Toward a Theodicy of the Body: Liturgy and Explanation

Abstract

This essay examines recent attempts to remake the enterprise of theodicy. Both Eleonore Stump and David Burrell analyze the story of Job in an attempt to move theodicy beyond the mode of explanation and into the mode of address. While Mark Scott's theodicy of navigation is a notable advance of this paradigm, such theodicies are still limited to speech and thought. I argue that liturgical practice functions as a sort of “theodicy of the body,” a theodicy of address that includes embodied practice as its predominant medium.