In This Darkness
Love Will Show the Way
Todd Van Grouw
God, Suffering & Evil
Anna Case-Winters
One needn’t live long or look far to encounter suffering. As suffering children of God we ask, “if God is good and God is powerful, why does evil exist?” Sophistic debate over the nature, cause, consequence, and significance of suffering is inevitable, but few refute its existence. While suffering (evil’s consequence) is generally experienced and interpreted individually, Evil is more existential and therefore more conceptually elusive. We encounter evil in personal, social, natural and metaphysical manifestations and differing elucidations emerge. Despite significant competition, the holocaust is generally seen as evil’s grandest modern icon, but achieving clarity that evil exists doesn’t bring consensus concerning its origin, nature or effects.
The predominant traditional theology in contemporary protestant churches is rooted in Augustine’s tenets of free will and original sin. Augustine claimed that “God is the ultimate of being and goodness,” and “as the work of omnipotent Goodness, unhindered by any recalcitrant material or opposing influence, the created world is wholly good.” [1] God is not responsible for evil, says Augustine, for God is ultimate goodness. Evil is a result of human corruption or privatio boni. Our fall from God’s perfection in Eden
Highly influenced by Augustine, John Calvin explained the existence and perpetuity of evil as a result of human depravity, our misuse of free will—a longstanding staple in the Reformed tradition. Following Paul and Augustine, Calvin hypothesized that the sinful malfunctions of humanity could only be offset by God’s salvation through the atoning sacrifice of Christ, a beneficence ultimately extended to a predestined few. The requisite conclusion to be drawn from Calvin’s election theology is that the predestined salvation offered to some is withheld from many, a thought I find hard to accept given my faith in a loving God. Calvin’s influential Institutes, first published in 1536, reveals the author wrestling with his own vision. He expounds,
The covenant of life is not preached equally to all, and among those to whom it is preached, does not always meet with the same reception. This diversity displays the unsearchable depth of the divine judgment, and is without doubt subordinate to God’s purpose of eternal election. But if it is plainly owing to the mere pleasure of God that salvation is spontaneously offered to some, while others have no access to it, great and difficult questions immediately arise, questions which are inexplicable, when just views are not entertained concerning election and predestination. [2]
While enormously influential in the Church since the 16th century, Calvin is not without detractors. Assuming universal sin and guilt in the realm of an omnipotent God, many would question why a so-called just and loving God would choose to save some and not others. To those who believe that God is good and just, it seems improbable to acknowledge God’s seemingly unjustified partiality through the salvific rescue of some and eternal damnation in hell of others when the sin and guilt of all are equally evident. Jan Bonda, a Dutch Reformed pastor writing in 1993 states that guilt of the lost is “no bigger than or different from that of those who are saved. We should not conclude that God is unable to save them. But, in their case, he does not choose to save. Why not? Because he wants to demonstrate that he is a just God, who punishes evil. That makes it necessary for some people to be lost.” [3] Does God’s salvation for some sinners necessitate damnation of others? Even as a distractible pre-teen struggling through the Heidelberg Catechism and my Reformed church confirmation, I fostered serious doubt about an angry and seemingly vicious God who would so willingly and brutally condemn and punish some and not others:
Q: Are all men saved through Christ just as all were lost through Adam?
A: No. Only those are saved who by true faith are grafted into
Q: What do you understand by the word “suffered?”
A: That during his whole life on earth, but especially at the end,
Christ sustained in body and soul the anger of God against the
sin of the whole human race. This he did in order that, by his
suffering as the only atoning sacrifice, he might set us free,
body and soul, from eternal condemnation, and gain for us
Is this true faith even possible? It doesn’t seem so. Was the life of Christ truly meant to sustain in body and soul the anger of God against the sin of the whole human race? Though humanity certainly deserves God’s wrath (myself and young friends in particular, it seemed at the time), Christ as the embodiment of God’s anger doesn’t seem coherent with the loving Christ described in the gospels. Certainly, scripture speaks of a narrow path, [6] but over time I have come to appreciate the biblical themes that express God’s grace and love: Isaiah’s promise of a banquet for all; [7] the savior promised to save God’s people, not damn them; [8] Luke’s Good Shepherd who left 99 sheep to find the lost one; [9] John’s Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world; [10] Luke’s explicit reference to the “universal restoration that God announced long ago through his holy prophets;” [11] and the works of Paul, himself a sinner restored by God’s grace without prior faith in Christ (!). Christ is a fulfillment of God’s Covenant with Abraham to faithfully love an unfaithful people. Whether before Christ or after, not one of us is faithful. “There is no one who is righteous, not even one; there is no one who has understanding, there is no one who seeks God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless; there is no one who shows kindness, there is not even one.” [12] Evil is indeed a most compelling force. Yet if we believe in a good and omnipotent God, we believe that God is “above all and through all and in all”—not some. [13] We turn from God (sin), but God refuses to turn from us (grace).
