Thinking towards God and the evil of Auschwitz

An impression of the theological confrontation in Western Europe with the Shoah

Anton van Harskamp

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands

It's striking: the wider the gap between the present time and Auschwitz, the less we are able to remain unmoved by that image of terror.

It may well be that this remarkable fact has something to do with the unfathomable evil of the nazi-persecution; to be more specific, it has to do with that trait of nazi-crimes for which the philosopher Hannah Arendt once coined the expression 'the banality of evil'. As far as Western Europe is concerned, this judgment may be right in a particular way. With respect to the 'bystanders' the nazi-persecution surpassed the intellectual means by which one could understand why persecutions and massive killings were happening at all. One of the most perspicuous reasons was that the terror was perpetrated by members of a 'civilized' nation, while the mechanisms of persecution permeated 'civilized' instititions (e.g. exclusion of jewish countrymen by legal means and with the help of official policemen and bureaucrats). That promoted the 'natural' inclination of many people to be relatively blind for what was happening. For the direct victims at the other hand, the evil was so overwhelming, so devastating that it went beyond the most dark imagination. It went so to say beyond the ordinary potential to put oneself mentally in hell, for the traditional representations of hell were outdated by the horror of Auschwitz (there is ample evidence for that judgment in the literature of survivors). Evil apparently can become so terrible that it is no longer experienced as extremely terrible. In that sense one can speak of the banality of evil.

So, besides the mass of social-pyschological and political reasons why nations and people are willing to forget the occurence of massive evil as soon as possible and want to return to normalcy - because society needs to be build up, to mention just one reason - we can have some understanding why it takes considerable time to unmask that banality and to realize the ultimate revulsiveness of the Shoah. It also takes time to get some sense of the dark ramifications with which the Shoah is interwoven with - on a pre-conceptual level - the history and ... the future of the so called western civilization, as well as with western forms of christianity. In other words, it takes time, to make a variation on a metaphor of the British/Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, to realize that the Shoah is not a picture at the wall at which one can look af from a distanced ease, but a mirror which reflects uncanny traits of our society ... and of ourselves.

Today we may say that for a considerable group of people in Western Europe the Shoah has become something which according to the philosospher Emil Fackenheim it definitely is: a root-experience (although I must admit that this group most likely consists of academics and intellectuals). The way I understand the concept 'root-experience' is that the Shoah points at an experience which defies our basic trust in ourselves, our society and our human neighbours and which forces us to rethink and to re-imagine the whole fabric of our outlook on life. And as far as this basic trust also is a indispensable dimension of the christian faith in God - a broadly, although not universally accepted conviction -, of the human possibility to follow Jesus and to participate in His Church, the Shoah definitely defies all western theologies. That is to say, the Shoah provokes in a deepgoing way all those intellectual attempts by which human beings are trying to think towards God. After Auschwitz every theologian has to reconsider the basic convictions of christian belief, e.g. the concepts of creation, sinn, cross, resurrection and redemption, as well as the theological methodology, and not to forget, the concept of God Herself as the sustaining Creator, the 'Master of the Universe'.

In this essay I will rather superficially touch on some of the most viable attempts in Western theology to deal with the evil of Auschwitz. I will concentrate on the issue which points at the most simple and the most decisive dimension of theology: can theology exist after Auschwitz, is there still some plausibility to yearn for God in an intellectual way? In other words: what can be the Kingdom of God after we've been told of the 'Kingdom of the Night' (E. Wiesel)?

But may we speak about the evil of Auschwitz?

Before answering this question I'll have to indicate three issues.

In the first place it might be useful to mention that speaking and thinking on such a massive horror in our own recent history is not without risks.

In the christian tradition as well as in the jewish tradition - the religious bedrock of christianity - the act of memory is indispensable for the religious community. The historical memory of life and passion of Jesus is even the essence for the practice of christian faith. And in the jewish tradition there is for instance a well-known dictum of the chassidic master Baal Sjem Tov, stating that to forget is to prolong exile, while to remember is the beginning of redemption.

Nevertheless, on a psycho-social level there are dangers in remembering the occurrence of so much evil as one observes in Auschwitz. As far as the survivors are concerned, there is ample evidence that remembrance can wake up the inner horror in such a way that the rupture in life, the discontinuity within the personal life-history manifests itself. The result can be unbearable for the survivor. And as far as we, non-survivors, are concerned: the reading of the remembrances of the survivors - as collected by for instance Lawrence Langer in Holocaust Testimonies - can touch either on the more obscure and agressive sentiments, even lead to a hidden sympathy with the perpetrators, or to moral indifference (because our own ethical way of confronting and interpreting the world is not suited for a confrontation with such a void of evil).

Which brings us to a more particular premonition, now with respect to christians. Thinking and reading on Auschwitz from a christian point of viwe may arouse feelings of resentments on a sub-consciuous level against jewish people, simply because they are thought to activate our guilty consciences. We christians are living in a tradition from which anti-judaism is part and parcel, for instance the doctrine of supersession of judaism by the church, and in a more general sense the so called Teaching of Contempt. After Auschwitz it is one of our tasks to unmask that Teaching of Contempt. However, there is a paradox; the confrontation with Auschwitz may arouse those bigot resentments of christian anti-judaism once again, because it's hard to admit that our own christian tradition delivered ideological support to antisemitism. Moreover it is hard to admit that only a very small minority of christians actually was resisting the pagan destruction of European Jewry by the nazi's. Reading about the holocaust must make us christians feel uncomfortable, and it simply is a human predicament to avoid uncomfortable feelings (by blaming the victim for instance). Anyway, one thing that is important in this respect is to make a distinction between psychological guilt and responsibility and structural culpability (of christianity as a tradition which transcends the individual). As far as in this essay the question of culpability is touched upon, I shall in the first place point at the christian tradition as a whole.

