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Paperback - 132 pp
ISBN 0-8028-0722-4
Eerdmans

Summary

This compelling study by J. Christiaan Beker provides a moving, triumphant answer to one of life's greatest mysteries - the presence of suffering in God's world.  Now an established classic in the discussion of the problem of evil, Suffering and Hope plumbs the Old Testament's response to earthly pain as well as Paul's own dealings with 'redemptive suffering.'  Beker seeks to understand how the Bible's view of suffering relates to our present experience of suffering and to the Christian hope for the future creation.  His concern is with the quality and character of bothe suffering and hope in a world where the question of suffering is inescapable.

This powerful new edition features a foreword by Ben C. Ollenburger that describes the story behind the book - the dehumanizing conditions Beker endured as a slave laborer during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and the ways in which they helped shape the particular poignancy of his view of suffering.  Readers will be moved both by Beker's personal transparency and by his biblical vision of 'hopeful suffering' - the apocalyptic trust in God's eventual victory over the power of death that poisons his creation.

Editorial Review

Beker has turned to the Scriptures with his questions not simply because that is his area of expertise, but because the Scriptures reflect the same tensions which the author experiences: between suffering and hope, between trust in a good Creator and the fact of immense pain everywhere.  As does the Bible, Beker stands squarely before God when thinking about both light and darkness, both good and evil.  And on every page the author appeals to that desire in all of us to avoid both cynicism and naive credulity.

Fred B. Craddock
Candler School of Theology, Emory University