Theology After Auschwitz: A Critical Analysis of Second Generation Post-Holocaust German Theology (book chapter trans. from German, 2001)

Theology After Auschwitz: A Critical Analysis of Second Generation Post-Holocaust German Theology

Sarah K. Pinnock, Trinity University

English version of essay published in German: Björn Krondorfer, Norbert Reck and Katharina von Kellenbach,ed., Von Gott reden im Land der Täter? Theologische Perspektiven der Dritten Generation nach Auschwitz (LIT Verlag, 2001), 95-109. Translated book title: Speaking of God in the Land of Perpetrators? Theological Perspectives of the Third Generation after Auschwitz

Introduction

The persecution and systematic annihilation of six

million Jews and others during World War II under the

command of Hitler’s Third Reich evokes powerful reactions

from Europeans and North Americans. The fear, pain,

humiliation and torture inflicted on victims were so extreme

and disturbing that past cruelty defies representation or

comprehension. After Auschwitz, both Jewish and Christian

thinkers have demanded that theology must change decisively

and permanently. American Rabbi Irving Greenberg is famous

for defining the terms of post-Holocaust theology as

follows: “ No statement, theological or otherwise, should be

made that would not be credible in the presence of burning

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children.” (Greenberg 1977, 23) The “new era” of theology

after Auschwitz places emphasis on mutual dialogue between

Jews and Christians. The impact of such dialogue on

Christian thinkers has led to the examination of anti-Jewish

theological doctrines. For example, theologians have come

to accept the salvific validity of the Jewish tradition and

acknowledge that the New Testament and the church have

vilified the Jews and supported prejudice and violence

against them. Auschwitz also tests the limits of theodicy

proposals that attempt to explain and justify innocent

suffering and show God’s good purposes in history. My

interest in Holocaust studies grew out of my investigation

of the problem of evil in philosophy and theology as a

doctoral student at Yale. I found that I was dissatisfied

with traditional theodicy approaches because of their global

declaration that suffering is permitted by God for allegedly

good purposes. I agreed with Kant’s critique of theodicy on

two levels: as a failure in solving all of the logical

problems that evil raises, and as an intellectual posture

that is incompatible to genuine moral faith. I admired

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Jewish and Christian post-Holocaust theologians who pursued

arguments against theodicy. My engagement in theology after

Auschwitz arises from empathy with the suffering of victims

and horror at the complicity of so many Christians with Nazi

genocide.

Unlike other authors in this volume, I approach

Auschwitz as someone with no national or ethnic

identification with victims or perpetrators. My

grandparents emigrated from the Ukraine to America and from

England to Canada shortly prior to World War I. Since I

have no knowledge of my wider family history in Europe, I

may in fact have roots that link me to the Germans or Jews

or some other group implicated in the Holocaust. I cannot

be certain. My first personal contact with the Holocaust

was as a child when a close friend from school (in Hamilton,

Ontario, Canada) told me rather casually that her

grandparents, aunts and uncles on her mother’s side were

killed in Poland during the Holocaust because they were

Jews. Later, the same Jewish friend strongly refused to set

foot in Germany during her travels around Europe with a

3

Eurail pass during summer of 1986. I tried to understand

why Germany was off-limits for Sharon. It seemed that her

rejection of Germany symbolized her protest against the

killing of her family. I detected that she felt so much

sadness and anger over the Nazi persecution of Jews that she

did not want to face the memories. She did not want to see

ruined or deserted synagogues and the Judenviertel without any

Jews, nor confront the possibility that some Germans might

continue to hold anti-Semitic attitudes. I cannot help but

project my own experiences visiting Jewish sites in Europe

onto my memory of Sharon’s reactions. My first visit to a

Holocaust historical site occurred when, in 1989, I visited

the Jewish cemetery, synagogue and museum in Prague. The

closed-packed buildings and narrow streets in the ghetto

helped me to visualize the restrictions placed on the Jews

for centuries. I sensed the loss of a vital Jewish

community and culture. The crowded and broken memorial

stones in the graveyard made me grieve for the persecution

cumulating in genocide where the dignity of burial was

impossible. I learned to place a pebble on a gravestone as

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a mark of remembrance. A year later, another Jewish site

that had a comparable dramatic impact on me was the large

ornate synagogue in Regensburg, Germany that was spared on

Kristallnacht because it was located too close to gas pipes.