A related issue, the second one, deals with the question whether thinking and speaking about the Shoah in a theological setting is a good thing to do at all. To put it bluntly: can it be morally accepted? Please, pay attention: I'm not asking the well-known question whether religion is still a moral possibility after Auschwitz. I'm not asking for instance whether we can still pray after Auschwitz. I'm inclined to consider the answer of the jewish theologian E. Berkovits suitable for christians too (although this will be not in line with the criticism Berkovits, writing for his jewish fellowmen, aims at christianity): we can pray because people prayed in Auschwitz. No, I'm asking whether doing theology as an abstract and conceptual activity is possible. For as such theology always comes afterwards the primal acts of faith. It is a second-order intellectual activity. As far as the Shoah concerns, this abstract thinking has some problematic features. Essentially because thinking on so much evil finds itself in danger to give some form of respect to evil, as if Auschwitz contributes to the intellectual and respectable achievements of modern academics and intellectuals; as if we can use the suffering of the victims for our own intellectual purposes. This would be a scandalous thing. But to be honest, I cannot simply avoid this problematic aspect of thinking about the Shoah. I only know, and I will get into this later, that not-speaking about the Shoah is also not morally acceptable. For the moment I can only indicate two moral-emotional stands which we have to avoid. There is on the one side the full-fledged detached and academic way of speaking, however leading to either indifference or to the cynical way of dealing with the terror of Auschwitz (and GUlag), for instance by expressing the rather trivial complaint: that's the way the world always turns. On the other side there is the highly emotional way of showing the utmost moral affliction, indicating over and over again how terrible Auschwitz was. However however who constantly hammers on the terror of Auschwitz, runs the risk of moral self-exaltation, while overlooking the demanding task to ask the painstaking questions on the consequences of Auschwitz for a present theology.

The third preliminary issue concerns the already indicated question whether it's more appropritate to consider Auschwitz as just one of the depressing series of 'normal' human bestiality. So the question is why we take Auschwitz as a special case for thinking about reframing of transforming christian theology. Can't we say that every massive form of bestiality actually is a provocation of the christian faith in the eternal love of the Almighty? A few considerations.

In the first place one has to say immediately: sure, every atrocity, every act of ruthless violence is one step more in the proces of the obstruction of an easy-going and unconcerned faith. An immediate comforting form of christian faith hardly seems possible: the comfort and peace of christian trust is a predisposition of the mind for which we have to fight for, something like a second order 'naïvité'. Just in our global world theodicy is an everlasting task, for every christian.

Still, I think that Auschwitz and GUlag are presenting in a paradigmatic way a radical form of evil in our time. I'll only deal with Auschwitz now. It is appropriate to distinguish (at least) two aspects of the issue at stake: firstly the question of the historical uniqueness of the Shoah and secondly the question of the moral and theological significance of Auschwitz. I can only touch superficially on both questions.

With regard to the historical uniqueness I join in with those who think Auschwitz definitely does have historical roots as - to mention only some historical roots - christian anti-judaism, transformed by secular racism, shaped by a romantic glorification of the German 'Volk' and politically used in a totalitarian state, all mixed up with an 'Enlightened' way of technological dealing with individuals as unconnected entities. So its uniqueness does not mean that it is a non-historical phenomenon (still apart from the usual power-political entanglements which have created the conditions for the holocaust). Its uniqueness also does not mean that it will never happen again. No, it has happened, so it can happen again, as the survivor Primo Levi often stressed: this potential of human mass destruction of human fellowmen is from now on a everlasting possibility (also a terrible reality, although on a less organized and less massive scale than during World War II; this even goes for Rwanda).

Nevertheless I consider the Shoah unique. Because, among other things, it seems to be the accumulation and culmination of all the terrible vices which were lying as a potential threat in modern western culture. That is to say: I consider the Shoah as the culmination of the selfhatred and the selfdestructive tendencies which, besides the impressive fruits of western civilization, were part, and still are part, of the potentials of that very civilization.

There are however, less speculative, more specific reasons to indicate the Shoah's uniqueness. There is for instance the incredible determination and persistency with which the legalized (!) hunting, persecution and killing of jewish people took place - the grain of truth in Daniel Goldhagen's Willing Executioners. It indicates the will to destroy every single jewish person at all costs. The point is that this happened without any 'rational' goal. For in 'normal' genocidal violence it apparently seems possible to detect some form of 'rationale' besides the frenzy of the irrational, e.g. 'Lebensraum', economic profit, political power etc. In the last resort however these motives aparently don't play a significant role in the execution of the Shoah. Auschwitz even was a hindering factor in the German war efforts (I wonder whether on the level of the perpetration there is a difference at this point between Auschitz and GUlag, because one could suppose that one 'rationale' for GUlag was to keep the people of the USSR in a continuous state of fear and personal disconnectednes in order to maintain absolute power).

The factor of the litterally incredible and unshockable determination and persistency of the nazi-perpetrators becomes even harder to comprehend once we realize that Auschwitz was unique just because of the relatively 'normalness' of the situations in which it happened (the same apparently goes for the stalinistic GUlag). In that sense is the uniqueness of Auschwitz its modern 'normalness' of its context and its execution. When we try to determine the nature of evil, we are after all used to point at nothingness, as caused by chaos, loss of morals, law and norm shattering violence, and as manifesting itself in pogroms for instance. But only a minority of the perpetrators, from 'Schreibtischmörder' till the camp bullies, were bestial or sadistic figures carousing in torture and violence. They often were 'ordinary men' (Christopher R. Browning) with a conscience which was well working in their private life. That's what makes makes so terrifying, for us, 'normal' people, that they were people like us.

And now over to the the disturbing moral significance of the Shoah. It's still quite usual to presuppose, as for instance the sociologist Norbert Elias has clarified, that the process of civilization is conditioned by the growing 'management' of individual behaviour, by structural differentiation of the social world and by the taking-over of all the material means and instruments of power by regulated institutions. The frightening enigma now is that in such a modern - that is, civilized, differentiated and regulated - world, there were places, from which almost everyone knew the existence, but which nevertheless were almost by way of subconscious collective agreement considered as secret places. These places, the destruction- and labour camps, were legitimized as places where the natural human restraints were broken, where the natural respect for the suffering fellow (wo)man was destroyed and the natural inclination to help the suffering other willingly was suppressed. In various degrees many sectors of society were involved in the proces of destruction. For this proces, writes Richard Rubenstein,

required the cooperation of every sector of German society. The bureaucrats drew up the definitions and decrees; the churches gave evidence of "Aryan" descent; the postal autorities carried the messages of definition, expropriation, denaturalization, and deportation; business corporations dismissed their Jewish employees and took over "Aryanized" properties; the railroads carried the victims to their place of execution, a place made available to the Gestapo and the SS by the Wehrmacht. To repeat, the operation received the participation of every major social, political and religious institution of the German Reich.

