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Gustavo Gutierrez’s On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent: A Review

“ Suffering disposes one to hear and accept the word of God.”1

Popular Christian cultural reference to Biblical Job typically centers on the patience Job
musters in the face of his innocent suffering. In 1987, Latin American Theologian Gustavo
Gutierrez, writing in On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent, reads Job not as a
patient and obedient martyr who suffers at the hands of God, but as an exemplar for
reconsiderations of the relationship between sin, suffering and human responsibility. For
Gutierrez, Job resolves the question: why do the innocent suffer from the legacy of colonialism
and enslavement? His response is, as the quote above conveys, innocent people suffer to remind
them to challenge injustice(s) in the world. Gutierrez’s read of Job reminds the reader that God is
not punishing those who are dispossessed in Latin America and elsewhere. Instead, suffering is
the path to God. The purpose of this essay, then, is to briefly explore Gutierrez’s remapping of
sin, suffering and human responsibility.
Early Christian views about sin and suffering inform the more normative contemporary
doctrine of sin and evil. Intertwined, sin and evil exist in the human world because Adam and
Eve’s relied upon their free will to think and behave outside of the will of God, a deviant, sinful
and evil act, the description of which is in the Hebrew cosmology and best conceptualized in the
term, “Adamic myth.”2 Human beings have inherited this sin and an Adamic guilt or first cause
of evil that exists in the world.3 Humanity, therefore, is responsible, guilty, for sin and evil in the
world. Extending this idea, theologian Augustine writing during the 4th century c.e.,
unquestionably shapes normative convictions about suffering in relationship to the Adamic myth.
According to Jones and Lakeland, for Augustine, “ although suffering of victimization may seem
to be evil from the perspective of the sufferer, it is actually God’s just punishment for the moral
evil that every person does.”4 It seems that if one experiences any type of socio-culturally
defined misfortunes, whether personal or familial, it is God’s retribution for one’s sinful actions.
To suffer means that one is guilty of sinning against God.
The Book of Job opens the door for a contemporary reconsideration about the relationship
between sin and suffering. Gutierrez begins with the theological context of the narrative. Satan
bets God that Job will turn from his faith in God, if Job experiences intense loss and suffering;
God assures Satan that Job will remain steadfast in his faith. Keeping with the narrative,
Gutierrez’ exegeses of the text reveals that Job’s sudden loss of family, livestock and health was
not punishment from God for sinning against God. For Job was innocent of sin. Prior to the onset
                                                        
1 Gustavo Gutierrez, On Job: God –Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent, (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1987), 46. 
2 Serene Jones and Paul Lakeland, eds., Constructive Theology: A Contemporary Approach to Classical Themes (Minneapolis: 

Fortress, 2005), 122. 
3 Ibid. 
4 Ibid., 130. 
of his suffering, Job cared for the disposed, nurtured the land and had not found joy in acquiring
wealth more that his love for God.5 In doing so, Job was what Gutierrez refers to as a
disinterested believer in God.6 That is, Job loved God because God created existence, not
because of some reward or success that God would provide as recompense for Job’s faith.
Furthermore, upon experiencing the ultimate loss of health, even at the behest of his wife who
pleaded with Job to curse God for his misery, Job did not. Job, according to the narrative, was
innocent, yet he suffered. If Job did not sin to bring about punishment from God, why did Job
suffer?
Lessons in the Book of Job directly challenge Augustine’s doctrine of sin and evil and
provide a contemporary way to understand the role of rampant devastation that the human family
experience. The initial wager that takes place between God and Satan demonstrates that God
does not cause suffering in the world. What Gutierrez implies is that God allows human
suffering for two reasons. First, free will, according to the Book of Job, does exist in the world,
as a part of God’s creation. Gutierrez writes, “God’s power is limited by human freedom.”7
Satan, then, is symbol for human freedom to choose how one will create one’s reality. Not only
can individuals choose to sin; it is a choice. But it is also through human thought and action that
institutions, governments, and economic structures are developed and can cause a myriad of
human injustices. For Jones and Lakeland, these experiences span from “sins of omission”8 to
“communal”9 and “systemic or institutional sin.”10 Sin is a human generated experience that can
cause others to suffer, including those who are innocent in the Jobian sense.
Second, God allows one to suffer because to suffer is the opportunity to heal. Quoting
the Book of Job Gutierrez writes, God saves the afflicted by [their] affliction, warning [them] in
[their] misery.”11 Jobian suffering of the innocent teaches them to commit to God, which means
to commit to alleviating or maybe even annihilating, the cause of the bearer of evil. In the Latin
American perspective, it would be to transform neocolonial institutions and economies that
cause poverty, destitution and the like. Even though Job was innocent, that is, he worked on
behalf of the poor, the land and God, Job could not fully grasp the effect that poverty, for
example, can have on the psyche and body of the sufferer. One must experience suffering to
become committed to bringing about the inherent goodness of God and humans in the world and
overcoming Augustine’s evil. One must cry out, act, and mobilize to overcome evil.12
Gutierrez’ On Job is of course transformative. For the first time in my life, I have been
introduced to a Christian response to sin and suffering resembles Africana rationales for
existence and personhood. The text unquestionably rectifies, for me, questions concerning
human responsibility for sin and suffering in relationship to the Hebrew/ Christian God.
Regardless of what type of suffering one experiences, the experience moves one closer to the
work of God on the one hand, and faith in the possibility of overcoming the suffering on the
other. Inextricably linked, in fact, one must have faith in God, according to Gutierrez, to have
hope in one’s personal power to endure.13 For the conclusion of Job’s narrative is revealing and
familiar. With faith in God, one can overcome any obstacle, although it does require one to
                                                        
5 Gutierrez, On Job., 23‐41. 
6 Ibid., 4. 
7 Ibid.. 77. 
8 Jones and Lakeland, Constructive Theology, 130. 
9 Ibid. 
10 Ibid. 
11 Gutierrez, On Job., 41. 
12 Ibid., 101. 
13 Ibid. 
dedicate themselves to not only the elevation of their suffering, but the suffering of humanity.
This is how God extends itself in the world.