Review of Suffering-Test of Theological Method

8/13/2019 Review of Suffering-Test of Theological Method

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BOOK REVIEWS 171

SUFFERING: A TEST

OF THEOLOGICAL METHOD

ARTHUR C.MCGILL

Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1982.Pages 130. pb.

This book made hardly a stir when it was first published in 1968. Thomas

Altizer, Harvey Cox, and4'religionless Christianity" where the vogue in that

annus terribilis.Now that the necro-theologies have gone the way of all fads,

Westminster Press has reissued the late Arthur McGill's exemplary essay, together with a foreword by Paul Ramsey and WilliamF.May. Though modest

in tone and slender in size, McGill's treatise shows how theology is done in

the grand manner. He takes what is surely the most vexing modern prob

lemthe reality of violent sufferingand subjects it to vigorous analysis by

way of the Christian theological tradition.

The essential, indeed the rending modern problem, McGill contends, is

the fear that an awful destruction will fall upon us unawares. Physical dis

ease,mental illness, political terror, mechanical calamity, total warall the

complaints of modern life seem to threaten us with a dread unexpectedness,

even an occult improbability. To the surprise of many, we have been madeonce again to confront what Scripture calls the demonic. Evil is not merely

the perversity that originates in humanity. It is also the abusive transnatural

power that entangles and subjects us to its own terrible energy of violation.

What kind of God, we must ask, will not or cannot obstruct these de

monic forces that beset us all around? In answering so troubling a question,

McGill makes no attempt at theodicy. Christian faith in the good God does

not need to be defended so much as clarified and proclaimed. To deal with

our modern perplexity over the demonic, McGill resorts ingeniously to the

ancient controversy between Arius and Athanasius. The real issue betweenthem, he shows, was the nature of God's own trinitarian lifenot only what

God does toward us, but what he is inhimself.For Arius, God is pure tran

scendence, the Absolute who is wholly self-contained, independent, and in

communicable. For Athanasius, by contrast, the decisive mark of God's

divinity is the charity whereby he gives all things to the Son, who in turn yields

all glory back to the Father.

To say that God is the power of surrender and self-giving love is also to

make a radical claim about the nature of evil. As the parody and ape of God,

the demonic rules by dominationby the desire to subordinate and subjugate

everything to its own selfish will. Its fundamental assumption is that we have

identity and security in the things we possess as uniquely and solely our own.


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172 PERSPECTIVESINRELIGIOUSSTUDIES

casion for demonic power to invade ourlives.Because it can deprive us of

what we think to be the source of our fundamental identity, it has the strength

tokill.

Sin is never, in this reading of evil,a choice between the good and the

bad. A merely ethical approach to our condition isitselfa demonic delusion.

Our basic lifedecision lies between two kinds of power that we must ac-

knowledge as having sway over us, and that we must worship as the final

Reality oftheuniverse: the power ofdominationorthepower ofredemption.

We liveand we die, in New Testament terms, "according to the king who

holds [us] and the kingdom to which [we] belong" (92). The great Scriptural

adjurations are not for us to do good, therefore, but tolove the selfgivingGodrevealed in Jesus.

McGillunderstands thelifeand death of Jesus as one continuous act of

dispossession. His crucifixion exposes violentpossessivenessin all of its fu-

tility and vapidity. The who rules by coercive domination has been

metand conquered in the Jesus who yields up his own identity as the world

understands it: Heseeksnot topossessbut to surrenderhimself,offering his

life in adoration to God and in service to hisfellows.His resurrection abol-

ishes the satanic pretense by showing that demonic control and destruction

are not the ultimate facts of life.This risen Lord enables Christians to confront demonic violence not in

despairing fear, McGill concludes, but in sorrow andjoy. In sorrow, because

ourown livesand the world itself remain largely enthralled by the ungodly

power. Yet finally in joy, because of our unyielding confidence that the world

is ruled by the God of Jesus Christ. Such assurance is the only true grounds

for living an unselfish life, and thus for answering the problem ofevilexis

tentially aswellas theoretically. Compared to most books that attempt either

tovindicate or indict God for the world's violent suffering, McGill's modest

workwillendure. It ought to become a standard text in courses on the prob-

lem ofevil.

RALPHC.WOOD

WAKEFORESTUNIVERSITY

WINSTONSALEMNC

BEYONDNIHILISM

NIETZSCHEWITHOUTMASKS

OFELIASCHUTTEChicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

Pages 233. $22.00.

P f S h tt h d d t hil hi i i h b k


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Review of Suffering-Test of Theological Method