BIFURCATION:
SUBJECTIVE VS. OBJECTIVE KEYS TO THE BOOK OF JOB
(pages 172-176)
hard cover page 175
Third parties to tragedy may cautiously question the moral/ philosophical underpinnings of the Divine/human interaction. But primary parties to suffering leave the realm of those who may intellectually challenge. They enter a new realm-that of those whose faith is tested in the crucible of suffering.
Job
In the case of Job, we observe what on the surface appear to be conflicting signals from the Divine on the issue of the rationally moral aspect of the human-Divine interaction. In the finale God seems to reproach Job’s insistence on his right to clear Divine justice: “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare if thou hast the understanding” (Job 38:4). Yet He reproves Job’s friends as well for their dismissal of Job’s protestations. “. . . ye have not spoken of Me the thing that is right, as My servant Job has” (Job 42:7).
Summary: Dual Keys
It would seem that at times the Divine importunes a challenge that demands Divine adherence to “moral standards.” The seeming contradiction would seem to be clearly resolved by our formulation: It is not the place of the sufferer Job to protest God’s “injustice”; but it may very well be the place of bystanders to forcefully press the sufferer’s case. This is the first crucial key to the resolution of the arduous convolutions of the Book of Job.
Thus, the Book of Job, which is an enigma wrapped in a paradox, is unraveled by a combination of the Unified Formulation and the “Bifurcation” schema just noted. The Book of Job is a counterpoint to the Garden of Eden narrative. The Jobian theodicy, put forward by the Divine, fittingly links evil to the wonderment and mysteries of creation. This is the second key to Job. As “quest for potential” is the inviolate core dynamic of the Divine and hence, of creation, the solution to gratuitous evil indeed lies in the unrevealed, as of that time,
~continued~
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