Lesson · 4 min Stretch
Why Allow Suffering?
In one line Replies to the problem of evil point to freedom, growth or our limited view, and each faces hard objections.
Defenders of belief have offered several replies. The free will defense, developed by Alvin Plantinga, says a world with creatures who are truly free is better than one without, and freedom means they can choose wrongly. It may be that even God could not create free beings guaranteed to do only good.
John Hick, drawing on the early Christian writer Irenaeus, proposed soul-making: the world is a place where hardship lets courage and compassion grow. Skeptical theists add that failing to see a reason for suffering does not show there is none, as a child cannot see the point of a vaccine.
Critics ask about natural evils such as disease, which no free choice causes, and about suffering that crushes rather than builds. Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov refuses any plan whose price is a child’s torment.
Go deeper
Plantinga’s argument aims only to show that God and evil are consistent, which he called a defense, not to explain why God actually allows each evil, which would be a theodicy. Mackie later accepted that the logical problem had been weakened. Marilyn McCord Adams argued that only a God who makes each sufferer’s life a great good overall could answer horrendous evils.
The training camp
A coach makes recruits run in the heat, saying hardship builds character. Most recruits grow stronger. One collapses and suffers lasting harm.
The coach’s reasoning works for the first group. It sounds hollow for the last. Critics of soul-making press the same point: a reason that fits ordinary hardship may not fit suffering that breaks people.
Try this today Take one reply to the problem of evil and test it against the worst case you can think of.
Cite or share this lesson
A plain reference you can paste into notes or an essay:
Quest2Reason. “Why Allow Suffering?.” https://quest2reason.com/learn/lesson/why-allow-suffering. Accessed 13 November 2026.
Sources
- Wikipedia, “Plantinga’s free will defense” — Sets out the defense and the difference between a defense and a theodicy.
- Wikipedia, “Irenaean theodicy” — Covers Hick’s soul-making theodicy and its critics.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “The Problem of Evil” — Surveys the logical and evidential problems and the main replies.
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “The Evidential Problem of Evil” — Covers skeptical theism, including the comparison of our view to an infant’s view of a parent.
- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Book V, chapter 4, “Rebellion” (Garnett translation) — Ivan refuses a harmony bought with a child’s suffering.