1. John Hick’s reformulation of the Irenaean theodicy
Hick’s theodicy is a reformulation of the Irenaean theodicy. It is based on the idea that free choice is better than compulsion.
For human beings to love God, they have to be free to do so.
Love cannot be forced.
The capacity to love God is a capacity that has to be developed.

2. In order to allow for this development humans must have been created imperfect.
There has to be room for improvement in order for this development to be possible.
Hick calls this distance between God and man an epistemic distance. It is a distance in knowledge and understanding.
This distance allows humans to develop – if God were too close, humans would find it impossible not to be influenced.
They would be unable to make a free choice, and would not benefit from the developmental experience of being morally free.

3. For humans to be free to make moral choices, there must be a full range of alternatives to choose from. The world must include the possibility for suffering, or moral choices would be meaningless.
Hick therefore proposed that suffering is a necessary condition in this process of free choice. The world is a forge in which humans are changed – it is a world in which the soul is refined. Hick illustrates with a phrase from a letter by John Keats:
‘Call the world if you please a Vale of Soul-Making’.

4. A world without problems, difficulties, perils and hardships would be morally static, for moral and spiritual growth comes through responses to challenges; and in a paradise there would be no challenges.
Hick J. ‘Evil and the God of Love’ 1968

5. One way in which humans can develop is through their response to suffering.
One of the ways in which this ‘test’ is carried out is through faith – God’s purpose cannot easily be discerned (the epistemic distance), but believers continue to believe despite the evidence. This faith becomes a virtue