Biblical Theodicy of Righteous Fulfillment: Divine Promise and Proximity

In the Beginning

God created everything else ‘in the beginning.’ So suggests the opening chapter of the book of Genesis. In that perspective, God existed alone prior to creation and thus faced nothing that was not-God. It then was false that something existed that was not-God. Things changed, however, as a result of creation. Divine creation introduced something that was not-God. For instance, it introduced, according to the writer of Genesis, ‘darkness . . . upon the face of the deep’ (Gen 1:2, NRSV, here and in subsequent Biblical translations). The writer does not say that God created the darkness (in contrast with divine creation of light, Gen 1:3), but darkness appears to emerge with divine creation, if indirectly. The book of Genesis does not say how it emerges. ¹

Having not-God coexist with God, after creation, raises a potential conflict, and it becomes an actual conflict in the Genesis story. At least part of not-God runs afoul of God, and serious problems ensue. Human disobedience of a divine command prompts God’s curse in judgment on at least part of not-God (Gen 3:17–19). The damage has begun, with a moral clash between God and not-God. How, then, is God to mend this far-reaching clash? This question occupies the storyline of the book of Genesis, but there is a prior question: Why does God allow the moral clash and its destructive aftermath in the first place? In addition: Is allowing the clash a moral failure in God?

According to the book of Genesis, God needs to ‘guard the way to the tree of life’ for humans (Gen 3:24), in order to safeguard God’s way to divine approval. This need stems from God’s character of righteousness, and it hints at the theodicy of righteous fulfillment to be developed, with God as guide, sustainer, and guardian of righteous life for humans. The returning of humans to a righteous God requires satisfying a moral standard worthy of being guarded by God for its surpassing value for humans.

Nothing seems to force God’s hand in allowing the divine clash from not-God. God does not seem to be at the mercy of a higher power in this regard. Why, then, does God allow for moral disaster from not-God? We gain little, if anything, by appealing to God’s giving free will to humans, as if the responsibility for the clash with God then would rest with humans. God still would be responsible for not deciding to create only those who freely choose righteously in a way that avoids a severe clash with God. Edgar Sheffield Brightman identifies the problem: ‘If God were omnipotent. . ., he could have created a race of free beings who would always choose righteously. . ., even though in theory they were free to sin.’ ² Even if an omnipotent God has limited foreknowledge of free human decisions, that foreknowledge could have curbed, at least more significantly, the unjust consequences in question.

From Creation to Promise

In the book of Genesis, God pronounces creation to be good in the beginning, but this is not the full story. The seeds of evil lie dormant in creation from an early time, ready to sprout into severe suffering and evil beyond easy explanation or justification. Is there, however, a divine justification for God’s creating that dangerous predicament and its destructive results? What is not-God seems to flout what is God in ways that question God’s vigilance as a uniformly good creator and landlord.

Let’s suppose, if only for the sake of argument, that God’s nature, consciousness, and will are morally perfect. What, then, of the created order that brings severe evil into God’s creation? Is God responsible for this evil? God would not be responsible for performing the evil actions of humans, of course, but there still could be divine responsibility for evil arising at all among created beings. God, we may assume, proceeded with creation while knowing that the agents created would introduce evil in the created order. So, God as creator would be responsible, causally and morally, for the created situation where evil arose from created beings. The pressing question becomes whether, and if so how, God could morally justify creating such a situation. Would it have been more responsible for God not to have created at all, or at least to have created without the resulting severe suffering and evil? Some Biblical writers answer in the negative, at least by implication, and their approach merits our attention.

The book of Genesis indicates God’s overarching purpose in the face of severe suffering and evil, courtesy of a divine promise to Abram and thereby all the families of the earth:

Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ (Gen 12:1–3)

We cannot adequately understand or appreciate the Biblical God without attention to this divine promise. The promise reveals in part God’s purpose in creating and in allowing severe suffering and evil in creation. A short characterization is suggested later in Genesis by Joseph regarding people who brought suffering and evil upon him: ‘Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous [רָֽב ; rāb] people, as he is doing today’ (Gen 50:20). God aims to sustain in righteousness ‘a numerous people’ in a setting of allowed severe suffering and evil, out of which God will bring ‘good,’ including their being preserved or saved. This grand redemptive aim colors many of the Biblical narratives but is not fully realized in history to date. It awaits fulfillment in the future, at God’s preferred time and by God’s standard of ‘a numerous people.’

