What is the main difference?
Augustine explains evil through the corruption of an originally good creation; Hick explains a challenging world as a setting for human development. Augustine places the misuse of freedom at the centre. Hick asks why God might create immature people who must freely grow into moral and spiritual maturity.
That difference changes the question each account must answer. Augustine must explain how the first bad choice arose and why others bear its consequences. Hick must explain why the amount and distribution of suffering are appropriate for development. Read the full Problem of Evil guide for the surrounding logical and evidential debates.
Compare the same questions
| Issue | Augustine | Hick |
|---|---|---|
| Starting point | God creates good natures; evil is a corruption or lack of due goodness. | Humans begin immature, with the possibility of growing into a fuller likeness of God. |
| Moral evil | A free will turns away from a higher good towards a lower one. | Genuine freedom includes the possibility of selfish or cruel action. |
| Natural suffering | Belongs to the fallen and disordered condition of creation in the traditional account. | A stable, challenging environment can make courage, compassion and responsibility possible. |
| God's apparent absence | Not the central organising concept of the account. | Epistemic distance allows people to respond without being overwhelmed by unmistakable divine presence. |
| Final resolution | Grace, redemption and judgement; salvation is not earned by human effort alone. | Hick's universalist completion gives the developmental process an ultimate fulfilment. |
| Hardest challenge | Why would a good creature first choose wrongly, and why should inherited consequences be just? | Why does some suffering crush agency or affect beings for whom the proposed growth seems unavailable? |
Augustine: a strong account of responsibility?
The privation account avoids presenting evil as a substance God deliberately manufactured. A lie uses capacities that are good in themselves, such as intelligence and speech, in a disordered way. This explains how a good creation can be damaged without introducing an equally powerful evil creator.
However, identifying evil as a lack does not explain every instance of its existence. Calling blindness an absence of sight says something about its nature; it does not yet explain why a benevolent creator permits it. Likewise, freedom may explain a human wrong without explaining suffering before human beings existed.
A defender can read the Fall as a theological account of universal human disorder rather than a scientific chronology. That reduces a direct conflict with evolutionary history. It also changes the defence: the writer must explain how moral responsibility and the need for grace survive that interpretation. Moving to symbolism does not, by itself, settle the fairness of inherited guilt.
Useful judgement: Augustine may illuminate the experience of choosing badly more successfully than the historical origin of every kind of suffering.
Hick: can suffering serve a good purpose?
Hick develops an Irenaean approach: mature goodness has a value that ready-made innocence lacks. Courage requires danger, forgiveness requires wrongdoing, and generous action requires real needs. A predictable natural order also makes responsible action possible; constant miraculous rescue would change what our choices mean.
The strongest objection targets the fit between this purpose and the world we observe. Some suffering encourages compassion, but some destroys confidence, agency and relationships. Severe suffering in infants or animals raises the further question of whose development is supposed to justify it. A benefit to an observer does not automatically justify the cost to the sufferer.
Hick's appeal to ultimate fulfilment answers the concern that earthly life ends before development is complete. Yet it introduces another claim requiring support. Universal salvation also needs explaining alongside freedom: if every person finally comes to God, why is that outcome compatible with genuine refusal?
Useful judgement: soul-making offers a possible reason for some difficulty. Its credibility depends on whether it can account for extreme and apparently unproductive suffering.
Worked plan: is Hick more convincing?
Original practice question: “Hick offers a more convincing response to evil than Augustine.” Discuss.
Possible thesis: Hick offers the stronger explanation of why a good God might permit a challenging natural world, but his account remains vulnerable to the scale of apparently pointless suffering. Augustine is stronger on culpable choices than on the origin of natural evil.
- Define the test. Judge explanatory power and fairness, rather than deciding that the newer view must win. Distinguish a possible explanation from a probable explanation.
- Compare origins. Explain privation and the Fall; test them against pre-human suffering. Explain developmental creation; ask whether this accommodates natural history more readily. Judge the scope of that advantage.
- Compare freedom. Test Augustine's account of the first misuse of will against Hick's need for meaningful choice. Ask whether freedom explains natural suffering as well as moral wrongdoing.
- Compare justice. Weigh inherited consequences against the risk of treating victims as instruments for others' development. Consider what each account's final resolution adds and what it assumes.
- Conclude proportionately. Defend the better account on your chosen criteria while acknowledging the objection it has not resolved. A qualified judgement can still be decisive.
For a related writing task, the reviewer supports this original question: Assess the view that soul-making is an adequate response to apparently pointless suffering. Adapt the comparison to its focus on apparently pointless suffering.
Three mistakes to avoid
- Do not write that Augustine thinks evil is a created substance; privation is central to his response.
- Do not reduce Hick to “suffering makes everyone better”. Whether it does is a central objection to his theory.
- Do not assume that answering the logical problem also answers evidence about the amount and severity of suffering.
For extended practice, read the free annotated natural-evil model essay. For an organised offline reference, preview the Philosophy notes pack.
Independent revision guidance for OCR H573. The practice questions and worked plans here are original teaching examples, not past-paper questions or official mark schemes.