The Problem of Suffering in the Qur'an

Abstract

In his recent book, Evil and the God of Love,1 Dr John Hick examined various Christian responses to the problem of evil. He traced two related, but in important respects different, paths of thought, which correspond to the two main ways in which the genesis or origin of evil have been understood: either as a capacity for goodness which has not yet been realised (with life, therefore, as a ‘vale of soul-making’), or as an original defect which has vitiated all subsequent life. The former is a ‘minority’ report, which Dr Hick called ‘Irenaean’, since the first person of renown to put it forward in reasonably articulate form was Irenaeus. The latter is the dominant, or majority, report, which Dr Hick called ‘Augustinian’, since Augustine's formulation of it became deeply and profoundly influential in subsequent Christian thought. The differences are not absolute, but the contrasts are clear: ‘Instead of the Augustinian view of life's trials as a divine punishment for Adam's sin, Irenaeus sees our world of mingled good and evil as a divinely appointed environment for man's development towards the perfection that represents the fulfillment of God's good purpose for him.’2