A Trinitarian Theology Of Suffering

By M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall

[M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall is Professor of Psychology at Rosemead School of Psychology, Biola University, La Mirada, California.]

[This is the third article in the four-part series “Suffering and the Christian Life: The Hard Road to Glory,” delivered as the W. H. Griffith Thomas lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, February 2–5, 2021.]

When I tell people I study meaning-making in suffering, people sometimes suggest that what Christians do might more accurately be called “meaning-finding.” It is a good point. We inhabit a world that is infused with meaning by virtue of being made intentionally by a God who also has loving purposes for this world and for our lives. It is a wonderful gift to be able to step into the meaningful story of God’s redemptive purposes and to not be burdened by the need to create meaning for ourselves. On the other hand, meaning-finding may also not accurately capture what Christians actually do when they are faced with suffering.

In the course of my research, my collaborators and I have conducted almost a hundred interviews with Christians on their experiences of facing cancer diagnoses. We have heard an astonishing variety of ways they make meaning of their suffering. Some of those ways are almost certainly theologically problematic. One middle-aged man with advanced prostate cancer was convinced that he was being unfairly punished by God, that he had been given a death sentence even though he saw himself as “not a bad guy, not some criminal.” Though his Christian friends tried to reassure him that this was not the case, he persisted in this belief. Another older man conceptualized his prostate cancer as a test of faith, in which he had to prove his faith by claiming God’s healing. God is, of course, the great healer, and James 1:2–3 suggests that the trials one experiences can be a kind of test to reveal one’s inner character. But this man’s approach involved reading through and claiming a list of healing verses every day. This claiming functioned as a sort of magic ritual and, unfortunately, also represented a rather rigid and brittle form of coping, effective only as long as the cancer did not return. We also heard a range of cancer narratives that were more orthodox in their approach, which I will review later. But even these more orthodox accounts, with few exceptions, largely struck me as falling short of the depth of meaning found in biblical passages on suffering. What accounts for this situation? Put simply, our contemporary churches do not offer people the cultural resources to construct rich meaning narratives. As I noted on Tuesday, our theology of suffering is often generically theistic rather than specifically Christian, triumphalistic rather than providing guidance for going through suffering, and focused on defending God rather than focused on people’s needs.

Meaning-Making As A Cultural Project

People do not make meaning in a vacuum. They draw on resources that are available to them. Dan McAdams is a prominent psychologist who is most famous for his work on narratives as a way of understanding people. He argued that we provide our lives with a sense of meaning and purpose by constructing self-defining life stories, which are similar to, though much broader than, the meaning-making narratives that we studied in our cancer patients.[1] He noted that narratives are “psychosocial constructions that are jointly authored by the individual whose life is being told and the culture within which the individual lives, from which he or she gathers the narrative resources and frameworks that shape storytelling itself.”[2] In other words, our views of suffering are internalized from our religious context, our religious culture. We hear ideas in sermons, Bible studies, Christian books, and conversations with other believers that shape the general ways we think about suffering. Then we encounter specific hardships in our own lives, the particularities of each specific kind of suffering, and we appraise that suffering. We understand it in a specific way. We try to make it fit with the way we understand suffering in general, though sometimes we struggle to fit the specific pieces in with our beliefs. For example, if I believe in a loving God who works all things for the good of those who love him, and I get cancer, I may generally believe that God can bring good out of the situation, but I may struggle quite a bit to understand how potentially leaving my teenage sons without a mother or my husband without a wife is loving. My cancer narrative consequently is a construction in which I attempt to fit the realities of my situation within the belief system I have learned from my evangelical subculture.

We clearly saw the imprint of cultural contexts on the cancer stories of our participants. We sampled from three Christian traditions: people from an evangelical megachurch that was predominantly middle class and White; women from historically Black congregations; and Catholics. Their stories, while all reflecting Christian themes, differed from each other in some interesting ways, in their emphases and in their structures. In other words, they were shaped by the meanings that were available to them in their particular contexts. For example, our Black participants had a well-defined narrative structure for their stories, which they referred to as “testimony.” Catholics demonstrated more active surrender to God, perhaps facilitated by practices focusing on Christ’s suffering. Evangelicals used the language of God’s purpose throughout their narratives. While all Christian, their narratives differed in systematic ways that can be tied to the resources available to them in their specific religious communities.

One other psychological study similarly found differences between religious traditions in their views of suffering. In a sample of chaplains from Judeo-Christian backgrounds working with veterans, the researchers found differences between religious traditions. Evangelicals were higher in views that emphasized God’s control over suffering, the role of free will in causing suffering, suffering as an occasion for divine encounter, and suffering as intended to bring about personal growth.[3] Black Protestants, like the evangelicals, were higher than other groups in beliefs that emphasized God’s control over suffering; mainline Protestants were higher in beliefs that emphasized God’s suffering along with people; Jews had higher scores on the views of suffering as random and lower scores on beliefs that saw God as suffering along with people.

The point I am making here is simply that the meaning-making narratives that people construct are only as good as the narrative material that is made available to them. If our engagement with suffering in the context of our churches is simplistic and shallow, the meanings people in our churches are able to construct will likely also be simplistic and shallow. If we offer resources that are triumphalistic, the narratives will tend to be triumphalistic. If they are robust and Christocentric, then the narratives are more likely to be robust and Christocentric.

And of course the robustness of our theology of suffering will influence the outcomes of our suffering. If the theology is flimsy, it will be unable to bear the weight of our suffering and could result in a loss or weakening of faith, negative mental health outcomes, and even potentially negative physical health outcomes. If it is robust, it can provide guidance, comfort, improved mental and physical outcomes, and perhaps even more importantly some outcomes of supreme importance such as increased intimacy with God.

Psychological Research On Christian Meanings Of Suffering

The consequences of our views of suffering are documented in the psychological literature. There is, at this point, a very small psychological literature that specifically looks at the content of meanings of suffering and their consequences for physical and mental health. An early study found that in caregivers of terminally ill patients from a variety of religious backgrounds, seeing the situation as God’s will was positively correlated with purpose in life. In contrast, seeing it as related to an apathetic or unfair God was positively correlated with depression and anxiety and negatively correlated with purpose in life.[4]

In one of the most sophisticated studies to date on views of suffering, Gall and Bilodeau studied spiritual causal attributions in a sample of women with breast cancer over the course of treatment.[5] They asked women to rate how strongly they attributed their current situation to God’s will or purpose, to God’s love, or to God’s anger or punishment. They found that seeing their cancer as being related to God’s will or God’s love was related to well-being, seeing the cancer as a challenge rather than a threat, and more positive coping, while the inverse pattern was found with seeing the cancer as an indication of God’s anger or punishment. An attribution to God’s anger was related to greater emotional distress from pre-diagnosis to two years postsurgery, suggesting that seeing the cancer as a result of God’s anger or punishment may result in a downward mental health spiral.

In addition to affecting physical and mental health, views of suffering influence other religious variables. In a study that examined views of suffering in college students undergoing a spiritual struggle, Wilt and colleagues assessed views of suffering, then assessed the same participants on multiple religiosity variables a year later.[6] They found that views that God shares in one’s suffering and has benevolent purposes for suffering were associated with increased commitment to and involvement in religion, while views of suffering endorsing the view that God has limited knowledge, power, or benevolence resulted in the opposite pattern of changes.

In the remainder of our time I’d like to turn to a more careful examination of orthodox Christian beliefs for understanding suffering. I’d like to suggest to you that biblical messages about the meaning of suffering can be understood at varying levels of specificity and that the thicker our understanding of the biblical message, the more adequate our theology of suffering will be for confronting and growing through suffering.

