Befriending Job: Theodicy Amid the Ashes

What role should theodicy play in the face of loss and acute suffering? Should it keep its distance and remain respectfully silent or should it step forward to illuminate the opaque reality of evil, especially untimely death? In my article, I explore the fraught relationship between the personal exp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Open theology
Main Author: Scott, Mark Stephen Murray (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: De Gruyter 2020
In: Open theology
Further subjects:B Occupation
B Bereavement
B Grief
B Silence
B Theodicy
B Mystery
B Suffering
B The problem of evil
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Summary:What role should theodicy play in the face of loss and acute suffering? Should it keep its distance and remain respectfully silent or should it step forward to illuminate the opaque reality of evil, especially untimely death? In my article, I explore the fraught relationship between the personal experience of loss and its theological interpretation through an analysis of three related bereavement autobiographies: C. S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed , Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Lament for a Son , and William Abraham’s Among the Ashes . Invoking Job’s "friends" as a theoretical framework, I analyze each author’s attempt to reconcile the lived experience of suffering with the theoretical task of theodicy: to explain suffering. I conclude with my own constructive proposal on the place of theodicy in the realm of human anguish.
ISSN:2300-6579
Contains:Enthalten in: Open theology
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1515/opth-2020-0022