I recall that I was sad to see the beautiful architecture

and artwork that once served a congregation of thousands

deserted.

When I reflect on my intellectual response to Auschwitz

history, I find it interesting that my identity as a

Christian Protestant did not make it automatic for me to

identify with the perpetrators of Jewish oppression. I

found it more natural to be interested in the stories of

Jewish victims and to wonder how faith in God could survive

Auschwitz. I wonder why. Perhaps because I had Jewish

friends at my neighborhood school, but it is more likely

because it was, and is, simply more comfortable for me to

empathize with victims and distance myself from

perpetrators. In studying responses to Auschwitz in

contemporary Christian theology, I am struck by the fact

that there is disproportionately large emphasis placed on

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suffering and victims, and much less reflection on the

complicity of perpetrators and bystanders. I am

disappointed when I read that the majority of Christians

gave both passive and active assistance to the Nazi genocide

against the Jews, in German and many other nations.

Holocaust history convinces me that Christian theology must

try harder to clarify the intrinsic connections between

faith, moral values and social action.

The initial new era of German theology after Auschwitz

is represented by the three founders of German post-

Holocaust theology, Jürgen Moltmann, Johann Baptist Metz and

Dorothee Sölle, who belong to the second generation after

Auschwitz. Born in 1928 and 1929, they were adolescents

during the Third Reich, mature enough to reflect on wartime

events and the reactions of their families and friends to

what was happening. Early in their theological careers, in

the late 1960’s, each of these thinkers independently and

forcefully insisted that German theology must change in

response to Auschwitz. The touchstone of their proposals

was the conviction that suffering must be the central theme

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for post-Holocaust theology, although their responses to

suffering are elaborated in strikingly different ways. In

Part I of this essay, I briefly sketch some defining

features of the “new era” of theology after Auschwitz. Part

II analyzes the proposals of Moltmann, Metz and Sölle for

post-Holocaust theology. And in Part III, critical

questions are raised concerning the methods and conclusions

of these three German theologians, particularly their

identification with the suffering of victims and the merging

of Auschwitz with other instances of suffering and post-

Holocaust theology with wider theological currents.

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Features of Post-Holocaust Theology

Theology after Auschwitz draws on Holocaust narratives

to articulate the problem of suffering and to examine

relations between Jews and Christians. The testimonies of

writers such as Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl, and

many others, have compelled and shocked readers with

accounts of day to day camp life and the means of Jewish

survival. Grappling with these witnesses, post-Holocaust

theologians seek to make theological statements applicable

even to situations of extreme suffering. Is faith in God,

or prayer, possible after Auschwitz? Often it is the faith

in God articulated by Jewish writers that becomes a

touchstone for Christians, attempting to think through the

possibilities for post-Holocaust Christian faith. Following

Job’s example, prayer to God may become rebellion against

God’s permission of excessive evil and undeserved suffering.

Christian thinkers, taking their cue from the struggles of

victims, emphasize reactions of pain and perplexity in

response to suffering rather than pious explanations.

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Post-Holocaust theology has a political and ethical

emphasis. It demands attention to social history, and seeks

a broad understanding of collective, socially engineered

evil. Remembrance of narratives becomes a tool for

formulating a faith response to evil that involves protest

and attempts to shape the future. The motto “never again”

sums up the ethical imperative driving Holocaust studies.

In attempts to connect faith and resistance to suffering,

post-Holocaust theologians stress human responsibility to

God for transforming history and enacting redemption which

includes political justice and right relation with God for

individuals and communities.

In theology after Auschwitz, theodicy is rejected as a

morally scandalous response to suffering (Ammicht-Quinn

1992, 5). The effort to explain God’s reasons for

permitting the Holocaust strikes many thinkers as

objectionable because it makes the suffering of victims

instrumental for the greater good of the world. A God who

condones such massive suffering seems cruel, rather than

good and just. The dispassionate style of theodicy

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discussion itself seems callous because it does not express

the depth of suffering. Theodicy abstracts suffering and

views it as creating a logical conundrum for the theistic

philosophical worldview, and seeks to smooth the

contradictions between the brokenness of history and divine

promises. To accept a theodicy explanation is to find good

in the past and justify the atrocities symbolized by

Auschwitz. Survivor Elie Wiesel puts the point clearly in

his statement that: “Auschwitz remains a question without

an answer. All we can do is ask questions and wonder.”

