Job and the tragic theology of Paul Ricoeur

Abstract

Job shatters the ethic vision of the world. In order to achieve this it is needed that everything is just such that the problem is established with all its sharpness and makes possible to appear the question: How is it possible for a just man to suffer in such an absurd manner? To Ricoeur, what Job discovers is the tragic God. In this way, beyond any ethic vision, Job enters a new faith dimension, the faith in front of what is unjustifiable and unverifieble. With his non-science, Job is the only one “to have spoken well about God.” His tragic theology does not try to explain the reason behind suffering and tries to limit the pretentious of any rational theology in explaining God. The author coincides with Ricoeur in criticizing the unilateral conception of a moral God who emphasizes an ethical, penal and juridical vision of the life, but he does not believe that any notion of remuneration, justice and a sorrow could be excluded by them. He thinks that Job’s book is not a tragedy and criticizes both Ricoeur’s vehement rejection of the notion of original sin and the disqualification of any theodicy.