of theodicy by placing God beyond moral accountability,
whereas the view discussed here insists that God’s justice will
ultimately be vindicated. Faith is not the belief in a God be-
yond justice but the belief that God’s justice will finally be
upheld.
Communion theodicies. Emphasis on the mystery of suf-
fering and the need to defer our understanding of it may help
to sustain religious faith in the face of evil; but it also imposes
new burdens on that faith, because human beings may come
to regard themselves as pawns in a cosmic game, and God
may come to be viewed as distant and indifferent. To offset
this, religious traditions have sometimes presented suffering
itself as an occasion for direct relationship, collaboration, and
even communion with God.
Several related positions may be identified here. One re-
fuses to accept the seeming distance of God in the mystery
of suffering by insisting on God’s presence with the sufferer
in the midst of anguish. God is a compassionate God, who
suffers with his creatures and who is most intensely present
when he seems farthest away. This position may not explain
why God allows suffering in the first place, but it comforts
and sustains the believer in the moment of trial. Moreover,
since God is a suffering God, suffering also affords the believ-
er a unique opportunity to obey and to imitate his creator.
Those who suffer for a righteous purpose do God’s will and
make known his presence in the world. Suffering thus pro-
vides the most intense opportunity for collaboration and
communion between God and humankind.
With this emphasis on communion, the enterprise of
theodicy comes full circle. That which first threw open to
question God’s goodness and power, the bitter suffering of
innocent persons, now becomes the supreme expression of
love between God and humans. Unlike the mystical dissolu-
tions of the theodicy problem that were looked at earlier, the
fact of suffering is not here denied. Instead, the reality of suf-
fering and its importance in human life are heightened. But
suffering itself is transvalued: what is usually viewed as an ex-
perience to be avoided is now seen as an opportunity for in-
tense religious fulfillment.
TEACHINGS ON THEODICY IN THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS.
These theoretical positions on suffering and theodicy are not
just abstract logical possibilities. They find concrete expres-
sion in the life and teachings of historical religious communi-
ties. Religions may even be characterized in terms of which
of these theoretical positions they favor. While all of these
positions may have some presence in a tradition, one or an-
other is usually emphasized and serves as a distinguishing
trait. Even closely related traditions like Judaism and Chris-
tianity evidence their uniqueness by subtle preferences
among these different theodicies.
Judaism. In Jewish tradition, the theodicy problem is
addressed not only in Hebrew scriptures but in rabbinic
teachings.
Biblical foundations. The Hebrew scriptures provide
the basis for both Jewish and Christian theodicies. With va-
rying degrees of emphasis, they contain many of the posi-
tions we have reviewed. However, the free-will theodicy is
probably to the fore. This view is firmly anchored in the ac-
count of history given in Genesis, where a world created as
“good” or “very good” by God is viewed as corrupted by
human sinfulness. From the first deliberate but unnecessary
transgression of the divine commandment by Adam and Eve,
we follow a process of recurrent and accelerating wrongdoing
that vitiates the goodness of nature and that pits person
against person. While the account in Genesis does not answer
all the questions that troubled later thinkers (why, for exam-
ple, God chose to create human beings in the first place), it
does place primary blame for both natural and moral evil on
humankind’s abuse of freedom.
Much the same view is conveyed in the portions of the
Bible that were influenced by the Deuteronomic writer and
the early prophets. Here, suffering is explained in simple re-
tributive terms: loyalty to the moral and religious conditions
of the covenant brings prosperity and peace; wickedness
brings plague, famine, and war. Since the prophetic literature
often aims to summon the sinful nation to covenantal obedi-
ence, it is recognized that the connection between conduct
and its consequences is not always immediate. The result is
an immanent eschatological theodicy based on confidence in
a prompt, future balancing of moral accounts. Thus said Isa-
iah (Is. 3:10–11):
Tell the righteous that it shall be well with them, for
they shall eat the fruit of their deeds. Woe to the wick-
ed! It shall be ill with him, for what his hands have done
shall be done to him.
This simple equation between suffering and punishment was
not unchallenged in biblical thinking, and the disasters of the
period from the Babylonian exile onward, when the Israelites
were often most intensely loyal to the covenant, forced an
explanation of seemingly innocent suffering. In wisdom liter-
ature, especially the Book of Job, the older theodicy is reject-
ed. Job is an innocent man, blameless and righteous in every
way; yet he suffers (Jb. 1–2). The prose epilogue, apparently
appended at a later date, seeks to maintain the retributive
schema by suggesting that Job is eventually more than com-
pensated for his trials (42:10–17), but the book’s most deci-
sive response to suffering borders on a radical dissolution of
the theodicy problem. Answering Job out of a whirlwind,
God asks, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of
the earth?” (38:4). A litany of God’s mighty deeds in nature
and history follows, with the suggestion that man is too puny
a creature to question his maker’s justice. Job repents his pre-
sumption: “I have uttered what I did not understand, things
too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (42:3).
The Book of Job may be read as an abandonment of the
very effort to comprehend God’s justice, as an assertion that
a creature cannot ask its maker to render account. Or, less
radically, it may be read as a deferred theodicy—not the
claim that God is unjust or beyond justice but that we are
unprepared here and now to fathom God’s righteous ways.THEODICY 9115