Between Trial and Return: Narrative Teleology, Suffering and Religion in the Face of the Non-Correspondence of Experience

The narrative problem of suffering lies not only in its explanation, but in the relationship between loss and its resolution. Historical experience does not guarantee that losses will be restored, that suffering will shape those who endure it, or that projects will reach completion, and this lack of guarantee is called narrative non-correspondence. Narratives respond to it in four ways: by restoring what was lost, by transforming loss into formation, by transferring to another the ending denied to the one who suffered, or by deferring resolution, or else they leave the gap open; and these modes are distinguished according to the subject who receives the resolution, the time in which it occurs, and the horizon in which it is situated, whether it be biography, the history of a people, or a transcendent order. The heroic pattern described by Joseph Campbell, stripped of the claim to universality, is the clearest example of transformation. Religious traditions matter here for a precise reason: besides extending resolution to descendants and to the people, which narratives without religion also do, they can keep it open for the subject himself, or for the order of the world, after death. The death of Moses outside the promised land and the epilogue of Job are read as objections to this hypothesis. In the first, the ending that the individual lacks is fulfilled in the people; in the second, the restitution of everything that could be restored leaves in view what could not. In neither case does the broadening of the horizon eliminate non-correspondence: it displaces it or preserves it. Describing what these narratives do does not decide where the beliefs that sustain them came from nor whether they are true.

DIETRICH, Pablo. Between Trial and Return: Narrative Teleology, Suffering and Religion in the Face of the Non-Correspondence of Experience. Zenodo, tradução do autor, 2026. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23818221.