God and Human Suffering: An Exercise in the Theology of the Cross

Professor Hall has written a major work on an agonizing subject, at once brilliant, comprehensive, and thought provoking.

In contrast to many writers who gloss over one or the other, Dr. Hall is true both to the reality of suffering and to the affirmation that God creates, sustains, and redeems.

Creative is his view that certain aspects of what we call suffering -- loneliness, experience of limits, temptation, anxiety -- are necessary parts of God's good creation. These he distinguishes from suffering after the fall, the tragic dimension of life.

Unique is his structure:

creation-suffering as becoming

the fall--suffering as a burden

redemption--conquest from within.

Professor Hall succeeds in moving the reader beyond the customary way of stating the problem: "How can undeserved suffering coexist with a just and almighty God?" He also evaluates five popular, leading thinkers on suffering: Harold Kushner, C.S. Lewis, Diogenes Allen, George Buttrick, and Leslie Weatherhead.

Douglas John Hall is emeritus professor of theology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. Among the most widely read theologians in North America, Hall has written many popular and acclaimed works, including Lighten Our Darkness (1976), God and Human Suffering (1987), and Why Christian? (1998), as well as a full-scale trilogy in systematic theology: Thinking the Faith (1991), Professing the Faith (1996), and Confessing the Faith (1998), all from Fortress Press.