What Shall We Say? Evil, Suffering, and the Crisis of Faith

by Thomas G. Long

Publisher:

Eerdmans

, 2013

Overview

Tsunamis, earthquakes, famines, diseases, wars—these and other devastating forces lead Christians to ask painful questions. Is God all-powerful? Is God good? How can God allow so much innocent human suffering? These questions, taken together, have been called the ‘theodicy problem,’ and in this book Thomas Long explores what preachers can and should say in response. Long reviews the origins and history of the theodicy problem and engages the work of major thinkers who have posed solutions to it. Cautioning pastors not to ignore urgent theodicy-related questions arising from their parishioners, he offers biblically based approaches to preaching on theodicy, guided by Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the tares and the ‘greatest theodicy text in Scripture’—the book of Job.

Contents

Top Highlights

“Susan Neiman claims that Lisbon marks the birth of modernity” (Page 16)

“More recently, though, theodicy has come to have a somewhat different meaning, one that is less about putting God on trial and more about putting our faith to the test.” (Page xii)

“Maybe so, but for many intellectually alert Christians today, the theodicy problem poses a deep challenge to their faith” (Page xiii)

“Preachers do not preach because the sermon is finished; they preach because it is Sunday. The time has come” (Page 114)

“it is instead about who God is and what it means to be human at all when God is understood truly to be God” (Page 96)

Product Details

• Title: What Shall We Say? Evil, Suffering, and the Crisis of Faith
• Author: Thomas G. Long
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Print Publication Date: 2013
• Logos Release Date: 2015
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subjects: Theodicy; Doctrinal preaching
• ISBNs: 9780802871398, 0802871399, 1467440523, 9781467440523
• Resource ID: LLS:WHTSHLLWSY
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2023-01-03T03:45:03Z

About Thomas G. Long

Thomas G. Long is Bandy Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Candler School of Theology, Emory University. He has taught preaching for over forty years, and his introductory textbook, The Witness of Preaching, has been translated into a number of languages and is widely used in theological schools around the world. Long has served as the president of the Academy of Homiletics and as senior homiletics editor of the New Interpreter's Bible. He has been editor of Theology Today and serves as an editor-at-large at The Christian Century. Long has been honored with the distinction of delivering the Lyman Beecher Lectures in Preaching at Yale Divinity School and was also named by Time magazine as one of the most effective preachers in the English language. A Presbyterian minister, Long has served churches in Georgia and New Jersey.