(Wiesel 1990, 154)

Alongside the rejection of theodicy, theology after

Auschwitz rejects Christian triumphalism. According to a

triumphalist reading of history, salvation is certain, evil

is conquered and redeemed, and the Kingdom of God is

realized (Pawlikowski 1982, 32). It has been observed that

the tendency in traditional Christian theology is to

encompass events of injustice in history in a scheme of

meaning that has at its core “neat, tidy demands for

transcendence, fulfillment and coherence.” (Steele 1996,

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123) The coming of the savior, Jesus Christ, is taken to

mean that the salvation of the world is already accomplished

spiritually, if not yet concretely, in history. Christian

thinkers who oppose triumphalism take their cue from Jewish

theology that understands redemption as indicated by peace

and justice occurring in history. Jewish and Christian

post-Holocaust theologians view the atrocities of Auschwitz

as evidence of the enormous gap between promised redemption

and suffering in history.

Among post-Holocaust thinkers there is a shift from

theoretical questions regarding the global purpose of

suffering to practical questions of survival and meaning.

What is more crucial than finding theodicy answers is

articulating how suffering can have meaning and how God can

be present in suffering. For Christian thinkers, the

crucifixion of Jesus is a model of suffering for God’s sake

and for love of humanity. However, many post-Holocaust

Jewish thinkers object to all attempts to find redemptive

meaning in suffering. Survivor Elie Wiesel argues: “Even

to say that we suffer for God would be to claim a

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justification and religious significance for the suffering

men have inflicted upon us. … and that would be to betray

both the response and the suffering.” (Wiesel 1990, 154-155)

But although Wiesel and others might not want positive

meaning projected onto Auschwitz, second generation German

theologians do not give up on finding religious meaning in

the struggles of persons coping with suffering.

Second Generation German Post-Holocaust Theology

a) Jürgen Moltmann

The Holocaust is central to Moltmann’s early theology

as an example of socially caused suffering that challenges

Christian ideas and institutions. He develops a political

Christian response to suffering in his first major works of

systematic theology: Theologie der Hoffnung (1967) and Der

gekreuzigte Gott (1972). In these works, theology is

conceived as intimately linked with praxis. The Christian

response to suffering is eschatological in that it evidences

hope in the fulfillment of God’s promises for redemption,

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and it is Christological in striving to imitate Christ. The

cross is an eschatological symbol where love, suffering and

hope are shown to be inseparable. Moltmann rejects

triumphalist interpretations of the cross in response to

Jewish criticisms of the Christian intoxication with already

accomplished salvation and messianic fulfillment. He

asserts that hope for both Christians and Jews rests on the

“not-yet” Messianic future promised by God. Hope does not

deny the wrenching experience of suffering or the brokenness

of history, nor is it overshadowed by suffering. In fact,

hope drives resistance to suffering. Out of the

juxtaposition of suffering and hope arise the moral and

political practices of protest, solidarity, resistance and

liberation efforts on behalf of those who suffer (Moltmann

1972, 313). Moltmann argues that the affirmation of divine

suffering is the only acceptable Christian response to

theodicy accusations that God is cruel.

In Moltmann’s political theology, there is a tension

between his political emphasis on a theology of praxis and

his theoretical development of a Trinitarian theology of

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divine suffering (Chopp 1992, 117). This tension resolved

itself when, after attending a liberation theology

conference in Mexico City in 1977, Moltmann became convinced

that, as a German, he could support the goals of Third World

liberation theology but he could not be a liberation

theologian. At this point, he decided to return to the

“regular business of systematic theology” in order to

concentrate on its “long term problems” (Moltmann 1997b,

11). The prophetic emphasis on the praxis of resistance to

suffering found in the Theologie der Hoffnung is demoted in

favor of the theoretical development of doctrinal positions

on divine suffering and other matters of systematic

theology. He asserts that God’s suffering is the only

viable answer to theodicy questions. Borrowing from

Orthodox theology, Moltmann considers Godself as suffering

in two different ways in the event of the cross. God

suffers as the loving Father who grieves for his son, and

God suffers as the Son who is betrayed, flogged and

crucified. God even experiences abandonment by God, which

is the experience of God’s absence. Christ’s cry of

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dereliction, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” is the

focal point of the theology of divine suffering. God no

longer stands aloof against the accusations of theodicy but

God is on the same side of the legal bench as the plaintiff

(Moltmann 1968, 55). Moltmann rejects traditional theodicy,

which assumes divine omnipotence and impassibility,

nevertheless, his use of divine suffering as a response to

Auschwitz confers positive redemptive meaning on suffering.

His doctrinal proposal is a new theodicy strategy.

In response to Auschwitz, Moltmann tries to avoid

triumphalism by placing emphasis on the gravity of evil and

suffering, symbolized by the cross. Adopting a Hegelian

scheme of history, Moltmann affirms that divine suffering is

the point at which God is closest to human beings and that

suffering is a necessary negative moment of history leading

towards final redemption. Theologically, world suffering is

part of God’s Trinitarian life. However, his theodicy is

not satisfactory. The fact that God suffers does not

protect God against the accusation of cruelty, nor does it

deflect responsibility for permitting suffering away from

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God. For despite divine suffering, there is never the

possibility for the Trinitarian history of God’s love to be

defeated (Moltmann 1997a, 55). Although God suffers, God’s

love is not vulnerable and the Trinitarian future is not at

risk. In the last analysis, neither triumphalism nor

theodicy is eliminated from Moltmann’s theology.

The identification of human suffering with God’s

suffering is also problematic in light of survivor’s

testimonies. Moltmann claims that the great abyss of the

world’s godforsakenness is taken up within the Trinitarian

love between Father and Son, such that God’s suffering

encompasses the physical, psychological and social aspects

of human suffering (Moltmann 1972, 233). However, as

American theologian A. Roy Eckhart has convincingly argued,

the Godforsakenness of Jesus is less extreme than the

Godforsakenness of some Holocaust victims, such as Irving

Greenberg’s example of “burning children” (Eckhart 1979,

102). The particular suffering of victims is more

scandalous than that of Jesus because it can render the

subject hopeless and broken, unable to call out to God.

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Holocaust suffering experienced by Jews was often non-chosen

and non-political suffering, whereas Jesus made choices that

led to his arrest and crucifixion. The sufferings of Jesus

resulted from his teachings, and his refusal to compromise

his mission when faced with opposition from powerful rulers.

Moreover, the Trinitarian model dignifies suffering without

distinguishing between degrees of innocent suffering. Does

the suffering of God encompass the suffering of a Jewish

child equally compared to the suffering of a German

Christian teenager enlisted in the war, like Moltmann

himself? And what about the suffering experienced by

perpetrators? Little attention is directed towards

perpetrators in his Trinitarian theology. His Christian

readers, Germans and others, are encouraged to reflect much

on victims’ suffering but not on the human capacity to

inflict it directly and indirectly.

b) Johann Baptist Metz

Metz asserts that Auschwitz is a necessary point

of reference for theology for two main reasons. For one, it

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indicates the moral failure of bourgeois Christianity.

Secondly, it displays how severely history is fractured by

massive suffering. He rejects theodicy proposals because

they falsify the brokenness of history by offering

fulfillment and resolution to history. Metz develops a

political theology that locates suffering in its historical

context, and explores what sort of Christian praxis is

appropriate in response. In Glaube in Geschichte und

Gesellschaft (1977), he identifies the fundamental praxes of

faith as memory, solidarity and narrative. Metz considers

narrative discourse more appropriate and more powerful than

conceptual systematic theology for articulating a faith

response to suffering. He argues that testimonies of

suffering and biblical stories share a common role: they

both interrupt attitudes of indifference to suffering found

in our society and in academic discourses. Holocaust

memories are dangerous because they raise responses of

protest against suffering, while biblical stories of

suffering are dangerous because they show how suffering,

hope, resistance and political protest go together. For

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Metz, the memory of Jesus Christ is decisive as a narrative

combining suffering and redemptive hope (Metz 1977, 147).

