Beyond Theodicy

Explores the work of post-Holocaust Jewish and Christian thinkers who reject theodicy—arguments explaining why a loving God can permit evil and suffering in the world.

Why does God permit evil and suffering? This question, known as the problem of evil in theological and philosophical circles, has perennially vexed Christian theology. Academic studies on the problem of evil, however, have failed to move the conversation forward in recent years. In this volume, designed for students and scholars alike, Mark S. M. Scott traces the major models and motifs in Christian explanations for evil (called theodicies) and argues for a thorough rethinking of the problem of evil and theodicy based on distinctly Christian theological criteria and resources.

True theodicy is partly a theoretical corrective to evangelistic impatience: discounting the distortions arising from over-eager salesmanship. And partly it is a work of poetic intensification, dedicated to faith’s necessary struggle against resentment. This book contains a systematic survey of the classic theoretical-corrective theodicy tradition initiated, in the early Seventeenth Century, by Jakob Böhme. Two centuries later, Böhme’s lyrical thought is translated into rigorous philosophical terms by Schelling; and is, then, further, set in context by Hegel’s doctrine of providence at work in world history. The old ‘God’ of mere evangelistic impatience is, as Hegel sees things, ‘dead’. And so theodicy is liberated, to play its proper role: illustrated here with particular reference to the book of Job, the post-Holocaust poetry of Nelly Sachs, and the thought of Simone Weil. A boldly polemical study, this book is a bid to re-ignite debate on the whole topic of theodicy. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars in religious studies, theology and philosophy.

Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love grapples with the same fundamental question that has vexed philosophers and theologians since the advent of monotheistic religion, and continues as a barrier to belief for many today. Namely, if God is so good, how can natural disaster, genocide, trauma - and my present suffering - occur? Historically, there have been two apparently very different approaches to the problem: the pastoral, or practical, on the one hand and the systematic on the other. Richard Norton, however, suggests that these two lines of thought may not be as separate as they seem, and may indeed be dependent on one another for their cohesion. Drawing on Julian’s medieval experience of personal and population-wide suffering, alongside that of more recent theologians such as Dorothy Solle and Jürgen Moltmann, Norton constructs a compassionate model of theodicy that can be of use to both pastoral and systematic theologians. Throughout, he remains sensitive to the raw atrocity of evil, while preserving a vision of God as the one who ensures that all shall be well.

If God is all powerful and entirely good and loving, why is there so much evil in the world? Based on a close canonical reading of Scripture, this book offers a new approach to the challenge of reconciling the Christian confession of a loving God with the realities of suffering and evil. John Peckham offers a constructive proposal for a theodicy of love that upholds both the sovereignty of God and human freedom, showing that Scripture points toward a framework for thinking about God's love in relation to the world.

My thesis--Theodicy and Anti-Theodicy: Tradition and Change in Post-Holocaust Jewish Theology--examines the collapse of theodicy by critically engaging the writings of Richard Rubenstein, Eliezer Berkovits, and Emil Fackenheim. These three Jewish theologians testify to how modern religious sensibilities irrevocably shift after Auschwitz. They illustrate in unique (even exaggerated) form how contemporary Jewish thinkers strategically reinvent theological and literary traditions in response to historical change. My research indicates that modern scholarship on religion needs to be radically rethought under the impact of non-Protestant religious cultures. I have found (based on readings of biblical, rabbinic and post-Holocaust Jewish texts) that religious life and thought are neither as theocentric nor as exercised by theodicy as western scholars have heretofore assumed. The methodological focus of my research is two-fold, both theological and literary. Theologically, I examine how Rubenstein, Berkovits, and Fackenheim displace theodicies found in rabbinic and modern philosophical strands of Jewish tradition. Instead, they engage a mode of discourse that I call anti-theodicy--by which I mean religious responses to catastrophic suffering that do not justify, explain, or accept the relation between God and evil. Instead of vindicating God, anti-theodicies defend afflicted human persons even against God and providence. My dissertation's second focus concerns the use of traditional texts. Rubenstein, Berkovits and Fackenheim reinvent tradition by sifting through a broad corpus of classical tropes and texts. They jettison time-honored theodicies and adopt a heretofore marginalized anti-theodic stance. Their revisions, I argue, reflect a powerful and distinctively "post-Holocaust" shift in the theological and readerly canons of modern Judaism.

Why does God permit evil and suffering? This question, known as the problem of evil in theological and philosophical circles, has perennially vexed Christian theology. Academic studies on the problem of evil, however, have failed to move the conversation forward in recent years. In this volume, designed for students and scholars alike, Mark S. M. Scott traces the major models and motifs in Christian explanations for evil (called theodicies) and argues for a thorough rethinking of the problem of evil and theodicy based on distinctly Christian theological criteria and resources.