Job and the Crisis of Theology

My pastor gave a good sermon on the book of Job this weekend - one of my favorite books. The Book of Job is set during the time of the Patriarchs but was written after the time of the exile.

In a sense, the book (like Ecclesiastes) is a response to the theology taught in the books of Deuteronomy and Proverbs. These latter two books offer a fairly clean cut approach to life in that it plainly states the general cause and effect truth that good begets good and evil begets evil. If we lead moral, righteous lives, we will be blessed by God and his ordained will. If we act immorally and lead unrighteous lives, we will reap bad consequences. This theology is generally true and real life experience bears it out. However, this theological framework does not tell the whole truth. There are times when  evil flourishes and the good unjustly suffers. Real life experience bears this out.

The book of Job's purpose is to deal with the theological particular of the righteous person suffering. Job is a righteous individual with strong faith in God. When he suffers blamelessly, his whole theology is shook to the ground. He wonders why God would allow such evil to befall him. His three friends are disturbed by the questions he is raising about how God relates to man and begin to argue with Job, trying to defend God and attempting to correct Job's theology. Much of what Job's three friends espouse is the theology of Proverbs and Deuteronomy. The most interesting part of this book is that Job listens to the theologizing of his three friends and agrees with them. His response is that he agrees with all their theology - it's his theology! - but it just does not fit his circumstance. Throughout his ordeal, Job never loses his faith/trust in God, but wrestles with the theology. From this perspective, the book of Job is about a crisis of theology, rather than specifically a crisis of faith.

Yet, Job remains unshakeable in both his belief in God and in the belief of his innocence.