The initial promise does not reveal in detail God’s means of reaching the grand aim, but it gives a hint: Somehow in Abram God will bless all the families of the earth. We get an additional hint in the follow-up promise to Abram:

After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great [הַרְבֵּ֥ה; har·bêh]’. . .. He brought him outside and said, ‘Look towards heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And he believed [הֶאֱמִ֖ן; he·’ĕ·min] the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness [צְדָקָה; ṣə·ḏā·qāh]. (Gen 15:1, 5–6).

Two factors are noteworthy. First, the best understanding of the blessing or reward for Abram includes God’s causative action of blessing into the future that is not exhausted in the present; hence, ‘your reward shall be very great.’ Second, God’s goal of blessing includes a divine crediting of ‘righteousness’ for Abram and his descendants: ‘the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.’ This blessing includes God’s gift of approval of Abram and his descendants, courtesy of divine crediting of righteousness through trust in God. ³ These two factors lie at the center of the Biblical theodicy to be developed.

Gerhard von Rad has characterized the key role of the divine promise to Abram:

Yahweh now intends to give what [humans] attempted to secure arbitrarily. The promise given to Abraham has significance, however, beyond Abraham and his seed. God now brings salvation and judgment into history, and [humans’] judgment and salvation will be determined by the attitude they adopt towards this work which God intends to do in history. . .. The narrator does not yet consider what God begins here primarily as ‘a sign that is spoken against’ (Luke 2:34), but as a source of universal blessing. . .. Abraham is assigned the role of a mediator of blessing in God’s saving plan for ‘all the families of the earth’. . .. This prophecy in chapter 12:3 reaches far out towards the goal of God’s plan for history, but it still refuses any description of this final end. . .. [It] points to a fulfillment lying beyond the old covenant. ⁴

Genesis 15:1, 5–6, as suggested, adds to the divine promise of Genesis 12:1–3 with its concern for righteousness credited to humans through their trust in God. ⁵ The divine goal of having ‘a numerous people’ of God thus includes divine righteousness for them, but the fulfillment of that righteousness lies in the future even though begun in the present. The divine promise emerges from God’s benevolent concern for humans, and not from human merit or earning, although divine expectations of humans accompany the promise (Gen 17:1). We need to clarify the Biblical theodicy that accompanies the relevant promise and goal.

An unduly neglected approach to theodicy suggested by some Biblical writers now can be summarized in initial form:

God justifies God’s allowing and using severe suffering and evil among humans by pursuing thereby a goal of forming and saving ‘a numerous people’ in righteousness begun now but to be fulfilled at a future time of God’s preference. God uses the allowed suffering and evil to challenge people without divine coercion to recognize their vital need of God and thus to cooperate, in trust, with divine righteousness, thereby enabling God to bring restoration to them from suffering and evil at God’s preferred time. They thus receive righteous approval from God through their trust in God, as God makes reparation in due time for the suffering and evil they have experienced, despite their not knowing all of God’s purposes in allowing suffering and evil.

God’s aim includes manifesting how divine righteousness that seeks human salvation can be powerful in countering severe suffering and evil among humans. The salvation offered saves people from having a life without a sustaining source of righteousness for their relationships. So, God aims to manifest and deepen a vital felt need of divine righteousness for humans as they undergo severe suffering and evil. We will neglect this aim if we underestimate that God’s knowledge of the results of suffering and evil, positive or negative, is superior to ours.

