Drawing from the exerpt below, answer the following Question. Question: 1) Which theologian does Hick think lies behind what he calls Christianity’s ‘dominant theodicy’? Why does he think this dominant theodicy within western Christianity is ‘valid’ as a ‘myth’ and yet still an insufficient ‘solution’ to the problem of evil?  Write 3-4 sentences. Exerpt: to regard the universe as a thing in which man is the highest "thing";
it regards evil as so many shadows which tend to bring out the light laying
across God's "painting." It is anxious to discover balance and symmetry
and for this reason emphasizes the final moral balancing in heaven and hell.
Hick denies the eternity of hell but for the reason that God's purpose of
having man " make his soul " seems largely unfulfilled on earth, Hick comes
out strongly for the Catholic doctrine on Purgatory. There is no hell, but
there definitely is purification beyond the grave.
Regarding human sufferings Hick is strongly opposed to the distinction
between the willing and the permitting of them by God. That distinction
does not make sense, says Hick, since God is omnipotent. It does make sense
in men who are not strong enough to avoid evil effects in many of the good
things they do; but God, obviously, is strong enough. Therefore we cannot
say that He merely permits suffering, He wills it directly. He wills it as a
means of strengthening men in their pilgrimage towards God.
Somewhat as a corollary to this, though not in the same stark terms,
Hick calmly accepts God's responsibility for sin. God made man weak. It
should come as no surprise to Him that His weak creation would sin. He
criticizes the Augustinian conception of the " original perfection " of man as
an attempt to get out of putting the responsibility for sin on God. If man
had absolutely no tendency to sin, if he lived in God's presence, then how
in the world could he have sinned? Sin would then be a creation ex nihilo;
and Hick dismisses that as unrealistic. However, though weak, man is
still free, still possessing a genuine though limited autonomy from God.
Otherwise there could be no true love, trust, admiration of God by men, no
true fellowship between God and man; and it is for this ultimate and eternal
fellowship with Him that God created man.
In summing up Hick's position, then, we may say that it is personal
rather than impersonal; eschatological, looking towards the future, rather
than nostalgic, looking towards the past; "realistic," accepting God's
responsibility for sin, rather than "naively idealistic." At the same time
it recognizes the genuine freedom of man and especially the great good
involved in the redemption of man by Christ.
Obviously, we have not tried to bring in everything of Hick's book, have
not even tried to summarize it. The above represents an attempt at a fair
presentation of his thought. We have skipped, for example, his treatment of
St. Thomas, which is generally fair and accurate, as well as his treatment
of modern Catholic thought, presented mostly through analysis of Charles
Journet's The Meaning of Evil, which Hick criticizes sharply and somewhat
contemptuously. It is the only sour note in the book. These elements are
not the crucial issues. Hick's understanding of original sin, punishment,
God's will, and the eternity of hell are.
I accept, first of all, the general observation that the Augustinian defense
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BOOK REVIEWS 447
of evil, deriving from neo-platonic elements, is too impersonal. Hick
himself, citing Maritain, notes, however, that Aquinas does relate an essentially aesthetic vision of the universe to redemption and in that way
"personalizes " the problem (p. 103) . Thomas writes: " The justification
of the ungodly, which terminates at the eternal good of a share in the
Godhead, is greater than the creation of heaven and earth, which terminates
at the good of a mutable nature" (S. T. 1-2, q. 113, a. 9). Also at the
beginning of his tract on the Incarnation he notes that " God allows evils
to happen in order to bring a great good therefrom; hence it is written,
' Where sin abounded grace did more abound.' Hence, too, in the blessing
of the paschal candle we say, '0 happy fault that merited such and so
great a Redeemer'" (3; q. 1, a. 3, ad 3). Hick does not gloss over these
texts. But I think he is right in claiming that the Augustinian and
Thomistic presentation does depend perhaps too much on the view of an
" impersonal " universe, with occasional corrections of that view in texts
such as these just cited.
