Abstract
This study takes as its starting point the consensus in research on the relationship between divine attributes and suffering in Psalm 89 which holds that some of the beliefs expressed in verses 39–52 contradict those in 1–38(53). In an attempt to address a related gap in the research in a new and supplementary way, a comparative-philosophical perspective is offered regarding the reasoning operative within the Psalm’s associated religious language. As counterpart, the so-called “Logical Problem of Evil” (LPE) in analytic philosophy of religion was identified. Conceptual and correlation-relations in Psalm 89 are clarified through correlation and contrast. The study argues that the logical status of the beliefs involved, as contradiction, makes more sense if interpreted as part of the protocol when prayer and poetry have to satisfy the conditions of a possible atheodicy. Thus, restating the Psalm’s associated content on its own terms, even if not in them, contributes to our understanding of why certain states of affairs in the world of the text are the way they are, or why they are at all. https://doi.org/10.17159/2312–3621/2021/v34n1a17
Highlights
This study takes as its starting point the consensus in research on the relationship between divine attributes and suffering in Psalm 89 which holds that some of the beliefs expressed in verses 39–52 contradict those in 1–38(53)
Without knowing it, both academic and lay readers of the Old Testament (OT) can no longer think of YHWH’s assumed relation to suffering without being, to some extent, aware of what is implied by the question of “why bad things happen to good people”
The philosophical-theological coining of the correlating conundrum currently most in vogue when coherencyrelation complications happen to contested concepts in conjunctive conditional constructions is found in what some analytic philosophers of religion refer to as the “Logical Problem of Evil” (LPE), which says,3
Summary
The idea that certain beliefs about suffering appear to be incoherently related to certain attributes of YHWH in the variety of associated theological assumptions in the Old Testament (OT) is a familiar theme in biblical scholarship. What can be considered less familiar, or at least are so overt that they appear covert, are the supervening religious-philosophical presuppositions, problems and perspectives of interpreters of the OT when making use of originally philosophical-theological concepts, concerns and categories. The LPE as formulated seems to include as its conditions of possibility the presumption of theism, a particular concept of God, a certain view of the nature, meaning and reference of religious language and the identification of suffering with evil of various kinds (e.g. metaphysical, natural and moral). Other overlapping loci include the nature of religious language ( the question of its meaningfulness amidst suffering), reasoning in religion (in religious epistemology featuring logic), the attribute of divine goodness (as regards its nature and scope as great-making property), and in arguments against the existence of God, in associated conceptions of the divine. It is clear why the LPE, as its name says, is a logical problem – it is more concerned with coherency in religious thought than with the question of whether the truth-claims of such thinking are propositionally justifiable
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