Outline The Irenaean theodicy
The purpose of this essay is to outline The Irenaean theodicy and what he believed was the purpose for evil and suffering in detail with some strengths and weaknesses, the essay will also include modern theodicies which were devised by Swinburne and another by Hick.
Irenaeus was a bishop and a philosopher who lived between the years of 130-202 which was before the time of the other philosopher Augustine. Irenaeus lived at a time when Christianity was new and he was able to put his believes into holy books as he helped form the New Testament in the Bible. Irenaeus had a theodicy that believed that there was a purpose for evil and suffering in our lives and this was because we were all born imperfect and through our lives we each develop into perfection because we go through two stages which are that we are born in Gods image and we then grow and develop through our lives into Gods likeness when we are in heaven and all the suffering that a person has endured in their life will be overcome because they have completed the full development throughout their lives which is then known as the completion of Gods creation.
One key concept which Irenaeus tried to disprove is the idea of the inconsistent triad which is that if God is omnipotent and omnibenevolent then suffering would not exist because he supposed to be all loving and if he was powerful enough he would be able to get rid of the existence of suffering. This is why Irenaeus said that God had a reason for this suffering which was the concept of soul-making.
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Irenaeus believed that suffering was necessary for us to live and it helps all of us as individuals grow and develop as people because it is soul-making as it was part of Gods plan for humanity when he made as it also helps us to live consciously with God which is why he allows suffering to exist in the world. God is an epistemic distance from us which means that he was created to watch over us and make sure that we grow into perfection through our lives.
There is truth in the fact that without bad we wouldn’t know if anything was good for example we wouldn’t know a hot day from a really cold day because we wouldn’t have experience the freezing weather which shows us that we need to have the bad in our lives to be able to appreciate the good things in life. God gave all of us as individuals the ability to have free will which means that we ourselves make the choice to do bad things and the choice to do good but all of us couldn’t be good throughout our lives which is why we have made our own decisions in life which leads to why the Fall occurred which is when the serpent tricked Eve into eating the fruit from the tree which God forebode any eating from which leads us back to the reason why we understand what differs from good and bad.
There are modern theodicies as told by Hick and Swinburne, Hick stated that the theodicy was soul-making and that each of us had to be created an epistemic distance from God which is why there are people who believe he exists and some people disagree. Hick believed that we were all given free will which agrees with Irenaeus but he also states that God had to create humans that were spiritually perfect and had to have free will instead of being born already programmed to do good in life because that would then make humans work like robots instead of being ready made.
The other modern theodicy was devised by Swinburne which he stated that for us to be able to make decisions in our life we must know what will happen next and to gain this knowledge we must have experience for example if an Iron is turned on a person touched it they would get burnt but would know not to touch it again because of the pain. Swinburne stated that we must all have knowledge of natural evil and suffering which is why God gave us free will as he must allow human suffering so that they can grow and learn through experience.
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There have been strengths and weaknesses to Irenaeus’ theodicy which have been debated over the years and are why there are new theodicies which criticise his theodicy with their own beliefs. The strengths of Irenaeus’ theodicy is that he didn’t try to disprove that evil and suffering existed he believed that they were necessary in a person’s life which is another strength because he is giving it purpose and has given a clear reason for why we each have free will which is why we are each given a path to go down which leads to perfection. The weaknesses of Irenaeus’ theodicy is that suffering shouldn’t be part of our lives is God is meant to be omnibenevolent because he is meant to love all of us and wouldn’t allow us to go through evil and suffering and put it into our lives. Another is that if we were all created in Gods image and develop into his likeness then we should be born perfect and shouldn’t be on a path to perfection because God is meant to be perfect and all of the people that have caused evil and suffering shouldn’t be allowed into heaven and Gods likeness because they don’t deserve it.
To conclude this essay on Irenaean theodicy, with reference to the theodicies and ideas above it is apparent that evil and suffering is a necessity in our lives to be able to grow into individuals and perfection. The modern theodicies of Swinburne and Hick developed further on Irenaeus’ theodicy which had ideas that were believable because none of these theodicies are in the Bible. Irenaeus had a lot of valid points in his theodicy which made it clear that there is a reason for evil and suffering and it gains a purpose in our lives and is how we are able to live with God and grow into his likes when we then go onto heaven after death.
