Power and Responsibility in Biblical Interpretation by Alissa Jones Nelson

Author:Alissa Jones Nelson [Nelson, Alissa Jones]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Ancient, General
ISBN: 9781317544029
Google: 7_LOBAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-10-14T01:24:41+00:00

Background: Gutiérrez’s Understanding of the Book of Job

The suffering of the innocent is a key issue in many theologies, but especially so in liberation theologies. Gutiérrez’s interest in the book of Job stems from this issue.52 He sees the issues of innocent suffering and God’s gratuitous love for the poor as the central themes of the book of Job. Furthermore, in defence of this perspective, which is clearly coloured by his commitment to liberation theology, Gutiérrez argues that “not only is it legitimate in principle to read the Bible from the standpoint of our deepest and most pressing concerns; this has also in fact been the practice of the Christian community throughout its history.”53 Gutiérrez’s exposition of Job is thus primarily, though not solely, concerned with the application of the text in the contemporary world, specifically in the religious/social/political situation of his Latin American context. He reads Job with particular attention to “the connection, and even the identity, between theological methodology and spirituality.”54

From the outset, Gutiérrez asserts that “theological thought about God is thought about a mystery.” This is not, however, a mystery that “must remain hidden” but one that “must rather be expressed, not concealed; communicated, not kept to itself.”55 The question at issue in the book of Job is the question of “how we are to talk about God from within a specific situation – namely, the suffering of the innocent.”56 This is the subject of the “debate” between Job and his friends.57 How does one “speak of God and to God in the situation that Job must endure”?58 It is this suffering of the innocent, and God’s role in it, which Job’s complaint addresses on behalf of all who suffer unjustly.59

In harmony with von Rad, Gutiérrez argues that it is clear that the author of the book “intends to make a paradigm” of Job. The possibility that Job can serve God gratuitously opens up the possibility that there may be others like him; in Gutiérrez’s view, the book of Job presents gratuitous service of God as a possibility not just for one person, but for all who believe. It is this possibility that “implies the loving and completely free meeting of two freedoms, the divine and the human.”60 Through this application of the principle of gratuitous love, “Job begins to free himself from an ethic centered on personal rewards and to pass to another focused on the needs of one’s neighbor. The change represents a considerable shift.”61 Job’s answer to the doctrine of retribution is that it simply does not reflect real life.62

The doctrine of retribution is problematic for any advocate of the poor who must face the argument that the poor are poor according to their own just punishment for “sin,” their own laziness, or their own greed. Job himself exposes the false premises on which this argument is based, and Gutiérrez seizes upon this as confirmation that the poor suffer innocently and that a doctrine of retribution is not only insufficient but unjust in the face of such suffering.

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