This leads to the realization of something terrible: that everything which we in Western Europe are relating to a cultured human life, reason, science, religion, rendered service to the destruction. That's the ultimate reason why the credibility of the christian gospel of love, so intertwined with society, has been put on trial by Auschwitz. Auschwitz destroys the conditions which are shaping basic human trust, so it destroys in the last resort the comfort that relations like solidarity, friendship, community feeling, usually deliver. On top of that it destroys the comfort that in the end all things are in God's hand.

Genocide as a consequence of Deicide or Genocide as Deicide?

Now, let's proceed to the theological views on God and the evil of Auschwitz.

Traditionally evil is indicated as something which at one hand definitely does have an indisputable reality and real effects, but which at the other hand is not allowed to exist morally, which even is not really thinkable in a logical way. This latter observation is an indication that we cannot understand the ground of existence of evil. We only can approach the phenomenal existence of evil by means of making distinctions. For instance the distinction between moral evil which can be related to questions concerning human freedom, responsibility and culpability on one hand and physical evil like malicious diseases, earthquakes etc. on the other hand.

With respect to moral evil one can make a distinction between evil as a consequence of human acts and evil as something which is suffered and endured. With respect to theology and Auschwitz this distinction can be formulated in the following way. There are two main groups of theologies: those that deal with the perpetrators and the execution of the Shoah, and those who focus on the suffering of the victims. I'll briefly touch on the first group; the second group I'll pay a little more attention to.

It's my impression that the central issue in the first group of theologies comes down to this question: either Auschwitz is the consequential culmination of modern deicide, the modern killing of God (already partly seen and partly prophesied by Nietzsche; and made completely manifest in World Wat I; a war which so to say demonstrated that when humanity in a industrial and technological world wishes to take over the old functions of divine power and providence, selfdestruction will be the consequence); or the nazi-genocide itself is the last (?) effort to get rid of God, by killing the people that represents the humanly intolerable Presence of His Absence.

A representative of the first mentioned view is the jewish thinker Arthur Cohen. For him Auschwitz is the manifestation of the self-demonizing of the instrumental reason and as such a superhuman sacred event, a Tremendum (so also implicating some sort of secret fascination). Auschwitz has become the completely inversed image of the loving God, the most horrible proof what's happening whenever human beings have been cut loose from every 'transcendent control', striving to occupy the empty place of God by technical means. Here we can observe also the conviction that we can consider the camps as some form of experiment, as huge laboratories in which the idea of humanity is transformed (because, don't forget, the jewish people were not persecuted because they were thought to be a specific political, social, military or economical threat; they were persecuted because they were considered from a sort of medical view as a threat to human existence as such, see R.J. Lifton).

This view presupposes that God was already killed by human culture in the nineteenth and twentieth century. It is Auschwitz as a consequence of 'Prometheus Unbound', but not on the level of individals, but on the level of the nations and the masses. This view probably is one of the most accepted 'interpretations' of Auschwitz. It fits the views of those thinkers and historians who are emphasizing the deep connection between modern western societies and nazi-Germany.

On the other side there are thinkers who emphasize that Auschwitz is an attempt to finish off every last bit of Transcendency. Let me mention F. Lyotard and G. Steiner. Lyotard does have some fine intuitions concerning judaism. According to him the most unique trait of religious Jewry is the deep-seated predisposition that God will not be met on the level of reason and intellect, nor predominantly on the level of personal experiences, either of affectional or mystical nature. God is even not met predominantly in ritual acts. No, people are yearning for the coming of God - who is so to say only present as an Absence - in praxis/action, in the first place in the simple fulfilling of His commandments. According to Lyotard the implication of this practical view is that in judaism there is the concept of 'The Voice'. This Voice of the Lord can be heard, but can never be conceptually mastered and represented. Lyotard tries to convince his readers that just because judaism is living in an atmosphere of respect for the wholly Other who is still Present in this world, the genocide took place. The western 'spirit', driven forward by its excessiveness, that is to say by the continuous refusal to acknowledge measure or limit, would almost automatically recognize the will to destroy the living symbol of that insusceptible immanent Transcendence; essentially because the history of the jewish people, in particular its misery, happens to show the substantiating of the ever enforced will to set apart from the idols of the other nations.

George Steiner takes a comparable course. But he focusses in particular on the christian roots of European culture. His idea, in short, is that the jewish introduction of monotheism and the emphasis of the pure perfection of the one and only God, puts an enormous pressure on people. Steiner mentions two events by which this pressure was heightened: the coming of the jewish eschatological prophet Jesus, and the secularized version of the promise of the Kingdom of God, the communist 'doctrine' of the coming of the classless society. In both cases the essence was the idea, not the reality behind these two events. And this idea engraved in the history of European christianity a deep feeling of moral failure, because of the unsurpassable high moral standards which were thought to be present in the Man of Nazareth and in the idea of a classless society. In nazism the hatred bursted out against the sources of the once internalized standards.

In this respect Steiner's view on Jesus of Nazareth as a jewish prophet is interesting (although as all his work, his remarks are highly speculative, sometimes elusive). He argues, to begin with, that Jesus was acting as a jew within a jewish context, but that after his death, the remembrance of Jesus within the christian community heigthened the above mentioned mental pressure, because the majority of the christians were confronted with the moral ideals of altruism and absolute self-renunciation, even till the execution on the cross. The issue is, that just because the jews did not accept the claim that Jesus was the Messiah, the christians were confronted with their own failure: they saw themselves in their religious incompetence and their actual unwillingness to follow Jesus. According to Steiner there is a strong tendency in christianity to project its own apostacy on the jews. Every pogrom, Steiner argues, is a form of christian selfmutilation as well. This is the same for Auschwitz. In this respect it's not only a crisis for religious judaism - although Steiner concludes that the orthodox majority wishes to deny that crisis, even that the orthodoxy in Israel makes a highly improper, purely power-political use of the Shoah - but it is also a frantic outburst of the will to silence the own christian conscience (I think it is not needed now to elaborate extensively that Steiner considers the relation between Jesus and actual christianity in a Nietzschean and Freudian way: He presents Jesus as a religious genius who simply cannot be followed because of his life-exceeding posture. I think that such a view apriori and falsely makes christianity a agressive religion).

