"Suffering Job":
Scriptural Reasoning and the Problem of Evil
William Wesley Elkins
Drew University
This essay examines the application and relevance of Scriptural
Reasoning to an interpretation of the book of Job. This will require
three steps. The first step will be an examination of an ambiguity
in Cornel West's interpretation of the value of Josiah Royce's
philosophy and Royce's tragic sense for the renewal of American
Pragmatism. The second step will argue that Royce's pragmatic
soteriology, read through a reconstruction of his interpretation
of Job, is an adequate response to the problem of evil. Thirdly,
Royce's interpretation of Job will be extended and validated
by the practice of Scriptural Reasoning. It will be argued that
Royce's interpretation of Job and his soteriology, in combination
with the practice of scriptural reasoning, deepens our tragic sense
through a pragmatic redefinition of truth: truth is that which
heals the suffering of the sufferer.
From West to Royce
The impetus of this essay was provided by a paragraph in Rosemary
Cowan's book Cornel West: the Politics of Redemption:1
...Although West commends the sense of the tragic developed by
mid-twentieth century pragmatists, he suggests that both neo-pragmatism
and even the heroic Dewey lack an adequate conception of the tragic.
West engages most forcefully with this theme in "Pragmatism
and the Sense of the Tragic" in Keeping Faith,
where he suggests that pragmatism needs to be supplemented by
the tragic temperament of Josiah Royce...2
This is a succinct statement of West's evaluation of Royce.
For West, Royce's philosophy could reconstruct pragmatism
so that it would meet
"the challenge posed by (Abraham) Lincoln, namely, defining
the relation of democratic ways of thought and life to a profound
sense of evil"3
and, in addition, the challenge posed to philosophy by the pessimism
of Arthur Schopenhauer. Unfortunately, in interpreting West's
evaluation of Royce's sense of the tragic as a response to
the problem of evil, Cowan does not note a subtle ambiguity in West's
evaluation of Royce. In the final paragraph the article referenced
by Cowan, "Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense of Life",
West notes:
I have quoted at length to convey Royce's implicit response
to Lincoln's challenge, answering Schopenhauer. The point
here is not whether his response is persuasive or convincing;
rather the point is to highlight the depths of Royce's efforts
to sustain the strenuous mood in the face of the deep sense of
evil. Never in the tradition of American Pragmatism has Lincoln's
challenge been taken so seriously.4
West's evaluation of Royce is without doubt positive. However,
the final paragraph of "Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense of
Life" suggests that West's interpretation of Royce is
qualified in a number of ways. The first qualification is the suggestion
that although Royce's response to evil evidences "depths"
of a sustained "strenuous mood", it may not be "persuasive
or convincing". Of course, this qualification, on West's
part, may simply be academic caution. However, when combined with
the preface he added to "Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense of
Life" in the The Cornel West Reader, his earlier
qualification appears more critical than cautionary:
Royce is the only pragmatist philosopher who wrestles with the
great Arthur Schopenhauer and, besides his friend William James,
the only philosopher with a tragic temperament...In my view; Chekhov's
tragicomic sensibilities go so far beyond and cut so much deeper
than anything in pragmatism that even Royce comes up short. Yet
Royce should be given more prominence in the contemporary pragmatic
renaissance in humanistic studies.5
For West, it is clear that Pragmatism must be tested by evil and
that Royce, among all pragmatists, is the best guide in this encounter.
However, if, as suggested, there are depths to evil of which Royce
is not aware, and "the contemporary pragmatic renaissance
in humanistic studies" is to continue, then a deeper sense
of evil and tragic must be developed. For West, Chekhov, not Royce,
is most promising in this regard. West's qualified caution
of the final paragraph of "Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense
of Life" in combination with the new preface of this article
constitutes a critique of the adequacy of Royce's sense of
the tragic to respond to the profounder depths tragedy and evil.
Without a comparison of Royce's and Chekhov's sense
of tragic, we are left with the judgment that Royce is good, the
best of the pragmatists, but he is not good enough. We can go a
long way with his "sense of the tragic", but we can't
complete the course. But is this true? Is Royce's sense of
the tragic too limited to meet the deepest aspects of tragedy and
evil?
One difficulty with any evaluation of West's interpretation
of Royce is that "Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense of Life"
is part of a larger unpublished work on Royce. It is possible that
this work may clarify West's interpretation of the significance
of Royce's sense of the tragic. At this point, however, we
are left with the possibility that a closer reading of Royce might
suggest depths to Royce's response to problems of evil that
extend beyond West's sense of the inadequacy of Royce's
pragmatism.
Is Royce's interpretation of and response to evil unpersuasive
and inadequate? I contend that it is not. West has not noted that
there are two aspects to Royce's response to evil. In addition
he has failed to note that these two aspects are logically interdependent.
The first aspect is Royce's representation of evil. The second
is the response to the representation of evil designed to repair
the conditions that caused evil. As West's evaluation of Royce
implies, an inadequate representation may lead to a response that
falls short of an adequate response to the problem of evil. However,
in Royce's pragmatism, representation and response are logically
interdependent.6 Simply put, Royce identifies a problem and after
thinking it through responds with a way to solve the problem. His
response is reparative. But a reparative response to conditions
of evil is not limited to conduct. More accurately, for Royce, all
problems are problems of conduct and a philosophic response that
repairs the ways evil is thought through is as much an action to
prevent evil as is developing a cure for childhood cancer.
But how do these observations answer West's criticism of
Royce? For Royce, we all act to achieve particular ends, but most
of what is done is a matter of habit. We act unconsciously. However,
when action is interrupted, we sense frustration and we become conscious
of a need to accomplish what we were prevented from doing. In addition,
at the point of frustration, we begin to think. We begin to try
to find some way through the problem. We try to correct what interrupted
us. We begin to problem-solve and our thoughts are directed to finding
a way to connect what we were doing to a pattern of action that
bridges the gap between our actions and their goals. So, from a
pragmatic perspective, the way we meet an unmet need is to change
the way we think and act. On the presupposition that if we act differently
we will not be ineffective in the same way, we try new patterns
of action. If we act with some thought, if we experiment with different
patterns of actions, our success will become more probable than
not.
Although Royce would not explain it quite this way, he would agree
that when we cannot get any further towards our goal, the direction
of thought and action is to repair the connection between our actions
and their proper ends. This is the connection that answers West's
criticism of Royce. The uniqueness of Royce's pragmatic
philosophy is that his response to the problem of evil is informed
both by a sense of the inadequacy of conduct to meet the challenge
of evil and by a sense of the inadequacy of philosophy to solve
the problem of evil. So, congruent with the reparative ‘logic'
of pragmatism, Royce's response to the problem of evil involves
both a repair of the conditions that cause evil and a repair of
philosophies that misrepresent evil.
For Royce there are two difficulties with standard interpretations
of the problem of evil. The first is philosophical: evil creates
intellectual problems that cannot be solved by philosophy. In a
sense, the existence of evil makes systematic thought inadequate.
The second is a matter of thought and conduct. The depth and range
of evil that make systematic thought inadequate make action ineffective.
Royce's response to the problems of conduct and thought caused
by evil is to repair philosophy and practical conduct by interpreting
both soteriologically. As a practical soteriology, Royce's
philosophical theology is designed to save both the philosophers
and the sufferers (POJ pp. 5-6).
A fundamental aspect of Royce's philosophical theology is
his observation that we have a need for salvation. For Royce, we
all have ideals and act to realize them. We experience a need for
salvation when we suffer the range and depth of injury caused by
those evils that prevent us from realizing our ideals. There are,
of course, many kinds of evil, each with its particular kind of
misery. But taken as a whole, evil prevents us from realizing our
ideals and enjoying, through their realization, a connection with
the comprehensive power that affirms that we are at home in the
universe. For Royce, physical and moral evil rend the relation between
our ideals, actions and the divine that gives meaning to our lives
(POJ p. 24).
Separated from the divine we feel the need for salvation. The ways
we repair the connection between our lives and the divine become
our way of salvation. Thus, for Royce, each problem of thought and
conduct calls for a solution and each solution is fitted to a particular
problem in ways that repair the relation between ideals, action,
and the divine. Finally, when ideals effectively shape our actions
the connection between our ideals and the divine makes us feel at
home in the world. Whether the solution is a response to a technical
problem of fixing the computer that has just ‘disappeared'
a year's work or is a response to a tragic death that threatens
our sense of the meaning of life, the problem-solving response of
Royce's pragmatic soteriology repairs the connection between
practical conduct and its divine end.
In the history of philosophical theology, Royce's pragmatic
soteriology is distinctive. It solves both philosophical problems
and problems of conduct. But is it possible, as West asserts, that
Royce's pragmatic soteriology is incomplete? Possibly, but
not practically. As noted above, for Royce, representations of the
problem of evil and our response to evil are logically interdependent.
The nature of evil determines the nature of the reparative response.
Pragmatically, the problem shapes the solution. Thus if we encounter
depths to evil that fall outside current practical action or philosophical
representation, Royce's soteriology will interpret this condition
as a problem requiring the repair of thought and conduct. In this
regard, Royce's soteriology is self-extending and self-repairing.
The self-repairing aspect of Royce's soteriology is best
evidenced in the way he interprets "The problem of Job"
in the book of Job. For Royce, one of the evils that Job encounters
and one of the needs that he experiences is his experience of God's
injustice and the need for a justification of God's actions
towards him. For Royce, the book of Job represents the connection
between particular kinds of evil and particular kinds of reparative
response. For example, one of the evils that Job suffers is the
limited compassion of his friends for his suffering. Since any pragmatic
reparative response must reconstruct the philosophical system and
physical and social conditions that contribute to the fact that
Job's suffering is so inconsequential to his friends, the
book of Job must show how this is done.
Aspects of Royce's interpretation of Job will be considered
below. However, what must be kept in mind is that in "The
Problem of Job" and in his philosophy, problem and solution
are logically interdependent. If we accept Royce's analysis
of a problem, then we must accept his solution. In particular if
we credit Royce's tragic sense, then we are committed both
to crediting his pragmatic soteriology and to the process
of philosophical and practical repair that will deepen Royce's
soteriology each time we encounter an evil that challenges the limits
of the tragic sense that informs it.
The fact that West does not note the logical interdependence of
the way Royce represents evil and the practical-philosophical way
Royce responds to problems of evil may be the source of the ambiguity
in West's interpretation of Royce. When West suggests that
it is not important whether or not Royce's arguments are persuasive,
with the implication that Royce's falls short, he has not
noted that Royce's tragic sense and pragmatic soteriology
are self-reparative. Any question about one or the other elicits
a reexamination of both. So when West indicates that he prefers
Chekhov's sense of the tragicomic to Royce's sense of the
tragic, he has simply encountered a practical and philosophical
problem that will be resolved by a consistent application of the
reparative logic of Royce's soteriology.
I will now undertake a closer reading of Royce's interpretation
of Job with close attention to the self-reparative logic of his
soteriology, in the hope that it may provide a deepened sense of
the problem of evil and the promise of a pragmatic repair of the
ways we think and act to resolve the problem of evil.
Royce on Job
Royce examines the problem of evil in a number of his works. One
early approach occurs in his article "The Problem of Job".
Although Royce's philosophical methodology changes significantly
in later works, his approach to the problem of evil remained the
same over time. "The Problem of Job" is thus representative
of Royce's fundamental approach to the problem of evil.
As noted above, for Royce, any reparative response to a problem
is always specific. The solution fits the problem. The book of Job
represents Job's suffering in excruciating detail. But according
to the traditional interpretation Job suffers less from the loss
of his health through various diseases, and the loss of his wealth
and family, than he suffers because he is just.
Job's problem is a theological problem. The fact that he
is just and suffering breaks the logic relating God, evil, and the
suffering of Israel. For ancient Israel, the logic of suffering
involved two conditionals: The first is that if someone is suffering,
then they must have sinned. The second is that if someone repents
of their sin then God will rescue and restore them. Traditional
interpretations of Job take this book as a challenge to this logic.
Although Royce is aware of this critique, the primary problem of
Job for Royce is the extent and depth of Job's suffering.
