Suffering, Faith, and Theodicy (CT3029W)

Content

This unit proceeds on the premise that the Christian community must learn to speak responsibly about suffering: the suffering in its midst and its being amid suffering. It: (i) critically examines some of the ‘Christian’ theodicies (from St Augustine to Thomas Aquinas, Alvin Plantinga, John Cobb, Catherine Keller, Marilyn McCord Adams, David Bentley Hart, and others) and anti-theodicies (from Fyodor Dostoevsky to Theodor Adorno, D. Z. Phillips, Donald MacKinnon, Kazō Kitamori, Simone Weil, Jürgen Moltmann, Paul Fiddes, and others) that have been proposed; (ii) enquires to what extent they are determined by the action of God’s becoming incarnate; and (iii) explores the nature of faith faced with the realities to which theodicies have attempted to speak.

Learning outcomes

Unit sequence

36 points in CT.

Pedagogy

Lectures, classroom discussions, and seminars.

Indicative Bibliography

• Adams, Marilyn McCord. Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999.
• Augustine. On the Free Choice of the Will, On Grace and Free Choice, and Other Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
• Dalferth, Ingolf U. Malum: A Theological Hermeneutics of Evil. Translated by Nils F. Schott. Eugene: Cascade Books, 2022.
• Fiddes, Paul S. The Creative Suffering of God. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.
• Forsyth, P. T. The Justification of God: Lectures for War-Time on a Christian Theodicy. London: Duckworth, 1916.
• Hart, David Bentley. The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005.
• Hick, John. Evil and the God of Love. 2nd ed. London: Macmillan, 2010.
• Kitamori, Kazō. Theology of the Pain of God. London: SCM Press, 1966.
• Levenson, Jon D. Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.
• MacKinnon, Donald M. Borderlands of Theology. Edited by George W. Roberts and Donovan E. Smucker. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1968.
• Moltmann, Jürgen. The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology. Translated by R. A. Wilson and John Bowden. London: SCM, 1974.
• Sölle, Dorothee. Suffering. Translated by E. Kalin. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1975.
• Wolterstorff, Nicholas P. Lament for a Son. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1987.

Assessment