God and the suffering in Auschwitz

I'll withold a more elaborate evaluation of the just mentioned broad views on the evil of the perpetrators. Let's proceed to the theological interpretations of the suffering in Auschwitz.

In recent theological literature on the holocaust one can detect several attempts to arrive at some sort of pattern in the spectrum of answers of western christian theology on the holocaust. I've got the impression that the differences are not much different from each other. Authors like James Moore, Alice and Roy Eckardt, Birte Petersen, to mention a few names, make different classifications on the basis of different perspectives, which however do not exclude or contradict each other essentially. While for instance Moore focusses on foundational theology and theological method, the Eckardts are more interested in the consequences of the Shoah for the dogmatic doctrines of resurrection and redemption, and Petersen emphasizes christology. In this essay I'll focus on the question of the existence of God related to the extreme suffering. Partly making use of the above mentioned authors I think it is possible to make the following classification:

- Theologies in which Auschwitz is considered a theological non-event: the majority (Alas!). I will not spend attention to this group, because this text itself is among other things meant to function as a refutation of this position.

- Theologies in which Auschwitz is seen as a challenge, but in which it's thought that the christian tradition can cope with this catastrofe: the apologetic group.

- Theologies in which there is a strong feeling of obligation to adjust and to nuance theology, in particular with respect to the relation between human suffering and God: the liberal-critical group.

- Theologies in which it's argued that Auschwitz requests a radical transformation of the method and of the central doctrines of theology: the radical group.

After the presentation - and evaluation of the three last groups I will briefly sketch my own position.

In order to get to an overall view over what these three groups are actually about, I have to refer to the well-known Epicurean trilemma.

There are three foundational propositions. Firstly, there is an excess of evil and suffering in the world (which cannot be transformed in for instance the well-being or salvation of people on the long term). Secondly: God is an Almighty God. Thirdly: God is a fountain of goodness. Now then, if we consider the first proposition as the premise, we can confront the option of God's almightiness and the option of God's weakness, just as the option of God's goodness and the option of his viciousness. In that case we get, according to Epicure: God is either almighty and vicious, or weak and good, or weak and viscious, but in the perspective of the excess of evil and suffering he can never be almighty and good.

This is a logical conclusive argument. Undoubtedly that's the reason why so many christians don't pay much attention to it, because they rightly feel that logical thinking becomes a form of ideological logicism whenever it's going to function within the atmosphere of life in which religious people are putting their trust in the unfathomable mystery which we call God. And yet, in this perspective we can learn something from the Epicurean argument: a strictly logical and literarilly abstract way of speaking (abstracted from the real-life orientation and real-life experience of the Presence of a transcendent God) does fail when dealing in a religious manner with the excess of evil and suffering. At first sight this implies a rather trivial conclusion: we shall not and we can not arrive at a more conclusive argument by way of (theo)-logical and purely conceptual arguing; as if we want to improve or nuance the Epicurean way of thinking. Now then: my point will be that all of the three above mentioned theological groups, in particular the first two of them, are running the risk of getting stuck on this rather abstract level.

The apologetic position

As far as the suffering and the selfsacrifice of Jesus on the cross does point to a universal meaning, the traditional legitimization of that suffering in western christian theology runs like this: God our Father had the ultimate power and the goodness to gave His only begotten Son to the abandonment of the cross, even till death and hell, so 'that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil; And deliver who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage' (Hebr. 2: 14f.; cf. John 3: 17f). That's the core of the theological legitimation, as embedded in a confession, a way of praising the Lord. However a legitimation which is so so say directed at more weak, sometimes doubtful believers runs like this: it's beyond human competence to measure or to criticize the majesty and profundity of the goodness and power of God. We can't understand the mysteries of His ways. In the last resort we are not entitled to question His acts and His competence. This goes for the suffering of Jesus, it goes a fortiori for other terrible forms of suffering, also when we speak of an excess of suffering. The only convenient thing for the faithful is to put trust in the divine wisdom; in the last resort we have to accept that the suffering had some kind of divine meaning, even if we may say that no human being will ever understand that meaning.

This view is still the dominant one, also of the Churches in Western Europe. For those theologians who can relate to the problems constituted by Auschwitz, it's not unusual to focus on the old idea of 'permissio'. According to them we may not think in terms of a direct relation between God and suffering. One may say that God does not want the unfathomable terror of Auschwitz. The Shoah is prepared by a godless culture and perpetrated by human beings who God as Master of the Universe once accredited with freedom, which they abused in a terrible way. In case these theologians are confronted with the counter-argument that there still is something like the idea of the divine providence, which means that logically speaking one cannot excuse God with respect to the human abuse of His Creation, because the human potential to do evil are also part and parcel of the created world, they are inclined to say that from a human point of view the argument is right. They sometimes admit that we even may say that in terms of justice God is guilty. He is guilty of creation. There simply is no justification for the ways of God. Within the dimensions of time and history these are simply unforgivable. Still, we are endowed with the grace to accept these ways, because trust in God finds itself in a dimension of religious experience which is beyond fulfilling history.

A somewhat other course, further thinking on the meaning of 'permissio', has been taken by the great neo-orthodox theologian Karl Barth. He starts from the premise that as christians we can only live in brokenness. On the one hand we simply find ourselves overwhelmed by gratitude just because of the grace of God, Who leads us Himself to the confession that He truly is the sovereign Lord of History, the Almighty Who holds to his Covenant although the human partners do forget it. On the other hand we cannot overlook the conviction that the excess of evil cannot be brought in line with God. Barth definitely does sense the danger which is looming here: to live in two completely separate worlds, the complete unworldliness, not only of God, also of the christian faith. In order to avoid that danger Barth sometimes advances the suggestion of the demonic depths in God Himself! As if in an incomprehensible way the excess of evil has something to do with God himself, not in a direct causal way, but in a dialectical way: as excluded from Gods power it yet belongs to the sovereign, all-encompassing power of God.

(By the way, at the margin of orthodox judaism one can find comparable positions. A very radical one is recently published by the American theologian and rabbi, David Blumenthal, Facing the Abusing God (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster 1993). In this book he expresses the absolute conviction of the existence of the Master of the Universe. But Blumenthal argues that in our time we are legitimized to stress in a very radical way the virtue of 'chutzpah'/religious courage. We are entitled to break out in protest against God, yes, even entitled to accuse Him for allowing the Holocaust - and breaking His Covenant, because in these days the Master of the Universe cannot escape the conclusion that He, not His people, broke the Covenant. We may, no we must put God on trial. 'And we rage at God. Otherwise, we have not confronted the holocaust' (Blumenthal, 94). Blumenthal develops his views on the basis of his reading of the Book of Job, but above all on his peculiar, but also impressive reading of some Psalms of Vengeance, in particular Ps. 44 and 109, in which he not only reads an appeal to God to punish the godless persecutors of the Singer, but also the intuition of the complicity of God in the vicious acts of the offenders of the faithful).

Let's make two short remarks on this positions (from which the latter one draws such a radical conclusions from orthodoxy that it seems to transcend it).

Undoubtedly a lot can be said againsyt this way of thinking about God and suffering (and in particular 'enlightened' intellectuals will find no trouble to ridiculize this more or less orthodox way of thinking). But one thing is clear; these views can be a comfort to individual believers. The religious intuition of trust, and more than that, the view that one's own suffering does have some divine meaning, yes, more radical, the inner experience that our suffering comes from a divine source, can have - besides considerable pyschological dangers - a good effect. It can be helpful in learning to live with those ever agonizing questions: why have I, or my child, my brother or sister, to suffer in such a hardly bearable way? Why to die such a death?

The second thing I have to say is, that whenever these views are used in a theoretical consideration with a universal or collective meaning, or whenever these views are used for the persuasion of believers to accept evil in daily practice (and only to wrestle with God in the mystical innerworld), then there is the risk that these views degenerate into an impertinent and blunt form of religious certainty. Then - so when these views are not expressed in an christian atmosphere of allusions to the mystery of God, but as prescriptions - we are confronted with the arrogation of the word of the cross. If we think of the Epicurean trilemma again - an excess of evil, the power God, the goodness of God - than we can observe that in practice we can only uphold the traditional justification by relativizing one of those three propositions. Blumenthal tends to relativize the goodness of God, with him being a jewish thinker, it does seem to have some plausibility. The other christian orthodox positions however, are always running the risk to relativize the premise, the excess of evil and suffering; viz. the suffering of others, the jewish people.

This usually happens by emphasizing the unique meaning of Jesus' suffering on the cross: it overshadows the suffering of the jews (the theological intention of this emphasis on the most terrible nature of 'the cross' is to function as the counter-image of resurrection and redemption). Now it is absolutely impossible to distinguish forms of suffering by accrediting them several degrees of terror and painfulness. That will be a very inappropriate thing to do. Nevertheless it is legitimate to ask some attention - as for instance David Flusser has done, well-known jewish expert on the New Testament - for the fact that before and after the execution of Jesus by the Romans, the death of the cross was the major capital punishment ... for jews. Even more significant are the observations of jewish thinkers like I. Greenberg and E. Fackenheim. Greenberg for instance indicates that from a human point of view there must be a difference in the way the torture is faced between the determined grown-up jewish prophet from Galilee who chooses death in a free and voluntary act, and the unfathomable fear of little children and their mothers who've been thrown alive in the burning gasovens. [It's dangerous to linger too long over these terrible things, but nevertheless it's indicating some sense of feeling on the meaning of Jesus' life, suffering and resurrection as a redemptive event. For if the specific negative 'quality' of Jesus' suffering is emphasized just in the perspective of resurrection and redemption, and if we try to think of the burning children, than I feel some inclination to endorse the statement of the christian theologians Alice and Roy Eckardt who wrote that no past event, however holy, or divine, can ever redeem that terror. Only a future event can do this at last. We have to conclude with James Moore that Christology is - at best - a proleptic event. I'll come return to this point at the end of the essay.]

The liberal-critical position

Let's call into mind the Epicurean trilemma once more. The orthodox/apologetic group either relatives the premise on the excess of evil and suffering or becomes so radical that they bring forward doubts concerning the ultimate depths of His goodness. We'll see that the liberal-critical group tends to relativize the propositon on God's power. To be more specific: some of them are inclined to play down the aspect of almightiness, others are inclined to indulge in such thorough qualifications of the concept of divine power, that it seems to vanish alltogether.

As illustration of the first position I want to mention two jewish authors who have had a considerable impact in christian theology.

The first one is the American liberal rabbi Harold S. Kushner. Although his books are intended to serve a broad public, he justly is taken serious by academic theology. He rejects beginning with the popular idea that God uses extreme suffering of people for their own best. That would give Him the character of a tormentor. Kushner's general idea is that we may pray with good reasons to a God who hates the suffering but who can't eliminate it; but it's almost impossible to pray to a God who chooses to let children suffer and die for very sublime, although unfathomable reasons. For that matter Kushner does not argue that God does not have any power at all. No, His power is qualified: God can commiserate with the sufferers, being in that way a real inspiration to cope with, even lastly to accept the tragic flaws of human existence as manifested in for instance fatal diseases and traffic accidents. From a pastoral point of view this is very important. But Kushner simply holds that as far as the massive and monstruous intensity of Auschwitz is concerned, there is no relation with God. God apparently did not inspire the majority of the convicts, let it be the so-called 'Muselmann'. Alltogether excluded is the idea that God used Auschwitz for 'peadagogical' ends, as a means to salvation. According to Kushner God has existed outside of Auschwitz.

Although I consider this view fruitful on a pastoral and individual level, I do my have my doubts whether Kushner actually evades the theological problematic as far as the Shoah is concerned. Of course, there is no answer to the question whether the Master of the Universe was present in Auschwitz, but just because we call Him the Master of the Universe, who manifestst Himself in history, we must admit that we do have a real problem. We can't simply suppose that God did not exist when the crime of Auschwitz was committed.

Another example of a very influential attempt to push back the disquieting dimension of the concept of divine power is delivered by Hans Jonas, Der Gottesbegriff nach Auschwitz (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp 1984). Jonas ardently wishes to keep on speaking about God after the Shoah (his mother was murdered in Auschwitz). He traces this wish back to the unreductible personal will, for which he simply refuses to give some sort conceptal legitimization. But because he considers mythology as a way in which people are trying to express their deepest emotions, he developed a personal myth; that's to say: a myth for which the motivation is delivered by the individual Hans Jonas, but which heavily draws on images from the kabbalistic tradition. According to Jonas God decided for His creation of the universum to surrender Himself, even to estrange himself to the ever contingent process of becoming. He refers to the idea of 'Zimzum', the contraction of God till He is present in history as powerlessm which he calls 'Entmachtung'. Which means that God suffers in history, even runs the risk of being destroyed by human evil. Now there certainly was a silence of God in Auschwitz. The ultimate reason was that God was not unwilling to speak and to take salvational action, no He simply could not speak and act. He was not the Lord of History. Later, not long before he died, Jonas indicated that although God does not control human actions with His power, and although human beings can make God speachless, yet He is actually able to attract people to His own 'defenceless superior power' - an idea which we can find in a more elaborate form within the American 'process-thinkers' like A.N. Whitehead: Gods activity must be considered as a way of attracting, seducing people to do good. In this respect Jonas refers to the jewish story of the 36 Righteous (André Schwartz-Bart): it could be that they were in Auschwitz too for without them there essentially could not be a future for the world.

Although Jonas' effort to keep on speaking about God is impressive, and the way and the tone in which he presents his thoughts are pointing at his moral integrity, we find ourselves still stuck with some questions (the moral integrity of Jonas manifests itself for instance in his recognition that he simply cannot answer this kind of questions). One question is whether a complete powerless, defenceless God does not have some features of a esthetic image of God: can people be empowered to act morally by a fully powerless being? Are in the last resort ethics not blended out? Another question concerns a certain contradiction in Jonas' 'myth': God is silenced by Auschwitz and yet there is the miracle of the presence of the Righteous: Jonas probably tries to suggest that God is not completely powerless, because He has the competence to send his representatives. And there of course the most poignant question: does not the silence of God point to the situation, not that he voluntarily renounces from power, but that he is defeated by the human nazi-will to power?

Hans Jonas actually delivers an exemplary case for the problems which are coming up whenever one is going to rethink the concept of divine power in a radical way: we always see attempts to relativize that kind of criticism, for instance by qualifying that concept as a appealing or seducing 'defenceless power'. I consider this move as a characteristic one. In The Netherlands it is a quite normal mechanism among educated christians (catholics and protestants) to cut the traditional relation between God en Power. They consider the concept of (divine) power as a dangerous concept, once constructed by foolish priests and evil leaders as an ideological tool to keep the faithful silent and meek. This definitely is a superficial judgment Although it may be clear that the concept of divine power can be misused, it simply is an indispensable concept for biblical christian thinking. The issue comes down to the following premise: if God does mean something in the life of the individual faithful, if God has some meaning for history, then one has to indicate in which specific way one can perceive or experience His power. The classic confession of 'Deus semper maior' must be maintained, a powerless God is no God.

The course Hans Jonas follows - beginning with the idea (myth) of a powerless God and arriving at more nuanced interpretations in order to stay in tune with the tradition in which Gods power is glorified - was also followed by some christian theologians. All of them were influenced by Dietrich Bonhoeffer who wrote in nazi-jail: 'The God who is with us, is the God who is leaving us (Mk. 15:34)'. It were people like Van Buren, Jüngel, Kitamori, Moltmann and Sölle. Although there are considerable differences between them, they all agree that the power of evil in Auschwitz does affect God. Speaking from a God who does not suffer in the light of Auschwitz, is making a demon of this God, writes Moltmann - to take one central figure of his line of thinking - in Der gekreuzigte Gott (München: Kaiser 1972), Moltmann is the man who was one of the first who tried to incorporate the scandal of Auschwitz in systematical theological thinking. He is relying on i.a. two important jewish thoughts: the possibility of the suffering/pathos of God as elaborated by the American-jewish thinker Abraham Heschel and the already above mentioned idea of the Zimzum as foundation of the Presence of God in Absence, the Shechinah.

Moltmann's main point is, that God is a God whose essence is a dynamic one. Our faith concentrates on our hope in the dynamism of His coming, as he wrote in his first theological 'bestseller', Theologie der Hoffnung. In this dynamism however, God carries within Himself the horror of death. That's the central theme of his book on the crucified God. To be able to represent that mystery, we have according to Moltmann to think from a trinitarian perspective. From this perspective we may interpret the passion and death of Jesus as the unfathomable agony of God the Father Himself. As just as God the Father took part in the crucifixion of His Son, he was present in Auschwitz too. The scheme of thinking here is that by enduring death to the fullest end, at last (in the literal sense, that is in the 'Eschaton') the elevation till redemption can take place. One could say, according to Moltmann, that the cry of protest because of Auschwitz has become a vigorous dispute within the trinitarian history of God: only in the perspective of the dynamism of the Holy Spirit this protest of God against God is developing itself in such a way that we may have the hope that the suffering victims of Auschwitz ultimately will be resurrected. So Moltmann does not suggest that Auschwitz is theologically legitimized right now. No, the trinitarin frame of reference in which we are trying to account for our hope, tells us that we may hope that the victims of Auschwitz will take part in the redemption. For only with the coming resurrection of all the dead and the tortured our hope will be fulfilled (266f.).

Although Moltmann displays an acute sense of the ways the holocaust is a challenge for christian theology, there are some things which are problematic in his view that God, as the crucified Jesus, actually was present in Auschwitz. One thing, for instance, is that when Moltmann considers the cross as the ultimate characterizing symbol for Auschwitz, we christians must realize that Auschwitz was a place of death for jewish people! And the history of anti-judaism and anti-semitism proves abundantly that the symbol of the cross pre-eminently was a symbol of hatred. But there is more. Moltmann emphasizes in Jesus' attitude the values in which our hope is located: that in the ultimate end values like powerlesness, meekness and openness for suffering will prevail. But Auschwitz teaches the lesson that this values can have lethal consequences. Which brings me to the most decisive criticism: the com-passion of God is actually located in an almost superhuman atmosphere. In the first place in the sphere of abstract theological thinking, in the second place in the heavenly sphere of the yet resurrected Christ. I know I touch on a emotive subject now. The most important objection against this line of thinking is, in my view the fact that the anti-triumphalism of the cross is actually a disguise for a christian triumphalist message to the jewish people. This not only because of the particular christian scheme of the incarnation is at stake here (God as present in the depths of early life, which is not a jewish way of thinking), but above all because the suggestion cannot be missed that the suffering of the jews in Auschwitz ultimately will be glorified in the universal redemption. So in the end judaism and all the suffering of the jews, as partly caused or at least allowed by christians, is subsumed again under the wing of christianity.

As an illustration of my criticism of this liberal-critical position I will briefly pay some attention to two stories. The first one is the story which is by now very well known, namely the story that Wiesel tells in Night about the dying boy on the gallows in Auschwitz. It's this story to which Moltmann makes his theological allusions. And I think it's also the story which functions as some sort of stumbleblock for christian theologians. For almost every christian theologian reflecting on Auschwitz, seems to deliver his or her own interpretation of it.

The storyteller, convict in Auschwitz, tells about the hangings he had to witness as a convict. They could not disturb the life of the convicts any longer: they were too miserable themselves. Except one: the hanging of a young boy 'with the face of a sad angel'. Even the kapo had refused to act as executioner. The boy was hanged with two adult men:

The three victims mounted together on the chairs. The three necks were placed at the same moment within the nooses. 'Long live liberty!' cried the two adults. But the boy was silent. 'Where is God? Where is He?' someone behind me asked ... the tree chairs tipped over ... Then the march began. The two adults were no longer alive ... But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive ... For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face ... Behind me, I heard the same man asking: 'Where is God now?' And I heard a voice within me answer him: 'Where is He? Here He is - He is hanging here on this gallows ...' That night the soup tasted of corpses.

This text has left a profound impression on many people, in particular on theologians in Western Europe. But yet we may have some doubts about the possibility of a christian interpretation of this text. To begin with: very often the last sentence is not quoted. This also goes for Moltmann. But it is this sentence which indicates that we can read the text as the message that God really was killed in Auschwitz. This is a more plausible reading. In the second place, as already indicated: the text is written by a jewish author and refers to jewish victims; there is no reason to see an analogue with the christian crucified God. And most important, the interpretation of the text as referring to the crucified God has a touch of intellectual arrogance. Only from the experience of hell itself one may be see through that horror, one may catch a glimpse of God. So we as Christians must acknowledge Wiesel's right to see God. But we can never, living outside that hell, tell a story about it, claiming God did exist there as the crucified Christ. Because the perspective from which we are bringing forward that claim is always tainted by the trust (!) that in the end God will prevail.

I'll try to clearify my objection by telling another story. This time a story written by the Serbian-Kroatic author Danilo Kis (1935-1989), a man who endured the atrocities of nazism as well as of stalinism. This time it's a story about Simon Magus and it is situated seventeen years after the death and the miraculous resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. According to the early christian Fathers, Simon is the ancestor of all heresy. Sometimes he is considered the same man as Simon from the Book of Acts (8: 9-24), the man who followed Jesus because of the wrong reason: to get power. Kis however uses another tradition. He knows from a gnostic tradition which mentions that Simon was living with a former prostitute, Helena, who however is called Sofia by Kis (and not without reason as we will see). Simon's doctrine is really a protest against the good Gospel of the apostles, against their message of a well-doing God. According to Simon their God is a tyrant who butchers people, who sends them famine, terrible diseases and other plagues, to withhold them from the knowledge of human vulnerability. Simon is challenged by Peter to defeat the Son of Man: if he can ascend to heaven his doctrine will be the right one. Characteristic for Simons views are these words which he utters before he tries to ascend: 'And leave me in peace now ... so that I can meditate undisturbed on all the horror of earthly existence ... on that innumerable quantity of living beings who butcher each other, on the animals who tear each other apart, on the snake who bites the spitter that lies in the shadow, on the wolves who tear up the lambs ... on the panic of the whale when they pull him on dry land .... In this way continues the litany. And while Simon gradually proceeds to the suffering of human beings, to the brevity of love ... the rotting teeth of the elderly ... the terrible deformations of the leprous, the metamorphosis of the bosom of women, the opened wounds, the misery of the blind, he at last comes loose off the ground, ascends to heaven, even so high that he almost disappears from sight. However, while the people are looking upwards full of amazement, Peter foretells that Simon will fall down. And this is what happens! Simon dashes against the earth. But Sofia, i.e. 'Wisdom' and former prostitute, who had ran as the first one to the crushed body of Simon, turns to Peter and says in a voice which frightens him: 'And this too proves evidence of his doctrine. Life of man is a deep downfall and the world is possessed by tyrants. Eternal curses on the greatest of them, Elohim'.

The most disturbing and defying aspect of this story - which represents so to say the original heresy in its purest form - is that the actual ascension and resurrection of Jesus is not a foundation for doxology, but for a charge against God. If I bring back this view to Moltmann again, it might be said that the belief that God took within His own life the suffering of Jesus and all human beings, is not necessarily leading us to praise the Lord: if the suffering of Auschwitz is part of God, He is either a cruel or a unfathomable pitiable God. In both cases - this is the almost unbearable conclusion - we may not make an easy appeal to the glory of the resurrected Christ (I realize that this view probably is also shaped by a western protestant tradition, which is the tradition in which I was raised).

The radical position

It's difficult to subsume this position under one category, simply because the most characteristic traits of this group imply that it is a highly 'individualized' group.

The most characteristic formal traits are that theology has become a utmost ambiguous intellectual activity. Furthermore that it inevitably will be a challenge to a personal confession, also that it will always be a dialogical and contextual activity. And above all that it will be an activity which is always suspicious of cliams on definite formulations of theological truths. All this traits indicate a great substantial variation in the radical christian answers on Auschwitz. I'll point out some tendencies.

