Ched Spellman

Beginning a History of the Alexandrian Library

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:15:00 +0000

Deep in my study, as the outer world resounded with the havoc of war, or limped in slow recovery from its frightful toll, I thought I would write the history of the Alexandrian Library, itself the perfect victim of military madness and of the frenzy of the heart and soul of man.

–Edward A. Parsons, The Alexandrian Library: Glory of the of the Hellenic World, ix.

Brevard Childs, Biblical Theologian, Book Review (Shorter | SBJT)

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:15:00 +0000

Title: Brevard Childs, Biblical Theologian: For the Church's One Bible
Author: Daniel R. Driver
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck, 2010
Price: € 69,00 (amz)
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 328

In this revised version of his doctoral thesis completed at the University of St. Andrews, Daniel R. Driver seeks to provide a comprehensive analysis of Childs’ oeuvre and to uncover the inner workings of his brand of biblical theology.

After surveying Childs’ life and the history of the canon debate, Driver divides his analysis into three main parts. In part one, Driver gives a sort of reception history of Childs’ work both in English and German contexts. In part two, he exposits Childs’ canonical approach itself and examines its internal coherence. According to Driver, Childs makes two major shifts or turns in his career. The first is Childs’ movement from a focus on “form” to a focus on “final form.”

In part three, Driver examines the second major shift in Childs’ career, which relates to his reflection on the relationship between the Testaments. Childs’ concern in this area is to affirm that Christ is the subject (the res) that both the Old and New Testaments witness to in their own discrete voices. After providing a test case for the issues raised throughout his discussion (on the scope of Psalm 102), Driver concludes with an epilogue that surveys recent work on the canon and suggests its relevance to Childs’ approach.

One of the consistent criticisms of Childs is that he is inconsistent and that his approach is in need of reconstructive surgery. This perception was encouraged by James Barr’s biting criticism of Childs throughout his career. According to Driver, this critique in particular has helped generate a “bi-polar Childs” in much secondary literature (36-50). On the one hand, Childs champions a focus on the final form of the text, but on the other he engages in various forms of historical criticism in his treatment of biblical material. Many critical biblical scholars would decry a privileging of a final form, which they view as arbitrary, and many evangelical biblical scholars would balk at the use of critical methodology, which they view as dangerous.

For Driver, what is missing in the contemporary discussion is the historical Childs, or better, the canonical Childs. Though one might surely still take issue with elements of Childs’ work, Driver maintains the importance of recognizing that for Childs, there is an internal logic to his version of the canonical approach. Driver points out that the “missing link” many critics neglect is the notion of canon-consciousness (71, 144ff) and that Childs sees an integral connection between the “pre-canonical” forms of texts and traditions and the shape they take in the canon as part of the church’s Scripture.

Driver’s articulation of Childs’ “career thesis” is that “the historically shaped canon of scripture, in its two discrete witnesses, is a Christological rule of faith that in the church, by the action of the Holy Spirit, accrues textual authority” (4). Driver’s overall contention is that Childs’ approach is complex but ultimately coherent.

Evangelical and historical-critical scholars alike who are wary of all things "canonical" would do well to situate Childs in his academic context. Driver demonstrates that throughout his career, Childs reflected on the relationship between historical-critical and biblical-theological methods and assumptions. And there are important differences between his application of these critical tools and “business as usual” in the scholarly guilds.

In a sense, the burden of Driver’s volume is to answer thoroughly the question, “What happens if Childs’ work proves to have a logic of its own, even if it is a logic one finally chooses not to enter?” (59). It is this suggestive yet balanced approach that makes Driver’s volume an instructive hermeneutical guide for reading Childs.

See also,

My ~~overly garrulous~~ more developed review/interaction with Driver's volume (and a few relevant links)
This shorter version also appears in the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 15.3 (Fall 2011): 97.

Canon Formation as a Survival of the Fittest

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 01:15:00 +0000

At the conclusion of his excellent and wide-ranging discussion of the formation of the New Testament (The Canon of the New Testament, 286-67), Bruce Metzger makes a few well-put general comments:

Instead of suggesting that certain books were accidentally included and others were accidentally excluded from the New Testament Canon--whether the exclusion be defined in terms of the activity of individuals, or synods, or councils--it is more accurate to say that certain books excluded themselves from the canon. Among the dozen or more gospels that circulated in the early Church, the question of how, and when, and why our four Gospels came to be selected for their supreme position may seem to be a mystery--but it is a clear case of the survival of the fittest.

