We can conceive of worlds in which human knowledge is modified such that we are more ignorant or much more intelligent than we are. A possible objection to the assertion of the Creator’s power or goodness is that the latter worlds are better than our own world and that a good and omnipotent God should have brought them into existence.

The same could be said about a world in which we indulged ourselves in food, drink and sex, or dulled our sense of inquiry into matters such as our deeper motivations or the meaning of life. Although some might opt for a world in which humans are practically unable to formulate any idea of a better world and hence to articulate the problem of God and evil, most of us would not want such a world, nor would we blame God for not having brought it about.

A more serious problem arises from the possibility that our knowledge could be increased. Is it possible and would it be better if there were no apparently pointless, gratuitous, or haphazard evil, no evil for which we could see no reason?

In one kind of super-knowledge, world humans would know everything, every detail of every causal sequence, every detail of the past, present and future. This would allow us in effect to transcend time and virtually know everything in a single glance. It would radically change our way of living. The sense of expectation would have no meaning for such a person; there would be no mysteries to challenge her intellect. She could not gamble, for there would be no unknown outcomes upon which she could risk anything. Nor would she be inclined to test her limits in order to find out more about herself, for she would have all that information already. There would be no need for experiments or attempts to falsify a hypothesis or select the proper hypothesis to explain a fact, for, since we would know the future, we would have no need for efforts to predict. We would know everything we wanted to know. There would be no sense in talking about the degree of probability with which any natural process would reach its goal.

Nor would she be troubled by her inability to solve the problem of evil. She would see either the reason for God allowing evil in the world, or she would see the true nature of God as less than all-powerful, or as less than all-good, or that the good and all-powerful God did not exist. Or, she would see that what humans call evil is not really evil. In effect this would be saying that humans know everything there is to know, that we have infinite knowledge.

The problem with this kind of knowledge is that it leads us to think that humans actually are infinite, since we would expect infinite truth to be found only in an infinite being. Such powerful knowledge suggests that we would be talking not about a creature, but about the all-powerful omniscient Creator. The implication is that any being who penetrated the inner intelligible core of the universe in such a way would have to be God. There is reason to think that a person with super-knowledge of this kind would become something other than human.

A less extreme type of world arises from the critic’s objection to apparently pointless or gratuitous suffering. In it human knowledge would be increased to the extent that we would have precise knowledge that each instance of suffering was punishment for our mistakes or a stimulation to virtue. We would know that our suffering would be punishment for something we did wrong, e.g., a life of dissipation, or we would see that it would be a necessary means to the development of virtue. We would see clearly that the wicked are punished and that virtue is rewarded with happiness. All of us would know precisely what moral mistake led to this punishment or what kind of spiritual development would be ours in the future. We would see clearly the pattern of our development toward spiritual maturity, and we would understand why we should develop in that way. We would see how and why the evils we are asked to endure are constructive.

There would be no such evil as the haphazard suffering spoken about by John Hick--that kind of evil which is, as far as we can tell, useless, unjust, and randomly related to one’s past deserts or to future soul-making. Haphazard suffering seems to fall upon men patternlessly, undeservedly, in excessive amounts, and without any apparent constructive purpose.

Hick is influenced by Kant’s requirement that a morally good act should proceed from a good will and that one cannot act morally if one is motivated by fear or the hope of a reward. We need not accept this Kantian view--that a person acts non-morally when he acts according to his inclination or out of fear. And yet, we can agree that the person who does something because it is right, even though it demands a sacrifice of his own immediate interests, performs an act of greater virtue than the man who acts for his own advantage. We see time and time again persons suffering inconvenience and sacrificing time, money, and even health because they are devoted to admirable ideals. Hick maintains that a world such as our own, in which many innocent persons suffer without cause and many good persons receive no apparent reward, is a better world than the behavior modification model. It encourages us not to look for the reward or punishment, and thereby leads us to a more perfect kind of morality.

