Notes · Religious StudiesUK · A-Levels

Evil and suffering

The existence of evil and suffering is the strongest challenge to belief in an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God. This topic sets out the logical problem (the inconsistent triad) and the evidential problem, then expounds and evaluates the principal theistic responses: the Augustinian free-will theodicy, the Irenaean soul-making theodicy developed by John Hick, Plantinga's free-will defence and process theodicy, before judging whether any adequately answers the problem.

5 sections~23 min reading time2 competenciesLevel Standard 2 · Advanced 3

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Exam profile

AO1 · Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the logical and evidential problems of evil and the main theodiciesAO2 · Analyse and evaluate whether the theodicies succeed in defending the coherence of theism, reaching a justified judgement

Operators:explainanalyseassessevaluate'...' Discussto what extent

basic level

At AS-Level, state the problem of evil clearly and expound one theodicy accurately with its main criticism.

higher level

At full A-Level, distinguish the logical from the evidential problem, expound and compare the theodicies, and evaluate whether they answer the strongest form of the problem.

Depth

Text

Contents · 5 sections

Evil and suffering

The problem of evil stated#

StandardAQA 7062/1 Section A: Evil and sufferingDfE GCE Religious Studies subject content

The inconsistent triad

Fig. 1Mackie argues that the three theistic claims cannot all be true: together they entail a contradiction.

The problem of evil arises from an apparent inconsistency between three claims that classical theism affirms: that God is omnipotent (all-powerful), that God is omnibenevolent (all-loving), and that evil exists. Epicurus is traditionally credited with the earliest statement of the dilemma: if God is willing to prevent evil but not able, he is impotent; if able but not willing, he is malevolent; if both able and willing, whence then is evil? J. L. Mackie, in 'Evil and Omnipotence' (1955), sharpens this into the inconsistent triad: an omnipotent being could eliminate evil, an omnibenevolent being would want to eliminate evil, so if such a God existed there would be no evil; but evil exists; therefore such a God does not exist. Mackie's claim is strong: the propositions are not merely improbable together but logically incompatible, so theism is not merely unlikely but incoherent.

This is the logical problem of evil, and its force depends on the hidden 'quasi-logical' assumptions Mackie makes explicit: that a good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can, and that there are no limits to what an omnipotent thing can do. If either assumption can be qualified, the contradiction dissolves. A theodicy (from theos, God, and dike, justice — a term coined by Leibniz) is an attempt to justify God's goodness in the face of evil by doing exactly this: showing either that a good God might have a morally sufficient reason to permit evil (denying the first assumption) or that even omnipotence cannot do the logically impossible (qualifying the second). A defence, more modestly, seeks only to show that theism is not self-contradictory, without claiming to give God's actual reasons.

The evidential (or probabilistic) problem, associated with William Rowe and David Hume, concedes that the logical problem may be answerable but argues that the sheer quantity, intensity and apparent pointlessness of suffering make God's existence improbable. Rowe's example is a fawn burned in a forest fire, dying in agony over days, unseen by any human and serving no discernible good: such gratuitous suffering, multiplied across the animal kingdom and human history, is strong evidence against an omnipotent, wholly good God, even if no strict contradiction is demonstrable. Hume, in the Dialogues, pressed the same point: a world containing so much misery is not what we would expect an all-good, all-powerful creator to make, and the inference from the world to such a God is therefore unwarranted.

A crucial distinction structures every theodicy: moral evil is suffering brought about by the deliberate misuse of human free will (murder, cruelty, injustice), whereas natural evil is suffering caused by the operation of the natural world independently of human agency (earthquakes, disease, famine). Free-will theodicies deal readily with moral evil but must work harder to explain natural evil; Augustine attributes natural evil to the Fall of angels and humans disordering nature, while Hick treats it as a necessary feature of a law-governed environment for soul-making. Keeping the two kinds apart, and noting which a theodicy handles well, is essential to a discriminating evaluation.

Worked example

How a theodicy breaks the triad

Show how the free-will theodicy responds to Mackie's inconsistent triad.

Locate the assumptions
Mackie assumes a good being always eliminates evil as far as it can, and omnipotence has no limits.
Deny the first
The theodicist argues a good God may permit evil for a greater good — genuine free will — so goodness does not entail eliminating all evil.
Qualify the second
Even omnipotence cannot create free creatures who are causally guaranteed always to choose good; that is logically impossible (Plantinga).
Result for the triad
With either assumption qualified, the three claims are no longer contradictory: an omnipotent, good God and evil can coexist if evil is the price of freedom.

