by Thomas G. Long

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 158 pages

reviewed by BRIAN R. PAULSON

This is a book to be read, pondered, used, then reused frequently in the exercise of ministry. It is a book that speaks to many of the deeply profound and confounding questions of our age.

It clearly spoke to me. After September 11, 2001, the boundaries of my preaching necessarily broadened to address the persistence of evil in new and more essential ways. Long offered guidance by pointing to another date in history — All Saints Day, November 1, 1755. On that day a tsunami wiped out the pious city of Lisbon, Portugal, while it knelt praying in its cathedrals. Long carefully outlines the way that horrific event upended centuries of Christian thought about the problem of suffering and evil in the world. Today the omnipresent influence of unbelieving writers like Bart Ehrman in print and PBS places theodicy squarely before us all.

So with a steady, thorough and illustrative voice, Professor Long offers a Christian response to what he calls the “impossible chess match” of theodicy — four mutually untenable propositions: 1. There is a God. 2. God is all-powerful. 3. God is loving and good. 4. There is innocent suffering. The logic of these propositions demands one must yield. A problem for believers is that these propositions are constructed around a God not identically found in Scripture.

Even so, we cannot dodge theodicy as preachers simply because someone else has framed the question. The question of theodicy remains, is trumpeted in popular life and is spiritually crippling for members of our congregations. Long draws upon the work of Peter Berger who shifts the understanding of theodicy to become “a workable sense of meaning and coherence in the face of experiences that challenge the consistency of one’s worldview.” This is what many desire when confronting evil and suffering today.

Professor Long proposes the “impossible chess match” can be transformed by the Christian gospel. After thoughtfully considering the book of Job, he settles on Jesus’ parable of the wheat and weeds to unlock a Christian response to theodicy. He speaks to the cause of evil, whether we can fix it and when it shall come to an end. His approach is not some mathematical solution, but it is helpful and faithful — seeing through a mirror dimly.

Here is what this book will not do: offer a simple answer for the most probing “why” questions about evil. (Darn!) Instead, it offers an honest and digestible approach to the most difficult questions faced by a preacher (or any Christian). He presents the challenge of a grieving father after an Asian tsunami as well as the agonized fury of a mother whose child wandered and drowned in a pool. He speaks to the onslaught of war, the abandonment of domestic violence, the Shoah, cancer, AIDS and even the death of Rabbi Harold Kushner’s son. The book does not dodge the hard stuff.

I intend to use this book for my preaching, my teaching and in preparation for the hardest pastoral conversations. The book achieved its purpose — helping “preachers and parishioners think through how faith in a loving God speaks to the facts of life in a suffering world.”

BRIAN R. PAULSON is pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Libertyville, Ill.