Again, Hick is right in presenting the Augustinian conception of the
perfection of Adam and the terrible calamity of the fall as the traditional
explanation of the evils in the world. But recent Catholic scriptural scholarship has commented extensively on this tradition. If Hick had been familiar
with Dubarle's The Biblical Doctrine of Original Sin, first published in
French in 1958, or with many other books and articles that have appeared
in Catholic journals during the fifties, he never would have said that the
ancient myth of the origin of evil in the fall of man is still regarded by
us as giving hard historical data (cf. p. 282). The Council of Trent
deliberately passed over a doctrinal draft in which Adam's gifts were
described in the classical way to affirm simply that the first man lost "the
holiness and righteousness in which he had been constituted." The present
situation of Catholic thought on the matter of original sin, evolution, and
all the problems raised by modern science, is not absolutely fixed. Paul VI
received wide publicity in his recent statement on these things, but it was
meant as warning against too easily accepting whatever one finds in the
conclusions of modern thinkers; it was not meant to shut all the doors on
responsible theological investigation.
The weakness of the Irenaeus-Schleiermacher-Hick synthesis lies in
Hick's objection to his own thesis. In his view God seems to have allowed
evil to come into the world as a kind of small domestic animal. But then
it got out of control. The sadistic cruelty, the deliberate destruction of
personality, the crushing of human beings, the mass murders of the concentration camps-is God responsible for these? Hick's answer is ambiguous.
On one page he emphatically says no, on another he says it is wrong to
exonerate God from all responsibility for sin. Hick never answers this
contradiction. When he treats of the excessive evils in the world he uses,
448 BOOK REVIEWS
for the first time, the expression "mystery." Apparently these are the
only things that stump him; all the rest are severely under Hick's rational
control. He fails to see that the whole business is a mystery; that if the
small domestic animal is going to grow into a ravenous beast then the
small domestic animal is a mystery. He cites very early in his book the
famous distinction between problem and mystery made by Gabriel Marcel.
But he distinguishes evil in the sufferer (to whom it is a mystery) and in
the onlooker, to whom it is a problem (p. 10). In the sufferer, then,
suffering is an experienced mystery which must be faced. " But it does not
at all follow from this that the intellectual problem of evil is a false or an
unreal problem, or that our obligation to grapple with it is in any degree
lessened" (p. 10). Marcel would probably answer that it is simply
impossible to treat it as a problem. If suffering is in the one suffering it is
also in the one watching. Can one watch another suffer without being
profoundly touched, without being " mystified " in some way?
The small domestic animal is a mystery. The absolute goodness of God
is a mystery. And it seems better to state the mystery from the beginning,
as the author of Genesis does in symbolic terms, which the Augustinian
tradition follows. This does not mean that we must subscribe to all of
the Augustinian tradition about the fall of man. Trent did not accept the
view that the first man had fantastic powers of perception. Adamwhether one or many-was probably very primitive, but as C. S. Lewis
suggests in his Problem of Pain-a book Hick recognizes as "an eloquent
presentation of the traditional concept "-the fact of primitiveness does not
exclude holiness. A child before possessing any knowledge of technology
whatsoever can still experience a genuine sense of the presence of God and
can achieve a deep degree of prayer and holiness. Adam could have been
like that, shaggy, if you will, but still holy and marvelously close to God.
And nowhere in the Augustinian tradition is the claim that the first man
was beatified, which Hick seems to imply, for that surely would make sin
impossible. He was holy, close to God; but he was free. The mystery of
sin begins there. But as Dubarle suggests, the " original sin " episode in
Genesis does not end with the sin in the Garden, it goes on to the murder
of Abel by Cain, the growing sensuality and violence before the flood, and
the universal pride at the tower of Babel. One must bring all these incidents
in to have the full explanation of the origin of evil as presented in Genesis.
