The Irenaean (Soul-Making) Theodicy

The Irenaean (Soul-Making) Theodicy

The Irenaean theodicy offers a fundamentally different approach to the problem of evil from the Augustinian tradition. Rather than looking backwards to a lost paradise and a primordial fall, the Irenaean theodicy looks forwards to the spiritual development and ultimate perfection of humanity. Evil and suffering are not punishments for past sin but necessary conditions for the moral and spiritual growth of human beings. This “soul-making” approach, rooted in the thought of St Irenaeus of Lyon (c. 130–202 CE) and developed extensively by John Hick (1922–2012), is one of the most influential modern theodicies and a central topic in the AQA A-Level specification.

Irenaeus: Image and Likeness

Irenaeus, an early Church Father and Bishop of Lyon, drew a crucial distinction between two aspects of human creation based on Genesis 1:26: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”

• The image of God (imago Dei): Humans were created with the potential for a relationship with God — they possess reason, moral awareness, and the capacity for spiritual growth. This is the “image.”
• The likeness of God: This refers to the actual achievement of spiritual maturity, moral perfection, and a full, developed relationship with God. The “likeness” is not given at creation but must be developed through a process of moral and spiritual growth.

For Irenaeus, humans were not created perfect. They were created immature — with the potential for goodness but not yet having achieved it. The purpose of human life is to develop from the “image” to the “likeness” of God — to grow into spiritual maturity through the exercise of free will in a world that presents genuine moral challenges.

John Hick’s Development: Evil and the God of Love

John Hick (1922–2012) developed Irenaeus’ seminal insight into a comprehensive theodicy in his landmark work Evil and the God of Love (1966, revised 1977). Hick argued that the world is a “vale of soul-making” (a phrase borrowed from the poet John Keats) — an environment specifically designed by God to facilitate the moral and spiritual development of human beings.

Hick’s key arguments are as follows:

• Humans were created imperfect: God did not create humans in a state of perfection but in a state of immaturity, with the capacity for growth. This avoids the problem that Schleiermacher raised against Augustine: if humans were created imperfect, there is no mystery about how they came to do evil.
• Genuine goodness requires free choice: A person who is created already virtuous has no merit — virtue that is simply programmed in is not real virtue. Genuine moral goodness can only be achieved through the free choice to do good in situations where evil is a real possibility.
• Suffering is necessary for soul-making: Without suffering, there would be no occasion for compassion, courage, self-sacrifice, or perseverance. A world without pain would be a world without moral significance — a “toy world” or “playground paradise” in which nothing of moral importance could ever happen.

Epistemic Distance

One of Hick’s most important concepts is epistemic distance — the idea that God must be at a cognitive “distance” from humanity in order to preserve genuine freedom. If God’s existence were overwhelmingly obvious — if God were constantly, unmistakably present — humans would be unable to freely choose whether to believe in and follow God. They would be compelled by the sheer force of God’s presence, just as a prisoner is compelled by the presence of an armed guard.

• God’s existence must be ambiguous — the world must be capable of being interpreted both theistically and atheistically
• This ambiguity is necessary to preserve genuine free will in matters of faith and morality
• The apparent “absence” of God in the face of suffering is therefore not evidence against God but a necessary condition for genuine soul-making

Counterfactual Hypothesis: The World Without Suffering

Hick asked his readers to imagine a world in which God always intervened to prevent suffering. In such a world: