God does not come, as he was already in Auschwitz and in Rwanda, not in the case of the Tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia in 2004, and not in 1755, as in the case of a devastating earthquake in Lisbon, tens of thousands were killed. Lisbon stands for a first deep incision in Thinking about God and the world in modern times. How could allow a good and Almighty God? With every disaster, with every innocent Suffering, this is a question for people of faith is back in the room. So also now.
The question arises, as before, because already the first prominent attempt at a reply failed to convince. 1710 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz' book "essays on theodicy, the goodness of God, the freedom of man and the origin of Evil" appeared. The philosopher made to the lawyer of God. Leibniz argued that an all-bountiful one, the Almighty and omniscient God can only create "the best of all possible worlds" and that the occurring Evil is necessary, or at least explainable. You could take the core thoughts of Leibniz's argument in the laconic sentence: I'm sorry, it was unfortunately not better.
fear and Trembling
Particularly plausible that don't work. Here is not simply postponed the conflict between concept of God and the world experience in the sphere of the Divine, by Leibniz is the Almighty God in his own creation task limits? In his 1791 published essay "On the Failure of all philosophical Attempts in theodicy" criticized Kant Leibniz as a presumptuous thinker, the eighth, the limits of reason, miss. Kant referred to the proposal of Leibniz as a "doktrinal". With this, such as Jan Philipp Reemtsma wrote recently, "casual Checking of this idea" is obsolete, the question of theodicy for some, and for others open.
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How theology and philosophy have to the much greater catastrophe of the Shoah is not responding? Contrary to Leibniz's times re-thinking the God-concept began after 1945. Perhaps the most prominent attempt by Hans Jonas has made in his lecture on "The concept of God after Auschwitz". The occasion was the awarding of the Dr.-Leopold-Lucas-prize of the tübingen gave Theological faculty at Jonas. The topic of his speech was urging him irresistibly up, said Jonas, as he read, that the mother of the founder of the prize, shared the fate of his own mother – both of them had been murdered in Auschwitz.
Stammer in front of the eternal mystery
"With fear and Trembling," he has chosen the theme of his speech, writes Jonas. He was believed to be the Victims of "something like a reply to your long-reverbed cry to a silent God" is guilty. For Jonas, this response term in a Rethink of the traditional God. You could no longer think of God after the catastrophe of Auschwitz as the Lord of history. In consequence, Jonas draws the picture of an expectant and suffering of God. He writes: "After Auschwitz, we can assert with greater determination than ever before that an omnipotent deity would either not compassionate or (...) totally incomprehensible. But if God is supposed to be, in some way, to some extent, understandable (and we must hold on to), then his goodness must be compatible with the existence of Evil, and it is not only, if he is all-powerful.“
Jonas referred to his ideas as a "Stammer in front of the eternal mystery". At the end of his lecture he takes a job on the book. During the book the power of job propagating the fullness of God the Creator, speaking of the power of renunciation. And he adds: "Also, it seems to me, is an answer to job: that in him God himself suffers." This Jonas is only hinted at, thought of God, the Protestant theologian Dorothee Sölle to a Central motif: the pity. In her book "Suffer" (1975), States: "one can say that God is in Auschwitz hangs on the gallows." But it is not the suffering of a powerless God. Sölle can also speak of the Power of God – but not in the sense of an Autonomous ruling power, but as Power in the relationship. Sölle's thinking God and man in relationship. We need the good Creation of God, but he also needs us. Because, as a well-known formulation of the Hamburg theologian: "God only has our hands." What is out of this world, depends not least of all us humans.
Date Of Update: 15 July 2020, 05:19
