Description
God’s Wounds: Hermeneutic of the Christian Symbol of Divine Suffering is a study of Christian testimonies to divine suffering. The larger study focuses its inquiry on the testimonies to divine suffering themselves, seeking to allow the voices that attest to divine suffering to speak freely. The goal is then to discover and elucidate the internal logic or rationality of this family of testimonies, rather than defending these attestations against the dominant claims of classical Christian theism that have historically sought to eliminate such language altogether from Christian discourse about the nature and life of God.
In the first volume, the author develops an approach to interpreting the contested claims about the suffering of God. Through this approach to the Christian symbol of divine suffering, he then investigates the two major presuppositions that the larger family of testimonies to divine suffering normally hold: an understanding of God through the primary metaphor of love (‘God is love’); and an understanding of the human as created in the image of God, with a life (though finite) analogous to the divine life – the imago Dei as love. When fully elaborated, these presuppositions reveal the conditions of possibility for divine suffering and divine vulnerability with respect to creation.
The second volume proceeds on the basis of the presuppositions of the symbol, those implicit attestations that permit the possibility of divine suffering – that which constitutes divine vulnerability with respect to creation. The author investigates two divine wounds or modes of divine suffering to which the larger family of testimonies normally attest: (1) divine grief, or suffering due to human sin or betrayal by the beloved human; and (2) divine self-sacrifice, or suffering for the beloved human in its bondage to sin or misery, so as to establish the possibility of redemption and reconciliation.
About the Author
Jeff B. Pool is Associate Professor of Religion, College Chaplain, and Director of the Campus Christian Center, Berea College, Berea, Kentucky.
Contents
Volume I: Divine Vulnerability and Creation
Preface
Prologue: Terrible Sublimity of the Christian Symbol of Divine Suffering
Part One: Orientations for Encounter with the Christian Symbol of Divine Suffering
Introduction to Part One: Approaching the Symbol
1. Delimitation of the Problem
2. Procedural Principles
3. Hypothetical Structure of the Christian Symbol of Divine Suffering
Part Two: Presuppositions of the Christian Symbol of Divine Suffering
Introduction to Part Two: Conditions of Possibility for Divine Suffering
Division One: Divine Lover: Self-limiting Divine Creator
Introduction to Division One: Divine Life and Creative Activity
4. Divine Lover: Divine Life As Love
5. Divine Lover: Divine Life As Love in Creation
Division Two: Beloved Human: Imago Dei and Imitatio Dei As Love
Introduction to Division Two: Human Life as Image and Imitation of God
6. Beloved Human: Imago Dei As Love
7. Beloved Human: Imitatio Dei As Love
8. Human Life As Caritas and the Cosmos
Epilogue: From Divine Vulnerability to Divine Suffering
Bibliography
Index of Scriptures
Index of Persons
Index of Topics
Volume II: Evil and Divine Suffering
Preface
Prologue: Central Mystery of the Christian Symbol of Divine Suffering
Part One: God’s First Wound: Divine Grief
Introduction to Part One: The Structure of Divine Grief
Division One: Infidelity of the Beloved Human
Introduction to Division One: Sin as Occasion of Divine Grief
1. Human Cupiditas: Formal Characteristics
2. Human Cupiditas: Material Characteristics
Division Two: Sorrow of the Betrayed Divine Lover
Introduction to Division Two: First Stage of Divine Grief
3. Divine Sorrow: Formal Characteristics
4. Divine Sorrow: Material Characteristics
Division Three: Anguish of the Betrayed Divine Lover
Introduction to Division Three: Second Stage of Divine Grief
5. Divine Anguish: Formal Characteristics
6. Divine Anguish: Material Characteristics
Part Two: God’s Second Wound: Divine Self-Sacrifice
Introduction to Part Two: The Structure of Divine Self-Sacrifice
Division Four: Misery of the Beloved Human’s Infidelity
Introduction to Division Four: Misery of Sin as Occasion for Divine Self-Sacrifice
