Theodicy and Spirituality in the Fourth Gospel: A Girardian Perspective by Daniel DeForest London

Abstract

Reviewed by: Theodicy and Spirituality in the Fourth Gospel: A Girardian Perspective by Daniel DeForest London Paul Houston Blankenship (bio) Theodicy and Spirituality in the Fourth Gospel: A Girardian Perspective. By Daniel DeForest London. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2020. 133 pp. $38.00 eb. Might a robust analysis of suffering disclose the human species' compulsory addiction to blame? Is it possible to hold someone responsible for the anguish in our world without creating more suffering? How did—how does—the Johannine Jesus respond to the question of suffering and the problem of blame? In Theodicy and Spirituality in the Fourth Gospel: A Girardian Perspective, the Rev. Dr. Daniel DeForest London explores these questions in a spiritual pilgrimage through a dynamic, proverbial river of the Fourth Gospel, the work of René Girard on mimetic theory, and London's own innovative spirituality. The result of London's pilgrimage is an erudite, creative, and brilliant piece of scholarship. It is further evidence that the academic discipline of Christian spirituality has come of age and is bearing good fruit in the world. What is at stake in Theodicy and Spirituality in the Fourth Gospel is more than a compelling piece of scholarship that will benefit theological educators and practitioners. At stake is a vision for a spirituality that might help free us from the shackles of blame and the maddening patterns of scapegoating violence, a spirituality that might shepherd us deeper into healing community and the Beloved's boundless mercy. The purpose of this review is three-fold. First, I will further render what is at stake in London's text and discuss why it really matters. Here, I hope to gently [End Page 340] lay the beautiful heart of Theodicy and Spirituality in the Fourth Gospel on the page so that it might speak to our shared heart as spirituality scholars. Second, I will lead us into the river of London's textual pilgrimage and say a word about how and where it moves. In addition to being adequate to the complexity of the book, which is quite impossible in a short review, I hope this discussion might entice readers to purchase a copy of their own and wade in with their own unique interests, questions about suffering, and perhaps blame. Finally, I will offer four queries for further conversation and then demonstrate the transformative difference London's work is making in my work as a theological anthropologist in an anguished, furious, and violently scapegoating local world. It is heartbreaking to contemplate the world. War, famine, and disease rage like wildfire. White supremacy, patriarchy, and demonic capitalism remain violent social gravities. How long our species will even survive, given our collective failure to think critically and care deeply beyond the human, is an urgent question. It seems inevitable, London thinks, that we ask who is responsible for the unnecessary suffering in our bodies and in the world and find, blame, even kill the alleged culprits. After a concise introduction, London echoes the perennial puzzle of Jewish and Christian theologians: if God is all-loving and all-powerful, why is unnecessary suffering so pervasive and insidious? German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz referred to rational solutions to this puzzle as "theodicies." For London, it is less a detached quandary that haunts and more the raw presence of suffering in the lives of the people he ministers to as an Episcopal priest. In the face of this raw presence, supposedly rational theological solutions risk perpetuating their own kind of violence. That is why what is really at stake in Theodicy and Spirituality in the Fourth Gospel is not a theodicy per se but what London calls a "theodical spirituality," which he defines as "a process of engaging God with the question of suffering and remaining open to the experience of a divine response, which can invite a believer to transcend the limitations of the question itself" (18–19). London claims that a responsible theodical spirituality attends to how theodical spirituality has been manifest in one's tradition. He surveys the work of Augustine, Julian of Norwich, Dostoevsky, and C. S. Lewis. He also enters and renders the world of the Fourth Gospel, specifically, John...