The Bible and Western Culture - Part 1 - Job and the Problem of Evil

[Music] the problem of evil is one of the most difficult theological religious questions that's addressed in the Bible and perhaps the thing that makes it most maddening most difficult most trying force is the fact that it has no obvious or easy solution and this problem of evil is something that emerges exclusively within the domain of monotheism and it's worth considering that fact before we go further into the book of Job the book of the Bible which most explicitly addresses the problem of evil think of it this way in any polytheistic tradition let's take the example of ancient Greece there's good and evil there's an understanding of right and wrong but it's hard to know to whom we can assign blame for the existence of evil or any specific evil in the world and also it's not clear that there's anyone to blame at all in other words when something bad happens within the Greek tradition for example it could have happened because Zeus was asleep because Zeus was on earth chasing mortal women because he was occupied with Hara or doing something else in other words there's always the possibility that God will be distracted even the chief of the pantheon in any polytheistic system once you have God distracted once God is on is neither omnipotent nor omniscient which is necessarily the case in a polytheistic system the problem of evil becomes easy to solve somebody else was doing something evil while the main god was occupied or asleep or somewhere else the situation radically changes when we moved to monotheism the I think was Harry Truman that once had on his desk a little sign that said the buck stops here well once you get to monotheism on the always desk the buck stops there and we can't blame anyone else for the prop for the existence of evil in the world it can only somehow be come becoming from Yahweh or somehow Yahweh's implicated in the problem and yet because of Yahweh's perfect moral status because Yahweh is completely good and has none of the temptations that human beings are subject to the problem is how could perfect Yahweh and create a world that's imperfect that contains evil within it so in other words it's worth your consideration from the outset at the of evil is exclusively a problem of monotheism there's no other system of religious thought which generates the problem in quite this radical form assuming that Yahweh is in charge of the universe that he made the universe and that Yahweh is perfectly virtuous and perfectly good the question emerges then how is it that Yahweh can allow for evil and there's no obvious or easy answer to that and one of the reasons why people continually raise this question while it seems that we're always why it seems that were always under the the burden of the this question is that evil is a simple fact of human life if assuming that we are within the tradition of Western monotheism we search the scripture perhaps with less than satisfactory results when we try and figure out why it is that evil confronts us in the world why it is that a perfect God would generate a world that's less than perfect how is it that a perfect God generated us we're so obviously invisibly imperfect the distance the gap between us and the divine is inscrutable it's uncertain and we search around for ways of formulating the problem and from that perhaps will formulate an answer or a series of answers now the book of Job is the one book in the Hebrew Bible which most explicitly addresses the problem of evil and it does it in a very radical form and it does it in a sort of parable form it does it has a for the most part the text of Job is relatively smooth and continuous despite the fact that the fact that it was redacted over a period of some centuries probably post-exilic and despite the fact that the story itself dates back to the earliest phases of semitic myth and literature it goes back certainly before the Year 1000 the story itself is elegant in its simplicity and its directness and it is one of the most bewildering and intriguing of stuff of the biblical stories start out frame the scene first part of the book of Job first chapter actually chapter and a half gives us a narrative frame scene which is in an in and of itself almost completely enigmatic we are set in a place that isn't determinant we don't know exactly what the location is all we know about the place is that Yahweh is there and Yahweh is always surrounded by the various minions and hosts of Yahweh and among these angels divine worshippers these spirits that are connected to Yahweh Satan is there the devil the tempter the problem is before we even get to the story what is Satan doing there why is it that he converses with Yahweh how is it that Yahweh and Satan seem to be on such good terms Satan would seem then not yet to be entirely the personification of evil a tempter a seducer but he somehow seems connected with God and that by itself before we actually get into the story of job when we come back we may find this to be the most enigmatic part of it how is it that symbolically we have Satan in among it within God's heaven within God's domain in such an intimate and personal connection to God and Satan is being very devilish in the Hebrew Bible Satan doesn't make