From this point of view the Church did not create the canon, but came to recognize, accept, affirm, and confirm the self-authenticating quality of certain documents that imposed themselves as such upon the Church. If this fact is obscured, one comes into serious conflict not with dogma but with history.

Yielded Secrets

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:15:00 +0000

One of the wonderful things about books is that they don't grow agitated or dismissive. They patiently bear all the scrutiny you choose to give them, and the more carefully you read them the more of their secrets they yield.

–Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, 53.

The Complexity of Unalloyed Dialogue

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 05:15:00 +0000

Updike on Hemingway:

It was he who showed us all how much tension and complexity unalloyed dialogue can convey, and how much poetry lurks in the simplest nouns and predicates.

–John Updike, "Foreword," in John Updike: The Early Stories, x.

The Entire Fabric of the Bible

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 18:15:00 +0000

Christ not only fulfills the Old Testament but fills out the entire fabric of the Bible, summing up all things in Himself.

–Joshua E. Williams, "How the Birth of Jesus Fulfills the Old Testament"

The Purpose of Liberty

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:15:00 +0000

Liberty is intended by God for you to use as an instrument for loving others (Gal. 5:13), and not as an instrument for suiting yourself.

–Doug Wilson

Art and Splendor

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 16:15:00 +0000

Art is worthless
unless it plants
a measure of splendor in people's hearts.

–Taha M. Ali, in Poetry 199.3 (Dec 2011): i.

Updike on the Aging Writer

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 16:15:00 +0000

In the work Updike was editing before he died, he muses about the "advantages, for a writer, of youth and obscurity."

You are full of material--your family, your friends, your region of the country, your generation--when it is fresh and seems urgently worth communicating to readers. No amount of learned skills can substitute for the feeling of having a lot to say, of brining news. Memories, impressions, and emotions from your first twenty years on earth are most writers' main material; little that comes afterward is quite so rich and resonant.

By forty, you have probably mined the purest veins of this precious lode; after that, continued creativity is a matter of sifting the leavings. You become playful and theoretical; you invent sequels, and attempt historical novels. The novels and stories thus generated may be more polished, more ingenious, even more humane than their predecessors;

But none does quite the essential earthmoving work that Hawthorne, a writer who dwelt in the shadowland "where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet," specified when he praised the novels of Anthony Trollope as being "as real as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of the earth and put it under a glass case."

–John Updike, Higher Gossip: Essays and Criticism, 3-4.

A Language the Dark Voices Do Not Understand

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:15:00 +0000

The gospel gives me hope, and hope is not a language the dark voices understand.

–Andrew Peterson, from the foreword to Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative, by Russ Ramsey (via).

Giving Thanks For God

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:26:00 +0000

I'm thankful for this reminder from Jason Lee about the effects that our thanksgiving discourse has on how we think about the God who gives. A few excerpts that I appreciated:

On the Implications of "Thanks-Giving":

For the secular mind, the whole holiday makes no sense. Thanksgiving? Thanksgiving somehow implies that I am not in charge of my own destiny. Thanksgiving somehow implies that a higher power not only exists but is in some way personally interested and personally involved in my life. To the secular mind, the very notion of “Thanksgiving” is repulsive and must be replaced. So, the movement to the title of “Turkey Day” is no real surprise.

On Thanksgiving To God:

Believers recognize that we are not just thankful for the good things that we have but that we should direct our thanksgiving to God. If we do not add to whom we are thankful, then our thanksgiving becomes little more than a progress report or satisfaction quotient. So, it is not just that we are thankful for (i.e. happy with) our jobs, our homes or our health. We are thankful to God who is our provider, our protector and our sustainer.

On Thanksgiving For God:

See, it is not just that we remember that we should be thankful to God, but that we are also thankful for God (e.g. Ps. 9:1-2). It is true that we are often overwhelmed by the gracious and loving acts of God including His good gifts of material provisions and life/health for us or our family. We are truly amazed at His provision of spiritual benefits such as forgiveness of sins, the fruit of the Spirit or a loving community of believers.

However, we must never let our thanksgiving for the good provisions of God overshadow our thanks for God Himself. We need to thank Him because of His glorious nature. There would be no possibility of wonderful things such as love, mercy, truth, righteousness, beauty and life, except through God who IS these things. So, pass the rolls, but first remember to be thankful to God for God.

Hey, It Looks Like You're Installing Windows . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 13:15:00 +0000

This might only be funny if you were once a heavy user of MS Word 2003 (and a lover of arid paronomasia):

Fleeting Affluence and Empty Cathedrals

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 01:15:00 +0000

A good word from a Reformation Day sermon I heard in 2005:

Right now is the time for American Christianity to influence the world for Christ.

We cannot be sure how long our time will last. We can spend our time, money and energy constructing affluent church buildings, but I have been to the great cathedrals of both Protestant and Catholic Europe–those cathedrals are empty.

How did they spend their days of affluence? How will we spend ours?

–Jason K. Lee, "Faith and Freedom," 6.

Could the Apostles Pass Your Hermeneutics Class?

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 11:15:00 +0000

The question of whether a New Testament apostle would pass a contemporary hermeneutics course may have more to say about our hermeneutics than the apostles'.

–Matt Smethurst, "Hermeneutical Hall Pass"

The Logic of Adoption

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 12:15:00 +0000

Calvin on why believers were adopted in Christ and not by some other way:

Let this reasoning, then, prevail among believers: we were adopted in Christ into the eternal inheritance because in ourselves we were not capable of such great excellence.

–John Calvin, Institutes, 3.22.1.

Nothing Lost or Forgotten

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:15:00 +0000

In the middle of a post on purchasing a book in a used book store solely because it looked "lonely," Ben Meyers:

It is part of Christian belief in the resurrection to assert that nothing is ultimately unwanted, nothing finally lost or forgotten. When the last trump sounds and the sea gives up its dead, whatever was forgotten will be raised up and kept forever in the presence of him in whom Memory and Love are one.

A good word to remember.

The Worth of Implicit Communication

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:15:00 +0000

One of my favorite elements of good fiction (and any writing) is the art of subtlety. Though the "understated," the "implied," and the "unarticulated" are not necessarily in vogue in tweet-it-as-soon-as-you-think-it-land, they are often the currency of stories and arguments that lodge themselves down the deepest in readers. In other words, some of my favorite things to hear are things that "cannot be directly told."

What sparked this thought and prompted me to not leave it unarticulated (!):

It is to be hoped that this book reaffirms the worth of implicit communication; not everything that needs to be said needs to be said outright. Some things, indeed, cannot be directly told: like happiness which 'writes white,' they vanish when put into words.

–Michael Ward, Planet Narnia, xi.

The Tall Task of NT Scholarship

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:15:00 +0000

The hardest task confronting any New Testament scholar is to come up with an idea or an argument that is at the same time fresh, interesting, and not too far-fetched.

–John Ashton, The Religion of Paul the Apostle, 244. Cf. Martin Hengel's complementary methodological caution.

Who Chose the Gospels? Probing the Great Gospel Conspiracy, Book Review

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 12:15:00 +0000

Title: Who Chose the Gospels? Probing the Great Gospel Conspiracy
Author: Charles E. Hill
Publisher: Oxford, 2010
Price: $27.95 (amz) (wts)
Binding: Hardcover
Pages: xii + 295

Who Chose the Gospels?
Popular accounts of biblical canon formation are often fraught with intrigue and marked by persistent rumbles of conspiracy. Recognizing that the four-fold Gospel corpus of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John came to function as the foundational unit of the New Testament canon, the question naturally arises among many, “Why these four?” and “Why these four?”

Many scholars of early Christianity argue that the early church was “drowning in a sea of Gospels” and that “Christianity’s early centuries were something of a free-for-all with regard to Gospel literature” (1). If there were a multitude of competing accounts of Jesus’ life and all Gospels are created equal, then the narrow selection of the canonical Gospels must have been a matter of coercion, with a particular faction of the church choosing which Gospels would belong in the church’s authoritative Bible. Accordingly, many agree that the selection of the Gospels was a late, controversial, and arbitrary development that was only achieved through the methodical suppression of rival voices.

In this volume, Charles E. Hill seeks to present the historiographical minority report to this scholarly consensus. Through an investigation of the relevant historical data, Hill aims “to examine critically some of the foundational scholarship used to support and promote this now popular narrative of how the church ended up with four, and only four, Gospels” (4). Hill serves as a professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida, and this volume draws on a substantive body of work dealing with the formation of the Gospels and early Christianity.

The Quest to Find the "Chooser"
In his attempt to debunk the “conspiracy theory” of a late and coercively established Gospel corpus, Hill revisits the major figures in the debate and tells a different story about what they perceived and what they received. After a chapter on recent manuscript discoveries in Egypt, Hill begins with Irenaeus of Lyons in the late second century. In his writings, Irenaeus mentions each of the Gospels and provides a creative defense of why there are four of them.

In order to render Irenaeus’ witness to a Gospel collection insignificant and “silence the Bishop,” some scholars portray Irenaeus as a lone ranger, almost totally isolated from the rest of his contemporaries. To counter this portrait of a “lonely Irenaeus,” Hill notes that Irenaeus wrote confidently “as if the church had been nurtured by these four Gospels from the time of the apostles” (41). In this sense, “he simply wrecks the popular paradigm,” because he seems to assume rather than establish this section of the New Testament (41).

Hill next surveys a number of figures that followed Irenaeus (e.g., Tertullian, Origen) and shows from their writings that the acceptance of the four Gospels was relatively widespread. In the rest of the book, Hill digs deeper into church history in search of a figure capable of choosing the Gospels. Hill proceeds to implicate Clement of Alexandria, Serapion of Antioch, and the author of the Muratorian Fragment as “co-conspirators” along with Irenaeus in granting the four Gospels authoritative status. These figures “at points far distant from each another on the map, are all saying or implying that the church has the same four acknowledged Gospels” (99). The presence of Gospel harmonies (e.g., Tatian’s Diatessaron), works of synopsis, and liturgical pulpit editions also assume the existence and circulation of the Gospels in the late second century. These works are “all significant literary-technological ‘packaging’ projects which presuppose the primacy of the four” (121).

Pushing back further, Hill engages the mid-second century teaching of Justin Martyr. In his apologetic work, Justin appeals to the “Memoirs of the Apostles,” which were written by “Jesus’ apostles and their followers” and were utilized in the worship of the churches (132). When Justin cites these memoirs, the content is drawn from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Consequently, Hill concludes that “Justin knew all four canonical Gospels and knew them as an already standard grouping” (143). As was the case with Irenaeus, Hill argues that Justin was not necessarily out of step with his contemporaries in his view of the Gospels. Justin too had “co-conspirators” that indicate the public and widespread usage of this collection. A number of works among the Apostolic Fathers (e.g., Polycarp of Smyrna, Ignatius) also exhibit an awareness of “the gospel” not only as an oral proclamation but also as a written entity.

Though these early precursors are by no means definitive, they do suggest that the “religious apparatus” that “made the reception of the four Gospels, as well as the rest of the New Testament, possible (if not inevitable), was in place already in the late first century” (204). In his last presentation of evidence, Hill entertains the possibility that there was an “arch-conspirator” in the first century who had a hand in choosing the Gospels. He suggests that an important, and perhaps the earliest, testimony to a four-Gospel collection is embedded in the writings of church historian Eusebius.

In his work Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius records a selection of comments from Papias, bishop of Hierapolis in the early second century. In these selections, Papias recounts the testimony of a figure named John the elder, who gives witness to all four Gospels and even asserts that the apostle John wrote his Gospel in order to complement and complete the Synoptics. Even if this account is “legendary,” the fact that Papias recounts it means that he was aware of the close relationship between the four Gospels. Papias, then, represents “the earliest first-hand source for a recognition of all four Gospels” (222).

Reaching the End of the Evidence
After this extensive survey, Hill returns in a concluding chapter to the book’s central concern. If his survey of evidence is plausible, then the question of who chose the Gospels at least pre-dates the fourth century. Each step taken back into the history of the church has a signpost pointing to an earlier generation. The evidence for an authoritative moment of selection by a “primal chooser” is “embarrassingly lacking” and “we simply know of no councils or synods from this period which deliberated on the matter” (230). Even the attempt to formulate possible criteria of canonicity that the church used misses the point, because “the church essentially did not believe it had a choice in the matter!” (231).

According to Hill, the question would not have made sense to the churches of the second century, because these writings “had been in the family as long as anyone could remember” (233). In this context, the internal textual properties of the Gospels themselves are what commended them. These were the Gospels that presented Jesus as the Messiah of the Hebrew Scriptures and the ones in which the church “encountered the real Jesus and divine power” (239). The competing Gospels, if they were true rivals at all, paled in comparison. In other words, recognition of the four canonical Gospels was actually not much of a choice.

