scholarly journals Animal Suffering, God and Lessons from the Book of Job

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 1047
Author(s):  
Georg Gasser
Keyword(s):  
Main Part ◽  
Moral Agent ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
Animal Suffering ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Concept Of God ◽  
Suffering God

Nature shows itself to us in ambivalent ways. Breathtaking beauty and cruelty lie close together. A Darwinian image of nature seems to imply that nature is a mere place of violence, cruelty and mercilessness. In this article, I first explore the question of whether such an interpretation of nature is not one-sided by being phrased in overly moral terms. Then, I outline how the problem of animal suffering relates to a specific understanding of God as moral agent. Finally, in the main part of the argumentation, I pursue the question to what extent the problem of animal (and human) suffering does not arise for a concept of God couched in less personalistic terms. If God’s perspective towards creation is rather de-anthropocentric, then moral concerns might be of less importance as we generally assume. Such an understanding of the divine is by no means alien to the biblical-theistic tradition. I argue that it finds strong echoes in the divine speeches in the Book of Job: They aim at teaching us to accept both the beauty and the tragic of existence in a creation that seen in its entirety is rather a-moral. Finally, I address the question what such a concept of God could mean for our existence.

Divine Justice and Sublime Suffering

2021 ◽  
pp. 28-70
Author(s):  
Damien B. Schlarb
Keyword(s):  
Vantage Point ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Moby Dick ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Divine Justice ◽  
Textual History ◽  
Bartleby The Scrivener ◽  
The Moment

This chapter shows how Melville draws on the book of Job to discuss issues of divine justice and human suffering. It argues that Melville uses the language and themes of Job to evaluate divine jurisprudence from the vantage point of the human plaintiff, celebrating human perseverance and indicting the arbitrariness of divinely mandated suffering. After sketching out the book of Job’s textual history, the chapter discusses in turn Mardi, Moby-Dick, “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” and The Encantadas on these grounds, detailing how Melville uses typology and intertextual reference to examine the Bible and to apply his findings to comment on natural, social, and cultural phenomena. It concludes that Melville sees the book of Job as a story not of defiance and repentance but of the learning and growth that occur in precisely the moment when one’s preconceptions and expectations of reality are shattered.

“Give Sorrow Words”: Lament—Contemporary Need for Job's Old Time Religion

2002 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Huff Byrne
Keyword(s):  
Human Suffering ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
The Many

The author explores the many meanings and interpretations often assigned to the Book of Job and finds in the notion of lament a particularly helpful understanding, especially for pastoral caregivers often called upon to work with persons experiencing sorrow, loss, and human suffering.

scholarly journals In the Circle of the Tragic: The Book of Job. A Fragment of a Greater Fragment

2019 ◽  
Vol 66 (1 SELECTED PAPERS IN ENGLISH) ◽  
pp. 151-187
Author(s):  
Andrzej Tyszczyk
Keyword(s):  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Book Of Isaiah ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Polish Version ◽  
Ultimate Source ◽  
The Image Of God

The Polish version of the article was published in “Roczniki Humanistyczne,” vol. 57 (2009), issue 1. Job’s drama that is equally a drama of existence and a drama of faith reveals the dimension that is in fact rarely seen in Greek tragedy, namely the transcendental tragic dimension. The identity tensions between the image of God whom Job accuses of cruelty and the image of the “defender in high” (go’el) mentioned by Job, one who would take the side of his suffering, at the same time testifying to the fact that Job was not guilty, opens the possibility of transformations blending the different images into a figure of transcendental tragic quality—based on a figure similar to the Greek figure of a tragic transfer—in which God, as the ultimate source of everything, including unjust misery, not only takes the side of human suffering but also experiences the suffering himself, revealing the analogy and then the interpretative identity of levels of human and divine experience of the tragic. The Book of Job is only the necessary starting point for the possible transformation of the image of God introducing a split of the image of God (the motif of go’el) in the book protagonist's complaint and deconstructing the category of “just retaliation.” The conditions that make transformation possible can be found in The Book of Isaiah, especially in the image of “The Lord’s Servant” and in Messianic interpretations of this picture closely connected with the phrase: “It was the Lord’s will to crush him with pain” (Is 53:10).

God, Suffering, and Omniscience

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. M. Rudavsky
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Theology ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
Basic Fact ◽  
Future Contingents ◽  
Divine Omniscience ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Suffering God

The topic of divine predication leads more broadly to issues surrounding divine omniscience, freedom, and evil. The question of why the righteous suffer remains one of the most intractable issues in philosophical theology. More generally, the very concept of a caring deity who is both omniscient and omnipotent gives rise to a logical dilemma: if God is omniscient, then God knows past, present, and future contingents; if God is omnipotent, then God can actualize any state of affairs; if God is benevolent, then presumably God wishes the best possible state of affairs for God’s creatures; and yet we cannot help but recognize the basic fact that the righteous suffer. And so, given the ineluctable reality of human suffering, God is either not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not benevolent. Jewish philosophers struggle to address these problems.

Confronting Job’s Demons

2021 ◽  
Vol 133 (4) ◽  
pp. 529-535
Author(s):  
Steven Shnider
Keyword(s):  
Human Suffering ◽  
Book Of Job

Abstract The theme of demons connects three difficult passages in the Book of Job: Job’s curse on the day of his birth in 3:3–10, Eliphaz’s mocking censure of Job for that curse in 5:6–7, and 38:12–21, God’s challenge to Job for his appeal to demons. A crucial insight is provided by a Talmudic discussion of demons and human suffering, which connects Job 5:6–7 to Psalm 91:5–8.

“Why Do You Hide Your Face?”

1994 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 229-238
Author(s):  
J. David Pleins
Keyword(s):  
Book Of Job ◽  
Suffering God

In the Book of Job, the ancient author masterfully weaves together the related themes of “human grief and divine silence” and “human consolation and divine speech.” As Job debates with his friends and teeters on the brink of blaming God for his suffering, God, though present, remains silent. At the last, however, God bursts forth in speech, provoked because Job and his friends have presumed to know God's intentions. In his speeches, God assures Job that although things may not be righted to his liking, God will nevertheless, through the gifi of God's creative presence, provide sources of consolation amid grief and tragedy.

Job's Wife as Hero: A Feminist-forensic Reading of the Book of Job

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 209-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Rachel Magdalene
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Job Offers ◽  
Feminist Hermeneutics

AbstractThis article offers a new reading of the role of Job's wife in the trial of Job, based on feminist hermeneutics, legal hermeneutics, and comparative legal historical analysis. The article proposes that the book of Job explores the problem of the violence and oppression of God's law as manifested through human suffering. Mrs. Job offers Job the best means available for resisting a violent, oppressive legal system, that is, martyrdom. Although Job does not use that strategy directly, he does employ it in an indirect fashion to exercise another form of legal resistance against God's violence in order that the case might be resolved. Consequently, God settles the matter with Job. The article demonstrates that Mrs. Job is a more important and more powerful figure in the book than prior readings have allowed. She is both heroic and wise.

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