Some suffering crushes rather than forms
Infant suffering, genocide, severe disability and animal pain often appear disconnected from any development of the sufferer.
Contemporary philosophy · 1922–2012
John Hick
Hick reframes a world containing difficulty as an environment for freely developed persons, then extends his philosophy towards plural responses to an ineffable Real.
John Hick was a British philosopher of religion who taught in Britain and the United States. His work addressed faith, religious experience, evil, life after death and religious diversity, most famously through soul-making theodicy and a pluralist interpretation of world religions.
EthicsKnowledgeAgency
The question he enters
The question John Hick enters
Would a world engineered to prevent every danger also prevent the formation of courage, compassion and responsible freedom?
The central move
Treat the world as soul-making
Hick argues that morally mature persons cannot simply be created ready-made. An epistemic distance from God and a challenging environment make free response and virtue possible. Drawing on Irenaeus, he treats earthly life as a setting for development, while accepting that the scale and distribution of suffering remain the theory's sharpest test.
Key ideas
Terms that carry the argument.
- Soul-making
- The development of morally and spiritually mature persons through free responses to a resistant world.
- Epistemic distance
- A condition in which God's reality is not overwhelmingly obvious, leaving space for non-coerced response and development.
- Religious pluralism
- The proposal that major traditions are culturally shaped responses to one transcendent Real rather than only one containing genuine encounter.
- Replica theory
- A thought experiment defending the logical possibility that a person recreated in another place or world could count as the same person.
Where the view strains
Objections and limits.
Pluralism may redescribe traditions from outside
Treating religions as responses to an ineffable Real can override their incompatible self-understandings in the name of a higher theory.
Sources and routes
Read the work. Follow the argument.
Primary texts
Where to meet the position.
- SpringerLink / Palgrave MacmillanEvil and the God of LoveWebThe major contrast between Augustinian and soul-making approaches to evil.Palgrave Macmillan electronic edition, 2010. · Publisher book record, preview and institutional or purchase access. Checked Aug 2026.
- Springer Nature LinkAn Interpretation of ReligionWebThe pluralist hypothesis of culturally shaped responses to the transcendent Real.An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent, second edition, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004; ebook ISBN 9780230510678, DOI 10.1057/9780230510678. · Official book record with contents, chapter previews where offered, and institutional access options. Checked Aug 2026.
- Wipf and Stock PublishersFaith and KnowledgeWebReligious experience, faith as interpretation and the epistemology of belief.Faith and Knowledge: A Modern Introduction to the Problem of Religious Knowledge, second edition; Wipf and Stock reissue, 2009, 278 pages, paperback ISBN 9781606086964. · Official publisher record with description and purchase routes; it is not a downloadable full text. Checked Aug 2026.
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