The Irenaean Theodicy and Its Problems

Image courtesty of superscholars.org

I recently learned that John Hick has passed away at the age of 90. I have been holding on to this piece for quite some time, as I feel I haven’t quite said what I want to say, or am not saying it quite as succinctly as I would like. Regardless, I would like to post this in memory of John Hick, with whom I have almost always disagreed but always enjoyed reading nevertheless. As always, please feel free to offer your critiques and comments, especially since I view this as a fairly rough piece.

John Hick begins his explication of the Irenaean Theodicy by briefly summarizing and simultaneously discounting the Augustinian approach. I shall not spend much more time than Hick does in defining the Augustinian approach, and the only reason I do so at all is to offer a companion against which Hick’s Irenaean Theodicy might be compared as divergent from traditional Christian theodicy. In short, the Augustinian model follows a traditional Christian viewpoint of creation and the fall of man. It postulates that men (and angels) were created as perfect, free, and finite beings who fell from perfection as a consequence of their misuse of freedom.[1] Hick states that, “the Augustinian approach…hinges upon the idea of the fall as the origin of moral evil, which has in turn brought about the almost universal carnage of nature.”[2] An integral piece of Augustinian Theodicy inherent in thinkers all the way from St. Augustine to Alvin Platinga is the free-will defense against the Problem of Evil. This defense chiefly rests upon the idea that God’s creation was entirely perfect and yet man and angels chose to sin of their own free choice, which resulted in the evil that we now see present in the fallen world.

Iconoclasts and Overcomers: Themes of Moral Overcoming in Nietzsche and Machiavelli

Niccolo Machiavelli and Friedrich Nietzsche are perhaps two of the most historically vilified figures in moral and ethical literature.  Indeed, Machiavelli’s ideas were so controversial that in 1559 all of his writings were banned in Italy until the 19^th century.[1]  Similarly, it has been alleged that Nietzsche advances the thesis that immorality in general is admirable.[2] In this essay I shall endeavor to compare and contrast these two titans of ‘immorality’ in an attempt to show that, rather than advancing simple immorality or amorality, Machiavelli and Nietzsche praise a sort of ‘supramorality’ which aims above the traditional limits of morality to attain a higher goal. I shall begin first by briefly providing textual support for the claim that both Nietzsche and Machiavelli seek to investigate and dissect the moralities of their day. From there I shall demonstrate how each author places the power of overcoming present-day morality in the hands of an individual of almost mythical proportions. Finally I shall discuss the differing aims between Machiavelli’s uniting Prince and Nietzsche’s Free Spirit and how each of these aims ties into the concept of a ‘supramorality.’