Following the example of the Hebrew Psalms and Job, he

argues that a Christian response to the atrocities of

history should be one of unconsoled protest to God. In

comparison with Moltmann, Metz is unique for refusing to

redeem or justify suffering by attributing it to God (Metz

and Wiesel 1993, 47). He is determined not to gloss over

the contradiction between hope in God and the irreducible

horror of suffering in Auschwitz. Metz criticizes Moltmann

for offering a new theodicy which makes the same mistake as

the older versions: it justifies God’s permission of

suffering, not by defending God’s omnipotent goodness, but

by affirming divine suffering. Metz criticizes Moltmann for

offering theological speculation about God that soothes

eschatological questioning and harmonizes suffering with

redemption (Metz 1990, 117).

In contrast to Moltmann’s theology of the cross, Metz

calls for a negative theology that eschews a systematic

theology of redemption. Metz is influenced by Frankfurt

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School Jewish philosophers Walter Benjamin and Theodor

Adorno, who interpret redemption as a negative ideal.

Although it cannot be defined in positive terms, redemption

functions as a critical idea that serves to measure the

shortcomings of human failures of justice, and to heighten

awareness of how urgently redemption is needed. However,

the doctrine of redemption is not an item of knowledge that

assures that history will end with peace and justice. The

future is always at stake and open. No one knows what

redemption will look like, except to say that will be unlike

present reality where there is cruelty and suffering. In

juxtaposition with the memory of suffering, redemption

functions as a critical idea that functions to measure the

shortcomings of human failures of justice and to heighten

awareness of how urgently redemption is needed (Metz 1977,

108).

Metz sharply opposes Christian triumphalism. He

declares that, “we will have to forgo the temptation to

interpret the suffering of the Jewish people from our

standpoint in terms of saving history.” (Metz 1980, 32)

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Auschwitz should not be reconciled or harmonized with

Christian redemptive claims; it does not have positive

meaning in history. In order to avoid Christianizing the

Holocaust, Metz deliberately refuses to develop a systematic

theology of redemption that would impose external meaning on

the suffering of Jewish victims and justify God’s permission

of these sufferings. He dismisses theodicy as blasphemy.

Moltmann emphasizes the future status of redemption in an

attempt to avoid Christian triumphalism, but Metz takes a

more radical approach by refusing to develop a systematic

theology of God. Metz avoids engaging in theodicy by

proposing a negative theology, where God and redemption are

beyond cognitive grasp. By refusing to make theoretical

moves that would alleviate the stark contrast between God’s

goodness and massive suffering, Metz maintains focus on

Christian praxis as the appropriate response to Auschwitz.

Metz thinks that theology after Auschwitz should be

“theodicy-sensitive.” However, to be sensitive to theodicy

does not entail trying to find the best theodicy proposal.

Instead, it means keeping the questions which theodicy

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raises audible and yet unanswered. Metz considers the

contradiction between suffering in history and Christian

promises of redemption one that cannot be reconciled. As an

alternative to theodicy, he concludes that protest is the

only authentic Christian or Jewish response to the

Holocaust, and suffering in the whole of history. Metz

singles out prayer as the type of God-talk which can best

articulate a religious response to suffering because it

expresses anger and rebellion as well as trust and hope in

God. He advises that Christian faith practice should follow

the precedent of the Hebrew prophets and Job, whose faith

displays an artless refusal to be comforted by ideas and

myths or theodicy. However, he indicates that suffering can

become meaningful in the context of faith in God. Metz

refers to a type of suffering that he calls the “mysticism

of suffering from God” where a person seeks God in

suffering, and he points to the life of Jesus Christ as a

model of this response. Taking this mystical approach, a

person asks theodicy questions in prayer without receiving

answers, and yet continues to trust in God’s presence.

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Faith in God does not relieve confrontation with the agony

of suffering. Hope for redemption is made more urgent in

view of the gravity of suffering. This mysticism of

suffering is what Metz calls a “mysticism of open eyes” that

increases a person’s perception of other people’s suffering.