If all sin and evil is predestined, what purpose does evil play in our world? Is evil caused by God’s imposed suffering from which God rescues us to be proclaimed King of Heaven and Earth by the saved? Should we sin to better appreciate God’s salvation? [14] Is God some sort of divine arsonist who sets earthly fires of suffering for proof of omnipotence and then watches us desperately extinguish the flames as we attempt to rid ourselves of pain and suffering? No! These views are not consistent with a just and loving God. From Augustine and Calvin we can only gather that either God is not loving, God is impotent, or (as I believe) the theodicy of Augustine and Calvin have serious limitations. Karl Barth, a Swiss theologian living in the mid-20th century, added a few twists to the classical theodicy conversation, but Barth’s contribution ultimately ended up as an “impossible possibility.” [15] He says we are “free,” but freedom exists so that we might obey God. Barth claims that God is responsible for our sin because God controls us and is therefore indictable, yet Barth also claims that “God does not have the power to do everything but only those things which confirm and manifest divine being.” [16] Barth can’t seem to make up his mind about whether God is omnipotent, or good, or neither, or both:
Barth cannot have it both ways. Either God is subject to necessity and therefore could not prevent evil and is not omnipotent (in the way that Barth has defined omnipotence) or God is not subject to necessity and therefore could have prevented evil and is therefore indictable for evil. In the first case, God’s omnipotence is sus-pended; in the second case, God’s goodness is suspended. [17]
Process theology departs from the classical monarchical model, as seen above, and views the God/human relationship as having shared power and responsibility for earthly affairs where human influence on God exponentially sways God’s influence on humanity—and vice versa. Humans and God are mutually influential, but God’s influence is above all. Charles Hartshorne suggests that “God is seen as influencing world process but not as controlling it in such a way that it is made to conform to divine willing.” [18] God can persuade but not force human decision. Human freedom implies a certain “surprise factor” in that God can’t predict or predestine the exact outcome of every miniscule human scenario. David Ray Griffin claims that the “view of shared power implies, in turn, that divine power is persuasive, not controlling. God, by hypothesis, influences every finite event, but God cannot wholly determine how any event will use its own creativity and thereby its twofold power to exert both self-determination and causal influence.” [19] For God to remove suffering from the world, God would need to eliminate human freedom because freedom and suffering are inseparably bound. Just as God formed the world out of original chaos, suffering, along with all the other results of God’s creativity, is elemental in a free world. Without suffering, existence could not be because suffering is required for the good/evil balance that defines existence. Douglas John Hall suggests that “God is able and willing, using the raw stuff of our deeds and misdeeds in much the same manner as God used the primeval chaos to create a world, to alter the course of things, to provide a way into the future.” [20] In the words of Rabbi Harold Kushner, “Pain is the price we pay for being alive.” [21] Just as God shares power, God also shares pain. A God who can’t suffer with creation can’t relate to a suffering creation. Humans free of suffering couldn’t participate with God in the ongoingness of their world.