Theistic Views Of Suffering

In its most bare-bone articulation, the Christian message is that God can redeem suffering. God works all things together for good. This is obviously a true message drawn directly from Romans 8:28, but it is usually not fleshed out by all of the wonderful content surrounding that particular verse in chapter 8. Often this form of meaning-making is accompanied by a search for “good things,” specific purposes that have been achieved because of the cancer: a reconciled relationship, the opportunity to witness, etc. A common benefit that is articulated is that it allows the sufferer to help others in similar situations, echoing the point made in 2 Corinthians 1:4: “[God] comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”[7] However, a problem with this framing of the Christian meaning of suffering is that, as noted earlier, it rarely takes the context of the verse into account in determining how to understand the “good,” and consequently it leaves the interpretation of “good” up in the air. Sometimes misguided attempts to identify precisely the good that is resulting can lead to a trivialization of suffering.

A more specific version is that God works all things together for good by changing us for the better. Again, this is obviously a true statement. There are several passages in Scripture that suggest that character growth can come from suffering. Christian Scripture connects suffering with the development of specific virtues such as obedience (Heb 5:8), empathy, compassion (Heb 2:18), perseverance (Jas 1:2–4), and hope (Rom 5:3–5). However, while true, this more specific version is also inadequate. Specifically, the problem is that this characterization of the purpose of suffering is incomplete and consequently suggests that the means are the end. The virtues themselves are not the end goal. Sanctification is not a self-improvement project. Growth in character is never intended as a goal in itself but rather as a way of equipping us for the greater purpose of intimacy with God, as I outlined on Tuesday. The point of justification and sanctification is not merely character growth; the point is the establishment and deepening of a relationship of loving intimacy with God for God’s glory.

These views are not wrong; in fact, as I have noted, there is ample biblical support for them. However, they do have some limitations. By themselves these two ways of framing the meaning of suffering are broadly theistic rather than Christian. They reference God the Father but do not draw on a Trinitarian understanding of suffering. Further, they focus only on the good outcomes of suffering, de-emphasizing the process of suffering itself and thus running the risk of being triumphalistic in minimizing suffering. In the next section I will attempt to outline the contours of a richer, more detailed view of suffering that is present in Scripture.

A Trinitarian View Of Suffering

I’d now like to propose the contours of a more complete Christian view of suffering, although I do this with some trepidation as a psychologist speaking to a group comprised largely of theologians! Michael Gorman begins his book Cruciformity by quoting Paul’s statement, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2, ESV).[8] Gorman goes on to argue that the distinguishing feature of Christianity is, quite literally according to Paul, Jesus Christ crucified. If that is the case, then the absence of Jesus Christ crucified in most of the suffering narratives we heard is a cause for concern. I propose that the most complete Christian view of suffering is that God works all things together for good by conforming us to the image of his Son with the help of the Spirit to achieve intimacy with God. This meaning structure can be found throughout Scripture but perhaps most clearly in Romans 8:18–37. This passage is packed with insights about the meaning and purpose of suffering. Time limitations preclude us from going into all the details, so let me just note for you how essentially Trinitarian it is. In the well-known verse Romans 8:28, God the Father is the one who “works for the good of those who love him” in all things, including the suffering that is the context for this verse. When we are immersed in our suffering, the Spirit “helps us in our weakness” and intercedes for us with wordless groans, shaping our responses to suffering in accordance with the will of God when we don’t know what to pray for (vv. 26–27). Christ comes in with respect to purpose. When God the Father works for good, he does it in those who have been called according to his purpose, which is defined in the very next verse as conformity to the image of his Son and in the verse after that, glorification. And the passage ends by infusing all of these actions with love. God does what he does so that in the midst of all kinds of suffering nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (v. 39). Intimacy with our Triune God is the ultimate end, as I noted on Tuesday.