Hick’s criticism is in line with traditional theology which teaches that a person acting out of a pure good will is thought to be acting out of the highest type of love, in which the object loved dominates. Here the self is downplayed, and all good is wished upon the beloved. If one looks upon doing what is right as an act of love for God who is her highest good, then she is not looking for a reward or for the relief of suffering. A world in which humans live and love in a relatively selfless sense is a better world than that in which one is ever on the lookout for what she can get or what evil she can avoid. To fault God for not bringing about a world in which we see clearly why we suffer is, then, unjustified. It is a weak objection.

The objectors miss the main point, for haphazard suffering gives rise to a kind of compassion that can hardly be compared with theirs. The husband’s compassion for his suffering wife would be immensely increased if there was no reason why she had to suffer so, if, for example, the operation was botched, or while recovering, those taking care of her did not monitor her pain medication properly. The parents’ compassion would be much more intense if their son was being punished unjustly and excessively by school authorities. A nurse’s sympathy would be markedly different if she knew for sure that her patient’s operation was unnecessary, or that her patient was dying from AIDS contracted in a blood transfusion.

Note the way we are inclined to feel when someone is going through a painful ordeal necessary for attaining a huge sum of money. Our heart goes out to him in only a limited degree. Should we feel intense sorrow for the person who, in an effort to become a millionaire, invests the totality of his assets in a highly speculative enterprise--and fails? Our intense compassion would go out to his wife and children who had no say in the matter and would then suffer unjustly, but not for him. Likewise, we do not lament the millionaire ballplayer who, separated from his family and living out of a suitcase nine months out of the year, is insulted by rude spectators and knocked on his backside by opponents from time to time. We have a good idea that his financial reward is well worth the inconvenience.

On the other hand, we are inclined to feel deeply for the young mother who is taken as a hostage by bank robbers and is incapacitated for life in the ensuing shoot out. She just happened to enter the bank as the robbers were leaving, and in the fracas she is struck in the spine and paralyzed. For her we feel a profound personal sympathy, a deep compassion, an unusually intense kindness, and a willingness to sacrifice something for this innocent victim of fate. Our response is a reasoned one, in that it would be significantly dissipated and decreased if we were convinced that she really deserved what she got, if, for example, she was the bank robber who just shot dead two young girls, or she was a prostitute with AIDS who did not care how many men she infected.

On the contrary, however, a significantly deeper degree of virtue is demanded in someone who has no choice, who has to endure a debilitating disease, a terminal illness, or in someone who has just lost a spouse in an accident. The courage of the athlete is manifested for an afternoon or a season, but the man with a terminal illness is in a game that never ends. No athlete today competes in a game that ends only with his death. No athlete is forced to live like a person who struggles with a terminal illness. After the game, an athlete takes a shower, goes out for a good meal with his friends, re-lives a victory or tries to forget an embarrassing defeat. A person with a progressive illness cannot easily shower it off; he takes it with him wherever he goes. There is no "minor difference in value" between the virtue required of those who freely take on difficult tasks and those who have no choice but to bear the burdens of disasters, accidents, and diseases.

If the dissertation writer succeeds, he can enjoy the fruits of his work; if time runs out or if he decides to pursue another path, he goes on living, sometimes disappointed, at other times in peace. Not so in the case of the victim of terminal cancer, who is confronted by a disappointment that does not allow him to pick up and go on living. In effect he is faced with a sentence of death. It is also hard to see how the courage of the dissertation writer’s wife is of the same degree as that asked of a woman who single handedly must care for a brain-injured child for ten or fifteen years. We cannot rightly compare the wife of a failed doctoral candidate with the girl who just lost her husband in a mine accident.

Consider the kind of world in which everyone knew that he was getting the suffering he deserved as punishment, or was getting the evil as a means to a generous reward. Would that not be a cold world in which people would have less incentive to care for anyone else? Everybody would be taken care of in such a world, so why should I worry about others? There would be no need for intense feelings for the person who suffers. For these reasons, we cannot easily dismiss the attempts to justify the evil in the world on the grounds that it intensifies our appreciation of life and calls us to greater virtue.

This analogy does not work for many reasons.

First, the aim of a business enterprise is to make a profit by providing goods and services. But what if God’s goal in creation is different, namely, the free development of creatures who freely choose to turn to their Creator and are not forced in any way? In this scenario, God would not be a knave or a fool when he fails to inform his creatures of his existence. And, as his existence is not forced upon humans, then his policies likewise are subject to questioning and interpretation.