We have briefly discussed that, in process theodicy, suffering is a necessary part of existence, that suffering is part of our cost of living, but where does suffering come from? God created a balanced world out of chaos in which good and evil are present, therefore God is at least partially responsible. But because God is good, good outweighs the bad and the fact that the scales ultimately tip toward the good reflects the goodness of God’s nature. Because of human freedom to choose goodness in the good/evil mix, we are equally free to choose evil and are therefore co-responsible for evil. Consider Hartshorne’s basic argument: “(1) the opportunity for good is inextricably linked to the possibility for evil, (2) it is probable that the concrete outcome is in fact more good than evil, and (3) God suffers every evil that is suffered by any creature.” [22] This outline clearly defines the God/human partnership, describes existence as that in which a balance of evil and good are present, and explains that the nature of God who suffers with us is good. Hall assesses the source of suffering in terms of four human conditions: the experience of loneliness in which a certain personal and moral “vacuum” exists, exposing a powerful hunger for other; the sense of human limitation or boundaries and the knowledge that we alone can only do so much; the power of temptation to do what we can but ought not to do; and anxiety caused by the necessity for dependence beyond self. [23] Human desire, and perhaps God’s desire as well, is for self-dependence without enduring the impatience of partnership with others, dependence on others, waiting on others or suffering social consequences. Yet in process theology, the ideal is a partnership with God. “Discipleship is the working out of our humanity within the freedom of the gospel and under the guidance of the divine Spirit.” [24] As God’s creatures, God desires active partners to mold the ongoing chaos of creation and to heed the prophet Micah’s famous call to “do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” [25]
For many, the God/human partnership model of process theology is too complacent in that it “lets God off the hook” for the horrific suffering and unending evil in this world. Protest theologians agree that good and evil co-exist but they believe “evil is stronger than good.” [26] In protest theology, relentless evil which overpowers good sets the agenda. God doesn’t cause suffering, but neither does God prevent suffering or promise to ease suffering in this life, so what option remains but to protest suffering and the God who allows it to happen? God’s love is fine in conceptual terms, but “love is not law,” [27] therefore, something must be done to resist evil and the suffering it causes. Protest theology calls us to stand up and fight against evil and suffering and for self worth. Wendy Farley, who distinguishes meaningful suffering from radical suffering, says the latter reduces personhood, it “destroys its victims, it does not make them stronger.” [28] In essence, radical suffering transforms persons into non-persons. Those who remain complacent or apathetic in the face of radical suffering will remain non-persons, but resistance and recovery are possible, as in Job’s case, and are therefore encouraged by protest theologians. One method of resistance against suffering is to identify evil’s causes and exercise defiance: to resist the evil-doers and the evil they do. Another option for protest occurs when external change is unlikely, where resistance takes a form of inner fortitude. “In any situation of humiliation, torture, and murder, the maintenance by the victims of a shred of humanity is not merely the basis of resistance but already part of it.” [29] Consider Mahatma Gandhi determinedly withstanding brutal beatings in the name of truth; Zora Neale Hurston’s “unction” amidst the evil of racism; Nelson Mandela facing a death sentence with poise and conveyance of supreme moral fortitude. All of these protestors suffered deeply by evil’s hand yet managed to conjure significant power in their maintenance of self. In defiance of their suffering, they prevented suffering from assuming a radical death grip on them. In some cases, leadership through resistance can not only allow continuation of personhood for the self, it can also limit the suffering of others and a certain eventual reduction of evil. Even in externally powerless situations, one can always maintain internal “soul power.”
Gustavo Gutiérrez’s commentary on the book of Job illuminates faithfulness as protest in the face of suffering. No evident explanation for the clear and dramatic suffering of Job is given as this innocent protests his pain of suffering and God’s unjust acquiescence. Yet Job maintains his innocence and refuses to curse God and die—as his “friends” counsel him to do. Job acknowledges God as his ultimate authority and pledges complete faith, though wavering at times, in God. Job declares, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at last he will stand upon the earth.” [30] Job complains, protests, cries in agony over his suffering but refuses to condemn God for it, even though God is clearly culpable for giving Satan free reign to torture. In keeping faith, Job clings to hope and in so doing maintains the rudiments of his personhood, thus disallowing his suffering to destroy him completely. Given the actions and inactions of God in this disturbing narrative, Job has every right and perhaps no other logical option but to protest God. God’s apparent inaction during the Job drama underscores both process and protest theology’s sense of God’s vulnerability. Gutiérrez writes, “the all-powerful God is also a ‘weak’ God. The mystery of divine freedom leads to the mystery of human freedom and the respect for it.” [31] It’s curious that Job fails to address Satan’s “free reign” or that he fails to curse Satan, his torturer, who is truly indictable for Job’s suffering. While God remunerated Job in the end by doubling his livestock and “replacing” Job’s seven sons and three daughters, nothing is said of the presumed suffering of Job’s first ten children. No mention is made of a wife or wives.
