Augustinian Theodicy and Free Will Defence - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Augustinian Theodicy and Free Will Defence Name the scholar – write a sentence summary

Which scholars are missing?Slide2

Scholars Plantinga

– FW is essential for humansKierkegaard – King and peasant girl analogyAugustine – God made the world perfectly and it was corrupted by the FallSwinburne – God can’t intervene to save some and not others e.g. Holocaust

Flew – God could have made good natured humansMackie – Suffering is not an expression of God’s loveSlide3

The Irenaean Theodicy

Soul Making TheodicyTo know the key features of the

Irenaeus TheodicyTo explain the factors that influenced himSlide4

Big Picture

Irenaeus was a second century ChristianSlide5

The Irenaean theodicy 130-202 A.D.

Irenaeus

, like Augustine traces evil back to human free will. He differs

in that he admits that God did not make a perfect world and that evil has a valuable role to play in God’s plan for humans.Slide6

Soul making theodicy

God’s

aim when He created the world was to eventually make humans flawless, in His likeness.

Irenaeas distinguished between the ‘image’ and the ‘likeness’ of God.

Adam had the image of God, but not the content of God, likeness.Genesis 1: 26 “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,”

Genuine human perfection cannot be ready-made, but must develop through free choice

. Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden because they were too immature and needed to develop; grow into the likeness of God.Since God had to give us free choice, He had to give us the potential

to obey or disobey Him.TasksRead paragraph 1 and 2 of page 49Write out Genesis 1:26 and explain it

ImageLikenessSlide7

There would be no such potential if there were never any possibility of evil. If humans were made ready-perfected, and if God policed His world continually, there would be no free will.

Therefore, the natural order had to be designed with the possibility of causing harm, humans had to be imperfect, and God had to stand at a distance from them.Slide8

Humans used their freedom to disobey God, causing suffering.God cannot compromise our freedom by removing evil.

Eventually, however, evil and suffering will be overcome and everyone will develop into God’s likeness, living glory in Heaven. This justifies temporary evil.

Irenaeas never developed a full theodicy, it has been put forward by Scheiermacher (1768-1834) and HickSlide9

SummaryHumans were created in the

image and not likeness

of God. We are in an immature moral state, though we have the potential for moral perfection. Throughout our lives/afterlife we change from being human animals to ‘children of God’. This is a choice made after struggle and experience, as we choose God rather than our baser instinct.

There are no angels or external forces at work here. God brings in suffering for the benefit of humanity. From it we learn positive values, and about the world around us. Slide10

Suffering and evil are:

Useful as a means of knowledge

. Hunger leads to pain, and causes a desire to feed. Knowledge of pain prompts humans to seek to help others in pain. Character building. Evil offers the opportunity to grow morally. If we were programmed to ‘do the right thing’ there would be no moral value to our actions. ‘We would never learn the art of goodness in a world designed as a complete paradise’ Swinburne.

A predictable environment. The world runs to a series of natural laws. These laws are independent of our needs, and operate regardless of anything. Natural evil is when these laws come into conflict with our own perceived needs. Task

Create a spider diagram ‘Why are evil and suffering necessary’Slide11

Baby food analogy

‘For as it certainly is in the power of a mother to give strong food to her infant (but she does not do so), as the child is not yet able to receive more substantial nourishment...’ - therefore the mother slowly introduces the child to adult food (Irenaeus

, Against Heresies, 4.38.1)What do you think Irenaeus meant by using this analogy?Slide12

AnswerThe child is not developed enough, right at the start, to be given an adult diet, so the mother gives the child milk and the child develops over time

In the same way God did not make human’s in his likeness right from the beginning, but ‘man could not receive this (perfection), being as yet an infant’Slide13

Craftsman analogyHow does Irenaeus believe that God is like a craftsman?

Read the past paragraph on page 49Slide14

Biblical support for the Irenaean Theodicy Jonah and the whale

Summary Irenaeus

clearly saw evil and suffering as a necessary part of Gods plan for humanity. Explain how evil and suffering is necessary by referring to this biblical storyDevelopment Read the account of Jonah and the whale (Jonah 1-4)Slide15

AnswerJonah needed to endure this in order to be brought closer to God and to do the work that God had planned for him, in preaching as a prophet in the

Ninevites.Similarly, Irenaeus

thought, suffering that other people endure should be seen in the same way. Even if we cannot see the reason for it, we should understand that suffering is necessary to bring us closer to God and to enable God to complete his purpose.Slide16

Modern additions to Irenaeus’ Theodicy

His train of thought has been taken up by other philosophers and developed.One major point the other philosophers have explained is why God needed to allow humans to develop themselves rather than doing it for them.Slide17

1. Hick’s basic ideas

John Hick believed that God was the creator, however, one of the major problems for Hick’s faith is the problem of evil. H

ow can there be a God when there is so much evil in the world? Hick’s theodicy of the ‘vale of soul making’ is a way of addressing this problem posed by the inconsistent triad of how an omniscient, omnipotent and all loving God could allow suffering to occur in the world we live in.

Evil and Suffering

All loving God

All powerful God

?Slide18

2. Hick’s theodicy:

PHASE 1

Image – potential Humans are the

culmination of the evolutionary process – a creature who has evolved with the possibility of existing in a conscious relationship with God.

PHASE 2

Likeness - actual

The nature of human existence as a necessary pilgrimage from moral and spiritual immaturity into the “likeness of God”

via responding freely to the challenges of this world.

According to Hick, human existence is divided into 2 key phases:Slide19

God could have developed us as perfect beings, so we automatically loved him.

However, Hick believes this kind of love would have been valueless Remember - Kierkegaard

Parable of the king and the peasant girl from the Free Will Defence

What do you think Hick means by this?

Can you explain?Slide20

3. Because…

Goodness and love developed through free choice is much better.It’s more likely to be genuine. Slide21

4. Epistemic distance

God created humans imperfect and at a ‘distance’ from him so they could decide for themselves whether to follow him or not.

This is the ‘epistemic distance’: a distance in the dimension of knowledge.Slide22

If Gods presence were too close, we would be overwhelmedWe would automatically believe and obey as God would be looking at humans every moveTo have distance God allows humans to choose freely Slide23

5. Counter factual hypothesis

The world also had to be imperfectIf it were perfect humans would not be free: everything they did would be good Slide24

Without evil and suffering humans would not be able to develop qualities like courage, honour and loveThere would be no opportunities to develop into God’s likeness as these qualities are essential to such developmentSlide25

Soul making

Hick suggests the world is a place of ‘soul making’A world where humans have to strive to meet challenges to gain perfection

To do so evil and suffering must occurSlide26

7. Heaven for all – everyone will be saved

Hick’s theodicy depends on life after death.If someone died young after a long and painful illness or if a baby was killed in an accident or through abuse it cannot be seen to be ‘all for the good’ unless the end works out for the best.

So there has to be a long term ‘in the end’ that goes beyond death in this worldHick does not attempt to prove life after death but admits the theodicy does not work unless you are prepared to believe in an afterlife.Slide27

Summary task

Irenaeus Memory Game

Soul makingImage Likeness

DevelopCraftsman analogyGenesisEpistemic distance

Counterfactual hypothesisFreedom

Jonah

Baby foodHick

Heaven for allStudy the words

How many can you remember?Choose at least three of the key terms and put them together into a sentence about the problem of evilSlide28

Plenary Tasks

Summarise the theodicy in five points

Image of God – likeness No coercion therefore genuine free will - freedomEvil encourages characteristics for perfection Heaven for all No evil no development – placidity, stagnation, no temptation