God & Human Suffering, Entry 1
Apr. 28th, 2005 02:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
muscadineWaaaay back during the Lenten season I mentioned we were reading God & Human Suffering: An Exercise in the Theology of the Cross by Douglas John Hall. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
annikadara requested a review, and I think it is useful for me to reflect on, so here is
Hall is interested in speaking to what he calls the "Jerusalem tradition" (by which he means the OT & NT Prophets & Gospels). He uses the Introduction to the book to place this tradition in a wider scheme/spectrum of belief. On one end he identifies Cynicism, which affirms "suffering is real--period." On the other end is what he calls Credulity, which affirms that "suffing has been overcome...it is fundamentally illusory." In contrast to both of these extremes, Hall says the Jerusalem tradition affirms Faith, which "must live in the tension" between the reality of suffering and the knowledge that suffering is not the last word.
Hall then turns to look at context, which in this case is used to mean (roughly) First versus Third World realities. Hall's argument is that in the Third World it is hardly necessary to affirm the reality of suffering--it is a conspicuous social fact, both individually and politicially. The work there is to speak to that suffering. However, this is not his primary audience. Rather it is those in the First World, which "fairly hums with the speculations of those who would demonstrate that suffering is unreal, temporary, illusory, a mere cultural lag, technologically containable, progressively being overcome, a figment of the imagination, etc." He believes that the point that must be emphasized in our context is that "suffering is real, is intense and ubiquitous, is not easily overcome, and is the lot of humanity under the conditions of existence."
He contends that this reality is the thing the Jerusalem tradition holds most insistently, and that indeed "it will drop its hold on God's enduring Word before it will betray God's creature with a religious exaggeration." (emphasis added) That is, not even loyalty to God must trump the commitment to fellow humanity (and creation). He believes this assertion is offensive to many Christians, but says that in the crucified Jesus we find the paramount example, arguing: "There is nothing in Job or Lamentations to equal, in its context, the full impact of the cry of dereliction on Golgotha."
Since this is a theme that Hall addresses in more depth in Chapter 1, I will leave it at that as a primer that lets you know where he's starting from.
One other thing I do want to mention: another theme that runs through the Introduction, implicitly and perhaps explicitly connected with the idea of tension Hall posits as inherent in Faith, is that the search for truth is "not static." Hall is not quite a postmodernist. He affirms that truth is "one," but believes that in order to preserve truth's "unity, its integrity" in a world where life is "forever in flux," one must always take account of changing circumstances. Thus, as he puts it: "What is eminently true in one social context may in another context constitute precisely a way of avoiding the truth. The search for a true theology (vere theologia) is thus a never-ending vocation of the church." He goes further, saying "...this inherent and unavoidable requirement of theology...that it entails an ongoing struggle to 'discern the signs of the times,' constitues a vital aspect of the suffering of the church... To ask about the theology of suffering is, in part, to reflect upon theology as suffering." (emphases in original).
Finally, Hall lays out the basic outline of the book (which I will try to follow in my future entries):
Ch 1 - The Reality of Human Suffering (a further analysis of the First World's condition)
Ch 2 - Creation: Suffering as Becoming (addressing what is "intended", "willed", "essential")
Ch 3 - The Fall: Suffering as Burden (addressing the primary problem, what is "wrong", what must be overcome, what must be undone)
Ch 4 - Redemption: Conquest from Within (addressing the nature of the overcoming, how suffering is "met, addressed, engaged, altered, redeemed")
Ch 5 - The Church: Community of Suffering and Hope (the role of the church--a community in which the redemptive event is extended)
Appendix - Dialogue and Conclusions (an examination of several other popular attempts to elucidate a theology of suffering)
Feedback/dialogue welcome.
From the book preface:
Soyen Shaku walked pas a house where he heard much crying because the master of the house lay dead. He entered, being well known in the locality, sat down, and cried with them.