Royce is aware of the ways that the suffering of the just contradicts
the standard soteriology of ancient Israel: if we act justly then
we will be rewarded and if we act unjustly we will suffer. But any
imbalance in desert and reward would do this. The fact that Job
is just simply adds a sense of unfairness to an already excruciating
distress. When it is deep suffering that breaks this simplistic
logic it is the suffering that is the real problem.
Traditional arguments that explain Israel's suffering are
elementary theodicies. They explain the place of evil in God's
good world. In theological tradition there have been a number of
theodicies that have been offered to resolve the problem of evil.
We would naturally expect Royce to offer another theodicy, a new
and improved argument for the justifying the place of evil. However,
in "The Problem of Job" Royce uses argument to invalidate
standard theodicies. In "The Problem of Job" Royce directs
his attention to the experience of evil and an interpretation of
theodicy that moves the reader beyond theodicy to compassionate
action.
As a pragmatist Royce is interested in the relation between experience,
thought and conduct. But a philosophical justification of the place
of evil in a good world will not change the way we act. This is
not to suggest that Royce does not offer an interpretation of evil.
Royce is one of the great philosophers of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. The distinctive aspect of Royce's
philosophy is that he senses that evil is more terrible and has
more destructive force than any argument or theory designed to justify
it can grasp. Face to face with evil, arguments do not move us.
Experience does. When we experience evil we begin to understand
the inadequacy of standard theodicies to support and guide our lives.
Of course Royce cannot make the reader experience real evil. He
can, however, do three things. First, he can use Job's experience
of evil to bring us to the edge of the bottomless chasm cut into
our lives by evil. Then, when our experience of evil is too near
for easy comfort, he can show us the inadequacies of standard theodicies.
Finally he can suggest a pragmatic soteriology that promises to
respond to a deepened sense of evil by repairing the inadequacies
of current theodicies. In the final analysis, for Royce, it is the
particularities of compassionate conduct that resolve suffering
and repair faulty theodicies.
For Royce, the task of developing a pragmatic soteriology requires
three steps: expression, analysis, and response. The first step
uses an interpreted concatenation of Job's words to express
the extent and depth of Job's experience of evil. For example:
...this God, who can do just what he chooses, "deprives
of right" the righteous man, "vexes his soul",
becomes towards him as a "tyrant", "persecutes"
him "with strong hand", "dissolves" him
"into storm", makes him a "by word" for
outcasts, "casts him into the mire", renders him "a
brother to jackals", deprives him of the poor joy of this
"one day as a hireling", of the little delight that
might come to him as a man before he descends hopelessly to the
dark world of the shades, "watches over" him by day
to oppress, by night to "terrify" him, "with
dreams and with visions" – in brief, acts as his enemy,
"tears" him "in anger", "gnashes
upon" him "with his teeth." ....On the other
hand, as with equal wonder and horror the righteous Job reports,
God on occasion does just the reverse of all this to the notoriously
and deliberately wicked, who "grown old", "wax
mighty in power", "see their offspring established",
and their homes "secure from fear." If one turns from
this view of God's especially unjust dealings with righteous
and with wicked individuals to a general survey of his providential
government of the world, one sees vast processes going on, as
ingenious as they are merciless, as full of a majestic wisdom
as they are of indifference to every individual right. (POJ p. 3)
After condensing Job's complaint, Royce summaries Job's
experience of evil with a direct quotation.
A mountain that falleth is shattered, And a rock is removed
from its place; The waters do wear away stones, Its floods sweep
the earth's dust away; And the hope of frail man thou destroyst.
Thou subdu'st him for aye, and he goes; Marring his face
thou rejectest him. (Job 14:18-20. POJ p. 3)
If the intended effect of this concatenation of complaint is to
overwhelm the reader, it does not miss its mark. Any temptation
to argue with the depth of Job's suffering and his accusation
of God is undermined by the sheer depth and sharpness of Job's
distress. Experience, not argument, is the intended effect of this
concentrated expression of Job's suffering.
Royce is pragmatic. He is trying to connect an experience of suffering
to conduct that resolves it. But philosophical argument sometimes
interrupts the connection between experience and conduct. Royce's
second step is to critique a number of philosophical responses to
the problem of evil. This will lead in his third step to a different
response to the problem of evil.
The first theodicy that Royce examines is the position that the
problem of evil can be resolved by viewing all evils as necessary
means to the evolution of a greater end.
"...the presence of evil in the creation is a relatively
insignificant, and an inevitable, incident of a plan that produces
sentient creatures subject to law." (POJ p. 6)
This argument is unacceptable for Royce, but it is not unacceptable
because of any difficulty with evolution. The Christian God and
evolution are not in conflict. There are difficulties, however.
The first difficulty is with God the Creator. For Royce, there is
no explanation that justifies the fact that we were created so far
from the goals of our ideals. We may all, so to speak, have to run
the good race, but the race need not be measured in millenniums
and light years. Moreover, the immense distance between our lives
and their goals multiplies the suffering that is required to realize
them. The existence of evil and the suffering it causes on any one
day may bring us to despair. When this suffering is increased by
the vast differences between beginning and end, the amount of suffering
involved in any theodicy of evolutionary transformation brings hopelessness
not confidence.
Since the depth and extent of physical evil do not appear necessary
to our existence, the second theodicy that Royce examines is one
that makes evil logically necessary. This is the argument that the
problem of evil can be resolved by the value of free will.
...the presence of evil in the world is explained by the fact
that the value of free will in moral agents logically involves,
and so explains and justifies, the divine permission of the evil
deeds of those finite beings that freely choose to sin, as well
as the inevitable fruits of the sins. God creates agents with
free will. He does so because the existence of such agents has
of itself an infinite worth. (POJ pp. 9-10)
This argument, as Royce notes, has a long and distinguished history.
It is, however, unacceptable for a number of reasons. The first
is that not all evil is a result of a choice. Bad things just happen.
They happen to bad and good, unjust and just people. It appears
that God does not protect the innocent or punish the less than innocent.
