Soul Making

Watch this lesson on YouTube, or listen to it here.

Access the slide deck here. 

NOTE: I think this material is good to know, but in hindsight, I did not find it to be a productive class.

1) This theory of the nature of God was articulated by Irenaeus (AD 130-202), Against Heresies.

A)   Intro

1) Later, Augustine, tried to explain evil by looking back: It was a fall from God’s perfect creation (a privation of good).

2) Irenaeus explained evil by looking to the future to see how God would use evil to develop humanity.

3) Both are still trying to justify God (theodicy).

B) Irenaeus argued that God did not create humans in a finished, perfect state. Instead, Adam and Eve were as “children” or “infants” who were innocent but spiritually and morally immature.

1) It was impossible for God to create humans a spiritually mature from the start because moral maturity requires mastering temptation and making responsible choices over time.

2) “…it was possible for God himself to have made man perfect from the first, but man could not receive this [perfect], being as yet an infant…”[1]

C) In this model, evil has a necessary instructive and productive (developmental) purpose. Suffering gives us the necessary conditions to freely find God and grow into the spiritual beings we were designed to be.

2) John Hick, Evil and the God of Love (1966, rev. 1977, 2007).

A)   Summary: The world is a “classroom” or a “vale of soul-making”[2] designed to facilitate human moral and spiritual growth.

B) For Irenaeus and Hick, there is a distinction between the “image” and “likeness” of God (Gen. 1:26).

1) The image refers to man’s nature as a personal, rational, and moral being, which existed from the moment of creation.

2) The likeness of God refers to the perfecting of humanity. It was not given at the start, but a “valuable quality of personal life” that can only be achieved through the free and responsible exercise of human freedom over time.

C) Hick argues that if God’s goal were merely to maximize human comfort, the world would be a “hedonistic paradise” for “human pets.” Instead, he made a classroom environment tailored for growth. This environment requires a few things:

1) Real challenges and temptations.

(a)   Morality cannot be simply given; it must be “slowly built up through personal histories of moral effort.”

(b)   Virtues like courage, humility and self-control can only develop in a world where real danger, failure and suffering exist.

(c)   e.g.

(i) 2 Cor. 1:3-5. We suffer and God comforts us. That happened so we can learn how to do it for others, and when we do, we are becoming more like God.

(ii)  Jesus (Heb. 2:10; 5:8-9)

(d)   Self-sacrifice and heroism.

(i) Without death and danger, the supreme good of laying down one’s life for another, the greatest love, would be logically impossible.

(ii)  The option for disaster is a precondition for the highest act of courage and ultimate generosity.

(iii)          God treats us as having significant moral stature. He pays us the compliment of presupposing that if we have the choice, we will choose to be heroes.

2) God’s epistemic distance.

(a)   God maintains an “epistemic distance” by not making his presence overwhelmingly obvious. This allows humans to freely choose to turn to God rather than being coerced by a direct awareness of his power.

3) A reliable natural order.

(a)   The world must operate by stable, impersonal laws, which open the door for horrible catastrophes. This consistency is necessary for humans to learn the consequences of their actions and to function as responsible moral agents.

(b)   Predictability is essential. If the laws of physics and biology changed constantly to prevent suffering, then we could never acquire knowledge necessary to function.

(c)   Knowledge expands our ability to make better moral choices.

D)   In this model pain and suffering are developmental tools. They are “smelling salts” to wake humanity up to reality, and suffering is to “refine, strengthen, and beautify” the soul like a forge refines gold.

1) Human goodness slowly built up through moral effort is of significantly higher value to God than goodness created instantaneously.

3) It is important to know about this because you will see it in unsuspecting places like cute little memes on social media. Here are some examples of this idea in motivational-type quotes

A)   “If you had not suffered as you have, there would be no depth to you as a human being, no humility, no compassion.”

1)     It’s a nice quote, and there truly is a sense in which we grow through suffering.

2)     But this quote says, “there would be no…” The idea is that you cannot be what God wants you to be without suffering.

B)    “What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness?”

C)    Variations of “No pain, no gain” but with philosophical spins, like “I’m so thankful for my pain. Without it, my happiness would mean nothing.”

D)   “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

E)    “This suffering is just prepping me for peak happiness later.”

4) Critiques

A)   Evil is a thing that God made (it is a part of his perfect creation) to make humanity morally perfect.

1) No. Evil is a fall from God’s morally perfect creation. Evil is a flaw, not a feature.

B) Recall the evidential problem of evil and gratuitous evil. Much evil appears to be crushing and destructive rather than character-building. But skeptical theism would fit here.

C) Keller critiques the distribution of pain. Some great souls suffer excessively while some bad souls suffer very little. This is a bad answer to a bad problem. There are no good people.

D)   Hick goes wild with his eschatology and universalism. The soul making process continues after death and God’s full plan will not be over until every soul is eventually perfected.

[1] From Richard Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil.

[2] These words are from a poem by John Keats.