Redemption or liberation : a Christian and a Buddhist response to human suffering

Abstract

Different Christian spiritual traditions offer various responses to the question of suffering. This dissertation will examine the main Christian responses, starting from St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, and other spiritualities which focus on the mystery of human suffering. It will then focus on the mediation on suffering made by Blessed John Paul II in his Apostolic Letter Salvifici Doloris (1984). The mediation of His Holiness is rooted in his own profound personal experience of suffering and illness. For John Paul, the mystery of suffering is inextricably bound up with the mystery of God's salvation. Suffering has a redemptive dimension, because God the Father 'gives' His only-begotten Son that He may strike at the very roots of evil, and thus transform suffering from the consequences of evil to the very means by which evil is overcome.