Moreover, (the full importance of this argument is discussed below)
if every evil is the result of a free choice, then there would be
no reason for compassion. We could reply to any sufferer:
...you suffer for you our own ill-doing. I therefore simply cannot
relieve you. This is God's world of justice. If I tried
to hinder God's justice from working in your case, I should
at best only postpone your evil day. It would come, for God is
just. You are hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, in prison. What can
I do about it? All this is your own deed come back to you. God
himself, although justly punishing, is not the author of this
evil. You are the sole originator of the ill. (POJ p. 12)
For Royce, these arguments are philosophically flawed. But in
addition to being flawed, when they are used in any context of personal
loss or suffering they tempt us to despair. Royce is particularly
and personally insistent upon this point.
I confess, as a layman, that whenever, at a funeral, in the company
of mourners who are immediately facing Job's own personal
problem, and who are sometimes, to say the least, wide enough
awake to desire not to be stayed with relative comforts, but to
ask that terrible and uttermost question of God himself, and to
require the direct answer--that whenever, I say, in such company
I have to listen to these half-way answers, to these superficial
plashes in the wavelets at the water's edge of sorrow, while
the black, unfathomed ocean of finite evil spreads out before
our wide-opened eyes--well, at such times this trivial speech...makes
me, and I fancy others, simply and wearily heartsick. (POJ p. 9)
For Royce, the experience of the triviality of all explanations
of evil is not unlike the effect of the contrast between the suffering
of Job and the arguments of his friends. Their explanations do not
match Job's experience. His suffering is too great to be justified.
Moreover, the fact that he is just exacerbates his suffering by
adding injustice to the mix.
But if the traditional arguments of teleology and the free-will
defense are not persuasive, this does not mean that we are without
recourse. For Royce, the problem of evil for Job is not fundamentally
a question of justice but is a question of the depth and extent
of Job's suffering. So, if Royce, as a pragmatist, is to offer
an interpretation of the problem of evil, he is required to offer
a thesis that links the immense suffering of Job to the conduct
of an agent that could repair the conditions that caused Job's
suffering.
This is the third part of Royce's argument: response. In
order to link expression, experience and response, he takes a somewhat
indirect course and defends two theses that are, for Royce, the
philosophical soul of an idealistic soteriology.
The first thesis is that when we suffer God suffers with us, i.e.
our suffering is God's suffering. The second is a pragmatic
implication of the first: God shares our commitment to resist and
overcome the evils we suffer together.
...God is not in ultimate essence another being than yourself.
He is the Absolute Being. You truly are one with God, part of
his life. He is the very soul of your soul....When you suffer,
your sufferings are God's sufferings, not his external work,
not his external penalty, not the fruit of his neglect, but identically
his own personal woe. In you God himself suffers precisely as
you do, and has all your concern in overcoming this grief. (POJ
p. 14)
This thesis is an implication of Royce's philosophical idealism.
As an idealist Royce believes that all things find their unity in
one Absolute consciousness:
...and that this world is essentially in its wholeness the fulfillment
in actu of an all-perfect ideal (POJ p. 15).
The second thesis is implicated in the fact that God's life
could not be perfect without suffering and the overcoming of this
suffering.
...without suffering, without ill, without woe, evil tragedy,
God's life could not be perfected. This grief is not a physical
means to an external end. It is a logically necessary and eternal
constituent of the divine life....He is perfect. His world is
the best possible world. Yet all its finite regions know not only
of joy but of defeat and sorrow, for thus alone, in the completeness
of his eternity can God in his wholeness be triumphantly perfect.
(POJ p. 14)
Royce makes two further observations that are significant for an
interpretation of the problem of evil. The first observation is
that human beings live in a tension between their desires and desires
about their desires. We can want what we want, not want what we
want, want what we do not want, and not want what we do not want.
This is a somewhat complicated mix of Pauline theology and basic
psychology, but Royce's point is that we can take a point
of view on our desires and the conduct that flows from them. We
can oppose bad impulses and those impulses that are not as good
as we would wish them to be. This is a fact of human nature, but
it is, for Royce, not contingent. It is essential to our nature.
The identity of humanity is constituted by the tensions between
what we approve or disapprove about our own desires.
...man is a being who can to a very great extent find a sort
of secondary satisfaction in the very act of thwarting his own
desires...in such cases, man is not merely setting his acts or
his estimates of good and evil side by side and taking the sum
of each; but he is making his own relatively primary acts, impulses,
desires, the objects of all sorts of secondary impulses, desires,
and reflective observations. (POJ pp. 20-1)
...We do nothing simple, and we will no complex act without willing
what involves a certain measure of opposition between the impulses
or partial acts which go to make up the whole act..." (POJ
p. 21)
The implications of this for his response to the problem of evil
are of fundamental significance. When some particular obstacle has
been overcome and a higher good has been achieved, then the good
that has been achieved through suffering is more perfect than the
same end achieved without suffering.
... I insist that, in general, the only harmony that can exist
in the realm of the spirit is the harmony that we possess when
we thwart the present but more elemental impulse for the sake
of the higher unity of experience, as when we rejoice in the endurance
of the tragedies of life, because they show us the depth of life,
or when we know that it is better to have loved and lost than
never to have loved at all, or when we posses a virtue in the
moment of victory over the tempter. (POJ p. 23)
Since this position applies both to God and humanity, it is the
cornerstone of Royce's interpretation of and response to the
problem of Job. For Royce, we (God and us) are perfected by overcoming
suffering. In his exposition, Royce uses a line of Tennyson to express
this: "it is better to have loved and lost than never to have
loved at all." We would not know what love is without having
lost someone or something we loved.
There is, however, a difficulty with this argument. Royce's
argument does not appear all that different from the teleological
argument: suffering is necessary as a means to a greater good.7
If Royce's interpretation of the problem of evil is inadequate
in the same ways that the teleological argument is inadequate, then
we, like Job, are left with simply the contingencies of suffering
and our responses to suffering.
This is a fair and accurate observation. Royce is a philosophical
idealist. But in his interpretation of evil and responses to evil
in "The Problem of Job" Royce is less interested in
theories that attempt to justify suffering than in the facts of
suffering. Most certainly, Royce has a teleological argument: suffering
is necessary for the perfection of God and humanity. Evil has its
necessary place in the unity of God's efforts to save and
succor humanity. But perfection, in this case, is not the elimination
of evil. For Royce, the facts of evil and our experiences of evil
are always particular. Given the particularities in the extension
and depths of evil, any response, either by argument or by reparative
action, is also particular. As a result, there is always an unresolved
tension between our sense of tragedy and suffering and any possible
perfection that presumes to justify the necessity of any evil for
any higher good.