Second, the goal of an organization is the determining factor in its operation. It takes priority over its smooth running. Moreover, efficiency is a two-edged sword; everything can work smoothly on behalf of a goal that is evil rather than good. An efficient rescue team can save a human life, but, as we can see in the holocaust literature, an efficient killing operation can cause massive evil. In the holocaust, good would have been served and evil thwarted by an executive who sent out unclear policies, or by subordinates who were not sufficiently convinced of the propriety of such policies. The goal of God’s plan for the universe might be that man come to acknowledge or reject him freely, not efficiently. The efficiency or non-efficiency of the process would be irrelevant. The freedom path might be wasteful, but it has a certain warmth and spontaneity, a beauty which we experience, for example, in love freely given. This alone would make it more desirable than a system marked by efficiency. At times we are quite willing to trade off efficiency for a higher goal.

Then too, how can we fault the infinite Creator God who has untold resources? Wasting things might be wrong and to be avoided for limited beings such as ourselves, but how can we be so sure that the unlimited Creator who dominates all existence also has that obligation?

Third, there is much to be said for the increased value of good actions performed by persons who have a great degree of genuine freedom. If freedom is a perfection, then the person who freely chooses to search out who this God is, who some accept and others deny--the person who after such a search freely accepts a God who was not forced upon him, and freely does what is right--this is the kind of person God should create. On the other hand, the evil done by someone who knows very clearly that his act is wrong and that the indubitably existent God has forbidden it, manifests a much greater malicious character than the person who, through weakness, fools himself, fails, and does evil. The evil that men do is less evil if done partly out of ignorance. An evil act done in the presence of one’s superior takes on the character of contempt for authority and is a more serious wrong.

Fourth, policies that are spelled out in great detail can be an effective barrier to the development and fulfillment of a firm’s subordinates. A detailed "manual of life" set out in "how to do it" fashion would strike hard at human freedom and initiative, and seriously downgrade the use of our reason in moral matters. We would scarcely propose as a better world one in which a robot-like character or one who merely obeyed exact directives was needed to implement the prescriptions. In ordinary life, a person who knows exactly what to do because he is told precisely, who has no authority to exercise discretion, is just another cog in a machine. The person who must apply principles and weigh the pros and cons, the person who must interpret and wrestle with difficult decisions of policy, has dignity and status.

Fifth, not every executive who does not show all his cards is necessarily a knave. It is not unusual for a top man in an organization to keep some things to himself at times. If, for example, he is trying to find out the real character of certain candidates for advancement, he might keep his intentions secret, lest the candidates disguise their behavior and appear as someone other than their true selves. The person who merely does what he is told to do in an effort to please a superior might get high marks for obedience, but his action would have greater value if he acts out of a deep conviction of his own, freely arrived at. A top executive does not spell out everything to his subordinates.

Sixth, an executive often demands a type of faith in those under him. He cannot be forever involved in trying to convince his subordinates or in trying to make clear some policy or other. We all know some subordinates who would not understand a policy or who would have trouble applying it no matter how great an effort to clarify was made. Moreover, prejudice, closemindedness, pride, selfishness, and the like can blind a person to even the most forceful unambiguous message.

In Madden and Hare’s world, humans would not be able to get away from God and be taken up with the world itself. A person would be unable to put God out of his mind, to act as if God did not exist. God’s existence would be automatically and undeniably evident to everyone. John Hick questions the better status of such a world. He defends the present world with its present type of human knowledge. He claims that it is fitting that the world both veils God and reveals him at the same time and does not unambiguously lead man to God.

Hick maintains that the possibility of our considering (to some extent) the world as if there were no God allows man to come to God by a mode of knowledge that involves a free interpretative response. The world that veils God and reveals him at the same time is as it should be, for man’s mind should be able to rest in the world itself without passing beyond it to its Maker; there should be some epistemic distance between God and man--we should be able to consider the world "as if there were no God."