Result: The free-will response dissolves the logical contradiction by denying that a good, omnipotent God would necessarily eliminate all evil; whether it also answers the evidential problem is a further question.

Typical mistakes

Presenting the problem of evil as merely emotional ('why do bad things happen?') rather than as a rigorous logical or evidential argument with premises.
Conflating moral and natural evil, then judging a theodicy that only really addresses moral evil as though it had solved the whole problem.

Active revision

Explain the logical problem of evil as set out by Mackie, and distinguish it from the evidential problem. (Structured AO1 response)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for religious studies (Department for Education)

The Augustinian theodicy#

StandardAQA 7062/1 Section A: Evil and sufferingDfE GCE Religious Studies subject content

Augustine's causal account of evil

Fig. 2A good creation is corrupted by the free Fall of angels and humans, producing moral and natural evil and deserved suffering.

Augustine's theodicy, developed in the Confessions and City of God, begins from the Genesis affirmation that God's creation was wholly good ('and God saw that it was good'). It follows that God did not create evil, for God creates only good things. Augustine's solution to where evil came from is the doctrine of privation: evil is not a substance or a positive thing but privatio boni, a privation or absence of good, a falling-short or corruption of a good that ought to be there — as blindness is not a thing but the absence of sight. On this view God is exonerated at the level of creation: everything God made is good, and evil is a parasitic deficiency, a going-wrong of good things, not a rival creation.

The origin of that going-wrong is the misuse of free will by rational creatures. Augustine holds that both the fallen angels (Lucifer and his followers) and the first humans (Adam and Eve) were created good and free, and freely turned away from the supreme good, God, towards lesser goods — an act of pride and disobedience, the Fall. Moral evil entered the world through this free rebellion. Natural evil Augustine attributes to the same source: the Fall disrupted the harmony of creation, so that nature itself became disordered, and human beings, 'seminally present in the loins of Adam', inherit both the guilt and the consequences. Suffering is thus not arbitrary but is, in Augustine's stern phrase, a just penalty for sin, and the world's mixture of good and ill even enhances the beauty of the whole, as shadows set off the light in a painting (the aesthetic and principle-of-plenitude themes).

Augustine's account also has a soteriological dimension: although all deserve punishment, God in his grace offers salvation through Christ to some, so that the story ends not in bare justice but in redemption for the elect. This gives the theodicy its overall shape — a good creation, a free Fall, deserved suffering, and gracious rescue — often called a 'soul-deciding' theodicy because human destiny is settled by the response to the Fall and to grace, in contrast to Hick's forward-looking 'soul-making' model.

The theodicy faces serious objections. Scientifically, the claim that natural evil results from a historical Fall is undermined by evolution: predation, disease and death existed for hundreds of millions of years before humans, so they cannot be a consequence of human sin. Logically, Schleiermacher argued that the Fall is incoherent: a perfectly good world could not go wrong of itself, for that would mean evil created itself out of nothing, and if the world did go wrong then it was not perfect to begin with — which implicates God. Morally, the notion of inherited guilt (that we are punished for Adam's sin) offends against justice, and a God who foreknew the Fall yet created anyway, and who consigns the non-elect to hell, looks neither wholly good nor wholly just. These difficulties push many towards the Irenaean alternative.

Worked example

Model evaluation plan: the Augustinian theodicy

Plan an essay assessing whether the Augustinian theodicy succeeds.

Thesis
The Augustinian theodicy answers the logical problem for moral evil but fails on natural evil and faces a fatal logical objection from Schleiermacher.
Argument (AO1)
Expound good creation, privation, the angelic and human Fall, deserved suffering and grace.
Counter (AO2)
Evolution refutes a historical Fall as the source of natural evil; Schleiermacher shows a perfect world cannot go wrong; inherited guilt is unjust.
Response
A defender may read the Fall symbolically (not historically) and evil as ongoing human alienation, but this concedes the literal theodicy and drifts towards Hick.
Judgement
Judged literally the theodicy fails; only a demythologised version survives, and that is really the soul-making view.

Result: The Augustinian theodicy is defensible for moral evil but not for natural evil, and its literal form collapses under Schleiermacher's objection, so it succeeds only if reinterpreted along Irenaean lines.

Typical mistakes

Describing evil as a 'thing God made' — Augustine's whole point is that evil is a privation, not a substance, so God did not create it.
Ignoring natural evil, or forgetting that Augustine roots it in the Fall, which is exactly where the evolutionary objection bites.

Active revision

'The Augustinian theodicy fails to explain natural evil.' Assess this view. (Extended essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for religious studies (Department for Education)

The Irenaean / Hick soul-making theodicy#

AdvancedAQA 7062/1 Section A: Evil and sufferingDfE GCE Religious Studies subject content

Hick's soul-making theodicy

Fig. 3Humanity grows from image to likeness through free responses in a world whose suffering makes moral development possible, completed after death.

The Irenaean theodicy, named after the second-century bishop Irenaeus and developed at length by John Hick in Evil and the God of Love (1966), is forward-looking rather than backward-looking. Where Augustine sees humanity as fallen from an original perfection, Irenaeus reads Genesis as saying humans were made in the 'image' of God but must grow into his 'likeness'. Humanity was created immature, at an epistemic and moral distance from God, with the potential to develop into perfected children of God through their own free responses. Evil and suffering are not a penalty for a past Fall but the necessary conditions of this growth — the environment in which souls are made.

Hick's central claim is that a world without suffering would be a world without moral growth. If humans were created already perfect, or placed in a hedonistic paradise where no action had painful consequences, there could be no genuine virtues: courage requires danger, compassion requires suffering to relieve, patience requires hardship. Moreover, God maintains an 'epistemic distance' — he does not make his existence overwhelmingly obvious — so that human beings come to God freely, through faith, rather than being coerced by his manifest presence; a God whose reality was inescapable would compel belief and destroy the freedom that soul-making requires. Natural evil, on this view, is not a problem to be explained away but a positive necessity: a stable, law-governed world with real dangers is the only setting in which responsible moral development is possible.

Because the process of soul-making is often cut short or defeated by suffering in this life — many die embittered, or in agony that produces no discernible growth — Hick argues that the theodicy requires an eschatological completion. Soul-making must continue beyond death, and God's purpose will finally be achieved for everyone: Hick embraces universal salvation, the doctrine that all souls will eventually be brought to perfection and none finally lost. Without this, the suffering of those whose lives seem wholly wasted would be pointless, and the theodicy would fail; with it, all suffering is justified as a stage in a process that ends in the good of every person.

The theodicy is powerful but contested. The gravest objection is the scale and distribution of suffering: much suffering is so intense and dehumanising that it destroys rather than develops character (Dostoevsky's tortured children; the Holocaust), and the amount seems far beyond what soul-making could require — this is the evidential problem again. D. Z. Phillips objected that it is morally monstrous to justify a person's agony by appeal to the good it might do someone else's soul, treating persons as means. Universal salvation itself is criticised as unbiblical and as undermining the moral seriousness of choice (if everyone is saved regardless, why struggle?). Hick replies that the goods achieved — free, mature, God-loving persons — are of such surpassing value that they justify the costly means, and that the mystery of particular sufferings does not defeat the overall vindication, but the objection from gratuitous, character-destroying suffering remains the theodicy's hardest test.

Worked example

Reconstructing Hick's greater-good defence

Set out Hick's argument that suffering is justified, and state the strongest objection.

Premise on virtue
Genuine moral virtues (courage, compassion) can only develop in a world containing danger and suffering.
Premise on freedom
God maintains epistemic distance so that love and faith are freely given, not coerced by his obvious presence.
Premise on value
Freely perfected, God-loving persons are a good of such surpassing worth that it justifies the suffering required to produce them.
Eschatological completion
Since growth is often incomplete in this life, God perfects all souls after death; universal salvation makes no suffering finally pointless.
Objection
Rowe and Dostoevsky: much suffering destroys rather than develops character and is grossly disproportionate; D. Z. Phillips: justifying one person's agony by another's growth is immoral.

Result: Hick's argument justifies suffering as the instrumental cost of soul-making and universal perfection, but its weakest point is the existence of gratuitous, character-destroying suffering that no growth appears to require.

Typical mistakes

Treating the Irenaean theodicy as claiming suffering is 'good' in itself; the claim is that suffering is the necessary condition of soul-making, an instrumental not intrinsic good.
Omitting the eschatological/universalist element, without which the theodicy cannot answer the suffering of lives that end in apparent waste.

Active revision

'The soul-making theodicy is the most convincing response to the problem of evil.' Discuss. (Extended essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for religious studies (Department for Education)

The free-will defence and process theodicy#

AdvancedAQA 7062/1 Section A: Evil and sufferingDfE GCE Religious Studies subject content

Responses to the problem of evil

Fig. 4The main responses divide into full theodicies and the more modest free-will defence, with process theodicy revising the concept of God.

Alvin Plantinga's free-will defence is aimed precisely at the logical problem, and is a defence rather than a full theodicy: it does not claim to state God's actual reasons for permitting evil, only to show that theism is not self-contradictory. Plantinga argues that it is possible that a world containing free creatures who sometimes choose evil is more valuable than a world of automata who cannot; and crucially, that even an omnipotent God cannot create free creatures who are causally determined always to choose the good, because a being so determined would not be free. So it is possible that God could not have created a world with moral good but no moral evil. Since this is merely possible, the mere existence of moral evil does not contradict God's existence, and Mackie's logical problem fails.

Plantinga extends the defence to natural evil with the bold 'transworld depravity' and Augustinian suggestion that natural evil might be the work of non-human free agents (fallen angels). This is speculative, and Plantinga offers it only to show logical possibility, not plausibility. The strength of the free-will defence is its modesty and rigour: it concedes nothing about how much evil there is, and simply blocks the claim of contradiction. Its limitation is exactly the same modesty — by aiming only at the logical problem, it leaves the evidential problem (the quantity and gratuitousness of suffering) entirely untouched, and it says nothing to comfort the sufferer.

Process theodicy, drawing on the metaphysics of A. N. Whitehead and developed by Charles Hartshorne and David Griffin, takes a radically different route: it denies divine omnipotence in the classical sense. On the process view, God is not the omnipotent creator ex nihilo of classical theism but a being who works within an uncreated, everlasting cosmic process, luring and persuading rather than coercing. God cannot unilaterally prevent evil because God does not have that kind of power; God shares in the world's suffering ('the fellow-sufferer who understands') and does everything possible, by persuasion, to maximise good. Evil is the price of a genuinely creative, partly autonomous universe.

Process theodicy has the advantage of taking the reality and gratuitousness of evil with full seriousness and of presenting a God intimately involved in suffering rather than a distant permitter of it. Its decisive cost, however, is theological: a God who is not omnipotent, who cannot guarantee the final triumph of good, is not the God of the Bible or of classical theism, and offers no assurance that evil will ultimately be defeated. Critics ask whether such a limited God is worthy of worship, and whether the theodicy solves the problem only by abandoning the very attribute (omnipotence) that generated it. This trade-off — dissolving the problem by shrinking God — is the standard evaluative pivot for process theodicy.

Worked example

Comparing the free-will defence and process theodicy

Explain how the free-will defence and process theodicy differ in what they concede.

The problem each targets
Plantinga targets only the logical problem; process theodicy targets the evidential problem of real, gratuitous suffering.
What each keeps
Plantinga keeps classical omnipotence and omnibenevolence intact, conceding nothing about the quantity of evil.
What each gives up
Process theodicy gives up classical omnipotence, so God cannot guarantee good's final victory.
The pastoral difference
Process offers a suffering, sympathetic God; Plantinga offers a rigorous logical point but no comfort.
Evaluate the cost
Plantinga's cost is scope (leaves the evidential problem); process's cost is doctrine (a non-omnipotent God may not be worthy of worship).

Result: The two responses trade scope against doctrine: the free-will defence keeps God intact but answers little, while process theodicy answers much but at the price of the omnipotence that classical theism will not surrender.

Typical mistakes

Treating Plantinga's free-will defence as answering the evidential problem — it is deliberately limited to showing theism is not contradictory.
Describing process theology's God as merely 'choosing not to intervene'; on the process view God cannot coercively intervene, because omnipotence is denied.

Active revision

'Solving the problem of evil by denying God's omnipotence costs too much.' Assess this claim with reference to process theodicy. (Extended essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for religious studies (Department for Education)

Does any theodicy succeed?#

AdvancedAQA 7062/1 Section A: Evil and sufferingDfE GCE Religious Studies subject content

Augustinian and Irenaean theodicies compared

Fig. 5The two classic theodicies share the free-will core but differ on the Fall, the role of suffering and the fate of souls.

A final judgement should separate the two problems, because the theodicies fare very differently against each. Against the logical problem, the free-will defence is widely regarded as successful: Plantinga shows that the coexistence of an omnipotent, good God and moral evil is not a contradiction, and even Mackie's ally William Rowe conceded that the logical argument from evil is no longer compelling. So the strong claim — that theism is incoherent — is not sustained. The serious battleground is the evidential problem: whether the quantity, intensity and distribution of suffering make God improbable, and here the defence's success does not carry over, because showing that some evil is compatible with God does not show that this much, of these kinds, is.