Suffering creates particularity, and though suffering is necessary
for perfection, it is always beyond the reach of any universal response
to evil. As an idealist, of course, he believes that the unity between
evil and the higher good is achieved in God. Here more scientific
and tough-minded critics might fault Royce for a theological "deus
ex machina". But no one, not even the toughest empiricist,
could fault Royce on his attention to the deeply distressing details
of suffering.
There is no overall solution, no formula, no one pattern of conduct,
however complex and complete, that will completely resolve the problem
of evil. Thus, although we can hope for perfection in particular
situations, the problem of evil is theoretically irresolvable because
there is and always will be particular aspects of tragedy and evil
that are beyond any reparative response. Certainly, evil will be
overcome in achieving unsurpassed goods. But if this is teleological
it is so in the way the development of common law is teleological:
our sense of the facts determine our decision in each case. Moreover,
if the law, along with the facts, shapes our understanding of a
case, the development of the common law seems to involve the statement
of the most minimum of rules governing the case.8 Analogously,
if Royce's soteriology is as teleological as the development
of the common law, it is teleological by increments that cannot
be determined or described by any general formula or theory. Given
the deeply distressing details of tragedy and evil, the only possible
"theory" is that particular evils are perfected in God
who continuously and infinitely suffers the irrationality of evil.
If Royce's argument for the necessity of suffering for perfection
is idealistic and teleological, the proof of any perfection is in
the facts. No formula, even the argument for the necessity of evil
for perfection, can guarantee the perfection of any response to
evil or the force of any argument that a particular perfection is
sufficient to justify a particular evil. The facts of perfection
are, as Blake notes about holiness, "in the minute particulars".
In the final analysis, given the particularities of the relation
between sufferings and their perfections, we will never know perfection
without the possibility of suffering or suffering without the possibility
of perfection. For Royce, we, as well as God, exist in these irresolvable
tensions.
From Job to Scriptural Reasoning
Up to this point, a close reading of Royce's interpretation
of Job has established a number of points. The first is that Royce's
soteriology is a response to his interpretation of Job's suffering
and of his analysis of the inadequacies of traditional theodicies.
For Royce, when we suffer, God suffers and it is the evil that God
suffers and overcomes that perfects God and the evil that we suffer
and overcome perfects us. Second, one part of overcoming evil is
to recognize that it is not possible to eliminate, avoid or explain
away all suffering. The tension between suffering and perfection
is constitutive of our identity and God's efforts to overcome
evil. The third point is the conclusion that it is the details of
Royce's interpretation of Job's suffering and the irresolvable
tension between suffering and perfection that requires a modification
but not a rejection of Royce's idealism. For Royce, God would
not be perfect and we could not be perfected without having overcome
particular sufferings. The recognition that all sufferings will
never be eliminated or completely justified requires the unity of
evil and good to be a particular and not universal perfection.
As noted above, the logic of Royce's argument is to move
from expression through experience to response. The significance
of this movement is that Royce's argument implicitly illustrates
the value of scriptural reasoning for an interpretation of the problem
of evil as exemplified in the book of Job. To make a connection
between Royce's interpretation of Job and scriptural reasoning,
will require an understanding of the practice of scriptural reasoning.
The difficulty is that although scriptural reasoning is a traditional
practice of the church, it has only recently received theological
articulation.
There are, at least, two reasons for this. The first is that it
is only since mid-century that exegetes have become aware of the
extent to which critical scholarship has replaced traditional uses
of scripture. The bible is no longer only a book of the church.
It is also a book of the university, interpreted to a significant
degree in and for the church in the way in which it is interpreted
for an academic community. In the church, the scriptures are read
less and less as instruction in discipleship or wisdom. The literal
sense of the scriptures, and what it means to a community of faith,
have been replaced by critical and historical interpretations of
scripture. As a historical document, the scriptures are read as
evidence for events that are probable truths of history not truths
of faith. The scriptures are signs of events that most probably
occurred differently than reported and whose relevance for faith
is uncertain. The second reason is that it took developments in
American Pragmatism to make it possible for philosophers to become
aware of the ways philosophy distorted our understanding of different
community-based interpretative practices.
As noted above, the traditional ways of posing and resolving philosophical
problems have broken connections between thought and action. Pragmatism
was developed to correct the ways that we did philosophy so that
we would begin to understand the ordinary ways we interpret, live
and act in the world. However, developments in pragmatism were not
in themselves sufficient to bring about pragmatically-formed scriptural
reasoning. Though there may be many explanations of the development
of scriptural reasoning, one is that scriptural reasoning developed
as a result of a discovery made by academics who were participants
in traditional faith communities. They discovered a connection between
their communities' loss of identity and the suffering it caused,
and the pragmatic insight into truth: as that which reconnects actions
and their goals, and more specifically, as that which meets human
needs. Succinctly put, scriptural reasoning as a form of scriptural
pragmatism came about through the connection pragmatism made between
the goal of eliminating suffering on the one hand, and truths (rules)
of interpretative practice that made a recovery of the identity
of text-based religious communities possible on the other.9
Scriptural reasoning thus made it possible to recover the practice
of reading the scriptures as a way of shaping the conduct of a community
of faith and practice. When truth is understood to be constituted
by what meets human need, it is possible to recover traditional
stereological uses of scripture to meet the need of salvation. In
sum, developments in pragmatic scriptural interpretation gave rise
to two developments. The first was a recovery of a deep scriptural
truth: true is that which responds to suffering by healing the sufferer.
The second was the possibility of using scriptural pragmatism to
correct and heal modern philosophy. Royce's argument in "The
Problem of Job" exemplifies both of these developments.
