Defending God: Biblical Responses to the Problem of Evil

by James L. Crenshaw

In the ancient Near East, when the gods detected gross impropriety in their ranks, they subjected their own to trial. When mortals suspect their gods of wrongdoing, do they have the right to put them on trial? What lies behind the human endeavor to impose moral standards of behavior on the gods? Is this effort an act of arrogance, as Kant suggested, or a means of keeping theological discourse honest? It is this question James Crenshaw seeks to address in this wide-ranging study of ancient theodicies. Crenshaw has been writing about and pondering the issue of theodicy - the human effort to justify the ways of the gods or God - for many years. In this volume he presents a synthesis of his ideas on this perennially thorny issue. The result sheds new light on the history of the human struggle with this intractable problem.

Genres: Theology, Philosophy, Religion

288 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2005

About the author

Professor Crenshaw, who taught Old Testament at Duke Divinity School from 1987-2008, is one of the leading interpreters of wisdom literature in the Bible.

Reviews

[Mark Franklin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tremendous overview of the writings on theodicy over the last century. Crenshaw is readable, a somewhat rare quality in theological writings. He is also authoritative- he is the expert on theodicy and the problem of pain in the present generation. Fantastic starting place for reading on this topic.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was lead to this book by Bart Ehrman's book, God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question - Why We Suffer as a more scholarly exposition on the various solutions to the Problem of Evil offered by the Hebrew (and Christian) scriptures. Crenshaw works through 11 different main solutions. The variety is much wider than I was aware of.

I was most caught by a quote towards the end of the book, where Crenshaw is discussing his personal response to this panoply. "While I cannot subscribe to the validity of the portrait of the God in the Bible, I draw my own painting from it, together with my religious longing, and offer it as a viable alternative. Consistency would require me to abandon the enterprise altogether. That I am not yet willing to do so is testimony to the power of a literary construct and a religious community shaped by poetic imagination." An intellectually honest admission.

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pro: you'll see the wide variety of responses in the bible to the question of how evil and a benevolent God can coexist. The survey is very comprehensive -- within the OT/Hebrew bible.

Con: all this is from the perspective of someone who ultimately believes the bible to be nothing but meager human attempts to speculate about a deity in anthropocentric ways. His ultimate conclusion, if I understand him correctly, is that there is no adequate explanation for how god can allow evil in the world, so the author will be content to appropriate the various passages in the bible, fallible as he sees them, and adapt them for his own purposes. This is ironic, because he spent an entire chapter decrying this very practice by the biblical writers. There is only one short reference to Jesus, and it's rather unsatisfying.

[KA · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent take on theodicy in the Hebrew Bible!