Applied Theodicies
Even the pastoral theodicies, while offering a way to apply Christ’s sufferings and resurrection, fail to actually make that application. They offer paths to follow but are not explicitly treading those paths themselves. We turn now to consider two works that do actually apply Christ’s sufferings and resurrection to their own unique stories of suffering. Nicholas Wolterstorff and John Andrew Bryant are both works of application. They don’t offer a way of application but are themselves application.[1] They wrestle personally and pastorally with the evil and suffering that they have experienced, all the while trying to see how their pain and suffering fit within the broader framework of God’s story of Christ’s suffering and resurrection. Both are helpful and hopeful.
Nicholas Wolterstorff: practicing lament
“Mr. Wolterstorff?”
“Yes.”
“Is this Eric’s Father?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Wolterstorff, I must give you some bad news.”
“Yes.”
“Eric has been climbing in the mountains and has had an accident.”
“Yes.”
“Eric has had a serious accident.”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Wolterstorff, I must tell you, Eric is dead. Mr. Wolterstorff, are you there? You must come at once! Mr. Wolterstorff, Eric is dead.”
For three seconds, I felt the peace of resignation; arms extended, limp son in hand, peacefully offering him to someone – Someone. Then the pain – cold burning pain.[2]
Fragmented. To lose someone you love, someone you have nurtured, cared for, raised, and hoped for, then, suddenly, for them to be gone… It is grief unimaginable.[3] That day came for Christian philosopher, Nicholas Wolterstorff, on June 11, 1983. It was the day he lost his son, Eric. Later Wolterstorff would describe how he wrote Lament for a Son over the year following his son’s death. Powerfully, he writes, “It consists of fragments – with lots of space between the fragments. Rather early in the process of writing I tried to join the fragments into a continuous flow, but it didn’t work. My life had been fragmented, so my lament would have to be fragmented as well. I think of the white space between the fragments as silence. In the face of death, we should not talk much.”[4] What response is there in the face of death, to have one’s entire life uprooted, dissected by sorrow, and fragmented by loss? There can only be silence, grief, sorrow, and lament.
The God Who Suffers. Central to Wolterstorff’s lament is that God himself suffers. While it may be debated as to how, who (which Trinitarian person), and in what way God suffers, all must agree that Christ has suffered.[5] Not only is this undeniable, but it is the central story of scripture as we have seen in chapter two. For Wolterstorff, God suffers because he is love. And love in our world is suffering love. He writes, “God is love. That is why he suffers. To love our suffering sinful world is to suffer. God so suffered for the world that he gave up his only Son to suffering. The one who does not see God’s suffering does not see his love. God is suffering love.”[6] He continues, “So suffering is down at the center of things, deep down where the meaning is. Suffering is the meaning of our world. For Love is the meaning. And Love suffers. The tears of God are the meaning of history.”[7]
While written in the throes of sorrow, it nonetheless bears deep significance to God’s love and his solidarity through Christ with our suffering. God is not aloof from the evil and suffering of this world. The history of our world is the history of suffering. But it is also the story of our deliverance together. “God’s work to release himself from his suffering is his work to deliver the world from its agony; our struggle for joy and justice is our struggle to relieve God’s sorrow.”[8] Wolterstorff further writes:
God is not only the God of the sufferers but the God who suffers… And great mystery: to redeem our brokenness and lovelessness the God who suffers with us did not strike some mighty blow of power but sent his beloved son to suffer like us, through his suffering to redeem us from suffering and evil. Instead of explaining our suffering God shares it.[9]
Aching Visionaries. We are made in God’s image. It is an image that cannot be lost. We have been forever stamped by the image of God. And the true and authentic life “is to image God ever more closely by becoming like Jesus Christ, the express image of the Father.”[10] Following, Wolterstorff asks, how and in what we do we image and mirror God? “One answer rarely finds its way onto the list: in our suffering. Perhaps the thought is too appalling. Do we also mirror God in suffering? Are we to mirror him ever more closely in suffering? Was it meant that we should be icons in suffering? Is it our glory to suffer?”[11]
One of the primary ways we image God by suffering is through mourning. This mourning is both an inward and outward reality. Blessed are those who mourn (Matt 5:4). Who then are the mourners? Wolterstorff answers:
The mourners are those who have caught a glimpse of God’s new day, who ache with all their being for that day’s coming, and who break out into tears when confronted with its absence. They are the ones who realize that in God’s realm of peace there is no one blind and who ache whenever they see someone unseeing. They are the ones who realize that in God’s realm there is no one hungry and who ache whenever they see someone starving. They are the ones who realize that in God’s realm there is no one falsely accused and who ache whenever they see someone imprisoned unjustly. They are the ones who realize that in God’s realm there is no one who fails to see God and who ache whenever they see someone unbelieving. They are the ones who realize that in God’s realm there is no one who suffers oppression and who ache whenever they see someone beat down. They are the ones who realize that in God’s realm there is no one without dignity and who ache whenever they see someone treated with indignity. They are the ones who realize that in God’s realm of peace there is neither death nor tears and who ache whenever they see someone crying tears over death. The mourners are aching visionaries.[12]
As those called to weep with those who weep and mourn with those who mourn, we need more aching visionaries. For those aching visionaries, those mourners are the very ones whom Jesus promises to bless. And as those who have received the comfort of Christ, those mourners are to not only mourn with those who mourn, but founded upon Christ’s resurrection hope they are to hope with others.
