John Hick: "The Vale of Soul-Making"
Throughout John Hick’s life, he explored
different religions and found that people need to be better understanding of
other religions, and that no religion is the “right” religion. He believed no
matter what religion you are, salvation is the work of God. Hick questioned
why God allows evil to happen in the world, and since it does happen, God can
be indescribable, and not defined as an infinite person, but as an ultimate
reality.
There are two stages
that come with the development of the world. The first stage is that of coming
into this world. The second stage is that we must work our whole lives to become
children of God, and made to be in his likeness. Hick believes we need to
build character, and this comes with some natural evil and moral evils. Natural
evils are the kind of evils that do not result from free human choice (ex:
disasters, birth defects). The moral evils are the evils that are seen in
newspapers and on the news channel (ex: murder, kidnapping ect.).
Hick believes God
creates people who he wants to be friends with. He wants people with the right
kind of character. In order to build this character, it would take moral evil
as well as natural evil. Being forgivable and loving are desired traits God
wants us to have, and in order to achieve this we need hardship, and that
hardship may include evil. But how can we be forgiving if there is no wrong to
forgive? God wants to allow humans to
develop themselves because virtues that have been formed as a result of the
person overcoming temptation and hardship is more valuable than if Man were
created ready-made, without any effort of any sort. This is why Hick believes
if humans were not given freewill by God, then their decisions and choices
would be a result of determinism and would make humans more like robots.
Hick discussed that we don’t have adequate reason to believe Mackie’s first premise,
that stated “if a being is perfectly good, than he prevents evil as much as he
is able”. Hicks believes we shouldn’t assume this because for all we know this
world is a realm of soul-making. He believes that God does not want to create
perfect human beings, because then we could not be made into his likeness. It
takes natural and moral evils to develop us into the beings we are intended to
be because without these hardships, we could not grow stronger. The scenes from
the Pursuit of Happiness help us see how the evils of hardship and struggle can
make you a stronger person in the end if you try to overcome the struggles. The
consequences that Will Smith faces are supposed to bring them down, but they do
just the opposite for him.
Pursuit of Happines- bathroom scene
Do you think all religions can relate to Hick’s argument
that we are put here on earth to be made in God’s likeness?
How can we know the truth to a situation: do we accept the consequences, or are we supposed to
fight against it in order to attain our necessary virtues to be Christ-like?
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