Espen Dahl: The Problem of Job and the Problem of Evil (2019)
«Despite the secular age that has emerged in the West, the discussions have not ceased. This is due, I assume, not only to some sort of “return” of religion in politics and academia but also to the fact that encountering evil calls for thought – thought that, sooner or later, for better or worse, touches religious dimensions (and, at times, denial thereof)». [p. 3]
«Of course, the Greek treatment of suffering and evil is marked by another cultural setting and preferences for other conceptions, indeed, against another religious horizon than that which we find in the Hebrew Bible. Nevertheless, the convergences are significant, and therefore the Greek accounts can be regarded as an interesting anticipation of the way in which two different traditions – Athens and Jerusalem – grew into one another during the Hellenistic and later Roman periods, having an enormous impact on spirituality and thought in the West and beyond». [p. 5]
«Tellingly, the most famous formulation of the problem of evil, written by Epicurus, is known to us thanks to a quotation by a Christian theologian, Lactantius, in the fourth century. […] Although, admittedly, having the Greek gods in mind, Epicurus’s argument presupposes a conception of God that is shared by the monotheistic traditions as well. It turns on the perfection that is bound up with the analytical concept of God: God must be perfectly almighty and also perfectly good, yet evil undeniably exists. One does not need to be a logician to see that this trilemma does not add up». [p. 5-6]
«No interpretation of a text can reach a detached “God’s point of view” from which its ultimate meaning is reached. In fact, a text can make sense only within the possibilities and limitations of a specific cultural tradition. This holds true especially for a classical text – a text handed down over a long period of time and continually reread and reinterpreted, according to shifting times and contexts.» [p. 7]
«[T]he logic of myths does not allow for such explanations: myths are neither rational nor irrational, but are illuminating only in accordance with their own mythical logic». [p. 41]
«For all their argumentative rigor, some feel that these contemporary theodicies and defenses leave us cold in their treatment of what is otherwise taken as burning issues. There is huge difference between Job’s passionate complaints and the argumentative, even calculating attitude that some have called a “kind of religious utilitarianism” (Phillips, The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God, 2004: 108–109). Van Inwagen readily admits that his story hardly comforts the victim, but adds that “the purpose of the story is not to comfort anyone” (van Inwagen, The Problem of Evil, 2008: 108). Neither Hick, Swinburne, nor van Inwagen regards his philosophical task as to care for the victim, but rather to test and put forth possible arguments. The question, then, is whether the distance to real suffering and evil is the best way to obtain the desired clarity of the arguments, or if such philosophy rather obscures the motivation for thinking about evil in the first place. Arguing the latter, Rowan Williams claims that much modern theodicies and defenses appear as evasions. If theodicy is not a response to those who suffer evil, then for whom is theodicy? In whose presence is theodicy carried out? Williams (Wrestling with Angels: Conversations in Modern Theology, 2007: 273) replies: “If the answer to this is, ‘In the absence of the sufferer as subject or narrator,’ how can it fail to evade – to evade not only humanity, but divinity as well?”» [p. 47]