Some of the Biblical writers suggest that God’s deliverance of Israel in the exodus from Egypt is a helpful analogue for illuminating divine creation in the book of Genesis and subsequent suffering and evil. A passage from the book of Exodus sets the initial basis for a generalization to the kind of theodicy to be developed here:

The Lord said to Moses, ‘Rise up early in the morning and present yourself before Pharaoh and say to him, “Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews: Let my people go, so that they may serve me. For this time I will send all my plagues upon you yourself, your officials, and your people, so that you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth. Indeed, by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth. But this is why I have let you live: to show you my power and to make my name resound through all the earth.”’ (Exod 9:13–17)

God sends a telling message to an oppositional Pharaoh through Moses: ‘This is why I have let you live: to show you my power and to make my name resound through all the earth.’ We need to identify (a) the divine ‘power’ in question and (b) how and why the divine ‘name’ is to ‘resound through all the earth.’ In doing so, we can find illumination of the divine allowance and patience towards the moral clash begun in Genesis.

A divine goal for divine glory gets some clarification from the following passage, where God informs Moses:

Pharaoh will say of the Israelites, ‘They are wandering aimlessly in the land; the wilderness has closed in on them.’ I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will pursue them, so that I will gain glory for myself over Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord. (Exod 14:3–4)

A crucial issue concerns how we are to understand divine glory here. A correct understanding will clarify what God seeks in allowing and being patient towards the moral clash begun in Genesis.

The book of Exodus gives us some needed guidance. In the following exchange between Moses and God, it recommends an understanding of divine glory, and by implication divine power, in terms of divine goodness:

Moses said, ‘Please show me your glory.’ And he [the Lord] said, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you the name, “The Lord”, and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.’ ‘But’, he said, ‘you cannot see my face, for no one shall see me and live.’ And the Lord continued, ‘See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by.’ (Exod 33:18–23)

Moses’s request for a powerful display of glory is answered by God with a self-described display of divine goodness. The presentation of divine goodness to Moses also includes the divine announcement that ‘I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.’ This announcement gives attention and priority not to coercive power, but instead to the morally relevant features of divine graciousness and mercy towards people.

Divine graciousness and mercy receive emphasis in a follow-up passage from Exodus regarding Mount Sinai and the Law:

The Lord passed before [Moses] and proclaimed,

‘The Lord, the Lord,

a God merciful and gracious,

slow to anger,

and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,

keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation,

forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,

yet by no means clearing the guilty.’ (Exod 34:6–7)

This passage fits with the Exodus portrait of God as concerned with moral goodness, including love, grace, and mercy towards wayward people, and thus with not condoning evil, even when God allows it to arise. So, God will ‘by no means clear the guilty’ if such clearing requires condoning evil. The book of Job offers further illumination for our theodicy.

God’s Test and Job’s Lesson

According to the book of Job, God aimed to show that Job ‘is a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil’ (Job 1:8). This stated aim anticipated a challenge to God:

The accuser answered the Lord, ‘Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.’ (Job 1:9–11)

The challenge concerns Job’s motive for commitment to God and divine righteousness. Does Job commit to God only for pleasant gifts from God and not for God and divine righteousness in themselves? God aims to show that Job, contrary to the accuser’s suggestion, is prepared to respond in favor of the primary goodness of God and divine righteousness, even when he suffers and his explanations of God’s purposes fail. We thus might say that Job stands on the side of the intrinsic value of God and divine righteousness for humans.

The Biblical God’s justification for allowing severe suffering and evil relies on a divinely valued primary goodness of human cooperation with God or at least with divine righteousness, to which such suffering and evil sometimes lead. Some human participants, including Job, thus deem God worthy of a cooperative witness even in their severe suffering and evil. In God’s judgment, it is better to become a righteous human sufferer than not to do so or not to exist at all, if this benefits God’s showing and perfecting a human need to trust God. The suffering in Job’s case is not divine judgment or punishment; instead, it becomes an opportunity for his welcoming God on God’s terms and thereby for current divine proximity to him. A Biblical theodicy will accommodate the value of such proximity. It thus will recognize that the divine promise of future righteous fulfillment emerges from and is grounded in divine proximity to recipients of the promise, whether Abraham, Joseph (Gen 39:2, 21), or Job.

H.H. Rowley has captured a central lesson of the book of Job:

Whatever bliss the righteous may enjoy in the afterlife, that can offer no explanation of suffering they may experience here. We, no more than Job, can deduce the cause of all human suffering, and when men experience suffering which they feel to be innocent, instead of crying out against the injustice of God they are wise to believe that it has some cause or purpose, though concealed from them and hidden in the heart of God, and through trust in him to find fellowship with him. For in God’s fellowship is the spring of man’s truest life and health. ⁶

We may think of the relevant ‘fellowship’ to include what we have called ‘cooperation’ with God; it is volitional, and not just intellectual, at its center.

