NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion - Volume 41, Issue 3, 1987

This article takes its starting point in the repetition of 1 Kings 19:9b-10 in 13b-14. This duplicate cannot be explained by a literary-critical or narratological solution alone. In the story of the encounter with JHWH the style figure of flash-back (‘nachholende Erzählung’) is present. In the time-order of the narration 9b-10 and 13b-14 are successive but in the narrated time they are synchronous. The author has placed the dialogue of God with Elijah in anachrony before 11-13a in order to emphasize Elijah’s despair.

In the second part of the article it is argumented that elements from the theophany ‘tempest - fire - earthquake’ are not referring to Baal but to the way JHWH has revealed Himself in 1 Kings 18. The theophany on Mount Horeb gives a theological counter-weight to the revelation on Mount Carmel.

After the First World War visions of peace and reconciliation were cherished by both secular and ecclesiastical leaders, such as Wilson, Söderblom and the Ecumenical Patriarchate. During the Twenties, when the League of Nations proved incapable of establishing peace, it became inevitable for early ecumenical theology to change perspectives. Though the ‘pre-dialectical’ period is usually being accused of compromises with liberalism and progressivism, there is more to say in favour of it than to disqualify it that way. Men like Ragaz, Heering and Siegmund-Schultze set a trend to found the ethics of international behaviour in the Word of God, especially in the Sermon on the Mount, as an ultimate and absolute criterion for mankind. Their influence upon the ecumenical movement in the Twenties should not be underestimated. As far as optimism remained, it was due to the experiences with political reality in the later Twenties. When reality changed, in the Thirties, ecumenical theology was faced with new challenges, as was the Ecumenical Movement itself.

This paper examines the objection that theodicy arguments like the free will defence, which try to reconcile human suffering with the love of God, fail to provide consolation for the afflicted. For those who suffer, such arguments are both morally insensitive, since they do not take suffering seriously enough, and incoherent, since they ascribe this moral insensitivity to a loving God. After examining Richard Swinburne’s argument for the free will defence and why D Z. Phillips considers this to be morally insensitive, I discuss two responses to the charge of moral insensitivety and show why these are inadaquate. I then examine the concept of love and show in what sense the idea of a loving God, far from contradicting the free will defence, necessarily entails it. Finally I show what follows from this for our concept of moral sensitivity and for the reasons why theodicy arguments often fail to provide consolation.