Sin began as the small domestic animal but its destructive seed flowered
darkly into universal division and discord. But it did begin. It seems a
weakness for Hick to say that there was no beginning to sin, no original
sin, that mankind was always the way it is. That is more difficult to accept
than the " sin ex nihilo " theory he ascribes to the Augustinian tradition.
It is, however, precisely to re-examine this problem that Maritain has
written his little book God and the Permission of Evil. He immediately
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BOOK REVIEWS 449
places a triple distinction in God's activity which may be helpful. God may
will, or permit, or admit. The willing touches the being and goodness in
creation, the permitting touches moral evil, the admitting touches the evil
of nature. In creating a tree, for example, He wills its existence, growth,
productivity while at the same time willing indirectly, or admitting, the
losses and evils which come to the tree. He directly wills the tree and He
directly wills the laws which cover the tree, generation, corruption etc.
But the life, which participates in and shows forth God's life, and which is
constantly being renewed in succeeding generations of trees, is the important element. Death is necessary for the constant re-appearance of new
life, a new life which suggests, in some ways, God's eternal newness. God
does not, then, will the life of the tree in the same way that He wills its
death; the first He wills directly, the second indirectly. "I am the God
of the living." This distinction does not hold for moral evil. He permits
that. As Maritain says, " Of course, to permit is something voluntary and
free; it is not to will to prevent. But to say that for certain reasons I
permit or do not will to prevent a thing I abhor, is not at all to say I
will this thing even the least bit; it is not at all to say that I will this thing
permissively" (p. 1, n. ~5, italics his).
And so from the beginning Maritain takes a strong stand against Hick's
position on the responsibility of God for sin. Deus nullo modo est causa
peccati, neque directe, neque indirecte. The sentence from Aquinas is one
hinge of Maritain's book. The second hinge is this other sentence from the
same source: Defectus gratiae prima causa est ex nobis. These two
propositions, that God is completely innocent of causing sin, and that the
first cause of sin is man, are accepted by every Catholic. The difficulty, of
course, is in understanding them, or rather in gaining some true light about
them.
Maritain criticizes some Thomists of the 16th and 17th centuries for
over-reacting to Molinism, and for not seeing what he calls the principle
" which is like a beacon illuminating the whole debate: this is the principle
of the dissymmetry, the fundamental, irreducible dissymmetry, between the
line of good and the line of evil" (p. 9, italics his). What we say of the
causality of God in the line of good we cannot say in the line of evil, and
it is Maritain's contention that many Thomists, though not all, have treated
evil as though it were in the line of good, and this error has reached into
their explanations concerning God's permission of evil, and divine predestination.
Hick comments that both the Augustinian and the Calvinistic doctrine on
predestination are the back doors through which the traditional innocence
of God regarding sin becomes God's responsibility for sin. In other words,
a sinner may be responsible for his own sin, God having not a hand in it,
but long before that man had committed his sin he had been picked for hell
450 BOOK REVIEWS
(in the Calvinist "positive reprobation" doctrine) or at least not included
among the saved (in the " negative reprobation " Thomistic refinement of
the Augustinian teaching). In the Calvinist doctrine, Hick says, "we
cannot be content to believe that God loves and accepts us unless we are
assured that He hates and rejects someone else. The feeling that there
must be this contrast appears in Calvin's thinking: 'election itself,' he says,
' could not stand except as set over against reprobation.' " Hick goes on.
" But why not? Why could not God, if He wishes, elect all to salvation? "
(p. 132, italics his). Maritain feels the same way. "'I choose all,' said the
little Therese of Lisieux. Cannot God do the same?" (p. 104). Though
perhaps Hick would wince at the technical language used by Maritain to
make his point, he would nevertheless agree in substance with the conclusions.