Rowley adds: ‘The message of Job . . . is that here and now in the fellowship of God the pious may find a peace and a satisfaction that transcends all the miseries of his lot.’ ⁷ This observation fits with Job’s concluding remark to God about divine proximity: ‘I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes’ (Job 42:5). (This talk of hearing and seeing is best understood as metaphorical.) Job’s suffering thus led to a deeper appreciation of God and divine proximity in the midst of his suffering, not by escaping it but by enduring it with trust in God. God uses such suffering, then, to bring benefit now, and not only in the future, to ‘a numerous people of God’ in a righteous relationship with God.

Psalm 73, in agreement with the book of Job, holds forth proximity with God as a primary value for humans, while announcing God’s goodness:

Truly God is good to Israel,

to those who are pure in heart. . ..

I am continually with you;

you hold my right hand.

You guide me with your counsel,

and afterward you will receive me with honor. . ..

My flesh and my heart may fail,

but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Indeed, those who are far from you will perish;

you put an end to those who are false to you.

But for me it is good to be near God;

I have made the Lord God my refuge,

to tell of all your works. (Psalm 73:1, 23–24, 26–28)

Despite suffering (‘all day long I have been plagued’, 73:13), the psalmist finds refuge in God, courtesy of his being ‘near God’ and God’s being close to him (‘you hold my right hand’). The proximity of God through divine intervention in human experience gives credibility to God’s promise of righteousness fulfillment.

A striking feature of the book of Job and Psalm 73 is that they seem not to limit God’s promise and proximity to this life. Job thus reports:

For I know that my vindicator lives

and that in the end he will stand upon the earth;

and after my skin has been destroyed,

then in my flesh I shall see God,

whom I shall see on my side,

and my eyes shall behold, and not another. (Job 19:25–27)

James Crenshaw has noted a similar note of transcending this life in Psalm 73, given a desired lasting basis for its talk of glory, forever, rock, and portion and its talk to God of ‘afterward you will receive me’ (73:24).

Crenshaw adds: ‘Anyone for whom God is the sole “possession and desire” in heaven and on earth has reached the stage where asking about the permanence of such a relationship is as natural as breathing. The fervor of this intimate relationship seems to give rise to the unthinkable. Death cannot blot out this love. It follows that the psalmist dares to hope for survival beyond death.’ ⁸ The same, according to Crenshaw, applies to Job in his hope for God’s enduring presence. Given this perspective on Job and Psalm 73, we may understand them to approach suffering in a way that coheres with the theodicy under development, endorsing righteous fulfillment in divine promise and proximity. We shall return to such promise and proximity after confirming that the apostle Paul and Jesus agree with the lesson of Job that suffering does not entail divine judgment or punishment but can provide an effective context for a righteous relationship with God.

Paul and Jesus on Theodicy

Following many writers of the Jewish Bible, Paul does not assume that all human suffering results from divine judgment. He writes to the Christians at Corinth:

Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our consolation. We do not want you to be ignorant, brothers and sisters, of the affliction we experienced in Asia, for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again. (2 Cor 1:7–10)

The felt ‘sentence of death’ included intense suffering, but it was not a matter of divine judgment. Instead, according to Paul, it came from a divine purpose that did not entail judgment; it arose ‘so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.’ The purpose here is God’s, but it does not follow that God caused the suffering in the felt sentence of death. God allowed it, of course, but divine causation of it is not needed for God to have a purpose for it, including a purpose to attract human repentant trust in God.

Paul does credit God with creating human frustration, and thus suffering, of various sorts for a good purpose:

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Rom 8:18–21)

God, in Paul’s perspective, causes some frustration and suffering among humans by subjecting some parts of creation to futility. God does so with a definite aim: to bring to recognition the people of God who are to receive and manifest the freedom and glory of being God’s children. This suffering caused by God thus fits with our Biblical theodicy of righteous fulfillment, because it intentionally yields significant moral good for some of the people of God: the manifested freedom and glory of being God’s children. ⁹ In addition, the good in question is not exhausted in the past or present but reaches its fulfillment at a future time preferred by God.

Paul clarifies a divine purpose:

We have this treasure [of God’s good news of righteousness] in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, always carrying around in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For we who are living are always being handed over to death for Jesus’s sake, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our mortal flesh. (2 Cor. 4:7–11)

Paul highlights ‘the power of God’ with special attention to ‘making visible’ the life of Jesus in response to God. In Paul’s thought, this is a focus on the righteous character of God manifested in Jesus, ‘who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption’ (1 Cor 1:30).

The powerful righteousness of God’s character and good news, according to Paul, is made visible not only in Jesus but also in his faithful followers. Paul writes to the Corinthians: ‘You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by all, and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets that are human hearts’ (2 Cor 3:2–3). The Corinthian Christians, according to Paul, manifest in their lives the character of God and Christ, including divine righteousness. Seeking such manifestation in humans, God is willing to allow and to use human suffering, including severe suffering, to that end, including for the sake of righteous fulfillment in the future. Paul suggests that divine goodness aims to lead people to repentance (Rom 2:4); suffering also can contribute to repentance as turning cooperatively to God as needed rescuer, and away from distrust.

John’s Gospel, agreeing with Paul, endorses that God manifests divine works through human suffering: ‘[Jesus’] disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind.” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him”’ (John 9:2–3; cf. 11:4). This perspective coheres with the theme of God’s seeking to show divine righteousness through humans, including through their suffering.

We have seen an indication of why God aims to make the divine character and works visible through humans: so that people, including ‘the nations,’ will know through their experience that God is God and Lord, the one they need for lasting righteous life. On the heels of a warning about suffering from persecution, Matthew’s Gospel has Jesus say: ‘Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven’ (Matt 5:16). He also makes participation in divine righteousness required for life with God: ‘Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’ (Matt 5:20). The divine motive shared by Jesus is to call and bring people into conformity and cooperation with God as the morally perfect one, intrinsically worthy of full commitment, who can save them from their felt moral failure and impending death (Matt 5:48, 22:37–38). We need to see how this motive figures in our Biblical theodicy.

Jesus responds to a request for theodicy in Luke’s Gospel:

At that very time there were some present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the other people living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish just as they did.’ (Luke 13:1–4)

It is common to take this passage as having Jesus simply brush off the question of an available theodicy for human suffering That, however, is a mistake. Jesus is, I propose, suggesting the kind of theodicy of righteous fulfillment we are pursuing. His talk of perishing indicates that he has in mind something vital for a good human life.

The lesson drawn by Jesus is no abstract injunction; nor is it limited to divine judgment. Instead, it is telling us a key divine purpose in God’s allowing human suffering, whether intentional or ‘accidental.’ This purpose is to show and perfect a vital human need to turn in (deeper) repentance to God in the salvific righteousness of trust in God. This perspective coheres with the Biblical theodicy under development and thus merits our attention.

Extending a suggestion from Jesus, we may talk of a divine purpose of ‘perfecting repentant faith’ among humans, because such faith comes in degrees, in keeping with degrees of repentance and trust. Jesus recommends repentance in the face of suffering even if a person has met a basic threshold for repentance, while needing to perfect repentance by going deeper in turning cooperatively to God’s righteousness. Repentance thus should not be considered a one-time or an all-or-nothing event for all people. It is better understood as ongoing in opportunities for increasing depth in turning one’s life cooperatively to God. (Paul would agree with this perspective; cf. Phil 3:12–16.)

The standard suggested by Jesus includes new levels of depth in cooperating with God in the face of new incidents of suffering, whether one’s own suffering or that of another person. For instance, the suffering of either the Galileans at Pilate’s hand or the victims of the fallen tower of Siloam can prompt us to repent more deeply of either our own indifference towards certain human suffering or some other shortcoming by God’s standard of righteousness. In such repenting, we would turn cooperatively to God with deeper trust in the power of God’s redemptive goodness, even if we had some prior trust. The book of Job, we have suggested, illustrates that development for Job in the face of severe suffering, presenting him as an approved cooperative witness for God and noting that ‘in all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing’ (Job 1:22).

Jesus’ perspective is eschatological in acknowledging God’s future resolution of various present deficiencies, in keeping with our notion of righteous fulfillment in God’s time. In Matthew’s Gospel, he responds to his disciples as follows:

Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my name’s sake will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.’ (Matt 19:28–29)

The suffering Jesus has in mind thus will not be fully rewarded now, even if coupled with repentant faith. The divine reparation will have to wait for ‘the renewal of all things,’ in the future. Even so, God can work to perfect repentant faith now, in the presence of severe suffering and evil, while its full benefits come later. (Similarly in Paul: Romans 8:18, 2 Corinthians 4:17.) A theodicy, in any case, does not require full reparation or redemption for suffering and evil now.

The kind of repentant faith sought by Jesus cannot be reduced to intellectual assent to information about God. Matthew’s Gospel captures this important but widely neglected lesson in its teaching on Jesus regarding the divine judgment of humans (25:34–40). Divine approval arises from a fitting human response to an opportunity for righteousness, even if the people responding fail to recognize God’s presence. Trust in divine righteousness thus does not require trust that God is present in the righteousness. Such trust, then, can be had by agnostics and even atheists. People thus can have a fitting response in faith without recognizing theological factors in what they trust. God’s purpose in a theodicy, as a result, can seek such a response even in the absence of recognition of a theological contribution. The divine aim would be for human receptivity towards, and guidance by, righteousness itself (de re), with the allowance and hope that any needed theological information (de dicto) would be recognized in due course. We should understand the role of potentially implicit faith involved with a theodicy accordingly.

Jesus understood God’s purpose to allow for his voluntary decision in Gethsemane, and there is no evidence of his being coerced to undertake God’s plan of his redemptive death. ¹⁰ In addition, Jesus arguably was allowed to receive the benefits of divine reparation for the severe suffering and evil he faced in his role for God (cf. Heb 12:2). Furthermore, Paul reports that God highly exalted Jesus as a result of his faithful obedience in his death (Phil 2:8–11). So, we may think of Jesus as having received a divine reward for his severe suffering for other people. It is arguable that an analogue applies to righteous sufferers more generally, as Jesus suggested above.

The approach of Jesus to theodicy corresponds to his approach to the coming of the kingdom of God in righteousness. They both have a distinctive feature of being realized ‘now (initially), but not yet fully.’ ¹¹ Divine righteousness is at the center of both Biblical theodicy and the arriving kingdom of God; so, the similarity in realization as ‘now, but not yet’ is not surprising. The similarity is, nonetheless, significant, and it adds to the plausibility of the approach to theodicy offered here.

Theodicy Grounded

We have asked whether it is morally permissible for God to allow in creation, for a salvific purpose, the introduction and continuation of severe evil and suffering. A central divine purpose, as noted, is: to show and perfect in human lives their vital need to have a salvific guide and sustainer of righteousness. This prospect calls for repentant faith in God’s power of saving righteousness, which does not exclude any people who would prefer to receive it on its own terms. A pressing question is whether God’s salvific purpose would make some people suffer in a way that is morally unacceptable.

Some people doubt that all human suffering reflects or serves either God or divine righteousness in a way that God can morally justify. They ask how God can morally justify not curbing (more than is curbed) either severe suffering of innocent people or human freedom that yields such suffering. Such moral justification would indicate how God’s tolerant response to severe human suffering would preserve divine righteousness in a morally robust way. This problem does not assume that all human suffering is evil, and that result is correct. ¹² In addition, the proposed theodicy does not assume that all suffering is good or salvific, and that result is correct too. A key assumption, instead, is that God as salvific can bring vital righteousness for humans out of suffering and evil and thereby justify current divine tolerance.

God’s self-justification depends in part on the moral value of perfecting repentant faith in God in the face of severe suffering and evil, including severe misuse of human freedom. According to the previous suggestions from Jesus, Paul, and various Old Testament writers, God values perfecting repentant faith in God enough to allow for severe human suffering and evil for the sake of promoting such faith. The key issue is whether that is morally wrong of God, perhaps as a matter of injustice. Even if God, as the book of Job suggests, tests humans ‘every moment’ (Job 7:18), is divine allowance of severe suffering to this end morally acceptable?

An important issue is whether moral goodness requires God to remove without delay severe suffering and evil, including severe misuse of human freedom. An affirmative answer is not obvious, because, as suggested, God can bring in due time significant righteousness and related reparation out of severe suffering and evil, including for people who directly experience such suffering and evil. It would be presumptuous of us to assume that we are in a position to set God’s time for moral benefit or reparation here. Perhaps an underlying concern, however, is that God appears to use the severe suffering of some people at most for the benefit of other people. This concern may prompt a charge of unfairness on God’s part.

Some people might want to opt out of benefiting by God’s standard of showing and perfecting repentant faith. Even so, God would not need to demand a cooperative response from them now for the sake of their future benefit and reparation. Future benefit and reparation, along with a future agreeable response, would be a live option, given God’s long-range planning and power over death. In any case, God would not have to neglect people indifferent to repentant faith by using their severe suffering to benefit other people. The important consideration is that God give them a fair opportunity to benefit significantly at a fitting time. We lack evidence to infer that God has failed on this front, and human refusal of divine reward or benefit does not create such moral failure in God. In addition, we have noted testimonial evidence from Jesus of a divine reward for righteous sufferers. Jesus did not limit this reward to our earthly life, and we have indicated a similar approach in Job and the Psalms.

A Biblical theodicy accommodates the truth that humans lack full knowledge of God’s purposes in parts of redemption, including in allowing severe suffering and evil. If the book of Job had not made this lesson clear to us, we find it confirmed by Jesus, even in his own case (Mark 13:32–33), and by Paul (1 Cor 13:12), who also affirm the abiding and sustaining love of God for wayward humans (Rom 8:37–39; cf. Matt 5:35–45). As a result, a Biblical theodicy will identify illuminating explanatory themes but not exhaustive details for us now. The themes will not yield a full explanation of divine purpose, but they will identify a partial trajectory that exonerates God from a charge of moral failure. A divine theodicy (from and for God) would be free of explanatory limitation, but a theodicy for humans now must accept the limitations in human understanding documented by the book of Job. We humans rarely know, in any case, the full audience who benefit from a divine challenge to humans towards righteousness (cf. 1 Cor 4:9).

In the Biblical theodicy offered here, God aims to perfect repentant faith in the presence of severe human suffering and evil. So, inquirers should ask about a significant relation between perfecting repentant faith and severe human suffering and evil. They should ask whether God wants people to come to recognize, at some time, their vital need of divine salvation in righteousness and thus will use severe human suffering and evil to contribute to that recognition when effective on God’s terms. The relevant suffering and evil can call attention to such a vital need as real and valuable. This consideration does not, and should not, include inferring an independent reality (God) from a human need, as the relevant need could go unfulfilled by independent reality. Instead, it assumes that a perceived vital need can aid in attending to relevant evidence of what is real and valuable.

Many Biblical writers identify the vital need in question as that of being raised to new life with God by the righteous power of God. In that regard, resurrection by God is central to full recompense or reward by God for humans. The hitch is the accompanying view that humans must suffer and die into the needed resurrection by God (Rom 8:17, 23, 2 Cor 4:8–14). Paul gives a reason: so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead (2 Cor 1:9). He also offers an aim that coheres with the previous reason:

I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. (Phil 3:8–11)

Paul thus ties together our main themes for a Biblical theodicy: divine righteousness, fulfillment, faith, suffering, and resurrection. This is noteworthy evidence that our proposed Biblical theodicy is on the right track.

Two additional factors merit attention. First, Paul speaks of the ‘surpassing value of knowing Christ,’ and he has in mind the human need to value divine righteousness and its culminating representative as a top priority. Such righteousness is not intended to be just an optional add-on for a human life. It is mistreated if it is not taken to be life’s priority, according to many Biblical sources. Famously, Jesus taught the same (Matt 6:33). Severe suffering and evil provide a distinct opportunity to set priorities accordingly, and Paul knew this firsthand. Our proposed Biblical theodicy thus should be understood to represent a divine aim to have a human priority for divine righteousness through perfecting repentant faith.

The second factor concerns Paul’s talk of the divine power of resurrection. He thinks of this power as being at work now in receptive humans lives, with completion in the fullness of time:

The death [Jesus] died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies, so that you obey their desires. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. (Rom 6:10–13)

Paul speaks of people who, by God’s power, ‘have been brought from death to life’ and thus are to be God’s ‘instruments of righteousness.’ This is divine power of resurrection now, even though bodily resurrection awaits a future time. It is the power to bring divine righteousness to a human life now through perfecting repentant faith. We should recognize such power in what we have called the ‘proximity’ of God to humans in current life.

A noteworthy problem is that neither the resurrection power nor the motivating evidence for the corresponding theodicy is perceived by all people. We can account for this problem to an important extent. People will perceive the resurrection power of renewal in righteousness only if they receive it by allowing it to come to fruition in its power to renew their lives. We experience its power to bring restorative divine righteousness only if we let the power come to fruition in changing us. H. Wheeler Robinson has remarked: ‘God is able by his grace to transform all evil into good. . .. I see him doing it on Calvary, and so far as I am really penitent, I feel him doing it in my own heart, and I trust him to do it on the vast scale of his universe.’ ¹³ Note well the crucial condition ‘so far as I am really penitent.’ Jesus hinted at this truth in his teaching about resurrection: ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead’ (Luke 16:31; cf. John 7:17). An implication is that people will create a missed opportunity for recognizing divine power and a corresponding theodicy if they do not let the power of divine righteousness come to fruition in their own cooperation. God, as suggested, does not use coercion to block such human resistance, lest human agency be suppressed and humans be extinguished.

Paul thinks of a cooperative experience of God’s resurrection power as supplying a down payment or foretaste of God’s ultimate renewal in vital righteousness, courtesy of God’s intervening Spirit (2 Cor 1:22, 5:5, Rom 8:23). He finds the same Spirit to aim to lead people in righteousness as the obedient children of God (Rom 8:14). Such experiences of God’s Spirit underwrite as evidence God’s worthiness of trust, despite severe suffering and evil. Paul sums up this evidential perspective on suffering and theodicy: ‘We boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us’ (Rom 5:3–5). Receiving the divine righteous love on offer in experience thus becomes evidential, courtesy of a self-manifestation of God’s unique character, in a way that removes cognitive shame towards hope and trust in God. ¹⁴ Such experience as evidence can figure in justifying the Biblical theodicy that, owing to God’s Spirit, ‘we know that all things work together for good for those who love God’ (Rom 8:28).

Conclusion

The Biblical theodicy of righteous fulfillment receives support from not only Jesus and Paul but also various Hebrew prophets, along with the writers of Genesis, Exodus, and Job. We thus have a firm basis for calling the proposed theodicy ‘Biblical.’ It is not left as an abstract explanation but is grounded and manifested in a distinctive pattern of human life turning towards righteousness presented in human experience. Its ultimate ground is God’s character of salvific righteousness, and that ground is fitting for any theodicy deemed ‘Biblical.’

We have mentioned the importance of allowing God’s self-justification to proceed on God’s righteous terms, rather than on merely human terms. This article calls for further exploration of the key idea of ‘God’s righteous terms’ for divine self-justification. These terms depend on righteousness as redeeming goodness found in experience, as an alternative to mere speculation or wishful thinking.

Why bother, then, with a theodicy at all, given the acknowledged explanatory incompleteness? Many people wonder, but we have a straightforward answer: The Biblical God bothers with divine self-justification. We saw this in connection with the book of Job and various other Biblical writings. The divine self-justification does not seek to give humans full explanation of God’s relevant purposes, but it does find moral, existential, and even explanatory substance in God’s promise of righteous fulfillment, coupled with divine proximity in receptive human experience. We thus care about divine theodicy because God does, on God’s unique terms. Courtesy of such care, we can pursue more deeply the uniqueness and the benefit of divine righteousness for our thinking and our lives. Such justification seems adequate for continued work on a Biblical theodicy of righteous fulfillment. ¹⁵