Caritas et veritas 2012, 2(1):27-38 | DOI: 10.32725/cetv.2012.005
Suffering As a Way to Knowing God: On the Interpretation of the Book of Job
- Jihočeská univerzita v Českých Budějovicích, Teologická fakulta, Kněžská 8, 37001 České Budějovice
The present study is focused on the book of Job as a whole. It is concerned with the reasoning of all the actors of the drama and with the way, how they perceive the main problems of the book: the suffering, God's justice, the sense of the whole creation and of the human life in it. The article points out the complexity of the reasoning both of Job and of his friends and its nuances. At the same time, it helps to understand the God's answer to Job. All three worldviews, present in the text (i.e. Job's, his friends' and God's) are complex ways, how to perceive and understand the world and the human life. Both "human" positions, that of Job and that of his friends, are sustained by a lot of valid arguments and the today reader knows them both and well. In the final God's speech, the author does not offer any unambiguous rational answer to the presence if injustice and suffering in the world. On the contrary, he exhorts Job to abandon both his self-centered and the rational speculations of his friends and to accept a new, wide opened and humble attitude to the world and to himself.
Keywords: Old Testament; Job; suffering; theodicy.
Published: March 30, 2012 Show citation
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