Deconstructing Theodicy: Why fob has Nothing to Say to the Puzzle of Suffering by David B. Burrell, C.S.C., with A.H. Johns (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 639 To all three, to Maritain and Porter who are willing to settle for too little, and to Schindler who wants too much, Long proposes that we consider nature uncut and untrimmed, and take as the basis for state and society both the speculative and the practical truths imbedded therein. It will be nature that renders up a knowledge of its provident First Cause and beneficent Last End. It will be a nature that delivers the practical guidance of the natural law within a known hierarchy of natural ends. And it will be a nature that is open to the news of its fallen condition and beatific end. In order even to have sufficient Catholic voices who could mount the arguments in the philosophy of nature and metaphysics that Long thinks required, we should have to refashion the universities-I mean Catholic universities-in the way Alasdair Macintyre has proposed in God, Philosophy, Universities. One therefore feels the same sense of not quite knowing what world we are in at the end of Long's book as at the end of Maclntyre's, with the same doubt whether there is anything to be done, with the same awareness of there being no rational or Christian alternative to their programs worth aiming at. I regret to say that Long's diction can be recondite and his syntax rococo. I confess there are some places where I don't know what he is saying. I wish that in charity he would make it easier for us rustics to share his great learning and timely insight. Saint Meinrad School ofTheology Saint Meinrad, Indiana GUY MANSINI, 0.S.B. Deconstructing Theodicy: Why fob has Nothing to Say to the Puzzle ofSuffering. By DAVID B. BURRELL, C.S.C., with A.H. JOHNS. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos Press, 2008. Pp. 144. $20.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-1-58743-222-4. The provocative subtitle of this book is slightly misleading. This eclectic work shows that Job does have something to say to the puzzle of human suffering, but not in the form of a post-Leibnizian theodicy. The aim of the book is revealed in the main title: to deconstruct the modern project of theodicy. The first four chapters of the book provide a reflection on the nature and strategies of the Book of Job. Burell argues that the Book of Job was written in order to deconstruct the Deuteronomic assumption that God would reward observance of the covenant and punish deviation. Job's interlocutors all formulate some version of the prevailing view that Job must be guilty of some sin in order to have merited his affliction from God as punishment. They attempt to defend forensically the justice of God by speaking about God. In stark contrast to his interlocutors, Job's speeches are neither propositional arguments nor 640 BOOK REVIEWS forensic in nature. Job's words are primarily performative in nature-they speak directly to God rather than about God. Job, the outsider from the land of Uz, speaks directly to the agent of his affliction seeking an answer to the question of why God is afflicting him when he has done nothing to deserve it. What is ultimately most remarkable about the Book of Job is that God accepts Job's challenge to respond to him in the voice from the whirlwind. It is the personal response of God to dialogue with Job that relieves his deepest and unarticulated affliction: a feeling of alienation from God as a result of suffering. As many commentators have remarked, God never gives Job an "explanation" for his suffering. God instead reminds Job that he is the transcendent, free Creator of the world whose agency is unfathomable to a creature. God's response to Job is not theodicy in the modern sense. It suggests instead that what human sufferers need most from God is a renewed sense of being in a loving, personal, and dialogical relationship with the God who is the transcendent Creator rather than a theoretical explanation. The Book of Job is in a sense an argument against argument-it is futile to seek an explanation from God or about God, when what...