John Hick: Soul-Making, Religious Pluralism, and the Real

John Hick: Soul-Making, Religious Pluralism, and the Real

John Harwood Hick (1922–2012) was a British philosopher of religion and theologian who made major contributions to several areas of the philosophy of religion, including the problem of evil, religious pluralism, the nature of faith, and the question of life after death. Born in Scarborough, Yorkshire, Hick studied at the University of Edinburgh, Oxford, and Cambridge, and held academic positions at Cornell, Cambridge, Birmingham, and Claremont. His intellectual journey took him from evangelical Christianity to a pluralistic understanding of religion that embraced insights from all the major world faiths. For AQA A-Level Religious Studies (specification 7062), Hick is essential for understanding theodicy (the soul-making theodicy), religious pluralism, and debates about the afterlife.

The Soul-Making Theodicy

Hick’s most famous contribution to the philosophy of religion is his soul-making theodicy (also called the Irenaean theodicy), developed in his landmark work Evil and the God of Love (1966; revised edition 1977). Hick distinguished between two major Christian traditions of theodicy:

• The Augustinian tradition: Evil entered the world through the Fall — the free choice of Adam and Eve (and, before them, of the rebel angels) to disobey God. Evil is thus a consequence of the misuse of free will by beings who were created perfect. The world was originally created good, and evil is a corruption or privation of that original goodness. Hick argued that this tradition faces insuperable difficulties: it requires a literal interpretation of the Fall narrative, it is incompatible with evolutionary science (which shows that suffering and death existed long before humans), and it raises the question of how perfectly created beings could have freely chosen to sin.
• The Irenaean tradition: Named after Irenaeus of Lyon (c. 130–202 CE), this tradition holds that human beings were not created perfect but were created immature — in the “image” of God (imago Dei) but not yet in the “likeness” of God (similitudo Dei). The purpose of human life is to grow and develop from the initial state of imperfection toward the final state of perfection — to be made into the likeness of God through a process of moral and spiritual development. Hick called this process “soul-making.”

Hick’s soul-making theodicy argues that evil and suffering are necessary conditions for this process of moral and spiritual growth:

• A world designed for soul-making: For genuine moral and spiritual growth to occur, human beings must live in an environment that presents them with real challenges, genuine choices, and authentic suffering. A world without suffering would be a “hedonistic paradise” in which no moral growth could take place — there would be no need for courage, compassion, self-sacrifice, perseverance, or faith.
• Epistemic distance: Hick introduced the concept of “epistemic distance” from God. For genuine faith and moral freedom to be possible, God must not be too obviously present. If God’s existence were as evident as the existence of the sun, we would have no choice but to acknowledge God, and our response would not be free. God has therefore created a world in which divine existence is ambiguous — the evidence is consistent with both theism and atheism, leaving room for a free response of faith. This epistemic distance is not a defect in creation but a necessary condition for the development of genuine, free, morally significant human beings.
• The counterfactual hypothesis: Hick asked us to imagine a world in which there was no suffering — a world in which God always intervened to prevent harm, in which no one could hurt anyone else, in which natural disasters never occurred. In such a world, he argued, moral development would be impossible. There would be no need for bravery (because there would be no danger), no need for compassion (because there would be no suffering), no need for self-sacrifice (because there would be no cost to generosity). Such a world would produce morally and spiritually stunted human beings — “pet animals” rather than free, responsible moral agents.
• Eschatological verification: Hick acknowledged that the soul-making theodicy cannot fully justify the suffering of every individual in this life. Some suffering seems excessive, meaningless, and destructive of the soul rather than creative of it. Hick therefore appealed to an eschatological (end-times) dimension: the process of soul-making extends beyond this life. In the afterlife, all human beings will eventually reach the final state of perfection — union with God. Hick affirmed universal salvation: every human being will ultimately be saved, regardless of their beliefs or actions in this life. The suffering of this life will eventually be justified when seen in the context of the final, blessed state to which all are destined.

“The world is not designed for the maximisation of human pleasure and the minimisation of human pain, but as an environment in which finite moral beings may, through their own free responses, develop toward the perfection that God intends for them.” — Hick, Evil and the God of Love

Evaluating the Soul-Making Theodicy

• Strengths: The soul-making theodicy is compatible with evolutionary science (which shows that human beings developed gradually from simpler life forms). It takes seriously the value of moral growth and the importance of genuine freedom. It avoids the difficulties of the Augustinian Fall narrative. Its concept of epistemic distance provides a powerful explanation for why God’s existence is not more obvious.
• The problem of excessive suffering: The most powerful objection to the soul-making theodicy is that much suffering is excessive — it exceeds what is needed for soul-making and is more likely to destroy the soul than to make it. The suffering of young children, the victims of genocide, and those who endure prolonged, agonising illness seems to serve no soul-making purpose. D. Z. Phillips argued that it is morally obscene to justify the suffering of a child by saying it contributes to “soul-making.”
• The animal suffering objection: Animals suffer in vast numbers but are presumably not engaged in soul-making. What justifies their suffering? The soul-making theodicy has little to say about this.
• The universal salvation objection: Many Christians reject Hick’s universalism (the belief that all will eventually be saved) as unbiblical and morally problematic. If everyone will eventually be saved regardless of their choices, does this not undermine the seriousness of moral choice and the reality of human freedom?
• The alternative worlds objection: Could God not have created beings who were already morally mature, without the need for a painful process of development? Hick responds that moral maturity requires earning one’s character through free choices in challenging circumstances — a “ready-made” moral character would not be genuinely one’s own.

Religious Pluralism and “the Real”

Hick’s other major contribution is his theory of religious pluralism, developed most fully in An Interpretation of Religion (1989), which won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award. Hick’s pluralist hypothesis is one of the most debated and controversial positions in contemporary philosophy of religion.

Hick’s pluralism was motivated by two observations:

• The geographical distribution of religion: A person’s religion is overwhelmingly determined by the culture and place in which they were born. Someone born in Saudi Arabia is almost certainly Muslim; someone born in Thailand is almost certainly Buddhist; someone born in Italy is almost certainly Catholic. This suggests that the different religions are culturally conditioned responses to the same underlying reality, rather than one religion being true and all others false.
• The moral fruits of the religions: All the major world religions produce saints — people of extraordinary moral and spiritual depth. Christianity produces St. Francis; Islam produces Rumi; Hinduism produces Gandhi; Buddhism produces the Dalai Lama. If the major religions are equally productive of moral and spiritual transformation, it seems arbitrary to claim that only one of them is true.

Hick’s pluralist hypothesis drew heavily on Kant’s distinction between phenomena and noumena: