path: root/faith/dan-drapal-on-job-review_en.rst

On „Spor o Joba“ (Dispute about Job)
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:category: faith
:tags: review, english, job, inerrancy, historicity
:date: 2015-07-06T12:11:00

I have just finished reading the book by Dan Drápal „`Spor
o Joba`_“ (Návrat domů, 2015; “Dispute about Job”) and I am
rather unsure about it.

.. _`Spor o Joba`:
    http://www.databazeknih.cz/knihy/spor-o-joba-251107

Firstly from purely formal reasons. To say it bluntly: the book
is in my opinion longer than it deserves to be. The really
important part is the first one (44 pages). When I was reading
it, I felt constantly an intense feeling that this was exactly
the book I would love to write myself, but I have never overcome
my laziness and incompetence to do it. Then, however, there is
also the second part (37 pages), which is just more or less (more
less than more) commented annotated reading notes on many books
related to the book of Job. The third part is a comprehensive (7
densely printed pages) bibliography.

I understand that publishing of books especially in the small
volume is quite a challenging activity financially, so I do not
suspect pecuniary motives on the side of the author. I would
guess that it is more a wish (more and more problematic in the
time of Kindle, Internet, and similar tools) to have his thoughts
immortalized on pieces of dead trees. Let me just note that the
result looks to me sensible neither from the environmental, nor
economical point of view (on the side of a buyer; 44 pages for
130 CZK or how much the book costs is quite a drastic amount).
I would welcome much more than this patchwork (half-page
paragraphs typeset on separate pages with almost every third page
blank; is it really necessary?) if the author published
a collection of his most timeless blogposts (including the part
of this book), that could in my opinion in total make a way more
valuable book and less pity for the sacrificed trees.

So, fortunately now we can leave behind the only really negative
part of this review and we can deal with something which I see as
the real contribution of this book. First of all, let me deal
briefly with a second part of the book which seems to me relevant
for the rest of my thoughts, which is the consideration of
historicity of the Book of Job. I hope the author would agree
with me that The Holy Bible constitutes whole library of works by
various human authors and various literary styles (that shouldn't
deny the inspiration of the Bible and I would like to leave that
issue outside of this review). We have in the Bible historical
books (however the concept was understood in the time of their
writing, e.g., The Books of Chronicles), spiritual poetry or
a prayer book (Psalms), prophecies, wisdom literature (Proverbs,
Ecclesiastes), shockingly open erotic poem (Song of Songs). So,
it makes sense to ask for the literary form of the Book of Job.
It seems to me obvious that it is not (prima facie) historical
writing, or prophetic or mythological one, but that it is
a rather unique(?) example of the Biblical fiction prose, in the
modern terms closest to some kind of novel or long story centered
around the deep theological / philosophical contemplation of the
human suffering (let me emphasize again, that it has absolutely
nothing to do with the issue of the level or manner of the
inspiration of the book by the Holy Spirit). If we accept this
classification and follow its consequences, we have to get in my
opinion to couple of conclusions:

1. Whole question of the historicity of the Book of Job looses
   its value. If the Book of Job is truly a novel, the question
   of its historicity is roughly the same as the historicity of
   Alyosha Karamazov. Yes, perhaps there are some literal
   historians, who are dealing with the issue whether Alyosha
   Karamazov is based on some historical person or not, but it is
   completely secondary question for the literary quality of the
   work and for its message.

2. When looking at the Book of Job as a literary work, it seems
   to me obvious that the key part are all discussions between
   Job and his friends (and God) dealing with the main issue of
   the book, question of human suffering in the world. The first
   two chapters and the half of the last one are then just
   a frame story giving a context to the rest. From this point of
   view the whole idea of using the second chapter of the Book of
   Job (meeting of God and Satan) as the explanation of the Job’s
   suffering. Our author this explanation firmly rejects in the
   first part of the book, but then in the second part he seems
   to be playing with the ideas suggesting such explanation.

   It is actually startling how most of the interpretation issues
   in our book (and I am afraid it is the true reflection of the
   discussion around the Book of Job generally) centers around
   this frame story and how little work is done comparatively on
   the rest of the book (here I need to recommend largely
   forgotten but very interesting book of Jiří Dohnal `Pastoral
   Care of the Job’s Friends`_; Logos, 1992).

3. Moreover, using of the second chapter of the Book of Job to
   explain it (“it was not about the real suffering of Job, just
   a bet and game between Satan and the LORD God”) seems rather
   suspicious. From the Job’s point of view this bet or game
   makes rather strange testimony about the God’s character (who
   kills all Job’s family just to prove his point to Satan). What
   such bet says about the God’s love, his respect to the value
   of human life, etc.?

.. _`Pastoral Care of the Job’s Friends`:
    http://www.databazeknih.cz/knihy/pastorace-jobovych-pratel-202307

Here I really end with the objections to the book and I can
finally continue with what I consider to be the most important
about the book, and why I think it is a very valuable one, that
is to its first part.