Justice. It is not enough to face evil and suffering. There is a biblical compulsion to do something about it. It is a recognition that this is not right and that something must be done about it. There is an inherent sense of right and wrong followed by a responsibility within every person created in God’s image. There is, in a sense, an oughtness when we are faced with evil and suffering. Such atrocities, whether personal or witnessed from afar, place a demand upon us. Wolterstorff’s work helps us see this. Evil and suffering demand a response, especially from those who follow the Christ who faced evil, suffered under its hand, but rose again in victory, might, and power.
Wolterstorff’s extensive focus on justice was not shaped in the corridors of the academy, but in the face-to-face reality of suffering. In 1975 Wolterstorff personally witnessed the ugly face of apartheid in South Africa and then in 1978 he heard the cries of 150 some Palestinians who were being wiped out of their homes. Upon hearing their cries for justice, Wolterstorff writes, “Not only was I profoundly moved by this cry for justice, I felt convinced that I had been issued a call from God. I did not hear words in the air; it was by way of the speech of the so-called blacks and coloreds that God spoke to me. Fidelity to God required that I speak up for these victims of injustice in whatever way might be appropriate.”[13] It was not just a task, but a requirement. Wolterstorff felt called, compelled, required by God to speak up for the victims of injustice.
Hope. “My son’s dying will not be the last word.”[14] This is a statement of hope. A defiant declaration in the face of horrendous evil, horrendous suffering. And the reason for Wolterstorff’s hope is found in the resurrection of Christ. He writes, “To believe in Christ’s rising and death’s dying is also to live with the power and the challenge to rise up now from all our dark graves of suffering love.” Such belief brings transformation. Wolterstorff continues:
If sympathy for the world’s wounds is not enlarged by our anguish, if love for those around us is not expanded, if gratitude for what is good does not flame up, if insight is not deepened, if commitment to what is important is not strengthened, if aching for a new day is not intensified, if hope is weakened and faith diminished, if from the experience of death comes nothing good, then death has won.[15]
Wolterstorff offers us the following. First, he challenges our traditional conceptions of theodicy. Is what those who suffer need most a theodicy or a lament? The answer seems clear – it is lament. Wolterstorff, an incredibly thoughtful and brilliant philosopher, sees that the best approach to pain and suffering is not a theoretical theodicy, but a biblical lament.[16] Wolterstorff offers us a power example of what a lament looks like while worked out in the crushing despair of the loss of his beloved son. His personal suffering has transformed the foundational realities of his life.
Second, his understanding of the relationship of love to suffering helps us to understand that if we love, we will suffer. To love others is to suffer.
Third, he offers us the impulse to justice. He shows that evil and suffering demand not just lament, but a response. That response unfolds in the pursuit of justice. While Wolterstorff doesn’t demand that all follow his path, he does highlight for us the importance of a Christian response to injustice. When we are confronted, face-to-face, with injustice and suffering at the least we should ask, is God calling me to do something about this? There is always an oughtness in the face of every evil and suffering.
[1] It should be noted that neither of these two works are specifically theoretical or even practical works. They do not align themselves with either of the previous categories we considered. Instead, they bear proximity to the psalms of lament or even the book of Lamentations. They are not carefully reasoned theological treaties (though they are both highly theological). They are first and foremost the crying out of men in deep anguish and pain. They are laments, chronicles of being confronted with unspeakable trauma and trying to understand where God fits into the crushing realities of their lives. As laments, they are accounts of believers wrestling with their God in light of their deep pain and suffering.
[2] Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), 9.
[3] Nicholas Wolterstorff, In this World of Wonders: Memoir of a Life of Learning (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2019), 204. He defines grief as “wanting the death or destruction of the loved one to be undone, while at the same time knowing it cannot be undone.” It is the collision of wanting with knowing. “Grief is wanting with all your heart what you know or believe is impossible” (204).
[4] Wolterstorff, In this World of Wonders, 198.
[5] For a critique of Wolterstorff’s position on divine simplicity see Jean Gomes, “Reassessing Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Objections to Divine Simplicity,” Themelios 47 no 1 (2022): 130-143.
[6] Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son, 90.
[7] Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son, 90.
[8] Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son, 91. While we may disagree with Wolterstorff on the nature of God’s suffering, what he does highlight is God’s presence with his people in his act of deliverance. We must not minimize the truth that God took on human flesh to suffer, die, and rise again for our salvation and deliverance. God expresses his solidarity with us in suffering through Christ.
[9] Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son, 81.
[10] Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son, 83.
[11] Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son, 83.
[12] Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son, 85-86.
[13] Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Journey Toward Justice: Personal Encounters in the Global South (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), 4. See also Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice in Love (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011, 2015).
[14] Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son, 93.
[15] Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son, 92.
[16] Wolterstorff, In this World of Wonders, 208-210.