too many appearances we get the snake in the Garden of Eden we get an occasional reference but for the most part Satan is going to make his big appearance in western religion in the Greek Testament here he is making a cameo appearance but the appearance is quite important he and God are up in heaven and they look down I assume that heaven is always up being the the symbolism always connected to it they look down and they see job and it turns out that Yahweh likes job Yahweh likes job a great deal and what he likes particularly about job is that job is Yahweh's faithful servant job never blasphemes job is rigorous and his adherence to the law he is virtuous and is dealing with other people and he shows the appropriate respect to Yahweh he among all the people of the earth is Yahweh's particularly chosen individual he is Yahweh's faithful servant if you had to choose one instantiation of the image of biblical faith tested beyond what would we would think to be the limits of human endurance Jobe is that great image you might want to say the Jobe adopts the characteristic stance of biblical philosophy the stance of absolute resignation but he only gets into the stance of resignation gradually and unwillingly and as is the case with the other chastise been sent by Yahweh there's always a reason for it and at the reserve at the end of this chastisement we will have moved up we will have ratcheted up to a new moral level to a new understanding of the relationship between the human and the divine so job is God's faithful servant he's down he's married to mrs. Jobe they have children and of course at the time that this story is generated Jobe is a wealthy man but it's so old it's so archaic it goes so far back into human history money hasn't been invented yet remember money gets invented coin gets invented about 700 BC in Lydia well job obviously goes back to Semitic traditions that are from the earlier millennium prior to that so Joe was a wealthy man which means that he has lots of goats lots of sheep that's what it means to be a wealthy man back then we probably lots of slaves large family one of the things that you should emphasize and think about when you are looking at the Hebrew Bible in particularly in particular is that God's blessing when God blesses someone what do you sign of that blessing is the fact that they get to live a long time and they have surrounded by lots of living things in particular a family for example Methuselah gets to live to be an enormous number of years no Moses lives to be very old Noah lives to be very old if you live to be old and you have a large family and you have a large amount of possessions that's the particular because possessions are living things that's the sign of God's abundance that's the sign of God's blessed blessing so Jobe is described as being God's faithful servant he also has the appropriate trappings to be understood as God's faithful servant God makes a man prosperous and happy and for that reason he's giving flocks and a family and things like that now Joe Satan and God are talking up in heaven and I always wondered what does evening God talk about I mean how is it that this frame scene works it's perhaps proper not to ask too many pointed questions about this visual frame scene because although it's very necessary for the later kind of moral message that's being told if you ask too many questions you'll get you about the correlation early between Satan and God you'll find that it's more more enigmatic and the solutions turned out to be well not entirely satisfactory we'll come back to that Satan and God are talking and they see Jobe the faithful servant down there and he's got his flocks his families a happy man he's a virtuous man he does what God tells him to do he shows the appropriate respect to God Satan says he doesn't really like you he doesn't really admire you God for what you are he doesn't really respect or worship you Jobe only goes through the motions of acting as if he were a religious morally faithful man because of the things you give him you give him flocks you give him a family you give my wife you give him all the nice things in life if you Yahweh had not given him great stuff Jobe wouldn't like you and he wouldn't follow you he wouldn't be your faithful servant now again this is a peculiar case job is trying to bait Yahweh and it seems like Yahweh goes for it it's very hard to understand what Yahweh would Satan baits Yahweh rather and it's hard to see why Yahweh would go for that why would y'all way allow himself be provoked by Satan who is inexplicably up in his divine court well we'll take it over the argument a little bit further God actually replies and says well if you don't believe that job is my faithful servant go down and test job Satan from this perspective is the tester he's the one who practically ascertains the inner core we are moving from the outside observation of job and his behavior in his ritual observance to the inner core of the man we can only do that by symbolically stripping away the externalities his family his possessions all the other good things in life so in some ways it seems that even Satan is doing God's will not that he's being that he's provoking God but rather that God is going to reveal the difference between the inner