Human Anguish and God’s Power

David Kelsey, Weigle Professor Emeritus of Theology at Yale Divinity School, takes up an enormously important and seldom-discussed problem in this challenging and important book: how to refute the bad theology—what he calls, more politely, ‘problematic theology’—that frequently crops up when people suffer horrendous evils and tragedies, and when well-intentioned, pious caregivers try to console them with theological claims like: it’s God’s will, or there is a reason such events have happened, or they are part of a divine plan, or ‘God never sends more suffering than you can bear.’ Such bromides may be ‘the platitudes of conventional wisdom,’ but they are profoundly wrong, according to Kelsey. Wrong because they misrepresent who and what God is and how God is related to the world. His objections to these claims are not, therefore, in the first instance, psychological. The problem lies deeper, in the ‘problematic theology’ that lies behind them. Human Anguish and God’s Power is an extended exposition of what a good (or better) theology could entail, one that, arguably, more profoundly fits the central theological thrust of the Bible and Christian faith and is also more respecting of and true to human experience. The book also shows why the popular, if problematic, account of things just won’t do. Kelsey writes as a systematic theologian, not as a practical or pastoral theologian. But though his thinking verges into pastoral theological pastures at various points, the true value of this book is its steady gaze at the theological ideas and insights underlying these difficult caregiving situations. His ideas have profound and actually counter intuitive implications not only for pastoral and other caregiving practices, but for the academic discipline of pastoral theology as well. Liberal pastoral theologians in particular will find this book both a highly innovative and creative intellectual work, but also a bracing and perhaps disturbing challenge to well-established liberal theological assumptions and perspectives in pastoral theology. It is, in any event, broadly conservative in its methodology if not in its theology, being rooted in an identification with the scriptures and much of the mainstream theological tradition of the church, especially perhaps the Reformed tradition (though it also departs from traditional theology in striking ways). Note: This book stands alongside Kelsey’s other works, especially his magnum opus, Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology (two volumes), which can be usefully read to fill in many blanks that arise in Human Anguish and God’s Power. Kelsey’s little volume, Imagining Redemption, which is far more readable and also provides a helpful adjunct to Human Anguish, can also be a useful companion in helping to clarify Kelsey’s thinking. I will point out some of these supplemental places in what follows.