reaching a reasoned conclusion — is essential for achieving the highest grades. This lesson provides the framework for that evaluation.
The Central Question
All theodicies address the same fundamental question: how can the existence of evil and suffering be reconciled with the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good God? The different theodicies offer radically different answers, and each carries distinctive strengths and weaknesses. The key question for evaluation is: which approach, if any, provides a satisfactory response to the problem of evil?
Comparing the Major Theodicies
The Augustinian Theodicy
Core claim: Evil is the result of the free rebellion of created beings (angels, then humans) against God. The world was originally perfect but fell into corruption through sin.
- Strengths: Preserves divine omnipotence and goodness; provides a unified explanation of moral and natural evil; rooted in biblical narrative; emphasises human responsibility; the privatio boni concept offers a sophisticated metaphysical account of evil
- Weaknesses: Scientifically untenable (no original paradise, natural evil predates humanity by billions of years); Schleiermacher’s logical critique (how can a perfect being go wrong?); injustice of inherited guilt; biologically incoherent concept of “seminally present”; the aesthetic theme may trivialise suffering
- Best suited for: Believers who accept a broadly literal reading of Genesis and who prioritise maintaining the traditional attributes of God
The Irenaean (Soul-Making) Theodicy
Core claim: Evil and suffering are necessary conditions for the moral and spiritual development of human beings. The world is a “vale of soul-making.”
- Strengths: Avoids the logical problems of the Augustinian approach; compatible with evolution and modern science; forward-looking and optimistic; preserves human free will; Hick’s epistemic distance is philosophically sophisticated
- Weaknesses: The quantity and intensity of suffering seem disproportionate to any developmental purpose; suffering often destroys rather than develops; cannot adequately account for animal suffering or the suffering of children; universal salvation is theologically controversial; D.Z. Phillips’ critique of moral obscenity
- Best suited for: Believers who want a theodicy compatible with modern science and who are willing to accept universal salvation
The Free Will Defence
Core claim: God and evil are logically compatible because God cannot create genuinely free beings who are guaranteed to always choose the good.
- Strengths: Widely accepted as successful against the logical problem of evil; philosophically rigorous; does not make empirical claims that can be scientifically falsified; preserves divine omnipotence (properly understood)
- Weaknesses: Does not address the evidential problem; assumes libertarian free will, which is philosophically controversial; the extended defence (fallen angels causing natural evil) is speculative; does not explain the amount of evil; a defence, not a theodicy — it shows compatibility without explaining why God actually permits evil
- Best suited for: Philosophers seeking to refute the logical problem of evil as a formal argument; those who accept libertarian free will
Process Theodicy
Core claim: God’s power is persuasive, not coercive. God cannot prevent evil because all entities have inherent self-determination.
- Strengths: Avoids the problem of divine responsibility entirely; takes suffering seriously by affirming that God suffers alongside creation; consistent with a scientific worldview; provides a deep metaphysical account of creaturely freedom
- Weaknesses: Radically departs from classical theism; the process God may be too weak to be religiously adequate; abandons creation ex nihilo, divine omnipotence, and other core doctrines; panexperientialism is philosophically contentious; may dissolve the problem rather than solving it
- Best suited for: Those willing to revise the traditional concept of God; philosophical theologians sympathetic to Whitehead’s metaphysics
Protest Theodicy / Anti-Theodicy
Core claim: The enterprise of theodicy is itself morally problematic. The proper response to evil is not intellectual justification but moral protest and compassionate action.
- Strengths: Morally serious; refuses to trivialise suffering; draws on powerful literary and experiential sources (Job, Dostoevsky, Wiesel); highlights the distance between abstract philosophical arguments and lived experience of suffering
- Weaknesses: Does not provide an intellectual resolution to the problem; may leave believers without resources for maintaining coherent faith; can be accused of intellectual evasion; if no theodicy is acceptable, is theism rationally sustainable?
- Best suited for: Those who prioritise moral and experiential authenticity over intellectual systematisation
Key Scholarly Debates
Several overarching debates cut across the individual theodicies:
Is Any Theodicy Possible?
The debate between theodicists and anti-theodicists raises a prior question: is the very enterprise of theodicy intellectually and morally legitimate?