Gloria Schaab proposes to respond to cosmic suffering with the recognition that the triune Christian God participates in the sufferings of the cosmos.

The global reality of suffering and death has always demanded an authentic theological response and impelled debate concerning Gods relationship to suffering, as well as the conceivability of the suffering of God. The scope and impact of this suffering in the last century have driven this debate to an acute pitch, demanding to know how one can speak rightly of God in view of the suffering that is inherent and inflicted in the cosmos. While in former ages, some looked to an omnipotent and impassible deus ex machina in answer to this question, many contemporary theologians have revised their understanding of God in relation to the world. With these theologians, Gloria Schaab proposes that a viable response to cosmic suffering is the recognition that the triune Christian God participates in the very sufferings of the cosmos itself. She sets her argument within theology and science dialogue and specifically within the work of scientist-theologian Arthur Peacocke. Informed by the understandings of evolutionary science, grounded within a panentheistic paradigm of the God-world relationship, and rooted within the Christian theological tradition, this work contends that the understanding of the Triune God as intimately involved with the suffering of the cosmos is viable and efficacious in view of the suffering of the cosmos and its creatures. It develops a female procreative model of the creative suffering of the Triune God, an ecological ethics based on the midwife model of care, and a pastoral model of threefold differentiation of suffering in God as steps toward Christian praxis in response to the mystery of God within the pain, suffering, and death of cosmic existence and human experience.

Examines the history and development of ecological theological anthropology and how it engages human suffering, so that people of faith can better understand the suffering inherent to earth's creative processes and that inflicted by human sin.

The immense suffering caused by sin and evil within the modern world, especially in the light of the Holocaust, has had a profound impact on the contemporary understanding of God and his relationship to human suffering. Since the early part of this century there has been a growing consensus among theologians that God himself, within his divine nature, suffers in solidarity and love with those who suffer. This present theological position contradicts the traditional Christian understanding of almost two thousand years that God is impassible and so does not experience negative emotional states, such as suffering. Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M., resolutely challenges this contemporary view of God and suffering. Calling upon scripture, and the philosophical and theological tradition of the Fathers and Aquinas, Weinandy creatively and systematically addresses all of the contemporary concerns. He strongly advocates the incarnational truth that the Son of God actually does experience, as man, all that pertains to living an authentic human life, and so does indeed suffer. This book is both a challenge to much received contemporary philosophical and theological wisdom, and a scholarly, original, and refreshing account of the Christian Gospel. It is one of the most comprehensive Christian presentations of God and human suffering available today.

The Unchanging God of Love provides a clear and comprehensive account of what Aquinas really says about divine immutability, presented in a way that allows his theology to address contemporary criticisms

Jurgen Moltmann and others contend that Christian theology and the church face a dual crisis--one of relevance and the other of identity. Despite making this pronouncement nearly forty years ago, the church in the West continues to struggle with this crisis. Several proposals have been espoused, from the way of wisdom to the way of ecclesial praxis. Yet, little attention is given in Protestant theological discourse to the role God's beauty plays in bringing theology and ethics together. By neglecting God's beauty for theological discourse, we risk diminishing Christian worship, witness, and wisdom. God's Beauty-in-Act addresses these issues, in part, by arguing that the redemptive-creative suffering and glorious resurrection of Christ are the nexus of God's being, beauty, and Christian living. God's beauty, understood as the fittingness of the incarnate Son's actions in the Spirit to the Father's will, radiates God's glory and draws perceivers into the dramatic movements of God's triune life. These movements serve as the patterns that shape the imagination, enabling participants to perform their parts creatively and fittingly in God's drama of redemption. In doing so, human beings flourish as they jettison false identities and realities of their own making that are incommensurate with God's purpose found in Christ by the Spirit.

"In every era, the scope of pain, suffering, and death in the world and its peoples has provoked profound and perplexing questions. Attempts to reconcile such experiences with a benevolent God only further complicate the questions and confusions that arise out of suffering. If God is for us : Christian perspectives on God and suffering illustrates a profound tradition of struggling - both personally and theologically - to interpret, reflect on, and find meaning in the midst of hardship. Through biblical, theological, and philosophical resources, Schaab explores a broad range of both ancient and modern Christian interpretations of personal, communal, and systemic suffering." -- Cover.

Persons anguished by another's profound suffering are often outraged by well-intentioned efforts to console them which suggest that God 'sent' that horrific suffering to their loved one for a 'purpose' according to a tailor-made 'plan' for just that person. However, the outraged reaction simply deepens the anguish. This book argues that such 'consolation' is theologically problematic because it assumes that unrestricted power is what makes God 'God.' Against that it outlines an account of 'who' and 'what' the Triune God is, framed in terms of God's intrinsic 'glory,' the attractive and perfectly self-expressive self-giving in love that is God's life, and sets limits to the range of things we can say God 'does.' Correlatively it offers an account of different senses in which God is 'sovereign' and 'powerful', one which reflects three ways God relates to all else: to create, to bless eschatologically, and to reconcile, as is scripturally narrated.