Critical Reflection
One helpful aspect of Hill’s volume is his emphasis on manuscript evidence and relevant archeological discoveries (e.g., chapter one). In canon studies, external historical evidence that has a bearing on the canon formation process is often scant and fragmentary. This reality makes the careful investigation of biblical manuscripts crucial and means that an interpreter’s presuppositions will play an important role in his or her analysis of the data. Hill is aware of this problem, and a vital part of his critique of those who downplay the existence of early forms of canonical texts rests squarely upon the assumptions that are made in the process (e.g., see Hill’s discussion of “minimialism,” 185-89).

Further, Hill helpfully delineates between clear and tentative conclusions that can be drawn from the historical evidence. His case for an early establishment of the four Gospels is cumulative and moves from certain to plausible cases (e.g., 206). Hill also provides a historical context for various points of conflict that affect the interpretation of the manuscript evidence (e.g., “Do Christians read other books?” 75ff). In this way, Hill presents the “other side” of the argumentation used by the scholarly consensus.

Much of the ink spilled in the canon debate revolves around how “canon” is defined. Is it only a closed list, or does it also involve authority and use? Hill raises this question in the introduction (5-6), but does not return to it formally. This definitional issue might have been traced throughout his discussion or at least revisited directly in the conclusion. Part of the burden of Hill’s study, though, is in fact to demonstrate the connection between authoritative usage in the churches and what it means for a work to be “canonical.”

Also, because of the nature of the sources under investigation, sometimes Hill’s connections are thin and more difficult to follow (e.g., Papias’ nested quotations). However, as noted above, Hill recognizes this ambiguity and revises the tenor of his conclusions accordingly. In these areas, Hill might have strengthened his argument by interacting with the work of David Trobisch in The First Edition of the New Testament.

Although Hill discusses many technical details and messy historical issues, he manages to keep his prose accessible and stimulating throughout. He also frequently engages the arguments of figures who have popularized the current secular paradigm of canon formation (e.g., Bart Ehrman, Elaine Pagels, Dan Brown). Rather than a conspiracy plot marked by malevolent skullduggery, Hill's narrative uncovers “the less sensational truth” (101) involving an early and natural recognition of a four-fold Gospel collection in the early Church.

This apologetic aspect makes this book a helpful resource for evangelicals who are interested in careful and reasoned responses to these claims about the Bible and early Christianity. Hill also provides helpful introductions to a number of key issues in the canon debate and includes a brief glossary of unfamiliar terms. Thus, among the many competing accounts of Gospel selection, Hill’s volume would be a good choice.

See also,

Hill's RTS Faculty Page
Craig Blomberg's review in Denver Journal
Hill's related volume The Johannine Corpus in the Early Church (Amz) (GBks)
David Trobisch's work The First Edition of the New Testament (Amz) (GBks)
This review also appears in JETS 54.3 (September 2011): 631-34.

Information Overload and Filter Failure

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 02:15:00 +0000

Sir Francis Bacon's comment regarding reading (from his essay "On Studies") is widely quoted:

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

Jacobs comments,

This is usually taken as a wise or sententious general comment about the worthiness of various texts, but . . . Bacon was making a very practical recommendation to people who were overwhelmed by the availability of books and couldn't imagine how they were going to read them all. Bacon tells such worried folks that they can't read them all, and so should develop strategies of discernment that enable them to make wise decisions about how to invest their time. I think Bacon would have applauded Clay Shirky's comment that we suffer not from 'information overload' but from 'filter failure.' Bacon's famous sentence is really a strategy for filtering.

–Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, 110-11.

Read What Gives you Delight

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 11:15:00 +0000

This is the best reading advice I've heard (read!) in a while:

Read what gives you delight--at least most of the time--and do so without shame.

–Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, 23.

Don't Settle for the Disaster of a Canon within the Canon

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 20:51:00 +0000

I enjoyed reading Fred Sanders' recent reflection on the concept of a "canon within the canon." He talks about having a "favorite" book of the Bible (not necessarily harmful if you affirm the whole canon), about the importance of recognizing the unique functions that different books play in the larger canon, and finally about the disaster of actually developing a "canon within the canon" as an interpretive grid.

