Divine Lament and the Problem of Systemic Evil: A Participatory Theodicy of Tragic Agency.
This article proposes divine lament, God's active grief over creation's vulnerability to systemic evil, a grief intrinsic to divine love's participatory structure, expressing covenant fidelity. Expanding biblical precedents where divine grief expresses covenant faithfulness rather than moral failure...
| Publicado en: | Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science Vol. 61; no. 1; pp. 288 - 310 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Open Library of Humanities
Mar2026
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=192794299&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 192794299 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 05912385 ZYG jtl: Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science issn: 05912385 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Mar2026 vid: 61 iid: 1 pid: 15576 pub: Open Library of Humanities artinfo: ui: 192794299 10.16995/zygon.24626 ppf: 288 ppct: 22 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 714KB tig: atl: Divine Lament and the Problem of Systemic Evil: A Participatory Theodicy of Tragic Agency. aug: au: Espartinez, Alma affil: Associate Professorial Lecturer, De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, Manila, Philippines Assistant Professor, Providence College, Providence, RI, USA su: Theodicy Grief Good & evil Faithfulness of God Theology Pastoral care sug: subj: Theodicy Grief Good & evil Faithfulness of God Theology Pastoral care ab: This article proposes divine lament, God's active grief over creation's vulnerability to systemic evil, a grief intrinsic to divine love's participatory structure, expressing covenant fidelity. Expanding biblical precedents where divine grief expresses covenant faithfulness rather than moral failure, I argue that divine lament emerges through constructive appropriation of participatory ontology, process theology, and evolutionary cosmology. These frameworks converge on a crucial insight: genuine divine–creaturely relationship entails divine grief over creation's wounds. The framework distinguishes covenant grief from moral culpability. God bears relational sorrow over structures that make evil possible without culpability for evil's actualization by free agents. Tested against the Holocaust, colonial slavery, and climate collapse, divine lament proves adequate where classical immunity and contemporary co-suffering falter, offering both ontological coherence and pastoral solidarity. The framework reveals a consistent pattern across systemic failures: participatory structures weaponized (Holocaust), persuasion's intergenerational inadequacy (slavery), and scalar–temporal mismatch (climate). Divine lament materializes through practices—Holocaust remembrance, reparations initiatives, climate liturgies—transforming theodicy from justification into embodied solidarity. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science is the property of Open Library of Humanities and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science holder: Open Library of Humanities dt: @attributes: year: 2026 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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