THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING [To the Editor of the SeEcm-ron.]
SIR,—May I be permitted a word in reply to Mr. Warner's suggestive and friendly criticism of my recent article on "Suffering in the Old Testament " ? Many aspects of the problem I was obliged, for lack of space, to ignore ; conse- quently in my necessarily brief reference to the Book of Job, I had to leave untouched even the important contribution of Elihu, to say nothing of what Mr. Warner calls the " demon- ology " of the book.
But two thing's may now be said : (1) The solution which "regards evil, physical is well as moral evil, as originating neither in God nor in man, but in an evil personality external to both," is a solution little likely to satisfy the modern man, as it can at best be nothing more than a speculation, which derives whatever support it seems to have from an obsolescent view of Scripture, and whose logical issue would seem. to be the destruction of the sense of moral responsibility (cf. James i. 14). But (2) it is even more important to notice that in the discussion proper (iii. 1—xlii. 6), which represents the writer's real mind on the problem, he never once alludes—and in this he is very modern—to the Satan who is introduced in the prologue as one of the actors in the popular story which furnished the great thinker and poet with the material for starting his discussion. Besides, if Mr. Warner traces the origin of Job's sorrows to the Satan, must he not' gd farther back still ? For twice over it is clearly stated (i. 8, ii. 3) that the Satan's malevolent action was set in motion by a question put to him by Jehovah Himself. It is He, for a special purpose of His own, and not the Satan, who sets in train the events which create the problem. It is necessary to distin- guish between the story, shot through as it is with 'popular religious conceptions, and the mature thought of the profound thinker who used the story in his own brilliant way as the basis of his immortal discussion.—! am, Sir, &c.,
Joinv E. MCFADYEN,,
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