Thursday 26 January 2012

Irenaeus and John Hick - Theodicy

Irenaeus lived about 200 years before Augustine and had a very different way of reconciling the belief that God is all-powerful and loving with the fact that evil exists.  He did not seek to show that evil is not real (like Augustine).  He decided that God created the world with good and bad deliberately designed in.  He says there has to be evil for us to appreciate good and also that we can't develop as human beings without free moral choice and challenge.

The idea of goodness is comparative and a qualitative judgement.  How do we know what is good unless there are varying degress of goodness?   How can we tell whether someone is kind or brave unless there are varying degrees of these qualities to make that judgement?  And then there must be some things that are not good at all.

How can we be made in the image of God unless we have the ability to make moral choices?

Also Irenaeus says there is a difference between being made in God's image and being in his likeness.  He says we are made in his image but have to grow into his likeness.  In order to grow into his likeness then we must have freedom to choose, to develop and mature; we can only reach our potential by learning to overcome difficulty and by resisting temptation.

If God stepped in and stopped people making the wrong choices or if he prevented the suffering that is a natural consequence or poor decisions or lack or morality then we may as well not be free and there would be no potential to learn from our mistakes.  Irenaeus uses the example of a baby only being able to drink milk and then moving onto pureed food before being able to manage solids.

John Hick says this,
"A world which is to be a person-making environment cannot be a pain free paradise but must contain challenges and dangers, with real possibilities of many kinds of accident and disaster, and the pain and suffering which they bring."  He says the world is a "vale of soul-making."

What do you think?
Does Irenaeus make a better theodicy than Augustine?

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