Evil and the God of Love

by Hick, John

• ISBN13: 9780230252790
• ISBN10: 0230252796
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-05-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

When first published,Evil and the God of Loveinstantly became recognized as a modern theological classic, widely viewed as the most important work on the problem of evil to appear in English for more than a generation. It has continued to be at the center of discussions ever since. This reissue of the work includes a new preface by the author.

Author Biography

John Hick is a world-renowned philosopher of religion. He is the author of numerous books, translated into sixteen languages. He has taught in Britain and the United States and lectured in many countries. His Gifford Lectures, An Interpretation of Religion, received the Grawemeyer Award for new religious thinking.

Table of Contents

Preface to the 1985 Reissue	p. x
Preface to the 2010 Reissue	p. xii
Foreword	p. xv
List of Abbreviations	p. xx
Introductory
The Problem and its Terms
Defining the problem	p. 3
Is theodicy permissible?	p. 6
The kinds of evil	p. 12
The Two Poles of Thought - Monism and Dualism
Monism and Dualism	p. 15
The pure monism of Spinoza	p. 17
A contemporary view of evil as illusion - Christian Science	p. 23
Plato's dualism	p. 25
The external dualism of	p. 27
The internal dualism of	p. 30
The Augustinian Type of Theodicy
The Fountainhead: St. Augustine - Evil as privation of good stemming from misused freedom
Evil as privatio boni
Augustine and Manichaeism	p. 38
The Plotinian theodicy	p. 40
The goodness of the created order	p. 43
Man mutable because 'made out of nothing'	p. 46
Evil privative and parasitic	p. 47
The identity of being and goodness	p. 49
The logical character of Augustine's doctrine	p. 53
'The Free-Will Defence' in St. Augustine
Sin as the basic evil	p. 59
The self-creation of evil 'ex nihilo'	p. 62
Sin and predestination	p. 64
The Fountainhead: St. Augustine - The principle of plenitude and the aesthetic theme
The principle of plenitude
The Problem	p. 70
Augustine's Neo-Platonist answer	p. 72
The principle of plenitude in Plotinus	p. 75
Emanation and creation	p. 76
The pre-existing pattern	p. 79
The aesthetic theme
The aesthetic theme in Augustine	p. 82
Animal pain in a perfect world	p. 85
Hell and the principle of moral balance	p. 87
Catholic Thought from Augustine to the Present Day
Augustine's theodicy writ large: Hugh of St. Victor	p. 90
Thomas Aquinas	p. 93
A contemporary Thomist presentation: Charles Journet	p. 98
Journet on sin and hell	p. 107
The Problem of Evil in Reformed Thought
Augustine and the Reformers	p. 115
Calvin
Fall and predestination in Calvin	p. 117
Predestination versus theodicy	p. 121
Karl Barth
Barth's method	p. 126
The 'shadowside' of creation	p. 128
'Das Nichtige'	p. 130
The origin of 'das Nichtige'	p. 133
Criticism: (a) the origin of 'das Nichtige'	p. 135
Criticism: (b) the status of 'das Nichtige'	p. 137
Eighteenth-Century 'Optimism'
A product of the Augustinian tradition	p. 145
King's 'Origin of Evil'	p. 148
Leibniz's 'Theodicy'	p. 154
The 'best possible world'	p. 160
'Best possible' - for what purpose?	p. 167
Dividing the Light from the Darkness
The main features of the Augustinian type of theodicy	p. 169
The theological themes
The goodness of the created universe	p. 170
Human suffering as a punishment for sin	p. 172
'O felix culpa…' versus eternal torment	p. 176
The philosophical themes
Evil as non-being	p. 179
Metaphysical evil as fundamental	p. 187
The aesthetic perfection of the universe	p. 191
A basic criticism	p. 193
The Irenaean Type of Theodicy
Sin and the Fall according to the Hellenistic Fathers
The biblical basis of the fall doctrine	p. 201
From Paul to Augustine	p. 205
The beginnings of the Hellenistic point of view	p. 208
Irenaeus	p. 211
Eastern Christianity	p. 215
The Irenaean Type of Theodicy in Schleiermacher
Schleiermacher on 'original perfection'	p. 220
Schleiermacher's account of sin	p. 222
The relation between sin and suffering	p. 226
God as ultimately ordaining sin and suffering	p. 228
Schleiermacher and the instrumental view of evil	p. 231
Man's beginning and end	p. 234
The Two Theodicies - Contrasts and Agreements
The contrast between the two types of theodicy	p. 236
Points of hidden agreement	p. 238
A Theodicy for Today
The Starting-Point
The negative task of theodicy	p. 243
The traditional theodicy based upon Christian myth	p. 245
The 'vale of soul-making' theodicy	p. 253
Moral Evil
The shape of sin	p. 262
The traditional free-will defence	p. 265
The recent critique of the free-will defence	p. 266
Divine-human personal relationship	p. 271
Freedom as limited creativity	p. 275
The virtual inevitability of the fall	p. 277
Man created as a fallen being	p. 280
Pain
Pain and suffering	p. 292
Physical Pain	p. 294
Has pain a biological value?	p. 297
Pain and the structure of the world	p. 304
Animal pain	p. 309
Suffering
Suffering as a function of meaning	p. 318
Pain as a cause of suffering	p. 319
A paradise without suffering?	p. 322
Excessive or dysteleological suffering	p. 327
The traditional answer: nature preverted by fallen angels	p. 331
Soul-making and mystery	p. 333
The Kingdom of God and the Will of God
The infinite future good	p. 337
Theodicy versus hell	p. 341
The intermediate state	p. 345
Some residual problems	p. 350
The biblical paradox of evil	p. 352
Its source in the duality of the Christian life	p. 357
Its eschatological resolution	p. 362
Recent Work on the Problem of Evil	p. 365
Index	p. 387
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