and the outer between the attitude of of religious faith as a matter of soul and the mere going through the motions of religious observance on the outside so Satan is going to allow us to have a look into the soul of Jobe into the soul of God's faithful servant and he does that by engaging in this colloquy with God which results in Satan going down and doing these desperate evils to job so Satan comes down and he kills the flocks that Joba depended on he sends in invaders to enslave and then kill his and kill his children and Joab looks around it says my possessions my family everything that was important to me gone almost everything that was important to me there's one thing that was important to me that's still there it's God but I do not know why God sends me these afflictions job does not blaspheme he is not willing to hang the blame on Yahweh he is willing to acknowledge that Yahweh runs history he is willing to accept the fact that Yahweh sends chastisements for whatever reasons he has but he doesn't understand the reason behind it if you think about that chapter from Isaiah where it says my thoughts are not your thoughts well very much the book of Job is in written in that vain my thoughts are not your thoughts and Joab is unable to fathom the point that Yahweh is making the reasons behind you always the afflictions he always sent so Joab is sitting there and the ashes of his life regretting the terrible misfortune seized found himself in mrs. Jobe the only one left in his family has come to give him advice and her theological advice is curse God and die now that's not a very hopeful or cheery sort of a message and we would hope for that that the Bible might offer us more solace than curse God and die and in fact mrs. Jobe is a sort of Paragon for the lack of religious faith for the person who accepts the world as it appears she is the person for whom appearance and reality are the same thing for whom inside and outside are the same thing what is important about Jobe what illustrates the spiritual depth of job is that job has an inside a soul as well as an outside so even though his outside is afflicted even though his children are killed his flocks are taken away he suffers enormous misfortune that's all external to job and Jobe is willing to say I do not blaspheme I am not willing to curse God and die I will never curse God under any circumstances well up in heaven this is making a big hit God and Satan are watching job's afflictions and Satan says double or nothing let's see if we can do it this way Satan says to God the reason why job is not willing to blaspheme is because he really never cared about possessions and really never cared about his family none of those things really matter Joe is not really your faithful servant he merely appears to be and the reason why he is going through the motions of acting as if he were Yahweh's faithful servant is because Yahweh has not stricken him physically has not sent physical disease physical pain to job directly he's more than willing to be unsympathetic to his family and not care about his possessions so long as you don't get him in the body wears which is where it really counts once again it seems that God takes the bait God says gives Satan license to go back down and afflict your job with boils and sores from head to toe so he's covered with terrible wounds and sores and he's wretched and unhappy and his wife is looking at I'm wondering why don't you curse God and die job bears up under the suffering job says look I'm God's faithful servant despite the fact that my life is ruined that I've lost everything that is important in the world to a man and I've even lost my own physical health I will not curse Yahweh I will not presume to judge God I understand what my position is in the world I understand what his position is I think that I am that I haven't done anything to deserve or merit this chastisement but I myself don't know and I whatever happens I know that I will remain faithful to the Covenant with Yahweh and I will remain God's faithful servant so we find ourselves at an impasse job is in a wretched condition Satan seems to be quite happy because he's doing all kinds of evil here in the world and perhaps the most satanic thing about Satan the most the most I don't know Promethean in its futility is the fact that he makes a wager with God what are your chances of winning a bet with God very small as a matter fact they're non-existent he's God God knows how the story ultimately comes out because he knows everything which means that it isn't even possible for Satan ever to win this argument the outcome is never in doubt in God's mind he is outside the realm of temporality so perhaps the most satanic thing about Satan is it is such an apostle of futility he grasps the possibility of tormenting job to no effect because he knows that there's no way of telling God that he's wrong if God says that job is his faithful servant God's right there's no doubt about that that's the way the Hebrew Bible works if that's the case then we go back and look at Satan and we look at the image of Promethean futility I mean it's really miltonic the image of satan we get here he would rather do evil on earth then reconcile himself with God in heaven he knows it's futile he knows it's not