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Holding On To the Hand of God: Edward Schillebeeckx on the Mystery of Suffering

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Robin Ryan CP
Robin Ryan CP*
Affiliation:
Catholic Theological Union, 5401 S. Cornell Avenue, Chicago, IL 60615
*
Email: rryan@ctu.edu
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Abstract

The experience of human suffering presents an ongoing challenge to believers who seek to sustain their relationship with God in the face of the tragedies of human history. Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P. is a seminal Christian thinker who has made a conscious attempt to take into account the harsh reality of suffering in his systematic theology. Rejecting theoretical attempts to reconcile belief in a good, all‐powerful God with the reality of evil and suffering, Schillebeeckx employs the categories of narrative and memory in his articulation of a Christian response to evil and suffering. He tells the story of Jesus as the story of God. The God who is disclosed in the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus is the God who is “pure positivity”– the source of life and the opponent of evil and suffering. God's action in and through Jesus provides clues to the way in which God is present and active in the lives of suffering human beings. This revelation summons Christians to become people of memory and of praxis.

Keywords

Schillebeeckxsufferingevilcrosskingdom of Godresurrectiontheodicy
Type
Original Articles
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 89 , Issue 1019 , January 2008 , pp. 114 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © The author 2008. Journal compilation © The Dominican Council/Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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