It is some time, so I am not sure exactly when it was, I saw in
TV (or read in newspapers?) interview with some Czech painter (or
was it a composer?) about his last work. Young journalist, who
obviously didn’t have much idea what to ask, and so he (or she?)
hoped to please the author by letting him talking about his work,
and so the journalist ask him what he wanted to say by the work.
The answer was rather irritated: “What do you think? If I was
able to tell it in two sentences to the newspapers, would I spent
two years struggling with the creation of it?”

I thought about this interview when reading the first part of
our book. When we try to explain simply the Book of Job, we have
to miss the its true meaning. Do we really think, that the Holy
Ghost has nothing else to do than to inspire writing whole book
of Bible, when it would be enough to tell its message on one or
two pages of simple text? There is not a simple way in my opinion
how to avoid reading and struggling for understanding of any
Biblical book.

Our book starts by explaining how the obvious understanding of
the issue of evil in the world leads to belief that the good God
always blesses virtuous and punishes sinners, and how this kind
of faith can get very dangerous in the moment, when it turns to
its other side and we start to believe that blessed people are
somehow more virtuous and suffering people are sinners. Authors
reminds us about the famous text of Luke 13:1-5:

    There were some present at that very time who told him about
    the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their
    sacrifices. // And he answered them, “Do you think that these
    Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans,
    because they suffered in this way? // No, I tell you; but
    unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. // Or those
    eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do
    you think that they were worse offenders than all the others
    who lived in Jerusalem? // No, I tell you; but unless you
    repent, you will all likewise perish.” 

Jesus here quite clearly rejects implicitly suggested theory of
“some” that the killed Galileans and eighteen killed under
the tower of Siloam somehow got what they deserved. I would even
suggest that this suggestion that blessing is the certificate of
just, is quite often tool of self-justification (rarely is such
theory promoted by somebody who just goes through “the dark night
of the soul”, but mostly by those who feels themselves blessed).
Jesus seems to me lead his listeners by the reminder of need to
repent away from this illusion of self-justification.

The remainder of the first part of the book deals with the
various methods, who to make Job’s suffering explainable and
rationally understandable and proves that none of these ways make
any sense or in fact that they don’t give any answer to the
question of the meaning of human suffering.

Some of the false paths mentioned by the author (and I wildly
agree with him) are thoughts that Job didn’t raise up his kids
properly, that perhaps his fear of the LORD God was just an
unhealthy fear, that perhaps the LORD God wanted to lead him to
higher perfection, that perhaps he could be an precursor of the
Lord Jesus Christ a his substitute sacrifice, or that in the end
it is a judgement over Job. It doesn’t make much sense to deal
with these reasons more in detail. First of all, the author did
himself very well, and moreover it seems to me that most of the
ideas have something common with the theories provided by Jobs
friends in the Book of Job itself.

Let me just stop for a paragraph, that Job was a precursor of the
substitute sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. This idea the
author found in the study notes of the Czech Ecumenical
translation and refused it briskly in one of its half-page
chapters closing that it is just another “ornate religious
rubbish”. Even though I generally agree, that the parallel is
rather strained and it is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible
(neither in the Book of Job itself or in the New Testament),
still I would say, that the author was a little bit too fast in
renunciation of this idea. Obviously the explaining the Book of
Job by this theory of the substitute sacrifice suffers from the
same problem as the LORD God playing gamble with Satan (see
above): nobody asked Job whether he wants to be sacrificed
(nobody even explained him that he is being sacrificed for the
larger good). On the other hand we believe that the Lord Jesus
Christ went to his death willingly and I would think that at
least with some thoughts that his death will bring salvation to
humanity. So this theory doesn’t lead to love-driven sacrifice
but it looks very much like an useless waste of human life. On
the other hand, the situation of the just human who because of
his suffering gets the power (or authority) to save by his
intercession others who violated him, seems to me legitimately
giving some possible parallels to the situation of the Lord Jesus
Christ. How does it relate to the strange sacrifices on behalf of
Job’s children from Job 1:5 I don’t know as well, but to brush
the idea in few (specifically five) sentences as rubbish seems to
me a bit hasty.

So the result of the first part of the book is that the author
gets to the conclusion that we really don’t know (perhaps we even
cannot know?) reason, why Job suffered the experience he got
into. In the same time we can see from the whole story that Job
accepted the reply to his situation, that there was some specific
reply to be accepted, and so in the end the Book of Job leaves us
instead of simple answer with an encouragement to search for the
answer from the LORD God when we get into similarly murky
situation and that we should look for the answer in meeting with
Him. In this context I always think about Psalm 73. Psalmist
stands in it in the similar situation as Job: how come that he in
his justice and effort to achieve holiness experiences just
suffering (“For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked
every morning.”), whereas the wicked lives in comfort and peace?
Psalm actually doesn’t give unequivocal answer but suddenly in
the verses 16 and 17 he claims: “But when I thought how to
understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, // until
I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end.”
After this meeting with the LORD God suddenly remaining part of
the psalm changes into the hymn of praise of the God’s justice
and goodness.

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