Any time a Christian promotes one book or author over the others, and forms the habit of always seeking answers in that section of the Bible while neglecting and losing familiarity with other sections, disaster awaits. The real Bible is replaced by an eclectic mini-Bible. The real canon is subordinated to a personal canon. Instead of hearing the word of God, we begin to hear our own voices echoing back from our self-selected favorite verses.

Settling for a canon [within] the canon is a terrible thing. As fallible and sinful interpreters, we lapse into this error all too often, but when we do so, we should at least know we are erring, and not pretend we are doing well. To play favorites with Bible books (in this sense) is to have a blind spot, not to have a privileged lens on the truth.

–Fred Sanders, "Canon within the Canon"

C. S. Lewis' Sophisticated Imagination

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:17:00 +0000

The Chronicles, then, are indeed “about Christ,” but they are about Christ in a much more imaginatively sophisticated way than people have hitherto realized. The Narniad looks planless, but all is planned.

–Michael Ward, talking about the literary influence of the "planets" in C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia in "Narnia's Secret: The Seven Heavens of the Chronicles Revealed," in Touchstone.

In my opinion, Ward's work on the Chronicles is instructive and compelling. The Chronicles are not a "Chicken soup for the Soul" straightforward Christian allegory. It's there, just woven a little further into the story than that.

Weapons of Mass Distraction

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 16:11:00 +0000

(via / ht)

When Hope Screams . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 12:15:00 +0000

My daughter Hope is precious, at least in my eyes. This utterly biased perspective is probably true of most Fathers. There are times when my whole world stops and zeroes in on her toothy grin, or her cackling laugh. Especially when she’s walking outside (she loves being outside) and turns to look at me with her hand outstretched for me to hold. Or when she scampers over to give me a hug when I walk through the door. Or when she lays her head on my shoulder when she’s exhausted after a long day. When Hope laughs, smiles, or grins, life is good and all the world seems right.

But, when Hope screams, that whole world seems to come unhinged. Aside from having a spirited disposition, she is also quite capable of emptying her lungs and filling a room with piercing volume. After only a short while of this screeching intensity, she can work herself up to the point where the original cause of the situation becomes superfluous, as the act itself of being upset perpetuates the pain. Suddenly, my words no longer soothe her sobs, and she no longer finds rest in my arms.

I remember one night in particular. Late into the evening, she woke up with a startling, desperate cry. We were visiting relatives, so for several hours, we attempted in vain to calm her trembling body back to sleep. Though she finally lay back down, we were never able to identify the cause of this particularly acute ordeal. Holding a screaming child who will not be pacified is an unnerving affair.

In these sobering moments, I am forced to reckon with the fact that I am not capable of shielding her from the harsh realities of the fallen world into which she was born. I can do nothing to change the fact that the moment she took her first breath, countless others breathed their last.

Suffering is often as difficult to understand as it is to endure. The burden of sorrow and the weight of suffering are interwoven elements of our lives. Thus, grappling with the gravity of pain in a sin-riddled world is not an optional task. Tragedy, loss, and heartache often carry enough force to shake even the strongest theological foundations.

In the pursuit of faithfulness amidst pain, we are not helped by easy answers or superficial articulations of the questions. Though believers have sometimes encouraged one another by diminishing the horror of human pain, the claims of the Gospel are more drastic than that. In Scripture, we hear a voice that speaks to the wounds of worst-case scenarios. Indeed, Christian hope is most needed when life screams.

In attempting to understand the nature of human pain, there are at least three types of suffering that a person might experience. First, someone might experience the just and natural consequences of his or her sin. Second, someone might experience undeserved persecution for faith in Christ. Or, third, someone might experience the effects of living in a fallen world. This last category involves suffering that often seems utterly meaningless. Though they have divergent origins, all three of these categories convey genuine hardship and represent a challenge to the thought process of a believer.

Any Christian response to the problem of pain must be able to account for at least these broad areas. How should we respond to the myriad of situations that involuntarily bring forth from the depths of who we are the wrenching query, “Where now is my hope?” (Job 17:15).

Excerpted from the introduction of "When Hope Screams: Learning How to Suffer as Sons from the Book of Hebrews," SWJT 53.2 (Spring 2011): 112-34. You can read whole thing here (pdf). I would love any feedback you might give!