A Critique of William Rowe’s View of John Hick’s Theodicy

One of the most influential versions of the evidential argument from evil was put forth by contemporary American philosopher William Rowe. He believes that frequency of evils and certain particular instances of evil in the world provide a rational context of evidence against theism. In contrast, critics try to uncover flaws in his argument. Rowe dismisses many of these critiques as apologetic and ineffective, believing that theodicies such as John Hick’s “cultivation of the soul” fail to justify why arbitrary evils occur. In this study, we seek an answer for the following question: are William Rowe’s critiques of John Hick’s theodicy rational enough? To see this, we provide a rough account of the evidential argument from evil and John Hick’s theodicy, and finally show that while Hick’s theodicy fails to establish some of its grounds such as the belief in resurrection and is founded upon principles such as reincarnation, Rowe’s critiques do not undermine the ability of this theodicy to justify arbitrary evils.