“Leading Sons and Daughters from Despair to Glory: Theodicy and Divine Action in Romans 8 and Hebrews 2,” in Divine Action in Hebrews, and the Ongoing Priesthood of Jesus (ed. Craig Bartholomew, Gareth Lee Cockerill, and Benjamin Quinn; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2023), 111–130

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Abstract

A number of shared features unite two of the most profound texts in the New Testament, Romans 8 and Hebrews 2. In them we find the early church’s two greatest theologians offering panoramic presentations of the Christ event and its significance for humanity. In both texts bleak assessments of the human condition are contrasted with effusive portrayals of Christian eschatological experience, and both bridge these disparate states by means of the Christ event, as Jesus’ full immersion in the human condition is accorded an instrumental role in rescuing humanity from sin, death, and despair, and conveying them into heavenly glory. More specifically, it appears that both texts were motivated by situations of suffering and an inability to understand the significance of divine action undertaken in the face of that suffering. In response, both authors offer theodicies which appeal to God’s most powerful act of love, the giving of his Son, and which locate the essential proof of this divine action in transformative experiences of God’s fatherly love. Only such experiences can adequately substantiate Paul’s remarkable claim, that “the present sufferings are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is about to be revealed in us” (Rom 8:18).