RT Article
T1 Befriending Job: Theodicy Amid the Ashes
JF Open theology
VO 6
IS 1
SP 319
OP 326
A1 Scott, Mark Stephen Murray
LA English
YR 2020
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1830006479
AB 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.
K1 Job
K1 Bereavement
K1 Grief
K1 Mystery
K1 Silence
K1 Suffering
K1 The problem of evil
K1 Theodicy
DO 10.1515/opth-2020-0022