Confronting ?meaningless? suffering: from suffering-as-insult to suffering-as-ontological-impertinence (original) (raw)
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Between Asceticism and Theodicy. A Synthetic Sketch of Patristic Suffering
Diakrisis, 2024
Christ recreates all creation that follows Him. Personally embracing His Salvation is the transcendent and central Christian duty, realized as a certain act of taking responsibility. This embracement turns the fact of suffering into a weapon against the devil and the appearance that natural biological death is a misfortune into the insight that it is the opening of the Gate of the Kingdom. This paper outlines the Holy and Living Tradition’s essential message on the topic at hand: The message about the fact that suffering is, in itself, neither good nor bad and about the way in which the Cross of Christ offers the rectifying Justification of the human being and, through man, of the whole of the fallen creation. Consequently, rather than a philological approach, it offers a synthetic dogmatical insight into this, based on the premise that the Holy Tradition is alive since the first centuries and until the more recent Saint Theologians of the Church.
How should we suffer? Meditating on Christian responses to the problem of suffering
2020
Despite the irreducible non-equivalence of individual experiences of suffering, there is a solidarity possible among sufferers especially during times of collective crisis. This essay focuses on the suffering of the disciple Peter in order to formulate a model for suffering that resonates deeply with other, more recent accounts. Peter’s suffering is linked with Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, as well as the work of certain German political theologians, in order to show how it is our human inability to adequately respond to suffering that gives us the existential vulnerability we need in order to stand in solidarity with others who suffer too—the primal element of Christian love. At a precarious time when so many feel a vulnerability perhaps never felt before, such vulnerability potentially transforms us into more responsible social agents and political actors.
In a theological framework, the problem of suffering is heightened to fundamental, relational questions between God and his creatures. At issue are: what essentially is the problem of suffering, how should it be understood and how close is God to his suffering creatures? The contemplation of these queries plunges the philosopher into the realm of the incomprehensible. Daily, the Christian must grapple with the reality of a God who is the fullness of being - in whom is the perfection of all that is good and a world which is fallen from that perfection. In this, man encounters mystery.
The World According to Suffering
The Philosophy of Suffering, 2019
On the face of it, suffering from the loss of a loved one and suffering from intense pain are very different things. What makes them both experiences of suffering? I argue it’s neither their unpleasantness nor the fact that we desire not to have such experiences. Rather, what we suffer from negatively transforms the way our situation as a whole appears to us. To cash this out, I introduce the notion of negative affective construal, which involves practically perceiving our situation as calling for change, registering this perception with a felt desire for change, and believing that the change is not within our power. We (attitudinally) suffer when negative affective construal is pervasive, either because it colours a large swath of possibilities, as in the case of anxiety, or because it narrows our attention to what hurts, as in the case of grief. On this view, sensory or bodily suffering is a special case of attitudinal suffering: the unpleasantness of pain causes pervasive negative affective construal. Pain that doesn’t negatively transform our world doesn’t make for suffering.
Therapeutic Theodicy? Suffering, Struggle, and the Shift from the God’s-Eye View
Religions, 2018
From a theoretical standpoint, the problem of human suffering can be understood as one formulation of the classical problem of evil, which calls into question the compatibility of the existence of a perfect God with the extent to which human beings suffer. Philosophical responses to this problem have traditionally been posed in the form of theodicies, or justifications of the divine. In this article, I argue that the theodical approach in analytic philosophy of religion exhibits both morally and epistemically harmful tendencies and that philosophers would do better to shift their perspective from the hypothetical “God’s-eye view” to the standpoint of those who actually suffer. By focusing less on defending the epistemic rationality of religious belief and more on the therapeutic effectiveness of particular imaginings of God with respect to suffering, we can recover, (re)construct, and/or (re)appropriate more virtuous approaches to the individual and collective struggle with the life of faith in the face of suffering.
The American Journal of Biblical Theology, 2016
This paper will examine the problem of suffering as it arises from both moral and natural evil through a Christian philosophical and theological perspective. Suffering throughout our planet is pervasive. We all experience it in one form or another. In western culture, we are bombarded, through the media with the terrible tragedies that occur in our home country and abroad. Inevitably we ask ourselves, the following question, as Professor Ramon Martinez, probes into his book, Sin and Evil, " Why does God permit suffering? " In order to address the question of suffering and its relation to the God of Christianity, we must understand what suffering is and how it affects humanity.
What does it mean to suffer? How are we to understand the sufferings we undergo? Etymologically, to suffer signifies to undergo and endure. Is there a sense, a purpose to our sufferings or does the very passivity, which they etymologically imply, robs them of all inherent meaning? In this paper, I shall argue against this Levinasian interpretation. My claim will be that suffering, exhibits a meaning beyond meaning, one embodied in the unique singularity of our flesh. This uniqueness is, in fact, an interruption. It signifies the suspension of all systems of exchange, all attempts to render good for good and evil for evil. It is in terms of such suspension that suffering—particularly as found in selfless sacrifice—finds its “use.” This “use” involves the possibility of forgiveness.
Problems of Suffering. The Philosophical Perspective compressed (1)
International Journal of Religion and Culture, A Journal of the Association of the African Theologians, 2015
Abstract This work aims at looking at suffering and the problems of suffering from a philosophical perspective. Suffering or pain in a broad sense is an individual basic affective experience of unpleasant things and aversion associated with harm or threat of harm. It might be qualified as physical or mental. It may come in all degrees of intensity from mild to intolerable. The work has at the same time, looked at what causes suffering from the point of view of religion and cultural beliefs to back up the philosophical beliefs on this. The implications and or impacts of suffering on the sufferer and the society have been highlighted. Another interesting aspect of this work that is given attention to is the reason why suffering persists; whether God is unable to avert suffering in a world He created and then seek for ways it can be mitigated or eradicated. Also, suggestions are n1ade where necessary.
Can only a suffering God help? Towards a contextual and pragmatic approach to philosophy of religion
Passibilism – understood here as the idea that God suffers in Godself – is sometimes motivated by the idea that a fellow-sufferer provides consolation and so is religiously helpful. Yet people's intuitions about whether a divine fellow-sufferer is indeed religiously helpful are radically different: for some, 'only a suffering God can help', while for others it is precisely by not suffering that God offers consolation. I will explore people's differing intuitions, before arguing that consolation is not a good argument for passibilism. Rather, consolation may contribute to the rationality of belief in a passible God, if it is indeed religiously helpful. And whether it is religiously helpful will depend on factors including what other figures within the religious tradition are able to provide consolation through fellow-suffering. As examples of non-divine fellow-sufferer consolers, I will explore saints in late medieval Western Europe, and bodhisattvas in Japanese Buddhism today. In so doing, I will suggest an account of why passiblism arose out of Protestant Christianity, and attempt to do philosophy of religion in a way that takes context seriously and probes beyond formal arguments into people's practical and psychological motivations for believing what they believe. Finally, I will consider some of the implications of my argument for some other aspects of debates about divine passibility.