Analysis Of John Hick's Evil And The God Of Love

Growing up I was raised in a Catholic family, and I have gone to Catholic school my entire life. I have always learned about religion and the history of Jesus. In grade school, we were always taught the positive aspects of God, but never the negative aspects. I never really thought about God being at fault for anything when I was in grade school, but the older I got the more I began to almost blame God for the things that would happen in my life. I always began to wonder how exactly God can exist if there is evil in the world. When bad things happen in someone’s life, it is very common for them to ask God what they did to deserve this or how He could do this to them. I wanted to utilize my chance of writing a paper on this topic, so that

Hick is the author of “Evil and the God of Love”, and within it he emphasizes the idea that human beings are created incomplete. Hick discusses the idea that individuals are capable of responding freely to God and says, “Good and evil are thus necessary presences within the world, in order that informed and meaningful human development may take place.” CITATION FROM MCGRATH BOOK HERE. Hick also states that humans are ethically immature, which causes mistakes and poor choices. This immaturity is one explanation for sin and evil according to Hick. As discussed in class, “The need for challenges in order to move toward maturity is the second explanation for sin and evil.” (Feske) God created human beings with the capacity to grow and mature toward the good, and it is on each human being to make choices to eventually lead them to that good. John Hick offers many different ideas as to why evil exists, another being that moral evil is forever wrapped up in the problem of free will. As far as immoral evil goes, Hick suggests again that it is a necessary thing for soul making. Evil can only be answered if there is a future good which overcomes it. Hick states in his book, “To many, the most powerful positive objection to belief in God is the fact of evil. Probably for most agnostics it is the appalling depth and extent of human suffering, more than anything else, that makes the idea of a loving Creator seem so

Hick offers many interesting views on evil and why exactly it exists. However, to some people, like Augustine, it sounds almost too good to be true. There are many theologians, and even non-theologians that will say evil is a necessary part of life. Augustine began to examine the idea of evil and came to the conclusion that an explanation for the existence of evil must be given, or else one must accept either that God created evil and therefore is partly evil as well. Evil is usually associated with nothingness and destruction. Augustine believes that if we say that evil is on the same level as good in the world, than we are also saying that being and non-being coexist. This idea is seemingly impossible. Augustine presents an idea in the Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love, that I found particularly interesting. He