possible to do anybody evil to job and the evil will not ultimately proven to be right God couldn't be wrong and that doesn't even slow Satan down so Satan is not just the tempter Satan is the image of Promethean futility of humanism in the sense that it never achieves or reaches or longs for never gestures at the divine it's strictly surface strictly body strictly alienated from the divine being so Satan is a very fascinating character here not so much because of what he says but because of the implications of his actions and the frame scene the scenes and the scenes with Satan here in the book of Job will repay a very careful and conscientious reading this frame scene is full of interesting and suggestive gestures at the relationship between good and evil as it's understood in the biblical tradition so we have a sort of Miltonic Promethean satan who does evil particularly to good men like Jobe because he enjoys doing evil not because he could ever possibly prove God wrong such as the nature of satanic futility well in keeping with this theme of satanic futility job's friends come for a visit and Jobe has kind of know-it-all friends friends whose pretensions towards omniscience in this case theological knowledge are not only unpleasant but they move in the direction of the blasphemous jobs three friends are theologians they believe that they understand the divine mind they not only believe that they understand God's purposes in this world but they think that they can justify God's ways to man they are rather Miltonic theologians John jobs three friends believe that they can discern in the pattern of human events and which they can only see at the surface of course the hidden meaning God's hidden purposes in the chastisement that gets sent out these in some ways are not only would-be theologians but would-be prophets well it turns out that a colloquy emerges which focuses our attention on the problem of evil as it's presented in the biblical tradition and his theological friends turn out to be theological wannabes it turns out to be impossible to discern God's ways and discern God's plans and there's a cycle of colloquy between Joe and his friends now it's three friends Elif as Bildad and Zophar come to commiserate but their commiseration is not entirely sympathetic they are not only trying to discern God's ways and they're not only implicitly alleging that they understand God's plan for the universe which is what every theodicy discloses they're also implicitly suggesting that because they have not been afflicted and Jobe has that they are more righteous than he is if we work on the assumption which the three friends are assuming that God sends things only for sufficient purposes and that these sufficient purposes are discernible by human reason alone well then the fact that Jobe has his family killed loses his possessions and has these terrible diseases is prima facie evidence that Jobe is guilty of some great transgression if it's not possible to work back from the root fact of the transgression to some hidden sin then the whole project of theodicy breaks down that means that it's impossible to know God's ways ultimately God will remain inscrutable so job's friends have an agenda because they are justifying God's ways not just a man in general but specifically to job but also and this is what's noteworthy what you ought to pay careful attention to when you read this passage this central part of job they are justifying the selves if job has been afflicted and they have not that means that they are good and job is wicked if they do not succeed in showing that job's affliction comes from as wickedness then implicitly they fail to justify themselves that means that the fact that they're not afflicted does not demonstrate that they are virtuous in the sight of God so there is a powerful element of human pride there's a powerful desire to justify oneself built into these theological wannabes and there is a very deep and rather caustic message about the possibilities and parameters and circumstances of theology and theodicy built right into the story of Jobe therefore the failure of the three friends to construct an adequate theodicy to comprehend thoroughly the mind of God means that in the long run it's not possible for any of us none of us can justify ourselves in God's sight and none of us can know God's inscrutable purposes for the world so now let's look at the colloquy as they engage in and let's say the the central part of the book of Job is roughly from chapter 3 to chapter 31 and there are three sets of colloquy and three friends and three is of course always a very auspicious number in the Bible a little later on when I talk about the book of John and that the Gospel of John I will talk about the significance in numerology and number symbolism in the Bible but for now just consider the fact that 3 is a heavenly number 3 is a very auspicious number and the 3 sets of 3 always suggest that we're gradually moving up levels towards some final revelation which we will get towards the end now Jobe and his friends jobs friends come to them and they say there are a couple of possibilities possibility number one is that you yourself have sinned and you're lying to us Jobe says that he's not and takes a whole series of oaths to