Grains of Wheat: Suffering and Biblical Narratives

There is a kind of knowledge that is non-propositional; one variety of it can be acquired in second-person experience of another person, but it can also be transmitted through narratives. This narratively mediated kind of knowledge can be significant for philosophical and theological reflection. Biblical narratives have prompted detailed reflection for so many centuries because they offer profound insights into the nature of the human condition and human flourishing. This book brings together detailed examinations of narratives in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament to yield one large, emergent story, which has something to teach that can be missed when the stories are taken in isolation from one another. These are the stories of Job, Samson, Abraham, Mary of Bethany, the temptations of Christ, the passion of Christ, and the story from the book of Ecclesiastes. Taken together, these narratives depict a possible world in which there is a good for suffering human beings that outweighs their suffering and that could not be gotten without the suffering, not even in a world without the Fall. On this emergent larger story, human suffering is defeated, and peace and joy in human life are possible.

Eleonore Stump, Robert J. Henle, SJ, Professor of Philosophy, Saint Louis University

Eleonore Stump is the Robert J. Henle Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University. She has published extensively in philosophy of religion, contemporary metaphysics, and medieval philosophy. Her books include Aquinas (2003), Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (2010), Atonement (2018), and The Image of God. The Problem of Evil and the Problem of Mourning (2022). She has given the Gifford Lectures (Aberdeen, 2003), the Wilde lectures (Oxford, 2006), the Stewart lectures (Princeton, 2009), and the Stanton lectures (Cambridge, 2018). She is past president of the American Philosophical Association, Central Division; and she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.