Brian Han Gregg. What Does the Bible Say About Suffering? Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2016. See here to buy the book.
Brian Han Gregg has a Ph.D. from Notre Dame and teaches biblical studies at the University of Sioux Falls in South Dakota.
In What Does the Bible Say About Suffering?, Gregg discusses
the Bible as it addresses the issue of human suffering. Often in the
book, Gregg prefers to interact in an in-depth manner with specific
biblical passages rather than covering the topic of suffering in the
Bible in a comprehensive sense. Among the topics with which Gregg
interacts are: God’s reward of the righteous and punishment of the
wicked in the Hebrew Bible; Cain’s choice to do evil in the Book of
Genesis; God using evil for good, as in the biblical story of Joseph;
suffering as an attack by Satan, which occurs in the Book of Job and is
mentioned in the New Testament; suffering as a test or as a means to
assist people in their spiritual growth; suffering as a way for Christ
to make himself known to others through us, amidst our weakness and
vulnerability; God’s comfort of believers amidst their suffering, and
their comfort of others; and Christ’s suffering acts of sacrificial
service, which believers are to follow. Gregg believes that all of
these biblical interactions with suffering should be considered, and
that to focus on one alone to the exclusion of the others disrupts the
symphony that the Bible conveys.
Here are some thoughts about the book:
A. Chapter 2 was excellent. This chapter was about God rewarding
the righteous and punishing the wicked. Gregg astutely notes that this
is a significant theme in the Hebrew Bible, but that the New Testament
shifts reward and punishment more to the afterlife, or to the eschaton.
Gregg also effectively addresses a question: How can we tell if our
suffering is God punishing us for our sins? Gregg responds that God
does not send us on a wild goose chase to identify some sin for which
God is punishing us, but that God often tells people explicitly when God
is punishing them for a sin. This chapter was sensitive to problems
and potential objections, and it was biblical.
B. Chapter 2 was the strongest chapter in the book, and the chapter
after that was all right. In Chapter 3, Gregg shows how God reached out
to Cain in love even after rejecting Cain’s sacrifice, and he briefly
addresses thorny topics surrounding human free will (i.e., mental health
issues).
C. It was at the end of Chapter 5 that I began to be disappointed
with the book. Chapter 5 had good points: for example, Gregg argues
that Satan in the Book of Job appears rather sinister, perhaps to argue
against biblical scholars who regard Satan in the Book of Job merely
as God’s prosecuting attorney. Near the end of the book, Gregg was
astutely discussing the weaknesses that can accompany blaming Satan for
our suffering. Then, Gregg was about to address a question: How can
we tell if our suffering is from Satan? I was expecting for Gregg to
knock this question out of the park, as he did with the question in
Chapter 2. But he did not; my impression is that he felt that he could
not, and that we really cannot make that determination, apart from God’s
guidance.
D. In the final chapter of the book, Gregg attempts to address the
larger question of whether believers can identify the reason for their
suffering. Is it a test? Is it punishment? On page 164, he says,
“There is no formula for discernment, but God has promised to lead his
children through the valley.” Gregg says that Scripture, the Holy
Spirit, and insight from others can assist one in discernment. There
may be some wisdom to this, but it is not iron-clad. The appeal to
Scripture leaves us exactly where we started: Scripture has all these
rationales for suffering, and believers want to know which rationale
fits their situation. Regarding the Holy Spirit, there are Christians
who claim some pretty wacky things that they attribute to the Holy
Spirit! And insight from others can be helpful, but not necessarily:
Gregg is aware of how unhelpfully Job’s friends advised Job! My hope
was that more of the book would be like Chapter 2, but it was not
exactly. Granted, no formula or criterion for religiously accounting
for suffering is perfect, but the book would have been better had Gregg
offered more guidelines.
E. People who have already read a lot about theodicy or religious
explanations of suffering may not find much that is new in Gregg’s
book. Gregg did well, though, to share stories about suffering,
including his own. And there were areas in which the book was edifying:
when he talked about how his wife as a hospital chaplain “bore witness”
to people’s pain (page 157), and how quadraplegic Joni Earickson Tada
felt a deep need for Christ after her accident, a need that she did not
feel before.
F. Not long ago, I read the book Between Pain and Grace, by
Gerald Peterman and Andrew Schmutzer, and something that I liked about
that book was that it taught me things I did not know about the thought
of Augustine and John Calvin. Gregg’s book would have been better had
it done something like that: peppered his insights with references to
theologians.
G. Gregg often felt a need to stress that God does not cause certain
forms of suffering, but that God can use suffering for our benefit, or
can bring good out of suffering. Occasionally, Gregg’s insight was
supportable by Scripture: for instance, God in the wilderness did not
directly cause the Israelites’ harsh surroundings, but he used those
surroundings for their spiritual benefit. Often, though, Gregg did not
really support this insight with Scripture. The insight is
understandable, for God would look horrible if he were to be deemed the
cause of certain forms of suffering. And yet, Gregg should have
wrestled with Scriptures such as Exodus 4:11, which seems to say that
God makes people deaf, mute, and blind. Randy Alcorn, in his lengthy
tome If God Is Good, actually interacts with this verse.
H. Chapter 12 was all right: it talks about service, and how Jesus
tried to “redirect” his disciples’ “ambition” for greatness rather than
suppressing it (page 148). That may qualify the biblical passages that
exhort people to deny themselves, and it presents Jesus as one who
realistically recognizes and acknowledges human egoism. At the same
time, on page 146, Gregg states that those who “looked not to [their]
own interests but to the interests of others” “will partake of the glory
of the resurrected Christ.” Does that imply salvation by works? Gregg
most likely believes in salvation by grace, which means that people
cannot earn their salvation. Still, he should have addressed the
question of how what he says on page 146 would relate to salvation by
grace.
I. In Chapter 13, Gregg wrestles with the enigmatic statement in
Colossians 1:24 that Paul is completing what is lacking in Christ’s
afflictions. Gregg could have been more direct in saying what exactly
was lacking in Christ’s afflictions. Gregg does say that Paul can “bear
[suffering] in the flesh in a way that the risen Jesus no longer can”
(page 156), and Gregg does say beautiful things in his interpretation of
that verse. But, overall, I am still unclear about what Gregg thinks
that Colossians 1:24 means.
J. Gregg uses the word “symphony” more than once in this book.
After reading this book, how the Bible addresses suffering does not
strike me as a harmonious symphony. Rather, the Bible says different
things about suffering, and people can take those different things in
helpful and unhelpful directions, as Gregg shows. I would not
necessarily go to the other extreme and embrace Bart Ehrman’s view that
the Bible is contradictory and discordant. Still, after reading Gregg, I
do wonder how many of these biblical ideas on suffering can fit
together. Something else to add: Gregg himself may not have been using
the word “symphony” to imply harmony, as much as to argue that we should
take everything in the Bible under consideration, as opposed to
focusing on only one thing in the Bible.
I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.