Maritain writes: "By His antecedent will God chooses them all (conditionally); by His antecedent will they are, with a total gratuitousness,
all chosen (conditionally, since to be conditioned or uncircumstanced is the
proper characteristic of the antecedent will)" (p. 104, italics his). Maritain
goes on to show that God still has preferential choices and loves which are
his own reason, but these have to do with a privileged group within the
elect. But " the great mass of the general run of the elect " God deals with
according to the normal course which befits fallible liberties. " Each has
been conditionally chosen, by the antecedent will; each is loved specially
for itself, with that love which wills that all be saved if the creature does
not obtrude any obstacle by its own initiative of nothingness" (p. 105).
Hick objects to the sin " ex nihilo " theory of the Augustinian tradition.
But it is precisely this that Maritain defends, not only for the original sin
but for every sin. Man in "not considering the rule" nihilates. This
negation "flowers " into the privation which is at the heart of every sin.
" Without me," said Our Lord, " you can do nothing." Maritain shows how
that 'nothing' can mean not only "not anything," but more mysteriously,
the nothingness which is the beginning of every sin. Without God man
can sin.
It is impossible to reproduce here the arguments proposed by Maritain
establishing the consequent permissive decree of God (instead of the more
traditional doctrine of an antecedent decree); impossible also to show how,
while disagreeing with many Thomists, he still remains solidly in the
Thomistic tradition. His arguments are cogent and convincing. They have,
indeed, shed much light on that most difficult of all subjects, predestination.
And they open the way for dialogue with men like Hick who simply cannot
accept that God is all good while at the same time choosing only some men
for salvation. Hick, of course, goes much further than Maritain, or any
Catholic thinker, in holding for the actual salvation of all. But in any
case the real value of Maritain's book, in the context of this dialogue, is
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to show us how God can permit sin without willing it, and how man can
take the initiative in the line of evil. The book also contains a partial
explanation for a principle taken from St. Thomas which Hick cannot
understand, i. e. what can fail, will fail. Maritain holds with Thomas that
every creature is naturally fallible; " God can no more make a creature,
angel or man, naturally impeccable than He can make a square circle"
(p. 37, italics his). But the certainty of his failing is taken rather from the
coUective. " That in a town of bilious persons a fight break out at some
moment or other between some two individuals-this is inevitable, necessary, certain. That such a fight break out at this or that moment between
these two particular individuals is neither inevitable nor necessary nor
certain " (p. 95) .
Raymond Nogar's The Lord of the Absurd is something of a personal
diary or metaphysical journal written out of the experience gained from the
many lectures he gave on the subject of evolution. As he was thinking and
talking about evolution his own mind was evolving towards different
emphases and attitudes. The book records the evolution of some of these
attitudes. He has gone from the " picture people " over to the " drama
people"; has seen the necessity of letting the dust of one's theological,
philosophical, or scientific presuppositions settle before entering into true
dialogue with others; has noticed the nuisance of the " falling inflection "
and of " flying the flag " ; has rejected the " package deal " ; has developed
a " philosophy of waste " ; has seen the terror of history; has tasted the
truth of a piece of pumpernickle; has pondered the world of Teilhard de
Chardin; has been affected by the sincerity of some atheists; and has met
the Lord of the Absurd.
It all adds up to a very fascinating, courageous book. The picture
people are those who see the world as static, completed, and who tend in
their own lives to be the same way. The drama people have their eye out
for the dynamic, the incomplete, the epigenic, and their lives, too, reflect
their values. Nogar in his many lectures gradually understood that more
and more of his audience were drama people, that the day of the impersonal
world-views is doomed; and he gradually felt himself drawn into this drama.
His studies in evolution itself prepared him, but the lectures, the drama of
the lectures, his deep involvement in seeking the truth in the give and
take of dialogue and debate, became to him an exhilirating and a necessary
way of life.
At one lecture he was presented with the following: "Well, sir, you seem
to be in the unenviable position of having to affirm the evolution of the
whole man on the one hand because science demands it, and having to
affirm the transcendence (and therefore non-evolution) of the soul just
because your Church tells you to. We scientists do not have to play such
games; we just affirm evolution and deny the soul. It's simple and honest