The Problem Of Evil In The Philosophy Of Christianity

Why are there evils in the world? We still hardly forget the miserable scene of Pacific Ocean Tsunami, the helpless eyes of African hungry children, or the panic of SARS; we also cannot easily get rid of those horrible memories of the World Trade Center collapsing on Sep. 11, 2002 or the ruthless Nazi treating Jews during the WWII; and also in the reality we have to endure the burden of high loan in order to get a house to live in. The obvious presence of evil has made itself always an appealing topic for scholars and experts all over the world. Ancient Chinese scholars like Xun Kuang as well as Western philosopher Augustine, offered deep-going thoughts on this topic. In the West, the problem of evil is discussed in the domain of religion, so the problem of evil specifically refers to: Why would the omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good God allow the existence of evil in the world?British religious philosopher John Hick thinks that there are mainly two traditions along the history in handling the problem of evil, i.e. Augustine tradition and Irenaeus tradition. Augustine's thoughts are very influential and what influences most is that he attributes the existence of evil to human beings' free will. God gives human beings free will, with which they may choose to do evil. Besides that, Augustine also starts the tradition of natural theology which tries to defend God by rationality. In contrast, Irenaeus tries to explain the existence of evil from another angle. He believes that God has not finished creating human beings yet, and evil and sufferings has specially been allowed in the world by God to create ideal personality.Richard Swinburne and John Hick are two outstanding contemporary religious philosophers. Both having weaved some certain modern scientific knowledge into their theodicies, they make them relatively more logical and complete. But their theodicies follow different traditions. Richard Swinburne accepts Augustine's ideas and furthermore makes some modifications. He holds that, the real freedom that God gives human beings must involve choosing good or evil. Thus evil resulted from the possible wrong choices of human beings. Moreover, through series of free choices, human beings make their final choice: to enter into the Heaven or the Hell. John Hick is a man with great lenity. Impacted more or less by Eastern religions like Buddhism, he abandons the traditional idea of Hell and develops Irenaeus' ideas. His theodicy is a kind of soul-making one. He believes that God aims to create human beings as Children of God, and human life is a process of soul-making. At present His aim has not been fulfilled yet. In order to fulfill this aim, He puts human beings in a world filled with evils. And according to His purpose, all the human beings will be saved and enter into the Heaven in the end.Although they follow different traditions, they share many similarities in their theodicies. They both hold positive attitude towards evil and believe that evil exists for some greater good. Besides, evil can help people to form positive characters. They also reject the traditional doctrine of destination and believe that human beings have ability to command their future to certain degrees.Swinburne and Hick's theodicies are different in their religious epistemology and eschatology. Swinburne insistently follows natural theology tradition and believes that God can be understood through reasons while Hick denies that. As to the eschatology, Swinburne holds that some human beings will enter into the Heaven while others into the Hell, which all depends on their own choices during the lifetime. In contrast, Hick believes all human beings will enter into the Heaven, which is compatible with the love of God.