The heart of the meaning of suffering then is conformity to the image of the Son, a concept that is connected to the concept of identification with Christ. Suffering allows us to identify with Christ in his suffering. But what does this phrase mean? Certainly there is a long Christian tradition of seeing suffering as an opportunity to enter into the sufferings of Christ. In fact, various Christian traditions offer practices intended to assist in this process, such as the Catholic devotional practice of the Stations of the Cross, which uses fourteen images depicting Christ’s crucifixion day as opportunities for reflection and prayer. Psychological research seems to demonstrate that this emphasis in the Catholic church makes a difference in the suffering experiences of practitioners. Two qualitative psychological studies to date have addressed the theme of identification with Christ in his sufferings. In a study of fifty-two older Mexican Americans, the majority of the sample felt that suffering was a necessary part of life.[9] The primary reason they gave was that Jesus suffered when he was crucified. In their suffering they felt “they [were] emulating Jesus . . . by taking on pain and suffering, just as He did.” In another study six British, older Roman Catholic women in remission from cancer were interviewed.[10] The authors found that Christ’s life, death, and resurrection served as a metaphorical framework for understanding their own suffering. The women frequently referenced the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ as they told their own stories. In discussing these findings, the authors noted, “For Catholics it is seen as an honor and privilege to participate in suffering, as to suffer is to become actively involved in Christ’s Passion; it is because He suffered and died that believers are able to share in the Glory.”[11] We evangelicals don’t have these kinds of reminders of Christ’s suffering, perhaps because of the triumphalism I discussed on Tuesday. Consequently, our interviews with two groups of conservative Protestant Christians revealed relatively few references to Christ’s suffering. I think this is a theological emphasis we need to reclaim.

Since I am not a theologian, I have asked my theologian friends to point me to resources to supplement my own attempt to find out more about what it means to identify with Christ in his suffering. What I have discovered is that very little seems to have been written about the meaning of this phrase. Furthermore, what has been written, with few exceptions, tends to focus on the metaphysical aspect of identifying with Christ rather than the more experiential or phenomenological mode that would be most relevant to people who suffer. Both Luke Timothy Johnson and Michael Gorman comment on this omission, noting that inattention to religious experience is a significant blind spot in New Testament scholarship in general.[12]

With respect to the metaphysical mode, the language of identification indicates what theologians might call a “positional” standing: we have died to sin and will be resurrected to glorification/Christlikeness. Paul frequently referred to his own suffering as a form of death or dying. In this way he appeared to conceive of his suffering as uniting him with Christ’s death.[13] Paul writes several times about being crucified with Christ (e.g., Gal 2:19; 6:14; Rom 6:6–7). As we participate in Christ’s death, we are freed from our “old self” with its sinful desires: “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been set free from sin” (Rom 6:6–7).

Gorman emphasizes that the pattern of identification with Christ does not stop with suffering but also includes resurrection.[14] For example, Romans 8:17 speaks of our future status of glorification as the end result of being in Christ but qualifies this by saying, “If in fact we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him” (NRSV)—a hint that Paul is speaking of something more than just a change in our positional standing. In chapter 6:3–11 there is an extended description of baptism as a participation in Christ’s death and resurrection. It can be helpful when we suffer to know that our positional standing has changed, that we have died and been resurrected with Christ, which gives us hope in our eventual resurrection and glorification. But I think there is much more to be learned from this idea of identifying with Christ in his suffering. In addition to just being something we know, it can be something that we experience. This is, of course, Paul’s whole emphasis, as he regularly in his writings grounds our phenomenological experience in our positional standing before God.

This phenomenological or experiential emphasis on identification with Christ in his suffering is of primary relevance for meaning-making. In Philippians 3:10–11 Paul expresses his desire to “know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (NRSV). What is Paul referring to in his desire to “know Christ” in this way? The passages referenced above give some indication of this. In Romans 6 and in 1 Peter 3 there is a connection between identification with Christ’s sufferings as experientially as well as metaphysically freeing believers from sin. In other words, suffering has the potential to transform believers in conformity to Christ. This conformity to Christ is in fact a move toward the end state of glorification. It is no coincidence that the most frequently cited verse in the context of suffering, Romans 8:28 (“we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him”), is immediately followed in verse 29 by God’s intent to conform believers to the image of God’s Son.

