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PUTTING GOD ON TRIAL:
The Biblical Book of Job A literary, legal and philosophical
study- Robert Sutherland. 1. The story opens
with the judgment that Job is “blameless, one who fears God and turns
away from evil.” (Job 1:1) It is
a judgment God himself will twice endorse. (Job 1:8; 2:3) Job is the very
best he can be, the very best all of us can be. His blamelessness verges on sinlessness. The
book itself may be a parable on the human condition. From the start, the
author structures his theodicy to exclude the traditional explanations of
punishment for sin (Augustine) and character development for immaturity (Irenaeus) as reasons for the evil that will befall
Job. There is “no reason”
in Job that merits the quantity and quality of the evil that befalls him.
(Job 2:3) 2. Satan challenges
the truth of God’s judgment on Job. (Job 3. God accepts
Satan’s challenge to create a world of undeserved and unremitted suffering in order to settle this question of
righteousness and reward. (Job 1:12; 2:6 )
God chooses Job as his personal champion in this trial by ordeal and
authorizes his destruction. (Job 1:13-19; 2:7-8) From this point on,
the author is presenting God as being causally responsible for the evil that
befalls humankind. God accepts that
causal responsibility for evil (Job 2:3); Job attributes that evil to God
(Job 4. Why, why, why,
why, why? (Job 3:11-23) With this
five-fold cry, Job turns to God for answers for the evil in the world. He knows God must have a hidden purpose
that he has not revealed. (Job Through five key
speeches, Job turns his cry into a demand through an Oath of Innocence. This was a self-contained lawsuit involving
a summary trial in absentia and two default judgments. No formal court was required since the oath
made God himself the court. No summons
was required since the oath dispensed with it. No witnesses were required since the
testimony of the deponent was all that was needed. (a) Job’s
statement of claim is a simple one. God is the author of underserved evil in
the world and must explain himself. He
has deprived Job and humankind of the reason why. (Job 27:2) (b) Job’s
proof of his claim is a lengthy positive (Job 29:2-25) and negative confession
(Job 31:1-40) (c) Job’s
enforcement of his claim is through a summary default mechanism. If God does not appear or appearing does
not give a morally sufficient answer for evil in the world, then two
judgments issue. The first is called
“vindication”, a finding of causal responsibility that Job and
humankind are not responsible for much of the evil that befalls them but God
is. The second is called
“condemnation”, a finding of moral blameworthiness attaches to
that causal responsibility. The first
is automatic; the second is something Job must pronounce by way of a
curse. And God guaranteed he would
execute that curse. (1 Kings 8:31-32; 2 Chronicles 6:22-23) This is high drama:
an appeal to God, through God and against God for crimes against
humanity. Job has set in motion the
legal machinery to condemn God if no sufficient answer is forthcoming. At this point, the
author is fleshing out a theodicy of necessity through the Oath of
Innocence. The moral necessity of
doing evil is expressed through the finding of causal responsibility for
evil, “vindication”. The
justification of a higher good, a selfless love of men and women for God, is
expressed through the possibility of “condemnation” if that
reason is either not forthcoming or not morally sufficient. This distinction in the summary default
judgments is what makes the defense of necessity possible. 5. To the
astonishment of all God appears, but cannot give a reason for his actions
based on the restrictions created in his trial with Satan. He enters into a strategy of
indirection. (a) In his first
speech to Job, God suggests the existence of purpose and providence through
the language of constancy and control. (Job 38:4-39:30) (b) In his second
speech to Job, God suggest the existence of purpose in evil through the image
of Leviathan. Leviathan is
Isaiah’s name for a cross-cultural symbol of the moral evil that
strikes at the heart of creation. It is deeply poetic image with extensive
ties to the Babylonian and Canaanite literatures that preceded it. God admits to creating that evil. (Job
40:15,19) But the image carries much more with it. Isaiah used Leviathan as a moral metaphor
for an apocalyptic end of the world when God would destroy and explain all
evil including Leviathan. (Isaiah 25:6-9; 27:1; 28:9-13; 29:18-21;
30:18-21) God wants Job to pick up on
that hint and his description of Leviathan (Job 41:1-7) draws heavily on
Isaiah’s messianic banquet when Leviathan is served as the main
course. God rests his case,
having hinted at the existence of a defense but having never presented
it. In doing so, God opens himself to
the condemnation that is the second part of the enforcement mechanism of
Job’s Oath of Innocence. But God
also puts Job and us to the ultimate test: will we condemn God (a finding of
moral blameworthiness) so that we ourselves might be justified (a finding of
causal non-responsibility)? (Job 40:8) Job elects not to
condemn God but to continue to worship him. (a) He intuits the
existence of a hidden purpose in evil based on God’s presentation of
the image of Leviathan. (Job 42:2) (b) He despises the
premature judgment of condemning God before God has had a chance to present
his case more fully. He melts to his
knees in worship. (Job 42:6a) The Hebrew
here “em’as” means both
“despise” and “melt”.