the effect that he's not Keith's point being that job since he is God's faithful servant will not take Yahweh his name in vain when he swears all these oaths to by the name of the sacred name of Yahweh to the effect that he is not to the best of his knowledge done anything to merit these sufferings we are again at an impasse job's friends do not dare take such a corresponding oath to the effect that they themselves are justified so we have a tremendous tension building up a second try that job's friends take is that perhaps your family has done some secrets in because at this point in time the idea of individual guilt was connected to the idea of collective guilt there was the possibility of not simply being guilty for your specific sins but carrying with you a burden of guilt from your ancestors think of the sin of Adam Adam and Eve and the fall in the garden means that we are all depraved we are all born with original sin so you must emphasize the fact and consider and remember the fact that job's guilt if there is such a thing may not be individual he himself may not have done anything it may be collective guilt a final attempt by the the friends is to say that well perhaps you yourself have not done it knowingly but perhaps in the process of engaging in your usual activities you have unintentionally transgressed it turns out the job rebuffs that - it has an argument to meet each and every accusation presented by the friends a couple of things to consider God's accusation and human accusations are fundamentally different human accusations are unreliable human accusations particularly when they are made individually are dubious within the numerology of the Bible the number two is always the number of society if you go back to things like a Deuteronomy the number of witnesses you need to make a case stick in Deuteronomy deuteronomistic law is 2 you have to have multiple witnesses each one of his friends comes in with a separate allegation against Jobe you don't have the requisite number of witnesses and these are only hypothetical transgressions in any case the point here is that job's friends are not justified in the sight of God and for that reason they are not morally equipped to accuse Jobe the idea of juk the idea that judgment is the province of God and his inscrutable handing out of punishment and its opposite is not to be understood or completely comprehended by human beings this is what I would call a philosophy of resignation I inclined to say that if all of job's friends who appear to think themselves religious men and who appear to think that they are knowledgeable about religious issues if it turns out that they are unable to know either the state of their own soul or the state of job's soul or God's plan for the universe it will find it will follow then that the god yahweh the god which we worship in the text of the hebrew bible is at some level inscrutable mysterious this is the opposite conception of the world to the conception of the world worked out by the ancient greeks for the greeks its knowable it's rational for the Hebrews it is fundamentally unknowable it is fundamentally mysterious the thing that will be important about this mystery is that insofar as people conceptualize the world as being a mysterious entity not ultimately susceptible to rational analysis and comprehension that aren't then and only then will faith become a virtue if you think the opposite the Greek idea that the world is rationally knowable faith is an absolute vise so it is only if you make the assumption that Yahweh is ultimately unknowable that human beings are incapable of justifying themselves or of understanding God's plans for the universe except through special dispensation and special revelation then you have the foundation upon which you can build virtue called faith you need that idea of mystery you need God's and screw Tbilisi for faith to be a virtue and that's why it's only a virtue only a theological virtue in the tradition that comes out of Jerusalem rather than Athens well Jobe is engaging in this deep and very perplexing and rather painful colloquy with his friends if that's what you want to call them and at the end of this uncertain and inconclusive dialogue a new figure emerges now the third colloquy between droven is Flint and his friends is incomplete one of his friends speaks and then there's a small section from a second friend the third friend never gets a chance to talk I would venture the conjecture here that the text is corrupt that in the process of doing these redactions that probably we want to give the third friend another speech and and then take away one of the three consecutive speeches that Joe gives there so do keep in mind when you're reading this the fact that the reduction isn't perfect and that although it's a lot more sophisticated than the reductions that we saw in Gilgamesh we are still a long way from having a perfectly smooth coherent narrative now the end of this series of ambiguous colloquy is we get a new figure and he's obviously a redaction too and his name is elihue lah who is a young man who apparently has spiritual and moral wisdom the first and most indisputable sign of his moral wisdom is that he knows how to keep his mouth shut oh and that's wonderful there are so few people