It should be noted that from this theological perspective suffering in itself is not transformative; it is suffering “in Christ” that has this power. It is when suffering is imbued with meaning that it has the potential to be transformative. The mechanism of this transformation is not spelled out at length in these passages. The biblical passages suggest three interconnected pathways for transformation: (a) the “power” referred to in Philippians 3 acts in us through suffering to achieve transformation; (b) when believers follow Christ’s example in how Christ faced suffering, the result is transformation into Christlikeness; and (c) there is a relational dimension of increasing intimacy with Christ through suffering as he suffered that allows us to more fully “know Christ,” including “the fellowship of his sufferings” (KJV), as Paul expresses in Philippians 3:10—this intimacy results in transformation.

The Power Of God

Philippians 3 speaks of the power of God that accomplished Christ’s resurrection and that accomplishes transformation in our own lives. Often this power is linked in the New Testament to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. This is one of the places where the involvement of the Holy Spirit in a biblical theology of suffering comes into play.[15] I have little to say about this aspect except to acknowledge it, since it has to do primarily with God’s actions rather than with anything we might do. The next two, however, have important meaning-making implications, as they involve our experiential participation.

Christ As Example

First Peter 2:21 states, “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps” (ESV). Among other things, identifying with Christ in his suffering means following his example. In this way Jesus’s suffering is viewed not simply as a means of salvation for Christians but also as an image or pattern to guide the believer’s life. Elsewhere, I have written at length about ways in which Jesus modelled how to face suffering.[16] Briefly, rather than allowing his suffering to alienate him from God, he brought his suffering to God in lament. “Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death” (Heb 5:7, NRSV). Tomorrow we will be examining this practice of lament in more detail. Second, in response to suffering he did not sin but instead displayed the fruit of the Spirit in his response to suffering. The biblical writers suggest that Jesus even grew in character through his experiences, learning obedience and gaining empathy and compassion for us (Heb 2:18; 5:8). Third, he practiced what we might call “perspective-taking”; he endured his suffering in light of the glory that was to come (Luke 24:26; 1 Pet 1:11), just as Paul encourages us to do. In Romans 8:18 Paul says, “I consider that the sufferings of this pres-ent time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us” (NRSV), and elsewhere, “this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure” (2 Cor 4:17, ESV). This is a meaning-making strategy: following Jesus’s example, we interpret our suffering in light of the glory that is to come (conformity to Christ), and which the suffering is helping to achieve.

I would like to spend some time on the change in perspective that Paul outlines here as I think it is central to identification with Christ in his suffering. In elaborating on this aspect of identifying with Christ, I will be drawing on Martin Luther’s theology of the cross. Martin Luther acknowledged the centrality of the cross in the Christian story of redemption (what I am referring to here as the metaphysical aspect), but he went further than that, also putting the cross at the center of the lived experience of Christians (the phenomenological aspect). Luther’s connection between the cross and daily life—and especially the tensions and trials of daily life—is directly related to the notion of intersubjectivity that I brought up in the context of intimacy with God on Tuesday. Luther suggests that the cross is not just the means of our atonement but is an important vantage point for viewing reality.[17] When we increasingly take the perspective of the cross, when we increase our intersubjectivity with Christ by intentionally viewing the world through the cross, we are transformed. The cross allows us a clearer vision of the world around us, of God’s place and our place in that world. It has the power to transform our vision. This notion is reflected in Paul’s declaration, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2, ESV).