The suffering and eradication of Job’s children and servants (whose innocence is neither established nor refuted) brings us to the issue which Andrew Sung Park
“The perspective of han suggests the inclusion of the other side of repentance—the forgivingness of victims. True repentance will transpire only when wrongdoers change their way of thinking and life against the wronged and are forgiven by them. Without the forgivingness of the wronged, the reconciliation between the wronged and the wrongdoers and between God and the wrongdoers is incomplete.” [35]
What can be learned when God appears to coalesce with the wrongdoer—in the case of Job, granting permission to Satan!? What can be learned from Job except that humans are dispensable in the face of God’s power, whether God exercises full power or not? Are we to assume that God randomly allows suffering among humankind and that some, whether justifiably or not, will elude suffering while others, like Job, will sit in piles of ash and scrape themselves with broken pots in the bitter reality of their radical suffering? A casual reading might be led to this conclusion, but Gutiérrez has thoughts worthy of consideration:
What is it that Job has understood? That justice does not reign in the world God has created? No. The truth that he has grasped and that has lifted him to the level of contemplation is that justice alone does not have the final say about how we are to speak of God. Only when we have come to realize that God’s love is freely bestowed do we enter fully and definitively into the presence of the God of faith. Grace is not opposed to the quest of justice nor does it play it down; on the contrary, it gives it its full meaning. God’s love, like all true love, operates in a world not of cause and effect but of freedom and gratuitousness. [36]
Compared to process theology, the prospect of perpetual protest seems lonely, tiresome and destined for defeat without God’s intervention. Whereas process theology’s human/God partnership slowly attempts to erode evil, protesting humans acting alone seem alarmingly outgunned by the overwhelming radicality of evil and it seems, given human frailty and fallibility, that evil will win—as it did for millions of Jews in World War II, as it has in the case of untold millions of victims of war, torture, starvation, assassination and disease. “Human beings are sojourners on the way to death, and the demands of life can be very tiring. It is often the case that freedom is more of a burden than a pleasure.” [37] In Job, God seems relatively non-committed, loving perhaps but not offering much help. God doesn’t intend evil and may want to help in its elimination but seems distant or preoccupied. Theologian Stephen Davis writes, “Although God could intervene dramatically at any point in present history, God elects to let freedom work out its own course as it lives in individuals and communities. Thus, God’s ‘plan’ for history is virtually no plan at all. It can release the worst as well as the best that is in us, and therefore the presence of this God may feel like the absence of all gods.” [38] Davis continues his assessment by adding, “Short of no God at all, what people have to ask religiously, therefore, is whether we should settle for an innocent but ineffectual God or whether we should run the risks of relating to a God who is really master of the universe but much less than perfectly good by any standards that we can comprehend.” [39] Eternally embattled in the fight for love and justice, perhaps in the manner employed by troubled children who act out and in so doing harm themselves in the pained attempt at gaining attention of loving parents or authorities, active adherents of protest theodicy may eventually whittle and erode themselves into personlessness in the very battle of seeking personhood in their escape from evil, a truly troubling prospect.
One final theodical assessment here focuses on the Irenaean theodicy which departs from Augustine’s election/Fall theory, adopts process theology’s God/human partnership without reducing God’s omnipotence, and shies from protest theology’s tiring battle for naught where freedom from evil is self-achieved (if achieved at all). Evil, says Irenaeus, is humanity’s teacher. Like newborns passing from comfortable warmth of the womb into the painful world of harsh blinding light and relative cold, we are existentially and metaphysically born into a whirlwind of chaotic suffering and evil in which we learn through pain. At birth, we quickly acknowledge pain and suffering caused by evil and are compelled to resist it. Irenaeus would claim that trying to overcome evil is neither practical nor practicable, but learning from it is both. Without evil, we develop no moral tools or vocabulary with which to resist evil. Were protest theologians to realize the goals of their resistance, they might find themselves in a hypothetically painless world of suspended moral animation in which no pain was present with which to compare the ecstasy of their fantastical pain-free world. They might hypothetically achieve an evil-free world, but without evil to provide balance, they wouldn’t have any way to realize or appreciate it. John Hick writes, “a world in which there can be no pain or suffering would also be one without moral choices and hence no possibility of moral growth and development.” [40] To desire a painless world, it seems to me, would be to seek complete moral ambiguity in which none could experientially differentiate between good and evil, happy or sad, satisfied or dissatisfied.