in Scripture that know how to shut up and elihue is great for that he's been sitting here all through this colloquy listening to these gentlemen or Joab and his friends who are a generation older expressed their views on justification and on God's plan for the universe and I'm on the meaning of evil on the connection between good and evil and a problem of evil in human life and he has found these reflections more and more provoking because it seems that the friends are implying that they understand God's ways and they are implying that they are justified and elihue believes this to be blasphemous he's restrained himself out of respect for their age but the third time around he's becoming rather worn and rather concerned about the tendency here he's even more concerned about Jove himself Jobe insists again and again and again that he has done nothing to deserve God's chastisement implicitly what he is saying is that he is capable of judging his own moral status and if God sees fit to chastise him he is in a position to tell God that it is unmerited the point is here that Elijah comes back in reproves job he says look if you are morally virtuous then you completely accept whatever cards God deals you and if God has decided to send you chastisement if he intends to kill your family or if he intends to kill even you you must accept that with a complete and utter resignation you do not shake your fist at God the way say Prometheus does towards Zeus a Yahweh being the one god of monotheism is not only absolutely powerful he's absolutely morally virtuous and what Yahweh does is right by definition it is predict ik there is nothing to talk about so if job is going to insist on the one hand that yeah that he believes in Yahweh and that he is God's faithful servant and that he is in fact consistent with Yahweh's demands he cannot at the same time say that he is blameless that he is sinless in the sight of Yahweh he is in no position to judge Yahweh insofar as he does it is blasphemous insofar as he thinks that he doesn't deserve punishment he does anyone who thinks that they are justified in God's sight is mistaken anyone who thinks that God might capriciously are arbitrarily or pointlessly give out suffering in the world defames and blasphemes the name of Yahweh this is the great transgression of job in a way Joe was tried and found wanting he was tried because on the outside he appears to be God's faithful servant in all of his behavior and all his actions God finds nothing to find fault with or there's nothing to find fault with in his behavior that Satan can see but if God and Satan look down say that's my faithful servant we look within and we see a man who is somewhat proud of his own moral status who likes being God's faithful servant and kind of Pat's himself on the back about the possibility of reconciling himself with the law of Yahweh so there's a certain degree of what we call hubris or perhaps even better self satisfaction in job's insistence again and again and again even to the point of swearing oaths using the name of Yahweh to the fact that he is morally justified the point is that anyone who thinks that they're morally justified isn't anyone who thinks they understand God's mind does not and the LORD thy God reveals himself when he wants to and how he wants to and anyone who objects to that is not a real faithful servant of Yahweh so I would be inclined to say that first of all that Allah who is probably redacted from another tradition if you can imagine that this this problem of evil has been floating around ever since monotheism was developed or gradually developed and the story of Jobe the righteous man who is tried probably has it's Mesopotamian or Near Eastern anta see this it seems like a most likely possibility wisdom literature which is the way job is class along with proverbs and things like that have men precursors in ancient Mesopotamian literature so there's a good chance that it's a real old problem what the religion of Yahweh is gonna add to this is a lie who I can imagine scribes redacting the story of Jobe not quite getting the last little colloquy with the phret with the three friends correct but knowing that we have to bring in Elihu we need some sort of Angel ex machina or ally who ex machina somebody has to come ex machina to show that Joe really isn't justified if we are capable of showing that Jobe is not justified that means that God's justice is preserved and it means that we are drawing a distinction between the external the ritual observance the actions people engage in and the internal facts of soul although Joe has been going through all the motions Jobe is proud of his spiritual status he believes that he can give Yahweh tips on how to run the universe and Yahweh is not interested in getting tips from us as to how to run things he knows everything and we don't and so when we disagree with Yahweh that's the same thing as being wrong the whole point of the book of Job is to say there are two stances that the person of faith can have you can agree with Yahweh and that's the same thing as being right because you always always right you can also disagree with Yahweh and that's the same thing as being wrong because Yahweh's always right so when you attempted to disagree with Yahweh think of