Abstract:
From an evolutionary perspective, it is argued in the following
exposition that specific expressions of suffering in the Psalter open up
a broadened, deeper and gracious understanding of human suffering
within a kind God’s good creation. From the many and diverse voices
of suffering as responses to diverse kinds of suffering, and if
hermeneutically embedded in a post-Darwinian evolutionary
framework, different existential and theological horizons of
interpretation are prompted and revisited. These very horizons that
interpretively open up direct us as embodied persons of flesh and
blood, on the one hand, to new and other dimensions of our being
vulnerable creatures before God, and on the other hand, to different
glimpses of a kind creator God in a world of dynamic relationships
and forces. Ultimately, embedded in a post-Darwinian evolutionary
framework, the Psalter eventuates here and now, in contexts of
suffering for embodied persons, a gracious cognitive-affective reappraisal of their faith.