The structure of Royce's argument in "The Problem of
Job" is to express suffering to highlight the experience of
evil. Royce then uses the experience of evil to critique standard
theodicies. Finally he uses the experience and critique of evil
to revise traditional theodicies and offer a new pragmatic response
to the problem of Job. Given this, the first trace of scriptural
reasoning in Royce is the way he treats Job as a practical religious
text. Royce reads Job for its plain sense. Job is about the justice
of God and the suffering of humanity. In the final analysis Royce's
interpretation of Job is somewhat outside the tradition. For Royce
Job is more about suffering and the ways we respond to it than it
is about the justice of God. Royce does offer a type of theodicy
but he does not use philosophy to filter the depths of Job's
suffering. It is the practical response to Job's suffering
that is important to Royce.
The second trace of scriptural reasoning is that Royce uses the
meaning of Job to test and reconstruct philosophical approaches
to the problem of evil. In Royce's argument it is the extent
and depth of Job's suffering that undermines the foundations
of any theodicy. This is an important implication in that it indicates
the direction and horizon where our experience of tragedy begins:
"There is more (evil, suffering, tragedy) in the world than
is dreamt of in any philosophy." But the most important implications
are those constituted by the method of Royce's argument.
In the first place, unlike interpreters of the book of Job, Royce
treats the text of Job as expressing an experience of evil. Although
argument occurs in Job, particularly in the exchanges between Job
and his friends over whether or not Job has deserves suffering because
he has sinned, for Royce, the most important effect of this argument
is not to convince us of the fact that Job is just, but to direct
our attention to the extent and depth of Job's suffering.
Although Job's suffering invalidates the traditional logic
connecting sins and suffering: if we suffer we must have sinned,
the deeper criticism, something that cannot be argued but only shown,
is the pragmatic inconsistency between his friend's recognition
that Job is suffering and their failure to assuage his suffering.
In effect, their insensitive use of the traditional logic connecting
sin and suffering in an attempt to help him is invalidated by the
cries of Job as his bones are being splintered and ground down by
the extent and depth of his pains.
And now my soul is poured out within me; days of affliction have
taken hold of me. The night racks my bones, and the pain that
gnaws me takes no rest. With violence he seizes my garment; he
grasps me by the coat of my tunic. He has cast me into the mire,
and I have become dust and ashes. I cry to you and you do not
answer me; I stand, and you merely look at me. You have turned
cruel to me; with the might of your hand you persecute me. You
lift me up on the wind, you make me ride on it, and you toss me
about in the roar of the storm. I know you will bring me to death,
and to the house appointed for a living. Surely one does not turn
against the needy, when in disaster they cry for help. Did I not
weep for those whose day was hard? Was not my soul grieved for
the poor? But when I looked for good, evil came; and when I waited
for light, darkness came. My inward parts are in turmoil, and
are never still; days of affliction come to meet me. I go about
in sunless gloom; I stand up in the assembly and call for help.
I am a brother of the ass, and a companion of ostriches. My skin
turns black and falls from me, and my bones burn with heat, My
lyre is turned to mourning, and my pipe to the voice of those
who weep. (Job 30:16-31)
Here, there is just too much suffering. Job's suffering is
too extensive and far too deep for any standard theodicy to justify
the evil he suffers. However, what the book of Job can do is to
bring the reader so near to Job's suffering that they feel
the contradiction between describing someone as "suffering"
without thought and action to prevent this suffering.
Royce's interpretation of Job suggests that the purpose of
this book is not primarily to make an argument for or against the
justice of God, but to provide an experience for the reader that
moves her beyond argument to corrective, healing action. In itself
this is a good reason to read Job in the light of Royce's
interpretation. But if we add scriptural reasoning to Royce's
pragmatic interpretation, there are additional important implications.
The first has already been noted but needs elaboration. The literary
enactments of Job's suffering are directed to moving the reader
towards compassion for Job. The strangest aspect of Job's
encounter with his friends is that they do not take any practical
action to relieve his suffering. Compared to their philosophical
and theological arguments, their initial helpless silence is far
better than their attempts to console Job by justifying the ways
of God to him. Why don't they simply give Job something for
his thirst? Why don't they shade him from the sun or build
a fire to warm him at night. These and any number of actions certainly
would have diminished Job's suffering.
The problem of Job's friends dramatized by the text is that
their theodicy alienates them from Job. Viewing Job through the
distorting glass of their theodicy, they appear remote from his
suffering. In fact given their insensitivity it is deeply ironic
to call them "friends". These "friends",
if questioned, might acknowledge that while Job is sitting on a
pile of ashes, covered with sores, he is not at his best, but lacking
a sense of compassion they cannot feel for or act to console Job.
In fact it would seem that they are dramatizing Royce's criticism
of standard philosophical theodicies. They seem to be saying that
(according to standard theodicy) if Job is responsible then they
cannot help him because they would interfere with God's purposes.
The practical implication of their theodicy is that they do not
reach out to comfort him, and the false comfort of their theological
and philosophical arguments, given the lack of sin to repent and
the crushing weight of Job's suffering, is the path to despair.
There is a further implication of this first point. If the reader
is distracted by the argument between Job and his friends and Job
and God, if we see Job's situation as an argument concerning
the justice of God, then we will miss the point. For Royce,
the point of Job is the questions raised when the reader feels the
inadequacy of standard theodicy and then senses the absence of any
a healing response to Job's suffering. If we look beyond the
argument about the justice of Job's suffering and focus upon
his suffering, then we might wonder what could heal Job,
body and soul. What interpretation could we give to the problem
of Job that would not reduce his suffering to a premise in a philosophical
argument? We might begin to wonder, when and where does suffering
initiate compassionate actions that precede rather than follow philosophical
argument?
The second implication of Royce's pragmatic interpretation
of Job is the possibility of using scriptural reasoning to explain
the meaning of God's answer to Job. Interpretations of God's
"where were you when I..." response to Job shift back
and forth. One traditional perspective is that if God's response
fails to meet Job's questions then that is how it should be.
No one has the right to question God. So, God's reply is designed
to "shock and awe" Job. Another interpretation is that
God's response, even if it does not answer Job's questions,
is, in an indirect way, an answer. At least Job has not been complaining
into the infinite void. God has heard Job and is present to Job
and this is significant enough to provide an answer to Job's
problem. Even though Job misses the point in his self-abasement
before God, God has appeared and through God's presence
God is known. The fact is that if we exempt the beginning of
the narrative, all through the argument of Job, God has been silent.
