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John Harwood Hick (20 January 1922 – 9 February 2012) was an English-born philosopher of religion and theologian who taught in the United States for the larger part of his career. In philosophical theology , he made contributions in the areas of theodicy , eschatology , and Christology , and in the philosophy of religion he contributed to the ...
The key points of a soul-making theodicy begin with its metaphysical foundation: that "(1) The purpose of God in creating the world was soul-making for rational moral agents". [4] (2) Humans choose their responses to the soul-making process thereby developing moral character. (3) This requires that God remain hidden, otherwise freewill would be ...
Romans 8:18–30 shows that suffering is temporary and set within the context of God's eternal purposes. Hebrews 12:1–6 sets suffering within the concept of "soul-making," as do 2 Peter 1:5–8, James 1, and others. Exodus 17:1–7 (and the Book of Job) characterize suffering as testing and speak of God's right to test human loyalty.
In the 20th century, John Hick collated the ideas of Irenaeus into a distinct theodicy. He argued that the world exists as a "vale of soul-making" (a phrase that he drew from John Keats), and that suffering and evil must therefore occur. He argued that human goodness develops through the experience of evil and suffering.
The soul-making reconciliation of the problem of evil, states Creegan, fails to explain the need or rationale for evil inflicted on animals and resultant animal suffering, because "there is no evidence at all that suffering improves the character of animals, or is evidence of soul-making in them". [156] Hick differentiates between animal and ...
John Hick criticised the Augustinian theodicy when he developed his own theodicy in 1966. Hick supported the views of the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher , which he classified as Irenaean, who argued that the world is perfectly suited for the moral development of humans and that this justifies the existence of evil.
John Hick used the term "soul-making" in his theodicy Evil and the God of Love to describe the kind of spiritual development that he believes justifies the existence of evil. This defense is employed by Michael Murray, [31] who explains how, in his view, divine hiddenness is essential to soul-making. It may seem that it is not hard to imagine a ...
Two Christian theologians of the 20th and 21st centuries who wrote in support of universalism and have received major notice are J.A.T. Robinson and John Hick. Both argued for universalism as coming from God's nature as being of omnipotent love and stated that as time went on after death, some would temporarily refuse to repent, but none would ...