The cross allows us to see ourselves more clearly—in our finitude and our sinfulness. The starting place for a transformed vision is a recognition of the vast distance between the unimaginable god-ness of God and the utter creatureliness of the creature. The cross constantly reminds us of this gap between who God is and who we are. It is a powerful reminder of our limited perspective on the world, of our finitude. After all, from our vantage point the cross makes no sense. From our perspective it was the unjust murder of a helpless and innocent man using an instrument of torture to cause a shameful death. What good could possibly come out of that? And yet hidden in the cross was the salvation of God in all its love, wisdom, justice, and righteousness. The cross is a constant reminder that we are severely limited in our ability to know God and God’s ways. Much of what we think about what is happening in our suffering is consequently little better than idle speculation. The cross cultivates in us an intellectual humility that acknowledges our dependence on God to see reality accurately. McGrath (thinking of Luther) explains this further: “[The] theology of the cross draws our attention to the sheer unreliability of experience as a guide to the presence and activity of God. God is active and pres-ent in the world, quite independently of whether we experience him as being so. Experience declared that God was absent from Calvary, only to have its verdict humiliatingly overturned on the third day.”[18] We can recognize our limitations and our utter dependence on God—a theme of surrender that we will return to in tomorrow’s lecture.

The cross also allows us to see our sin more clearly. One of Luther’s central tenets is that we are “simultaneously just and sinners.”[19] We can look at our sin honestly without needing to hide from it, confident in our ability to seek and find grace. We can also be clear that God is working in us and through us. We are confident that the one who started a good work in us will complete it (Phil 1:6). We see ourselves accurately, and consequently are in a position to cooperate with God’s sanctifying work in our lives through our suffering.

Finally, the cross allows us to see God more clearly. While forcing us to acknowledge our limitations, the cross also reminds us to look for God’s working in the world. As Hebrews 11:1 reminds us, faith is characterized by its ability to see past the limitations of our human senses and recognize what lies behind them—God’s plans being worked out in the world to achieve God’s purposes. In this sense it provides greater clarity than what we can achieve unaided by the cross.

Intimacy With Christ

Let’s move now to the third potential mechanism for transformation implied in the concept of identifying with Christ in his suffering: achieving intimacy with Christ. Gorman noted that Romans 8, which speaks at length of suffering, concludes that in suffering, believers are “more than conquerors through him who loved us” (v. 37). This verse is surrounded by exuberant depictions of the love of Christ for us. Just as Christ’s suffering was a demonstration of God’s love for us, so our suffering is “a continuation of the narrative of divine love.”[20] We experience Christ’s love in its intensity, as described in Romans 8, in participating in Christ’s suffering. Wilbourne makes the point that Christ is the suffering servant, “a man of sorrows . . . acquainted with grief” (see Isa 53:3, ESV).[21] To know Christ, believers must know suffering, as Christ’s sufferings were not merely something he experienced but were central to his mission and identity. In this way the shared experience of suffering and the intersubjectivity that it achieves facilitates relational intimacy, as I noted on Tuesday.[22]

This theology of the cross has profound implications for suffering. After all, we are talking about identification with the cross of Christ. Consequently, suffering is central to this way of being in the world. As with the cross, from our own human perspective suffering is random and senseless, but from the perspective of the cross, suffering is seen differently, as “profoundly reasonable.”[23] Only by identifying with Christ’s suffering through our own suffering can we gain access to a certain knowledge of God necessary for intimacy. Our own suffering takes on significance and meaning as it facilitates our identification with Christ’s suffering, allowing us easier access to that intersubjectivity which is so important to intimacy.

Luther states that “God can reveal himself only . . . in the humility and shame of the cross.”[24] We don’t experience the benefits of the cross in spite of suffering; through the cross we experience them through suffering, as suffering is used to transform us.

With respect to why suffering can produce this transformation, Gorman points to Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 1:9: “We felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (NRSV).[25] Hagen suggests that Paul opens the letter with an account of his own suffering precisely to illustrate the principle “that believers’ sufferings in Christ are intended to bring them to a place of utter and complete reliance upon God.”[26] Suffering forces believers to turn to God’s power when they have reached the end of what they can accomplish. In this way of thinking about identification with Christ’s suffering, believers’ suffering facilitates the working of God’s power as believers recognize their own limitations and learn to depend on God and God’s power in their lives. Again, this brings up the concept of surrender, which we will discuss in more detail tomorrow.