Even if God's intention is simply to overwhelm Job, God at
least shows up and is not uninformative. Job learns something about
the humanly inconceivable majesty of God.
Whether this last interpretation is ultimately correct, at least
it attends to the basic literary form of the book. It notes and
accounts for the dissonance between Job's demands that God
justify God's actions and the fact that God's majesty
overwhelms and silences Job. But even though an answer that says
nothing relevant is better than no answer at all (at least God has
been hearing, if not listening), when Royce's interpretation
of Job is viewed as a form of implicit scriptural reasoning, it
offers the possibility of a deeper understanding of the problem
of Job.
As previously noted, Royce's response to Job's problem
is to offer the possibility that God is perfected through suffering
Job's suffering. As an aspect of Royce's idealism this
possibility needs to be particularized. In addition, this possibility
has little or no grounds in the text of Job. This interpretation
has its origin in the tradition of the suffering servant of the
First Testament, is appropriated and modified in the New Testament
and is developed as a basic theme in Christian soteriology. Job
was not, however, written as a Christian text, although it is now
part of the Christian canon. However, as a part of the Christian
scriptures it is appropriate to interpret Job in terms of the Christ-event
that formed the church. The problem, however, as Royce indirectly
notes, is that theologies, particularly theodicies, have a tendency
to distort the interpretation of scripture. For example, various
interpretations of the atonement – Jesus Christ suffers for
our sins, takes our places as the object of God's judgment,
or represents to God perfect obedience and faith despite temptation
and suffering – shape the way Christians read scripture. Royce's
own interpretation of the atonement, although shaped by these traditions,
is somewhat unique.
Royce's theory of the atonement is presented in his last
book, The Problem of Christianity.10 In Royce's
soteriology we are saved from evil when a loyal person or community
acts in ways that recover what we lost when we have betrayed of
our highest ideal. In addition, and most importantly, the act that
redeems what we've betrayed creates a situation that is better
than it would have been had the betrayal not occurred. The similarities
and differences between the theory of atonement in The Problem of
Christianity and "The Problem of Job" deserve note.
In each, the response to evil is a pattern of action that responds
to evil by overcoming it. In both, redemptive action is necessary
for the good that redeems the sufferer and her suffering. In each,
evil is necessary and it is never explained away but is resisted.
Finally, in "The Problem of Job" and The Problem
of Christianity, for redemptive action to occur, compassionate
interpretation must guide action.
The difference between these two works is that in "The Problem
of Job," it is God who acts to redeem suffering, while in
The Problem of Christianity, God is replaced by the loyal
individual whose compassion leads her to a sacrifice that redeems
the sufferer. Finally, in The Problem of Christianity the
ultimate end of action is to form a community of the beloved. In
the beloved community members are loyal to the loyalties of others
and act in ways such that each person realizes their highest ideal.
In Royce's interpretation of the book of Job it is God who
will overcome our suffering and will redeem us through love that
is unfailing, unifying and perfecting. There is, however, no reference
to a community of sacrifice and compassionate interpretation. This
is the development that determines the uniqueness of Royce's
later works.
Taken together, Royce's interpretation of Job in "the
Problem of Job" and The Problem of Christianity make
an original contribution to philosophical theology. But when combined
with the practice of scriptural reasoning, Royce's interpretation
of Job and his theory of atonement offer new possibilities for biblical
hermeneutics. As noted above, Royce exemplifies the practice of
reading scripture as a religious text. His interpretation of Job
is that the book expresses suffering with the purpose of creating
an experience of compassion that elicits acts of resistance directed
to overcoming suffering. This, if we stretch the term a bit, is
the performative aspect of the book of Job. The book does not simply
represent suffering. It acts it out, dramatizes it, so that the
reader is involved and implicated in Job's suffering. Once
involved, the reader can identify with any action that responds
to Job's suffering. If there is no response to Job's
suffering, then the reader can identify with the abandonment of
Job. In this sense, the book of Job is a cry of pain. The problem
of Job is that no one responds to his cries because no one is listening,
or those that hear him through their philosophical and theological
abstractions do not act upon the practical logic that makes listening
hearing: when we hear pain behavior (suffering) it means one thing
to us: "help now".
In its reconstruction of the connection between suffering, compassion
and action, through a criticism of a traditional theodicy, the drama
of Job is one way to renew one of the sources of the biblical tradition.
On a fundamental level, the book of Job renews the connection between
Israel's suffering and God's action in the Exodus. When
Israel was suffering, God heard them and responded to free them
from bondage. The problem, of course, is that in Job's circumstance,
God does not appear to respond. But if the book of Job is an act
of renewal of the tradition of God's response to the suffering
of Israel, what kind of renewal is it? How is the tradition renewed
when God never answers Job's questions?
In order to answer these questions by interpreting Job through
scriptural reasoning, it is necessary to restate the argument of
this essay. The argument of this essay has uncovered two rules of
scriptural reasoning. First, pragmatic scriptural reasoning is committed
to interpreting different forms of scripture in terms of how they
represent, shape, and repair conduct. Secondly, scriptural reasoning
is committed to discovering how the scriptures can be used to repair
and reconstruct philosophical arguments. A third rule could be added
to the first two. As a practice for the repair of practices, scriptural
reasoning is committed to affirming some commitment to pragmatism.
Absent an argument for and agreement on this third rule, the first
two rules, derived from Royce's interpretation of Job, can
be correlated with a rule developed by Paul Ricoeur in his article
"Philosophical Hermeneutics and Biblical Hermeneutics".11
For Ricoeur different literary forms shape different kinds of the
faith. Change the form and faith is transformed. From the perspective
that form shapes faith, whatever else the book of Job might be about
it is about faith in God. The basic form of Job is a narrative introduction,
expressions of suffering, arguments that attempt to justify suffering,
more expressions of suffering and then God's "responding"
to Job with a series of rhetorical questions: where were you, when
did you..? This, for Ricoeur, is a way to shape faith. But how does
this form shape faith? An answer to this question will answer the
question of how the book of Job renews the tradition of God's
response to the suffering of Israel.