The Irenaean path does not welcome pain as anything but a necessary distance to cross en route to moral enlightenment. God is present with us on this journey as guide and encourager, in much the same fashion that a parent is present in the upbringing of a child, but ultimately does not fully “co-experience” it. As parents wince at the pain endured by their children growing up, so God must wince at the pain we suffer as we blunder toward further understanding and moral maturity. Pain is our necessary lesson without which it is impossible to recognize the image of God into which we are born, nor can we assume the likeness of God attained through moral maturity.
In the Via Negativa section of his book, Original Blessing, Dominican scholar Matthew Fox cites Japanese poet Kenji Miyazawa who “left us a powerful image of dealing with pain when he said that we must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.” [41] Without pain and suffering as fuel we would not achieve any moral destination. To allow pain to exist without using it to propel us toward greater moral maturity would be to fail. It is important to clarify that the existence of pain and suffering alone does not bring maturity, but it is how we respond to the pain that brings us to a higher place. As a suffering community, we learn from our own suffering as well as the present and historical suffering of others. Like protest theologians, we are called to resist suffering the way a mountain climber resists gravity. Sin, like gravity, exists. In order to move, we must burn suffering like fuel if we desire the “mountaintop.” The higher we climb in resisting and learning from suffering, the closer we are to reaching God’s intended peace—God’s likeness. “Misfortune is not always a punishment, as the friends and even Job himself suppose; it can also have a pedagogical purpose. Job has been complaining that God does not speak to him; Elihu answers that suffering can contain a revelation of God.” [42] What sets Irenaean theodicy apart from others is the emphasis on universal salvation. The moral path we tread doesn’t end at death but only culminates “around the eschatological corner” which we can’t see or understand from an earthly perspective. “If we are ever to reach the full realization of the potentialities of our human nature, this fulfillment can only come in a continuation of our lives in another sphere of existence after bodily death.” [43] While our evil-filled world is difficult, the end offers revelation which brings ultimate wisdom.
I strongly relate to Irenaeus. As a human parent, I understand and appreciate God’s parental omnipotence, but also God’s gift of free will exercised with loving restraint in allowing us to blunder our way toward wisdom and maturity. Restraint is difficult and painful. For God to watch the world suffer radically, to cringe in horror as atrocities unfold in Auschwitz, Belgrade, Rwanda, El Salvador, South Africa, Jerusalem—old and new, . . . when equipped with the power to intervene, but to refrain from intervention, reveals supreme—yes, divine—love for us and our moral development. God’s intervention in one single event would be to compromise the dam of God’s restraint after which God could be indictable for aiding some but not others. God is the absolute parent who let even Christ die so that all may be saved. Imagine God’s pain! Once, God intervened and “blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, human beings and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark.” [44] As evil is all pervasive, the only just option for God short of universal salvation would be universal annihilation. Neither I nor God, I presume, would prefer the latter option. God did promise never to destroy us again. Perhaps even God learned a lesson from suffering! “The Lord said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.’” [45] Humanity is born to struggle and suffer evil. This is our birthright. God promises a deathright too, that all will die to God and receive the final answer. [46] Death, like birth, is a passage from one existence to another. All phases are painful, but all existence is of God. As we struggle toward the next existence, we must be mindful that God’s promise “is not a salvation from pain but through pain.” [47] God is love—in birth, life, and death. Until we see God face to face, we will never fully understand suffering and pain, but in the end, all will reach the top of God’s holy mountain and stand with God. All will know peace. All will know God. God’s salvation will be revealed to all.
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
-- Isaiah 11:6-9
Show the Way
You say you see no hope, you say you see no reason
we should dream that the world would ever change
You’re saying love is foolish to believe,
‘Cause there’ll always be some crazy with an Army or a Knife
To wake you from your daydream, put the fear back in your life
Look, if someone wrote a play just to glorify what’s stronger than hate
would they not arrange the stage to look as if the hero came too late,
he’s almost in defeat
It’s looking like the evil side will win, so on the edge of every seat,
from the moment that the whole thing begins, it is . . .
