Long, Thomas G., What Shall We Say? Evil, Suffering, and The Crisis of Faith. Wm B.

Eerdmans Publishing Company; Grand Rapids. 2011.

Chapter Two: The Impossible Chess Match

Given that horrors exist, the reaction of some is to turn from faith to unbelief, agnosticism, or atheism. Long uses as his poster-child none less than Bart Ehrman to show the journey from belief to disbelief. The journey of Ehrman is described and though Long is complimentary of Ehrmans honesty and his willingness to raise questions about God that many are raising privately, he does suggest that Ehrmans views are unimaginative and unsophisticated. For example: Gods Problem is a significant book, not because it is profound it is, in fact, theologically somewhat unsophisticated but because Ehrman expresses the theodicy problem in a street-savvy, common sense manner (p. 21). Of Ehrman he notes, quite insightfully, that He had been converted to a zealous evangelical faith that rested on the chassis of a brainy, highly logical and rationalistic form of fundamentalism (p. 21). Ehrman has, it seems, never ceased to be that precise form of fundamentalist. Only now, his fundamentalism is channeled in the service of rationalism or perhaps better, materialism. Ehrman, like so many others, wishes the reality of suffering to fit their worldview whereas A fourteenth-century mind would encounter terrible suffering and say This is from the hand of God. What is God saying to us? (p. 23). Long uses that observational analysis to posit the fact that people of faith make 4 assumptions: 1) there is a God; 2) God is all powerful; 3) God is loving and good; and 4) there is innocent suffering. Since all 4 of those things are in and of themselves true, how are 1-3 to be reconciled with 4? For the unbeliever, the solution is simple- 1-3 cannot be true. And that, Long argues, is Ehrmans conclusion. Holding on to these 4 premises is what Long calls the impossible chess match leading to a theological stalemate. How can the stalemate be overcome, and why does Ehrman (and those like him) fail to do it?

I think it takes theological imagination to find our way through these questions faithfully. I believe it is precisely theological imagination that Ehrman lacks, and it finally costs him in the end. He is no longer a fundamentalist, but in many ways he still thinks like one, unable to escape the stiffness of its categories and woodenness of its rationalistic logic (p. 26). That sums up Ehrman (and those former believers akin to him) perfectly. Having dispensed with Ehrman, Long moves on to address more particularly the practice of clerics in ministry to the grieving. He eviscerates (though he would not like to think so) the ministry of presence as insufficient and at the end of the day, meaningless. Christian pastors and theologians need to use their words. As Long puts it Done most faithfully, pondering the question of suffering and the love of God is a form of prayer, and I think preachers owe congregations the benefits of this intellectual questing, this form of prayer in which faith seeks understanding (p. 30). Thats a brilliant insight! But the brilliance doesnt stop there. Long further observes, after relating the story of a childs death and a chaplains theological impotence in the face of that disaster, When pastors themselves capitulate to a ministry of the manageable, a prayer book of only empirical explanations, small wonder that their parishioners feel overwhelmed in a secular age (p. 32). Perhaps if Ehrman (and others like him) had honest pastors unafraid to face the hard issues, faith wouldnt have been abandoned. Then Long writes one of the most important sentences youll read this year: [For pastors] to stand there silently, as if all the gospel has to offer in the face of suffering is our little presence, is to deprived the faithful of their own theological heritage (p. 33). It is this insufferable silence and a failure to apply our rich theological heritage to the subject of suffering that Long will redress in the remainder of the volume, beginning with chapter three. To which we turn next. At this stage it has to be said- this book it leaves me breathless and exhilarated to see articulated an honest theodicy that offers something to all struggling with or who will struggle with understanding innocent suffering.

Jim West Quartz Hill School of Theology