For a Christian to take this approach to Jewish suffering,

means that she will refuse to offer theological ideas that

make suffering justified but remain appalled at suffering

and the absence of redemption (Metz 1990, 115).

c) Dorothee Sölle

Dorothee Sölle takes an intermediate position in

comparison to Metz and Moltmann. On the one hand, Sölle

agrees with Moltmann that the affirmation of divine

suffering is necessary for Christian post-Holocaust

theology. On the other hand, like Metz, she considers

theoretical doctrinal proposals about God unsatisfactory in

response to Auschwitz. Sölle’s theological method takes a

narrative approach to examining suffering and how God can be

present in one’s response to it. Holocaust testimonies are

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an important resource for her thought, alongside testimonies

of the suffering of oppressed workers and women, in Europe

and beyond. Her understanding of redemption is political

and historical, as well as non-triumphalist. She holds that

the cross is a paradoxical symbol of suffering and

redemption, where redemption indicates future liberation and

peace in the world. Hope in redemption fuels protest

against injustice, which is an act of solidarity with

victims. The cross is a model of meaningful suffering,

suffering that is accepted in solidarity and hope. She

succeeds in situating suffering, by pointing out that the

context determines whether suffering is meaningful. Sölle

argues that the only legitimate meaning arising from

suffering is self-designated by persons who suffer. The

world’s suffering is not subsumed under the cross. Only

suffering that is in imitation of Jesus Christ counts as

redemptive or meaningful (Sölle 1973, 203). Consistent with

her emphasis on the contextual meaning of suffering, Sölle

objects to theodicy answers offering an explanation and

justification for suffering. She argues that the theodicy

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question “why does a good God permit suffering?” should be

superseded by the practical question: how can my suffering

be transformed into something which serves God?

Given her rejection of theoretical theodicy responses

to Auschwitz, it is striking that she strongly opposes the

doctrine of divine omnipotence and affirms divine suffering.

According to Sölle, God is not an all-powerful spectator of

suffering but a suffering God. She quotes a famous passage

from Elie Wiesel’s novel Night to elaborate her position,

where Auschwitz inmates are forced to watch a hanging (Sölle

1973, 181). When a camp inmate asks plaintively “Where is

God?” a bystander (not the main character, Elie) responds

that, “God is hanging here on this gallows” (Wiesel 1982,

61-62). Sölle takes this scenario as a symbol of divine

immanence in human suffering. She considers it a “mystical”

aspect of human experience that suffering can become

“participation in the powerlessness of God in the world.”

(Sölle 1992, 101) This meaning requires that the individual

appropriate suffering as participation in God’s pain of love

and God’s sorrow over the world. The meaning that lies in

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suffering is experienced in intersubjective relation with

persons and God. Sölle draws on the framework of Buber’s I

and Thou (1923) to articulate the contrast between meaning

that can be defined and objectified in a formula, and

meaning that carries certitude and conviction in personal

experience by means of I-Thou relation. As a response to

suffering, an I-Thou posture allows the individual to

sympathize with others’ suffering in history. Affirmation

of the value of one’s life, despite and including suffering,

happens in mutual relation within community. In I-Thou

relation with persons and God, there is experiential

assurance of God's reality and love that enables the

individual to find meaning in suffering (Sölle 1990, 183).

Sölle is wary of affirming religious acceptance of

suffering, in view of Marx’s critique of religion.

Promises of otherworldly rewards for suffering too easily

make faith “the opium of the people” that suppresses

protest. However, Sölle admits that acceptance of suffering

can be appropriate as an individual-existential decision,

either combined with resistance or where resistance is

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impossible. Acceptance of suffering can be a decision of

solidarity, for instance, when voluntary suffering is

accepted as the result of defending individuals who suffer.

Solidarity means accepting suffering and even death, it

shows love for others and indestructible oneness with God.

The figure of Jesus Christ is a paradigm for voluntarily

accepted suffering. To imitate Christ means to accept

suffering as a consequence of solidarity with victims, and

to transform non-chosen suffering into suffering for God’s

sake (Sölle 1973, 164).

Sölle holds that a Christian response to Auschwitz

should be both “mystik und politik” – terms that Metz uses

to describe the imitation of Christ. In I-Thou relation

with persons and with God, there is mystical assurance of

God's reality and love. She speaks of God’s pain that is

sorrow over “a barbaric world filled with injustice and the

destruction of life.” (Sölle 1992, 93) God’s pain is

identified with the actual pain of the man Jesus, who sided

with persons who suffered poverty, sickness and oppression.

