John Swinton’s book Raging with Compassion is unusual, and unusually good. Because he combines nursing, pastoral and theological disciplines he approaches the problems of evil and suffering as a practical theologian – a theologian who seeks to apply Christian belief to Christian practice in ways appropriate to context and faithful to the Gospel. Early in this book he is uncompromising in his criticism of theoretical theodicies, intellectualised solutions to the problem of evil. Evil is not a philosophical conundrum or a challenging test of theological ingenuity. Indeed the attempt to solve ‘the problem’ of evil as a mental / philosophical / theological exercise, so reduces the realities of human experience to ideas and theory, that such intellectualised distancing contributes to the problem by excusing God or blaming the victim. it then exacerbates the problem because theorising is isolated from both the expereince of the sufferer and from responsibility to respond to and resist evil in practice. Philosophical and academic theodicy merely ‘solves’ the problem by a logically coherent argument within the framework of theism.
Swinton’s alternative is to pursue a practical and pastoral theodicy, a way of responding to evil that is not based on adjusting the pieces of an intellectual board game. The practical theodicist is concerned, not about logical coherence but about pastoral consolation of the sufferer, and developing practices of resistance to evil and suffering wherever it is encountered. So Swinton identifies certain practices which in their interconnectedness, create communities of resistance to evil, and assume an understanding of the human being that is affirmative, protective, supportive and ultimately rooted in the love of the Triune God. This is one of the most satisfying considerations of ‘the problem of evil’ I have read (from Hick’s Evil and the God of Love [1966] to McCord-Adams Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God [1999]. This book isn’t so much a theodicy of intellectual apologetic, but a theodicy of Christian responses to evil that are essentially and redemptively Christlike.
The four core practices are lament, forgiveness,thoughtfulness and friendship and they make up over half the book. They are preceded by a critique of classic theodicy, a careful chapter defining evil, and an account of practices of redemption which are inherently resistant to human suffering and the evils that add to it. But practices of resistance have an interconnectedness that give them cumulative and embodied effectiveness – in that sense Swinton is arguing for
i) a form of ecclesiology defined by Christian practice rather than doctrinal distinctives;
ii) the church as a community that expresses in a practical and pastoral theodicy, the resistance of God to evil and suffering;
iii) and a community which does so by reflecting in lament, forgiveness, thoughtfulness and friendship, the mercy and grace of God in Christ;
iv) and persists in such practices because they are deeply rooted in the nature of the Christian God, and the Christian expereince of God as loving creator, incarnate redeemer, active sustainer.
Next few days I’ll post several key quotations – but near the end of the book is a sentence which summarises the books argument, and indicate the qualities of its writer:
Learning to practice in the ways described in this book is much more than just human striving. It is an ongoing task carried out in the power of the Holy Spirit and within a community of thoughtful holy friends who recognise whose they are and remain open to the dangerous possibility of meeting Jesus in the multitude of ways in which the stranger comes to us.
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