Another reason that has some force in the defense of a world of haphazard suffering concerns gratitude. Apparently meaningless suffering stimulates the virtue of gratitude. The very meaning of random and haphazard suffering involves our inability to predict it, as well as to understand the reason for such suffering once it has occurred. We know that an unforeseen accident can happen to any one of us at any time. Upon reflection, this can evoke in us a profound appreciation for the many happy, trouble-free days that go along according to our plans. If all suffering were deserved as punishment or always seen as a necessary means toward something good for the sufferer, then we would lose the sense of being the recipient of benefits we might not really deserve. The world would lose a significant quantity of warmth. We might be grateful for our own existence, but in the day-to-day life of the world everything else would be cut and dry, a reward, a punishment, or a means to our own perfection. It is possible to conceive of a person being uneasy, bored, perhaps bitter when confronted by a world in which one has no chance to freely accept or reject the meaning of what was happening to one. On the other hand, suffering that is a mystery challenges us and allows us the freedom to develop or to fail.

To the believer the need for gratitude can be seen clearly when we realize that our creation was not like a business merger in which both parties bring assets, and an agreement is hammered out. There was no bargaining table--we humans brought nothing to the scene of creation. In a sense, we are in a weak negotiating position. It is more realistic than subservient to think that we should be grateful for whatever we have been given.

We have all heard the claim that a person does not have to experience something in order to appreciate, value, and deal with it. A doctor does not have to have cancer or tuberculosis in order to treat properly patients with those illnesses. A CPA need not himself have declared bankruptcy in order to guide a client through a difficult business crisis. A citizen does not have to commit a crime in order to know what it is to be a criminal.

This is true up to a point, but in a certain way it is deceptive and incomplete. A doctor’s help for his terminally ill patient is often limited to physical remedies. The business consultant who has never gone through a bankruptcy might not be fully aware of the psychological effects of a business failure. The citizen does not feel the rebellion and disgrace that sometimes permeates the heart of the prison inmate.

In conclusion, there are too many difficulties with a so-called "better world" in which God is expected to provide humans with much more deep and clear knowledge about reality. It is not that the world would not be better if we had more knowledge of ourselves and our world, but this knowledge is something we have to work for--the effort is part of our destiny. Insight into mystery is part of our goal; to find out why evils happen to us, how we can overcome them, and how we can bring good out of them gives our lives tremendous value. There is much to be said for John Hick’s apparently pointless suffering leading to the stimulation to virtue, and his role for "epistemic distance" in the human life. The attack on God’s goodness or power that arises out of a demand for a greater gift of human knowledge fails. It is highly dubious whether such a world is really "better" than the one we have. It seems, too, that in order to appreciate adequately the reality of what is good we must have a significant, intense experience of evil.

1. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (New York: Bantam Books, 1958).

2. Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 4521 (New York: Ballantine, 1953).

3. John Hick, "God, Evil and Mystery," Religious Studies, 3 (1967-1968), pp. 544-545. Evil and the God of Love (Great Britain: Collins, 1968), pp. 370-371. God and the Universe of Faiths (Glasgow: Collins, 1977), pp. 53-61.

4. Hick, ibid.

5. Evil and the Concept of God, p. 88.

6. Atheism--A Philosophical Justification (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), p. 424.

7. G. Stanley Kane, "The Failure of Soul-Making Theodicy."

8. John Hick, Evil and the God of Love, ibid., God and the Universe of Faiths, ibid.

9. Madden and Hare, Evil and the Concept of God , p. 114.

10. Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 211-212.

11. Hick, God and the Universe of Faiths, pp. 53-61.

12. Hick, Evil and the God of Love, pp. 296, 317-318

13. Charles Hartshorne, Natural Theology for Our Time (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1967), p. 82.

14. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, trans. Vernon Bourke (Garden City: Doubleday, 1956) III, Part I, 71.

15. Sir Zachary Cope, M.D., The Early Diagnosis of the Acute Abdomen, 14th ed. Preface (London: Oxford University Press, 1972).

16. Cf. Piers Paul Read, Alive, the Story of the Andes Survivors (New York: Avon, 1975).

17. Ibid., p. 312.

18. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, On Death and Dying (New York: Macmillan, 1969).