She claims that God's pain only becomes visible in human

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pain when suffering is linked with practices of hope,

solidarity and joy. When Sölle speaks of “God’s pain” she

does not ontologize divine suffering in the Trinitarian

history of God. The manifestation of God’s pain is immanent

and historical. Human suffering can become participation in

God’s mystery: “participation in the powerlessness of God in

the world.” (Sölle 1992, 94)

Sölle does not propose a theology of God’s inner life,

as Moltmann does, but a theology of divine immanence in

suffering which Moltmann labels a “humanistic” approach

(Moltmann 1997a, 55). Divine pain becomes visible in human

pain only when suffering is linked with practices of hope,

solidarity and love. In particular, God’s pain is visible

in the suffering of Jesus, who sided with persons who

suffered poverty, sickness and oppression, but it is not

exclusively associated with Jesus as Metz implies. Sölle

allows for nuance between situations of suffering without

imposing Christological comparison.

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Evaluation of Second Generation German Post-Holocaust

Theology

There is no doubt as to the seriousness of each

author’s theological engagement with the Holocaust. But in

evaluating their proposals, it is apparent that these second

generation thinkers have not created a unified German

theology after Auschwitz, nor are each of their responses

fully adequate to the challenge.

All three authors prioritize the position of the victim

and the experience of suffering, identifying themselves as

Christians with Jewish suffering. Given the atrocities

committed during the Holocaust, it is not surprising that

suffering is a major issue for theology after Auschwitz.

Biographically, all three theologians faced suffering and

the fear of death as teenagers living in Germany during

World War II. In fact, Moltmann and Metz were both drafted

into Nazi military corps as teen-agers in 1944, and Sölle

survived the bombings of Köln. All three were lucky not to

be killed. On the other hand, they were protected from

certain kinds of suffering by their Christian identities,

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obviously, Hitler’s anti-Semitic policies. It is worth

asking why these German Christians seem most theologically

interested in the experiences of victims, rather than

collaborators and perpetrators. Perhaps because they were

young and in danger themselves, these thinkers identify

themselves with the war’s victims. In addition, the desire

to be pay attention to Jewish voices and responses leads

these theologians to focus their reflection on suffering

victims and solidarity with those who suffer.

In second generation German theology after Auschwitz,

the particularly of suffering and its social location needs

to be recognized more acutely. There is a tendency to

universalize the redemptive meaning of suffering. Jewish

suffering can be subsumed under a Christological framework,

either the symbol of the cross or the praxis of Jesus in

response to people who suffer. To impose Christian meanings

on historical testimonies betrays the narratives of Jewish

Holocaust victims. Christian responses to the Holocaust

should pay attention to differences among individual

experiences of suffering, and how certain suffering applies

30

to specific groups of people uniquely. It is valuable for

theologians to read and respond to Jewish writings, but they

must be highly aware of which voices are included or

excluded. For example, it is more natural to select the

testimonies of devout Jews rather than secular Jews, as the

passage from Wiesel’s novel Night indicates. Among

Christian voices, it is more likely that attention will be

paid to the narratives of Christian resisters instead of

perpetrators. The process of selecting narratives is both a

necessity and a limitation of any theology after Auschwitz.

However, among the second generation thinkers studied,

Christian solidarity with Jewish suffering is overstated.

Attention to Jewish suffering should be balanced by

theological analysis of the narratives of Christian

perpetrators as well as resisters. If distinctions between

Christian and Jewish voices and narratives are not made

clear, there is the danger that solidarity with victims will

mask Christian responsibility and questions about the human

capacity for evil (Reck 1998, 223-225).

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The paradigm shift to post-Holocaust theology requires

confronting and criticizing the Christian idea of the

acceptance of suffering. I agree with Metz that the

prophetic current in the Hebrew Bible should inform a

Christian response to suffering, as an antidote to

inadequate theodicy answers. This strategy of turning to

the Hebraic sources of Christianity builds bridges towards

dialogue with Jewish thinkers. In admitting perplexity

about God’s reasons, looking critically on injustice in

history and yet maintaining hope in the face of the

Holocaust, there is the potential for common ground between

Christian and Jewish faith responses. Moreover, protest is

a pragmatic response to the failure of theodicy to give an

adequate understanding of God’s reasons for allowing so much

evil.

