As Luther Seminary prepares to celebrate creation from Earth Day activities to the Rutlen Lecture on faith and creation, this month’s book recommendation explores the human relationship to God and the environment. “Out of the Whirlwind: Creation Theology in the Book of Job” by Luther Seminary Professor Kathryn Schifferdecker contemplates human suffering and humanity’s place in the divine order of the world.
Schifferdecker takes into consideration creation theology throughout Job, within the divine speeches, and then looks at how the divine speeches work in context with the rest of Job. God’s answer to Job’s undeserved suffering is not a direct one; instead, the divine speeches contain a poetic exploration of the world’s wildness. The creation theology found in Job is particularly unique in the Bible, and it speaks to the ongoing issues of environmental destruction that we face in our lives every day.
Ellen F. Davis says, “Schifferdecker’s book makes a fresh contribution to the perennially interesting study of Job by focusing specifically, though not narrowly, on the different views of creation and humanity’s place in creation that are articulated by Job and his various interlocutors, including God … Both Schifferdecker’s prose and her argument are consistently well crafted; sometimes she is not just persuasive but movingly eloquent.”