(c) He changes
course. He chooses not to condemn
God. He is comforted in his own
vindication and delays any condemnation of God. (Job 42:6b) The Hebrew here
“naham” does not mean confession of
sin, but rather “change in action” and
“comfort”. (d) He adjourns the
matter to the Day of the Final Judgment to hear from his Redeemer a third
time. (Job 42:6b) This was the original trial date set for an answer. (Job
19:25-29) And Job is content to postpone any consideration of a final
condemnation of God to that date. He continues the lawsuit. The image of “dust and ashes”
builds on Abraham’s ongoing challenge with God. (Genesis 18:20-23) Job will neither prematurely condemn God
nor acquit God. Job will neither deny
his moral need to know nor his legal right to know. He grants God an adjournment of his
defense. He will not
“condemn” God prematurely, so that he himself might be
“justified” or “vindicated”. (Job 40:8) In the
meantime, he will continue to selflessly love, trusting that answers will be
forthcoming. This is the moral
integrity and selfless love for which the world was created. Through the Oath of
Innocence and Job’s nuanced submission, the author is making a profound
point in his theodicy. (a) God has a duty to give the answer. That duty is rooted in the goodness of
God. God has created human beings with
certain natural needs, including the need for truth. God has to provide a reasonable possibility
that those needs can be fulfilled for it is self-evidently true that “ought implies can”. Otherwise, God is contradicting
himself. God does not have any
obligations to human beings prior to their creation. But once God creates humankind with certain
needs, God acquires certain duties of care.
They are duties he owes to himself and to men and women. (b) But God does not have the duty to give the answer right now. That is because the right to know is not an
inalienable and indefeasible right. A
right is inalienable or indefeasible if it cannot be “given up”,
“taken away”, “deferred” or “overridden”,
without a moral wrong being committed.
Very few rights are inalienable and indefeasible in that sense. There are perhaps only three such rights:
the rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Those three rights can never be given up,
taken away, deferred or overridden, without human nature itself being
destroyed. The right to know the truth
can be overridden or deferred in certain circumstances. Such circumstances exist where the
disclosure of the truth would interfere with the pursuit or possession of a
more important good. Selfless love is
posited as such a real good. Time is
required for the development of that good.
Any premature disclosure of that truth is overridden by that higher
good. The ultimate disclosure of that
truth is deferred to the time at which that good is complete. Truth is never denied as being a real good. If truth were not regarded as a good, then
that denial would constitute a moral wrong.
It is just that the timing of the disclosure of the truth has some
flexibility to it. Since selfless love
is posited as a real good justifying the deferral of the truth behind evil in
the world for an entire human life, the appropriate time for that disclosure
is the moment of death, or a short time thereafter in a resurrection and a
Final Judgment on the life one has lived. This understanding of the nature of the right to know the truth is what
underlies God’s failure to answer Job’s complaint and what
underlies Job’s adjournment of the lawsuit. It is what allows both God and Job to be
right. 7. Job is declared
by God to be the only one who has spoken “rightly” about
God. (Job 42:7-8) The Hebrew here
“kuwn” means “to establish as
right or true”. “The root
meaning is to bring something into being with the consequence that its
existence is a certainty.” It does not carry with it any nuance of
“sincerity” such that God might be understood to be excusing Job
for speaking “sincerely”, but “incorrectly”. God is
saying Job spoke “correctly”. Through his Oath of Innocence, Job
has established with certainty two points. (a) First, God is
the author of evil in the world and that evil is undeserved. (b) Second, human
beings have a right and need to know what why God has sent evil into the
world. That is the
judgment of God. It is a stumbling block for many a reader. By
this point, the author has had God effectively eliminate the traditional
explanations of evil as punishment (Augustine) and as character development (Irenaeus) and proffer a new explanation of evil as a
necessary means to the higher good of selfless love. (Hegel) The details of that justification will be
revealed on the Day of Judgment. 8.
In the end, God richly blesses and restores Job. But this ending is richly
ambiguous. If the first test was
having less reward than one’s righteousness merits, then this second
test is having more reward than one’s righteousness merits. The moral test that is life is merely
transposed into a different key. The test
is never ending. Will Job continue to
demand answers for evil in the world even when he is well off? Will we? The Book of Job is
a masterpiece in world literature, one that has stood the test of
millennia. It demands judgment. It provokes judgment. It even tempts to false judgment. Yet it
condemns with the harshest judgment those who judge deceitfully or
prematurely, showing bias either towards human beings or to God. In many ways, the Book of Job is an abyss
of eternal peril for as you look into it, it looks into you. More than any other biblical book, the Book
of Job will tell you who you are by the choices it forces you to make. Robert Sutherland sutherlandrobert@telus.net |
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