Divinely Abused

Verbin engages with the logical features of the experience of divine abuse and the religious difficulties to which it gives rise.

Auteur

N. Verbin is an Assistant Professor at Tel Aviv University and a senior research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.

Contenu

Preface

Chapter 1: What is Abuse?

1. Self-Worth
   a. Self-Worth and Justification
   b. Resentment and Self-Worth

2. Happiness
   a. The Socratic Conception
   b. The Maimonidean Conception
   c. The Wittgensteinian Conception

3. Power
   a. The Intuitive Paradigm
   b. The Moral Paradigm
   c. The Self-Restraint Paradigm

Chapter 2: Divine Abuse

1. Job's Conception of Happiness
   a. The Worldly Conception
   b. The Moral Conception

2. Job's Conception of Self-Worth
   a. Divine Abuse: Humiliation and Elevation
   b. Resentment and Moral Hatred of God

3. Power and Power Relations
   a. Job's Conception of Power
   b. Job's Way of Exercising his Power

Chapter 3: The Way Out: From Abuse to Suffering

1. Afflictions of Love and Love of Afflictions
   a. Afflictions of Love
   b. Love of Afflictions: The Sadist, the Masochist and the Slave

2. Providence and Intervention
   a. Providence as Intervention
   b. Maimonides
   c. Simone Weil

3. Providence Lost
   a. Afflictions of Hate
   b. Malevolent Providence
   c. From Abuse to Suffering

Chapter 4: Forgiveness

1. The Victim
   a. Harms, Wrongs and Hostile Emotions
   b. Resentment and Reason
   c. Overcoming Resentment

2. The Assailant
   a. Telling the Moral Story
   b. Telling the Biographical Story
   c. Telling the Same Story

3. Forgiveness
   a. Forgiveness without Reconciliation
   b. Reconciliation without Forgiveness
   c. Forgiveness and Reconciliation

Chapter 5: Forgiving God

1. Protest
   a. Roth's Theodicy of Protest
   b. Blumenthal's Theology of Protest

2. Beyond Protest
   a. Protest in Context
   b. Beyond Protest

3. Forgiving God
   a. The Logical Space for Forgiveness
   b. Forgiving God
   c. Subsisting in Brokenness

Conclusion
Bibliography