The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL AND THE PROBLEM OF GOD. D. Z. Phillips (2005). Minneapolis, MN: Fortress. Pp. 280 + xxiii, Pb, $25.00. Reviewed by J. Harold Ellens. A few watershed volumes have been written by Christian scholars during the last three decades about the perplexities of human suffering. Notable among them are Nicholas Wolterstorffs autobiographical Lament for a Son (1987), Lewis Smedes' How Can it Be Alright When Everything is All Wrong? (1988), and Philip Yancey's Where is God When It Hurts: A Comforting, Healing Guide for Coping with Hard Times (1990). In that line of inquiry we now have Phillips' work of three parts and 11 chapters. Wolterstoff's book was of enormous help to suffering persons from the outset, and remains so nearly two decades later because it is an existential personal report on what it is to suffer unspeakable loss and get through Christianly. He is not afraid to say aloud that much of the traditional dogma about God's sustaining mechanisms are not real or true, but he leads us to the center and to the essence of the experience of loss and of spiritual resilience. Smedes' piece was a somewhat less satisfying effort to combine psychological observations with theological framework. The result was a nice but not necessary book. Like much of his published work, it was not quite compelling. Yancey's book got a great deal of play, largely, I think, because so much of his work has been enormously appealing to the general public, particularly his, What's So Amazing About Grace. His book on suffering is a folksy how-to book about suffering, with both the few strengths and the numerous weaknesses of all how-to books. It ended up being a kind of analytic narrative, viewing grief and loss from afar. Phillips' new book incites the feeling that one is located somewhere in the scholastic discourse of the Middle Ages, approximately half way between Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas. It is a book of philosophy grappling with the speculations of theology. Its character and mode is suggested by the abstruse abstraction of Simone Weil quoted on the fly leaf, setting the tone for the book. "We have to be careful about the level on which we place the infinite. If we put it on the level which is only suitable for the finite it does not much matter what name we give it." Phillips holds the Danforth Chair in Philosophy of Religion at Claremont Graduate University and is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Wales, Swansea. His previous recent books are Religion and Friendly Fire (2004), Recovering Religious Concepts (2000), and Religion and the Hermeneutics of Contemplation (2001). …