Explain the Freewill Defence and Examine Its Purpose

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The freewill defence argues that freewill is an essential part of humanity, without which we would be like robots. This explains why freewill is sufficiently worth the risk of evil, as many circumstances of evil are a part of the soul-making process according to John Hick. Genuine freewill requires the possibility of evil and without this possibility we would have freewill. It then argues that all the accounts of evil that have happened throughout history were necessary to our freewill. This explains why God did not simply step in and save us from the worst effects of our choices. For humans to have a genuine relationship with God it is only possible to do through our own decisions and this requires freewill, and this is supported by Richard Swinburne and Søren Kierkegaard’s example of the King and the peasant. Freewill is a necessary characteristic according to Soren Kierkegaard as he aims to put forward his idea through the tale of the King and the peasant. The parable is that a King falls in love with a peasant girl and does not want to appear to her as a king as she will be fearful and this would not be genuine love, so he decides to disguise himself as a peasant as a way for her get to know him and genuinely fall in love with him. This is similar to the circumstance of God and human freewill. This parable also links with the Christian and Islamic idea of God as noted in the parable it is necessary for humans to have freewill so that they will learn to love God out of genuine love and not out of fear. Through John Hicks theodicy he focuses on the reasons why God chose to give us such freedom. He understood that humans were made in an immature moral state, and that humans can be perfected through the use of their freewill – through learning from their mistakes. God knew it was inevitable that humans would make mistakes. However Hicks believes that through God’s

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