Said one of those present, "Master, how can you cry? Surely you are beyond such things?" Soyen Shaku answered gently, "It is this which puts me beyond such things." -A Zen tale
annikadara requested a review, and I think it is useful for me to reflect on, so here is Hall is interested in speaking to what he calls the "Jerusalem tradition" (by which he means the OT & NT Prophets & Gospels). He uses the Introduction to the book to place this tradition in a wider scheme/spectrum of belief. On one end he identifies Cynicism, which affirms "suffering is real--period." On the other end is what he calls Credulity, which affirms that "suffing has been overcome...it is fundamentally illusory." In contrast to both of these extremes, Hall says the Jerusalem tradition affirms Faith, which "must live in the tension" between the reality of suffering and the knowledge that suffering is not the last word.
Hall then turns to look at context, which in this case is used to mean (roughly) First versus Third World realities. Hall's argument is that in the Third World it is hardly necessary to affirm the reality of suffering--it is a conspicuous social fact, both individually and politicially. The work there is to speak to that suffering. However, this is not his primary audience. Rather it is those in the First World, which "fairly hums with the speculations of those who would demonstrate that suffering is unreal, temporary, illusory, a mere cultural lag, technologically containable, progressively being overcome, a figment of the imagination, etc." He believes that the point that must be emphasized in our context is that "suffering is real, is intense and ubiquitous, is not easily overcome, and is the lot of humanity under the conditions of existence."
He contends that this reality is the thing the Jerusalem tradition holds most insistently, and that indeed "it will drop its hold on God's enduring Word before it will betray God's creature with a religious exaggeration." (emphasis added) That is, not even loyalty to God must trump the commitment to fellow humanity (and creation). He believes this assertion is offensive to many Christians, but says that in the crucified Jesus we find the paramount example, arguing: "There is nothing in Job or Lamentations to equal, in its context, the full impact of the cry of dereliction on Golgotha."
Since this is a theme that Hall addresses in more depth in Chapter 1, I will leave it at that as a primer that lets you know where he's starting from.
One other thing I do want to mention: another theme that runs through the Introduction, implicitly and perhaps explicitly connected with the idea of tension Hall posits as inherent in Faith, is that the search for truth is "not static." Hall is not quite a postmodernist. He affirms that truth is "one," but believes that in order to preserve truth's "unity, its integrity" in a world where life is "forever in flux," one must always take account of changing circumstances. Thus, as he puts it: "What is eminently true in one social context may in another context constitute precisely a way of avoiding the truth. The search for a true theology (vere theologia) is thus a never-ending vocation of the church." He goes further, saying "...this inherent and unavoidable requirement of theology...that it entails an ongoing struggle to 'discern the signs of the times,' constitues a vital aspect of the suffering of the church... To ask about the theology of suffering is, in part, to reflect upon theology as suffering." (emphases in original).
Finally, Hall lays out the basic outline of the book (which I will try to follow in my future entries):
Ch 1 - The Reality of Human Suffering (a further analysis of the First World's condition)
Ch 2 - Creation: Suffering as Becoming (addressing what is "intended", "willed", "essential")
Ch 3 - The Fall: Suffering as Burden (addressing the primary problem, what is "wrong", what must be overcome, what must be undone)
Ch 4 - Redemption: Conquest from Within (addressing the nature of the overcoming, how suffering is "met, addressed, engaged, altered, redeemed")
Ch 5 - The Church: Community of Suffering and Hope (the role of the church--a community in which the redemptive event is extended)
Appendix - Dialogue and Conclusions (an examination of several other popular attempts to elucidate a theology of suffering)
Feedback/dialogue welcome.
From the book preface:
Soyen Shaku walked pas a house where he heard much crying because the master of the house lay dead. He entered, being well known in the locality, sat down, and cried with them.
Said one of those present, "Master, how can you cry? Surely you are beyond such things?" Soyen Shaku answered gently, "It is this which puts me beyond such things." -A Zen tale
