“Come Here Jesus … Wonder What God Had in Mind:” Toni Morrison and F. Scott Fitzgerald as Narrators of (Anti-) Theodicy

Abstract

This article argues that realist and tragic fiction can and should play a central role in Religious Education in communities of faith and in theological education in schools of theology—thereby contributing to theological construction—because good fiction produces truth. Fiction is a vital source for producing the questions that theology needs to address first (especially questions pertaining to suffering and evil) rather than last.

Carol Lakey Hess is associate professor of Religious Education at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, in Atlanta, GA. E-mail: [email protected]

Notes

¹ Theodicy refers to attempts to justify God when the logic of theism is at risk: (a) God is omnipotent; (b) God is all good; (c) there is evil. Theodicy tries to hold all three together and explain how a and b are still true even in the presence of c.

² As one who lost 10-year-old and 12-year-old would-be uncles to the Nazi concentration camps, this assertion has a particular resonance with me.

³ This is to be distinguished from the more informal use of “reader response” as a validation of diverse impressionistic responses to text. The formal analysis of texts that Fish offers does provide for varied interpretation, but it foremost looks carefully at the mental processes produced by the text.

⁴ Using novels requires an ongoing critical assessment. This is part of an ongoing discussion in the “ethics of fiction” (see, for example, Booth 1990).