the book of Job the answer is you're wrong if you think that Yahweh's punishments or chastisements or trials are capricious you are even more wrong because you are justifying yourself in the same way the Jobe did and you are presuming to judge God what a lie who says and this is certainly one of the core ideas of biblical monotheism is that the LORD thy God is awesome and inscrutable and separate from you and however he dispenses chastisement in history it's your job is to deal with it not to second-guess him he's second-guessing me wrong so elihue brings us back to the tradition of biblical faith and it's very interesting the colloquy that we get right after that because as soon as lai who goes and Jobe is on his own we get a chat with Yahweh Yahweh makes a personal appearance not personal a sense that we get a burning bush this time Yahweh talks to job out of the whirlwind and I must confess this is one of my favorite images of the deity in the biblical tradition because what's more powerful and awesome and intimidating and bigger than you are than a tornado think about the fact that as a tornado approaches there's little or nothing you can do it's bigger than you are it's stronger than you are there is no way you could possibly contend with such a force and in addition to the fact that it is awesome in its power it is a living not quite a living but it is a dynamic symbol of chaos may I suggest that God's speaking to job out of the whirlwind is Yahweh talking to Joe out of the realm of what appears to be moral chaos the whirlwind is the simple brute fact isset II of history with which we are forced to deal I would be inclined to say that Yahweh in the form of whirlwind is the V he's the god of the Hebrew Bible this is the God that hardens Pharaoh's heart this is the God that is the severe judge of all human transgressions this is the God that we are frightened by and intimidated by this is God as universal lawgiver this is God as inscrutable force this is God as being utterly separate are totally different utterly apart from humanity it is only under the most unusual circumstances that this face of God makes itself manifest on the whole those who would get too close to the divine image die as a result of it Moses is given a chance to see the burning bush Joe was given a chance to talk to God in the form of a whirlwind but apart from extremely rare cases like that such a close interaction with the divinity means that humanity just is crushed by the burden of absorbing God's awesome Majesty so here we have the whirlwind and Jobe covered with boils sore afflicted he's got all the problems in the world his family's dead as sheep were gone he's got sores on his body and his friends think they're better than he is it's not the kind of the icing on the cake so he's sitting there amidst the dust and the ruins of his life and a tornado comes up and starts talking to him so it's gonna be a bad day and what does the tornado say tornado says we're worth thou when I created the world speak if thou hast understanding that's in the King James Version if I remember correctly but the idea is this I'm Yahweh I make mountains I make planets I make mackerel I make oceans I make everything what do you know how to make nothing all you do is complain all you do is think you're justified Yahweh is not pleased it turns out that the little colloquy between Yahweh and Jobe suggests that Yahweh doesn't think that he's obligated to explain himself to worms like Jobe there's a fine passage in chapter I think it's chapter 25 of Job where the human beings are kind of compared to maggots and worms in their relationship to Yahweh and I think the the gist of the book of Job is that human beings have a great deal more in common with maggots and worms and they do with the inscrutable divinity and for the same reason that it would be presumptuous for a worm or a maggot to tell God how to run the universe since maggots and worms don't know what's going on it would probably be prudent and faithful and probably be appropriate for us not to make suggestions to Yahweh as to how he might run history it turns out that if you believe y'all ways there at all one of the entailments one of the con commitments of this idea is that everything happens for a providential reason and it not only happens to other people it also happens to you so the point is then if you believe in Yahweh it is necessary to make a moral distinction between good and evil in the world it is necessary to be able to distinguish between right and wrong between the faithful adherence to Yahweh's commands and the rejection and alienation from Yahweh's commands if you make that distinction a you must work on the assumption that you are not able to completely fulfill the terms of the Covenant in other words you must make the assumption of your own sinfulness of your own depravity in the eyes of Yahweh this is one way of thinking about original sin if that is the case if people aren't really depraved if they are only in fits and starts able to maintain their moral fidelity to the principles of Yahweh then that means that in every case for every person under every circumstance when bad stuff happens to us we deserve it we may not like it we may not see the direct cause a connection but there can be no question