When Job is questioned by God, (where you there...?) since God's
ways are not our ways, the only possible answer to God's questions
is no. Job was not there when God created the world. Job does not
know the intimate details of the birth and lives of the deer. These
are facts for which, excluding for a moment the ending of Job, we
must account. What then is the faith that answers the problem of
Job?
If scripture does as well as says something, or more accurately
does something by saying something, there are a number of possibilities.
The first is that the purpose of God's discourse is not to
answer Job's question but to show Job who God is. Each rhetorical
question indicates that God does this or that. We can conclude therefore
that this is who God is. God has created tremendous things, creatures
that would over power any conceivable human power and things as
intimate and secret as to be beyond any human wisdom. So, God is
both greater in power that we could possibly imagine, but also greater
in an intimacy so deep that, again, we could not possibly imagine
it. But other than silencing Job, what is the effect of God's
description of God's mighty and intimate powers?
One answer is suggested by taking Royce's interpretation
of Job as a form of scriptural reasoning. It is not a leap in logic
or faith to imagine that the God who created the Leviathan and the
deer would also know what it is to be human. God is the god of the
child as well as the whale. This is what distinguishes God from
all other gods. Even if we do not understand God, God is with all
things. But this, according to Royce's interpretation of Job,
is not what makes God perfect. What makes God perfect is that God
suffers with us. God suffers the conditions that cause suffering,
the tragedies, "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune",
but God also suffers the impossibility of anything other than particular
actions being a response to sufferings. This is what makes God perfect.
If so, then as Royce argues, God knows human suffering. God knows
human suffering and will act in ways that will redeem it. We may
not know how, but God will be the God who God is: creator, redeemer
and sustainer of our lives.
But is the majesty and intimacy of God an answer to the problem
of Job? There is one possibility. One thing that God's self-description
offers Job is the possibility of imagining his experience of suffering
both in terms of the majesty of the scope of God's creation
and the intimate relations of God to his creatures. God's
descriptions of God's creative acts places Job, if not at
God's side, at least close enough to sense the majesty and
intimacy of God. If we take Royce's perspective that God suffers
with us, Job's imagining his suffering in conjunction with
the order of God's intimately perfected creation makes it
possible to renew God's care for the suffering of Israel in
terms of God's care for the suffering of all creation.
This is the way the book of Job attempts to renew the traditions
of the Exodus. Royce's interpretation of Job and the practical,
soteriological aspect of Royce's implicit scriptural reasoning
offers us this possibility. But in addition there is in Royce's
pragmatic interpretation of Job and in the practice of scriptural
reasoning an interest in repairing philosophy through the practice
of scriptural interpretation. In "The Problem of Job",
Royce argues that the difficulty with standard theodicies is that
they are too abstract. Philosophers and theologians do not often
recognize, because they have not often encountered, the tragic intimacies
of evil. If, according to Royce, the purpose of Job's argument
is to move the reader from experience through analysis to response,
then Royce's interpretation of Job adds another rule to the
practice of scriptural reasoning:
Truth is that which heals the suffering of the sufferer
and that which corrects the philosophies that
tend to explain away suffering.
Royce's interpretation of Job when modified through attention
to the intimacies of suffering and when combined with Scriptural
reasoning, leaves us with the truths of compassionate action and
a definition of truth that promises to repair philosophy through
a deepened sense of the tragic. This, according to Royce, is enough
for some kinds of perfection and a promise of other kinds to those
who suffer (like) Job.
1. Rosemary Cowan, Cornel West
and the Politics of Redemption (Malden MA: Blackwell Publishers
Inc., 2003)
2. Ibid. p. 47.
3. Cornel West,"Pragmatism and the Sense of the Tragic",
The Cornel West Reader (New York: Basic Civitas Books),
p. 175.
4. Ibid., p. 181.
5. Ibid., p. 174.
6. Most of this analysis is implicit in Royce's interpretation
of evil in Josiah Royce,"The Problem of Job" (POJ), Studies
in Good and Evil (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1906).
A direct statement of the logical interdependence of suffering and
response forms the argument of Royce's more explicit appropriation
of Pragmatism: The Problem of Christianity (New York: the
MacMillan Company, 1918, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1968).
7. I am indebted to Susannah Ticciati of Cambridge University for
noting and clarifying the implications of this objection.
8. A history of thought about the common law in relation to American
Pragmatism is detailed in Louis Manand's The Metaphysical Club:
A Study of Ideas in America (New York: Farrar. Straus and Giroux,
2001).
9. The argument of this essay will conclude with defining truth
as"that which heals the suffering of the sufferer". This
is a somewhat bold move. A justification, beyond its significance
for an interpretation of Royce's soteriology, would require more
than a few pages of philosophical argument. Here this definition
works on an intuitive level. A more detailed presentation would
indicate how this definition of truth combines and clarifies two
perspectives. The first is Pragmatism's commitment to effective
conduct and the relevance of this definition of truth in clarifying
how pragmatic thought focuses attention on the practices of solving
problems to meet unmet needs. The second perspective is the purpose
of Jewish and Christian scriptures to respond to the suffering of
Israel and the Church. When scripture relates salvation history,
when it dramatizes the ways God responds to the suffering of Israel
and the Church, it is true to the purpose of God to save God's people.
This is the insight that connects Royce's interpretation of Job
to the practices of scriptural reasoning. Much of the argument in
this essay is an application (and simplification) of the work of
Peter Ochs, particularly his book Pierce, Pragmatism, and the
Logic of Scripture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998), and his recent article"Recovering the God of History:
Scriptural Life after Death in Judaism and Christianity" in
Jews and Christians: People of God, ed. Carl E. Braaten
and Robert W. Jenson (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans Press, 2003).
10. Josiah Royce, The Problem of Christianity (New York:
MacMillan Company, 1918, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968).
11. Paul Ricoeur,"Philosophical Hermeneutics and Biblical
Hermeneutics," in From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics,
II, trans. by Kathleen Blamery and John B. Thompson (Evanston,
Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1991), pp. 89-101.
2004, Society
for Scriptural Reasoning |
