Divinely Abused: A Philosophical Perspective on Job and His Kin

Abstract

A solution to the problem of theodicy, that is, the reconciliation of the existence and effect of evil with the righteousness of the traditionally defined Jewish or Christian God is, to my mind, simply philosophically impossible. The problem arises due to a certain cluster of defined characteristics of God. God is one, omnipotent, omniscient, omni-beneficent, omnipresent, immovable, impassible, the purposeful creator of all, and involved in history. One simply has to give up one or more of these characteristics to explain how evil came into the world, or one has to argue that evil is not truly evil but only appears to be evil from our limited human perspective. Nehama Verbin’s volume explores, through a philosophical lens, protest theology’s resolution of the problem of evil. Protest thought argues that God is not omnibeneficent, immovable, or impassible, based in both historical experience and the book of Job. Most importantly, God is an uncontainable abuse perpetrator.