7. Misery of Human Cupiditas: Formal Characteristics
8. Misery of Human Cupiditas: Material Characteristics
Division Five: Travail of the Betrayed Divine Lover’s Fidelity
Introduction to Division Five: First Stage of Divine Self-Sacrifice
9. Divine Travail: Formal Characteristics
10. Divine Travail: Material Characteristics
Division Six: Agony of the Betrayed Divine Lover’s Fidelity
Introduction to Division Six: Second Stage of Divine Self-Sacrifice
11. Divine Agony: Formal Characteristics
12. Divine Agony: Material Characteristics
Epilogue: From Divine Agony to Divine Affliction
Appendices
Appendix 1: Insights from the Reformed Doctrine of Total Depravity
Appendix 2: The Concepts of ύβρις and έπιθυμία
Appendix 3: Ancient Hellenistic Philosophy and the Christian Concept of Divine Impassibility
Appendix 4: Analytical Distinctions between Fear, Anxiety, and Anguish
Appendix 5: Divine Impassibility and Passibility in the Theology of Origen
Appendix 6: Arian Christologies of the Suffering Logos
Appendix 7: Historic Variations on the Classic Christian Theory of Atonement
Appendix 8: Fragments from the History of Patripassianist Theology
Appendix 9: Fragments from the History of Theopaschite Theology
Bibliography
Index of Scriptures
Index of Persons
Index of Topics
Endorsements and Reviews
Volume I: Divine Vulnerability and Creation
Jeff Pool has written a thorough and thoughtful study of the issues raised regarding a God who suffers. His careful and groundbreaking work ranges widely across the theological disciplines, including the biblical fields, evident not least in his remarkably inclusive bibliography. All who will address this theme in the next generation must take this study seriously into account.
Terence E. Fretheim, Luther Seminary
Taking his personal direction from Bonhoeffer, ‘Only the suffering God can help’, Jeff B. Pool opens up an alternative Christian understanding of God’s wounds. With astonishing breadth of scholarship and critical insight, he draws upon the resources of the Christian tradition to set forth a vision of hope for the post-modern and post-Christian worlds. His personal engagement with this symbol – it is not ‘doctrine’, he argues – provides a rich and inviting ‘hermeneutic of love’. It is God and God’s suffering, creative love that shine through these pages.
Frank D. Rees, Whitley College, University of Melbourne
With rigor and discipline – and moving deftly across many streams of analogy, Scripture, and creaturely experience – Jeff Pool guides us deep into the symbolism of God’s suffering and vulnerability and undertakes a new mapping of the divine and human ‘logic of love.’ The culminating chapters of this first volume of God’s Wounds are amongst the most succinct theological-ethical interpretations of the paradigm of God and humanity constituted as love that I have read.
Larry D. Bouchard, University of Virginia
Volume II: Evil and Divine Suffering
Pool’s book provides a probing study of the meaning of suffering and evil in the light of the Christian revelation. This second volume of a trilogy offers a depth of analysis of a perennial subject that contemporary theologians will value.
Chester Gillis, Georgetown University
Jeff Pool’s God’s Wounds provides one of the most carefully written discussions of the relationship between evil and divine suffering. This deeply theological book offers a sustained treatment of a theme that many Christians invoke but few can discuss with any clarity: the meaning of divine suffering and its role in liberation from all forms of oppression. It ought to be read by anyone concerned with the contemporary meaning of the drama of sin and redemption.
Stephen J. Pope, Boston College
The second volume of Jeff Pool’s trilogy interprets the core of our Christian heritage as a story and message of divine suffering in loving response to the miseries of creaturely cupiditas. Consistent in his method and in his critical approach, while painstakingly careful in dealing with both the Bible and the flood of relevant studies, the author offers his readers a coherent and challenging construal of the biblical view of the universe and its destiny.
Petr Macek, Charles University in Prague