that Yahweh has his reasons if you believe that Yahweh is there and if you believe that his moral order really is universal then it follows that you are not allowed to have any complaint against Yahweh he does not want advice he always thought it through already when you are tempted to give him advice go back and read the book of Job that is what the book of Job is for it is to force you into an absolute and radical position of faith which is a moral virtue unique to the tradition of Western monotheism or certainly unique in its intensity the Greeks would find this rather fanatical and rather excessive but if you view the world as mysterious if you view Yahweh is inscrutable and if you hew every human being as intrinsically depraved then all the pieces of the puzzle come together then although we have an incomplete understanding of the world we have at least a black box the mystery of Yahweh's Providence in which to throw all our uncertainties and that means that once we have a way of shrugging off the burden of not understanding you always plan for the universe we are also able to throw off the burden of justifying ourselves in God's eyes it turns out that justifying oneself in God's eyes is superfluous because God already knows our moral status it turns out that when Satan and God were talking upstairs in heaven or wherever it is that they talk together well it turns out that God knew that although Joe was going through the motions of being his faithful servant deep inside within the soul of Jobe there was a certain unreconstructed pride in his status as God's faithful servant there was a certain idea that he really deserved a house or another house because there Honda knew then but that he deserved flocks and a family and the good things in life after all he had been going through the motions for this long there's a sense in which Satan was not wrong in saying that job's religious commitment or at least part of it is somewhat connected to the good things that Yahweh had given him might look at it this way I don't know if those who know the philosophy Immanuel Kant the terminology who perhaps make more sense of what Satan is saying is that Jobos heteronomous in the sense that he is caused to obey and go through the ritual observance of Yahweh's dictates on account of the fact that Yahweh gives some nice stuff the proper stance apparently is to be faithful to Yahweh and to refuse to blaspheme against Yahweh regardless of what Yahweh offers you because Yahweh is justified whether he is giving you good things or evil things Yahweh has his reasons so for that reason we are enjoined in the book of Job to an absolute position of faith that is unique certainly not anything like the tradition we get out of Athens and in addition to that we are also enjoined to become job like to become God's faithful servant and accept whatever it is that God dishes out to us in the same spirit of humility and in the same spirit of mystery it's this mystery of suffering in the mystery of evil as it is introduced through an all-loving monotheistic God that the problem of the book of Job addresses and I be tempted to say that it doesn't entirely say it is an entirely satisfactory and it's answering of the question we ask again and again why is there evil in the world and it turns out that it's a dumb question because Yahweh surely knows and we surely don't and unless y'all we wants to tell us we're not going to find out in the interim between now and the end of the world or the final judgment of the world or whatever it is Yahweh chooses to disclose the meaning of evil in this world the proper position for us is absolute submission to the will of God and job instantiates that he's the great image of the absolute life of faith and he serves as a sort of icon for the great religious thinkers in the Western tradition if those those of you know the work of say Blaise Pascal or Soren Kierkegaard these men are recapitulation of the job story the most ardent and powerful and deep of the interpreters of the Western religious tradition were the ones who tried to solve the problem of evil and good who tried to offer The Odyssey who tried to comprehend God's mind and then in a spirit of humility and in a flow using a philosophy of resignation threw up their hands and said I give up and I guess that's not the problem that's the solution in other words it's telling human beings what their moral boundaries are what the perimeter of their possible knowledge is that defines the human condition what Yahweh is doing for us here is insisting on two ideas which are in a certain degree of tension God is a moral God who creates a universal moral law and yet we can never completely understand the way in which this moral law is realized here in the world it turns out then that the philosophy of resignation that's instantiate it in the book of Job is probably the greatest religious icon or image or symbol that is introduced by the Hebrew Bible into the Western tradition of art and literature

Channel: Michael Sugrue

Views: 9,317

Rating: 4.9264708 out of 5

Keywords: Michael Sugrue, Dr. Michael Sugrue, Lecture, History, Philosophy, Bible, Western Culture, Job, Evil

Id: teQhNXBMxvE

Length: 43min 32sec (2612 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 25 2020