Abstract
AbstractWhen Joshua came to Jericho and encountered the captain of the LORD’s host, his stance appears much like the theodicist, who, facing the awful prospects of suffering, evil, or death, seeks assurance from God, asking, “are you for us or our adversaries?” (Jos 5:13). Yet the angel’s reply is not “yes,” as typical theodicies seek to answer on God’s behalf, but “No; rather I indeed come now as captain of the host of the LORD.” (Jos 5:14) The implication is political: the angel seeks to alter Joshua’s stance from one ordered to his own purposes to one ordered to the LORD’s. Like traditional theodicies, Eleonore Stump’s Wandering in Darkness (2010) does not sufficiently establish why a theistic God must create a world where, to preserve our capacity to freely love God, suffering is caused or permitted. I avoid this problem by finding a “kenotic” aspect in the action of signs in which the perennial problems of suffering and evil do not arise, and which is available to direct experience, making it empirically falsifiable in principle. Like the angel’s reply to Joshua, this invites a change from a speculatively grounded stance representing the hopes of a theodicist, to one formed from real interactions that transcend discourse.
Highlights
The theory presented in this article began, for me, with a startling closing stanza from E
Stump makes use of Franciscan knowledge to illuminates the problem of suffering in such a way that it does not arise in at least one possible world – namely, the world evoked in several extended reflections upon the biblical narratives of Job, Samson, Abraham, and Mary of Bethany.[29]
We owe it to Ralph Austin Powell for providing what I believe is a successful defence of scientific realism, without which empirical verification could not establish publicly verified realities,[53] and for providing a suitable methodology for testing theories of the kind presented in this article
Summary
The theory presented in this article began, for me, with a startling closing stanza from E. Time’s a strange fellow; more he gives than takes (and he takes all) nor any marvel finds quite disappearance but some keener makes losing, gaining Reading this over the course of the death of my grandmother, I experienced a dramatic change of perspective on death and suffering that Eleonore Stump terms “Franciscan knowledge”2 – an intuitive, perspectivegiving, right-brain knowledge-of something. This is opposed to a left-brain “knowledge-that,” which typically attains the details of something and perceives its parts, but not the whole. If this interpretation is correct, “kenosis” (self-sacrificial “love”) is pervasive, and so a self-sacrificial aspect is pervasively part of the universe. (Particular attention will be given to how kenosis includes, as a part, our working self-sacrificially to modify where, and how much, suffering is borne.) This semiosic
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