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‘The Changelessness of God’ as Kierkegaard's Final Theodicy: God and the Gift of Suffering
Author(s) -
MARTENS PAUL,
MILLAY TOM
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
international journal of systematic theology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.149
H-Index - 13
eISSN - 1468-2400
pISSN - 1463-1652
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2400.2011.00562.x
Subject(s) - temporality , philosophy , eternity , rhetorical question , theodicy , faith , literature , new testament , theology , early christianity , christianity , epistemology , art , linguistics
In the midst of his final ‘attack on Christendom’, Kierkegaard published a short discourse devoted to James 1:17–21 entitled ‘The Changelessness of God’. Aside from providing a pleasant rhetorical anomaly at this juncture in his corpus, Kierkegaard's final discourse also introduces another surprise: a defense of the God who sits silently by and watches true Christianity disappear from Denmark. Kierkegaard's defense of God also accounts for Christian suffering – Christ's, the apostles' and perhaps his own – and it does so by creating a sharp division of reality between temporality and eternity, a division that echoes through from the earliest discourses on the same biblical passage. This article contextualizes ‘The Changelessness of God’ by tracing these developments and then continues to press the logic of Kierkegaard's construal of the relationship between temporality and eternity which ultimately leads to a rather problematic description of suffering as a necessary good and perfect gift from God.