Chorus:
Love who makes the mortar and it’s love that stacked these stones
and it’s love who made the stage here, although it looks like we’re alone
in this scene set in shadows like the night is here to stay
there is evil cast around us
but it’s love that wrote the play . . .
For in this darkness love can show the way
So now the stage is set, Feel your own heart beating in your chest
This life’s not over yet. So we get up on our feet and do our best.
We play against the fear. We play against the reasons not to try
We’re playing for the tears burning in the happy angel’s eyes, for it’s . . .
(chorus)
-- w/m David Wilcox, Big Horizons, A&M Records, 1994
Bibliography
Bonda, Jan. The One Purpose of God: An Answer to the Doctrine of Eternal Punishment.
trans., Grand Rapids , MI
Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion, Volume I: A New Translation by Henry Beveridge, Esq. Edinburgh: The Calvin Translation Society, 1845. (Quick Verse,
Version 8.0, Omaha, NE: Parsons Technology, Inc., 2003).
Case-Winters, Anna. God’s Power: Traditional Understandings and Contemporary Challenges. Louisville , KY
Davis, Stephen, ed. Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy.
Editors. The Heidelberg Kalamazoo , MI
Christian Reformed Church, 1975
Farley, Wendy. Tragic Vision and Divine Compassion: A Contemporary Theodicy.
Fox, Matthew. Original Blessing. Santa Fe , NM
Gutiérrez, Gustavo. On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent. trans.,
Hall, Douglas John. God & Human Suffering: An Exercise in the Theology of the Cross.
Hick, John. Evil and the Love of God, revised. San Francisco , CA
Park, Andrew Sung. The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and
the Christian Doctrine of Sin. Nashville , TN
Wiesel, Elie. Night. trans., New York , NY Avon Books, 1960.
[1] John Hick, God, Suffering & Evil: (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978), 43f
[2] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Volume I: A New Translation by Henry
Beveridge, Esq. (Edinburgh: The Calvin Translation Society, 1845), Book 3, Chap 21, section 1
[3] Jan Bonda, The One Purpose of God, trans. Sierd Woudstra (Grand Rapids , MI
1998), 9
[4] Heidelberg Kalamazoo , MI
1975), Q&A 20 (emphasis added)
[5] Ibid., Q&A 37 (emphasis added)
[6] Matt. -14, 22-23; -12; ; Mark ; Luke 13:22-30
[7] Isaiah 25:6f
[8] Matthew 1:21
[9] Luke 15:4-7 (also Matt. -14)
[10] John 1:29
[11] Acts
[12] Rom.
[13] Eph. 4:6
[14] see Rom. 6:15
[15] Anna Case-Winters, lecture at McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago , IL 9-22-04
[16] Anna Case-Winters, God’s Power: Traditional Understandings and Contemporary Challenges
(Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), 102
[17] Ibid., 123
[18] Ibid., 129
[19] Stephen Davis, “Free Will and Evil,” in Encountering Evil, ed. Stephen Davis (Louisville
Westminster/John Knox Press, 2001), 122
[20] Douglas John Hall, God & Human Suffering: An Exercise in the Theology of the Cross
(Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986), 111
[21] Ibid., 151
[22] Case-Winters, 156
[23] Hall, 54f
[24] Ibid. 133
[25] Micah 6:8
[26] Wendy Farley, Tragic Vision and Divine Compassion: A Contemporary Theodicy (Louisville
Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), 131
[27] Ibid., 120
[28] Ibid., 22
[29] Farley, 57
[30] Job
[31] Gustavo Gutiérrez, On Job, trans. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987), 77f
[32] Andrew Sung Park, The Wounded Heart of God: The asian Concept of Han and the Christian
Doctrine of Sin (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993), 19f
[33] Job
[34] Job 40:6-9
[35] Park, 91
[36] Gutiérrez, 87
[37] Farley, 37
[38] Davis, 13
[39] Davis, 14
[40] Davis, 47
[41] Matthew Fox, Original Blessing, (Santa Fe, NM: Bear & Company, 1983), 142
[42] Gutiérrez, 46
[43] Davis
[44] Gen. 7:22
[45] Gen. 8:21
[46] Rom. ; I Cor. 15:22;, et. al.
[47] Fox, 162