Inspired by prophetic demands for justice, resistance

rather than acceptance should be the first line of response

for Christians. Nevertheless, acceptance of suffering can

be appropriate in situations where resistance is impossible

or futile for the victim. Acceptance of suffering can also

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be an act of solidarity, for example, when a person enters

into suffering in order to assist others. The distinction

between voluntary and non-voluntary suffering is crucial.

Sölle is the only thinker to explicitly formulate this

distinction to distinguish between the voluntary suffering

of Jesus, whose choices led him into conflict with

authorities, and the involuntary suffering of concentration

camp victims who were selected based on their Jewish

identity. For Christian thinkers, the figure of Jesus

Christ is a paradigm for voluntarily accepted suffering. To

imitate Christ means to accept suffering as a consequence of

solidarity with victims, and to transform non-chosen

suffering into suffering for God’s sake (Sölle 1973, 172).

However, not all suffering fits this paradigm. Theodicy

ignores this fact, brashly offering reasons for suffering

and imposing redemptive meaning. Moltmann’s doctrine of

divine suffering subsumes victims’ suffering under the

auspices of God’s Trinitarian suffering. He follows the

mainstream tradition in understanding Jesus as Messiah and

Savior who redeems history (Haynes 1991, 122).

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In theology after Auschwitz, it must be recognized that

meanings in the face of suffering are multiple and self-

conferred. To give theological meaning to the suffering of

others is to superimpose a theological voice onto the

victim’s own narrative, which is a betrayal. The

implication that all suffering can receive such

interpretation tends towards an elitism of suffering, where

it is presumed that persons with superior strength of faith

will see divine meaning in suffering. Post-Holocaust

theology must accept that there is also such a thing as

meaningless suffering. The positive valuation of suffering,

connected with the cross, must be self-designated. By

making clear that suffering gains redemptive meaning only

when the victim actively confers such meaning on it, Sölle

takes steps towards acknowledging some suffering as non-

redemptive and emphasizes the context of situations of

suffering. In opposition to theodicy, post-Holocaust

thinkers should acknowledge that meaning is appropriated

only by the individual who suffers.

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Although Auschwitz is a serious concern for Moltmann,

Metz and Sölle, their work does not establish a new era of

post-Holocaust theology. Rather, their work blends with

other movements in contemporary theology. When they first

began to articulate their proposals in the 1960’s and

1970’s, post-Holocaust theology was part of the German

political theology movement. Within their political

theology, Auschwitz functions as an impetus for a critique

of political passivity in the churches and society. Over

the course of his career, Moltmann has developed a

Trinitarian systematic theology that takes suffering

seriously as part of God’s Trinitarian history. Metz

continues to identify his work as political theology in

solidarity with “third world” theologies. Since the 1980’s,

Sölle has identified her work as liberation theology from a

German feminist perspective. For all three writers,

Auschwitz represents one instance of massive suffering among

other current examples of economic injustice, racism and

oppression. Attention to suffering widens theological

concerns beyond Europe, calling for universal solidarity

35

with human suffering. In retrospect, what is distinctive

about the life work of these three theologians is not

exclusive attention to the memory of Auschwitz, but

attention to socially caused suffering that encompasses

problems of prejudice and oppression worldwide.

36

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Pawlikowski, John T., 1982: Christ in the Light of the Christian-Jewish Dialogue, Ramsey, N.J.: Paulist Press.Sölle, Dorothee, 1992: Es muss doch mehr als alles geben: Nachdenkenüber Gott, Hamburg: Hoffman und Campe Verlag.------------------, 1990: Gott Denken. Einfuhrung in die Theologie, Stuttgart: Kreuz Verlag.------------------, 1973: Leiden, Stuttgart: Kreuz Verlag.Steele, Michael R., 1996: Christianity, Tragedy and Holocaust Literature, in: Hubert G. Locke and Marcia Sachs Littell (Hgs.), Holocaust and Church Struggle, New York: University Press of America, 1996, 117-125.Wiesel, Elie, and Philippe-Michael de Saint-Cheron, Evil and Exile, Notre Dame : University of Notre Dame Press, 1990.--------------, 1982: Night, New York: Bantam Books, 1982.

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