Against the evidential problem the soul-making theodicy is the strongest theistic resource, since it gives suffering a positive role and a final resolution. Yet it is most vulnerable exactly where the evidential problem is strongest: gratuitous suffering that develops no one, and the appalling disproportion between the growth achievable and the agony endured. Whether Hick's greater-good-plus-universalism reply is adequate depends on two contested judgements — whether the value of freely perfected persons really can outweigh the suffering, and whether it is morally acceptable to justify one person's agony by another's benefit (Phillips's objection). Reasonable people divide here, which is itself significant: it suggests the evidential problem is not decisively won by either side.

The atheist can press the point that theodicies exhibit a troubling pattern: each rescues God only by qualifying a claim the believer began with — Augustine reinterprets the goodness of the world, Hick postpones the resolution to an unverifiable afterlife, process theology shrinks omnipotence. This 'death by a thousand qualifications' (Flew's phrase from the religious-language debate) suggests that theism is being protected from falsification rather than genuinely defended. The theist replies that qualification is legitimate intellectual work, that all live hypotheses are refined under pressure, and that the theodicies are not ad hoc but flow from independently held doctrines (free will, growth, divine love).

The most defensible A-Level judgement is therefore differentiated. The logical problem of evil fails: theism is not shown to be self-contradictory. The evidential problem remains genuinely powerful and is not decisively answered; the soul-making theodicy blunts it but cannot remove the scandal of gratuitous suffering, and how much weight this carries depends on prior commitments — the believer already convinced of God's goodness (perhaps by religious experience) may reasonably regard the suffering as a mystery within a larger trust, while the sceptic may reasonably regard it as sufficient counter-evidence. Evil does not disprove God, but it remains the strongest single consideration against theism, and any honest theism must hold its answer with humility. This is why the problem of evil is the hinge on which the cumulative-case debate of the previous topic turns.

It is worth noting that the practical or 'pastoral' dimension also bears on evaluation. A theodicy may be logically adequate yet religiously repellent if it trivialises suffering or blames the sufferer; conversely process theology's suffering God may be religiously attractive yet metaphysically costly. The specification's demand to assess the 'significance and influence' of these positions invites candidates to weigh not only logical adequacy but also their moral and existential acceptability — a fuller test that the strongest answers acknowledge.

Worked example

Model evaluation plan: does any theodicy succeed?

Plan an essay judging whether the theodicies answer the problem of evil.

Thesis
The theodicies answer the logical problem but not decisively the evidential problem; evil does not disprove God but remains the strongest case against theism.
Logical verdict
Plantinga's free-will defence shows theism is not contradictory; the strong atheist claim fails.
Evidential verdict
Soul-making gives suffering purpose but stumbles on gratuitous, character-destroying suffering (Rowe, Phillips).
Weigh prior commitments
The believer with independent grounds (religious experience) may reasonably treat suffering as mystery; the sceptic may reasonably treat it as counter-evidence.
Judgement
A differentiated conclusion: evil refutes neither theism nor its critics, but it caps how strong the cumulative case for God can be.

Result: The theodicies succeed against the logical problem and partially against the evidential problem; the residue of gratuitous suffering keeps the question open and sets the ceiling on the cumulative case for God.

Typical mistakes

Concluding that evil 'disproves God' — the logical version is now generally regarded as answered; the live issue is evidential probability.
Failing to link back to the cumulative-case debate: how much weight evil carries determines whether the arguments for God succeed on balance.

Active revision

'No theodicy adequately answers the evidential problem of evil.' Evaluate this claim. (Extended essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for religious studies (Department for Education)

References & sources

Sources

Department for Education

GCE AS and A level subject content for religious studies

Evil and suffering

5 sections~23 min reading time2 competenciesLevel Standard 2 · Advanced 3

Evil and suffering

Key points

How a theodicy breaks the triad

Key points

Model evaluation plan: the Augustinian theodicy

Key points

Reconstructing Hick's greater-good defence

Key points

Comparing the free-will defence and process theodicy

Key points

Model evaluation plan: does any theodicy succeed?

Sources

Evil and suffering

Key points

How a theodicy breaks the triad

Key points

Model evaluation plan: the Augustinian theodicy

Key points

Reconstructing Hick's greater-good defence

Key points

Comparing the free-will defence and process theodicy

Key points

Model evaluation plan: does any theodicy succeed?

Sources