ABSTRACT
John Hick has written extensively concerning the problem of evil. Hick distinguishes the question of whether the existence of God is logically consistent with the facts about evil from the question of whether the facts about evil render belief in God unreasonable or irrational. There are two good states that figure in Hick’s theodicy. The first is the state in which all human beings freely develop themselves into moral and spiritual beings. The second good state is that in which all such beings freely enter into an eternal life of love and fellowship with God. Hick takes the remaining difficulties to be principally three: the sheer amount and intensity of evil in the world; the fact that this evil falls randomly and haphazardly on both the just and unjust; and the question of whether the postulated goods for the sake of which God permits such evils can be worth the price.