Summary And Conclusions

In our time together today, I suggested the necessity of providing the church with a thicker theology of suffering. I provided the contours of a Trinitarian theology of suffering with a particular focus on identifying with Christ in his suffering. The all-powerful, good God the Father will only allow suffering that can move us toward the ultimate goal of loving intimacy with him. This goal takes a Christocentric form when we choose to suffer following Christ’s example, depend on God’s Spirit, and in this way become more like Christ. During this process we are aided by the Spirit who empowers us, produces the fruit of Christlikeness in us, intercedes for us, shapes our longings, comforts us, and gives us confidence. The Triune God looks forward to the glory to come and works to bring it to pass as the Spirit works within. My hope is that you leaders in the church will take up the challenges of developing and disseminating a theology of suffering that plumbs the depths of the loving purposes of God who will not allow suffering to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Notes

1. Dan P. McAdams, The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
2. Dan P. McAdams et al., “When Bad Things Turn Good and Good Things Turn Bad: Sequences of Redemption and Contamination in Life Narrative and Their Relation to Psychosocial Adaptation in Midlife Adults and in Students,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 27.4 (2001): 484.
3. Joseph M. Currier et al., “Theodicies and Professional Quality of Life in a Nationally Representative Sample of Chaplains in the Veterans’ Health Administration,” Journal of Prevention and Intervention in the Community 45.4 (July 2017): 286–96.
4. Jacqueline R. Mickley et al., “God and the Search for Meaning among Hospice Caregivers,” The Hospice Journal 13.4 (1998): 1–18.
5. Terry Lynn Gall and Cynthia Bilodeau, “ ‘Why Me?’—Women’s Use of Spiritual Causal Attributions in Making Sense of Breast Cancer,” Psychology and Health 32.6 (2017): 709–27.
6. Joshua A. Wilt et al., “Theological Beliefs about Suffering and Interactions with the Divine,” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 9.2 (2017): 137–47.
7. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NIV.
8. Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 1.
9. Neal Krause and Elena Bastida, “Religion, Suffering, and Health among Older Mexican Americans,” Journal of Aging Studies 23.2 (2009): 114–23.
10. Fiona Clements and Fiona Tasker, “Living Through the Paschal Mystery: Surviving Cancer Narratives Told by Older Roman Catholic Women,” Journal of Religion, Spirituality and Aging 27.1 (2014): 48–66.
11. Clements and Tasker, 61.
12. Gorman, Cruciformity, 3; Luke Timothy Johnson, Religious Experience in Earliest Christianity: A Missing Dimension of New Testament Studies (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998).
13. Constantine R. Campbell, Paul and Union with Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Study (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012).
14. Gorman, Cruciformity, 312–19.
15. For an elaboration on the role of the Holy Spirit in suffering, see M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall, “Suffering as Formation: The Hard Road to Glory,” in The Holy Spirit and Christian Formation: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Diane J. Chandler (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 69–88.
16. Hall, 69–88.
17. Alister E. McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross: Martin Luther’s Theological Breakthrough (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 5.
18. Alister E. McGrath, The Enigma of the Cross (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1987), 159.
19. Martin Luther, A Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, trans. Theodore Graebner (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1939), 62.
20. Gorman, Cruciformity, 329.
21. Rankin Wilbourne, Union with Christ: The Way to Know and Enjoy God (Colorado Springs, CO: David C Cook, 2016).
22. Eleonore Stump, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford: Clarendon, 2010).
23. Rosalene Bradbury, Cross Theology: The Classical Theologia Crucis and KarlBarth’s Modern Theology of the Cross (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011), 59.
24. Bradbury, 60.
25. Gorman, Cruciformity, 343.
26. Jeanette Hagen, “Faith as Participation: An Exegetical Study of Some Key Pauline Texts” (master’s thesis, Durham University, 2016), 104.