There are for instance some theologians who actually question the third proposition of the Epicurean trilemma: God's goodness. Usually they are making use of E. Wiesel's own position, but transformed into christian thinking. This position can be summarized by two statements: a) theology as a pure intellectual enterprise is no longer possible, it's fading away after the confrontation with the existential agony which is left by Auschwitz; perhaps only narratives are possible; b) this existential agony manifestst itself on a religious level as the intuition that after Auschwitz we can't live no longer with God, and at te same time as the intuition that we can't live with the remembrance of Auschwitz without God.

This view may show an analogy with a feature of the story of Simon Magus. For Simon did not ascend to heaven on the songs of praise on God, but on the recitation of a litany. An yet: in the charge against God, the Master of the Universe is still present as an experienced reality. The already mentioned R. Eckardt formulates this position in terms of the dialectic of faith and despair, a dialectic which according to him constitutes the uncertain position of christian faith: 'Can we believe in God? No, it is impossible. Can we believe in God? Yes, for a fleeting moment.'

My point is that this position does have some plausibility in a jewish perspective, but it is very difficult - although perhaps inevitable - to maintain from a christian perspective. That undoubtedly is the reason why all the radical authors are emphasizing the fact that one of the most important requests in constituted by the acknowledgment that christianity has to be something like a jewish religion. R. Eckardt for instance emphasizes the concept of 'Christian Jewishness'. Theologians like F..W. Marquardt in Germany and James Moore in Great Britain emphasize that this does mean a transformation of theological method: christian theology has to become a way of halachic thinking. The form of the theological text has to be like a midrash, a form of 'texting' in which the neat demarcations between the 'genres' occur blurred, a form of 'texting' also which principally knows of its ever existing incompetence to reach for the ultimate. The American Lutheran theologian Darrell Fasching brings forward that the jewishness of christianity in the first place has implications on the basic religious mentality from which theological thinking is executed. He suggests that the ultimate sin of historical christianity was its willingness to submit itself to the commandments of a divine Subject. According to him the representation of that Subject changed in the course of history and varies with respect of the context of religious experience, but submitting - to a warriorlike God, to Christ as Pantokrator, to the benevolent sweet Father of catholicism, or to calvinist Sovereignity - was a constant factor. Now, after Auschwitz, we must be very suspicious with respect to all that superhuman representations of the divine. It's time to learn from Job, that is to say from the jewish tradition of chutzpah, of religious guts: the courage to be rebellious against God.

As far as traditional dogmatics are concerned, R. Eckardt dares to take a more far reaching decision. He suggests very incisive changes in traditional thinking (although he uses traditional dogmatic language). He stresses that the scheme 'Cross - Resurrection - Parousia' has always been considered as a real historical development, which after Auschwitz is no longer possible. For if we consider resurrection and the empty tombe as a real historical event, this means that in the last resort all history is re-interpreted as a history of salvation, which cannot be true. Therefore Eckardt suggests, we must consider resurrection as a still coming event: 'That young Jewish prophet from the Galilee sleeps now'.

I could pay more attention to this radical views, to count our objections for instance (by confronting this position with St. Paul, with 1 Cor. 15: 13f: 'But if there be no resurrection, then is Christ not risen; and if Christ be not risen, then our preaiching is vain, and your faith is also vain'). However, my main objection comes down to the following position: not only the apologetic and the liberal-critical group, but also this radical group is in the first place interested in theo-logy: by transforming the method and/or doctrine they are one way or another busy in saving God in the perspective of the horror of Auschwitz. It's my view that as theo-logians we should not focus in the first place in God as our main and our exclusive interest. We are not called to save the divine along an intellectual way. The problem we have to deal with has at first to do with antro-pology, with that human basic trust (which also happens to be the condition of our faith).

Only cynicism?

Why is that? The first reason is far reaching (and for many christians not acceptable). We saw a that speaking about God after Auschwitz does mean that we must indicate where the divine power overcomes evil. Now, the problem is that thinking in traditional terms of power defines that divine power as the manifest will to change the behaviour of sinners, tyrants and violators. The simple conclusion must be that after Auschwitz we can't speak any longer about God in that way (N.B.: please, keep in mind that I'm speaking of theology as a form of academic reflection on and intellectual evaluation of living faith).

Are the books closed then? Not entirely. For if we interpret the attempts of nazism (and stalinism) as massive human efforts to be like God, and if we don't make the mistake to consider their historical failure strictly as their complete failure - in the perspective of the victims we may say that they succeeded - than we may follow the suggestion of a philosopher like Lyotard who summons us up to openness and availability for new manifestations of the Other, of Transcendence. Be aware: the ultimate reason is the fact that nazism and stalinism were claims to be Gods in the shape of the twentieth century.

Another reason why we should not start with the issue 'God' has been indicated above several times. In my view the most incisive meaning of Auschwitz points to the question concerning ourselves. Elie Wiesel wrote that in Auschwitz not only six million poeple doed, but the entity 'man' has died, the moral 'entity' man. All stories survivors tell and historical facts endorse this observation. That is to say, when we consider 'man' in the usual 'enlightened' way. Following that way back to the beginning we are inclined to say that every human being can feel within him- or herself an urgent and powerful cluster of demands that we recognize as moral concern for the life, integrity, well-being, even flourishing of others (as the well-known philosopher Charles Taylor recently stated). There is a 'natural' feeling of responsibility for the other (wo)man, even before we are socialized as beings who are dependent of each other, claims Zygmunt Bauman. The presence of these instincts is proved, according to Bauman, whenever they are violated. Then the feelings of guilt must be repressed by all massive means, by the continuous hammering of ideology and propaganda.

Does Auschwitz corroborate this view? Let's first admit that the answer according the majority of the victims simply is: no. Their 'message' is very often that moral barriers can be demolished very quickly, even in a singular moment of frenzy. The camps apparently are places where a ruthless struggle for life, a continuous fight for a somewhat less certified death takes place (for instance by getting a job in the camp hierarchy). The Polish author Tadeusz Borowski affirms in every story that in a German 'labour camp' there was no crime which could not be done without twinges of conscience. Jean Améry has evidence for the relatively easy loss of natural morality. And even the well-balanced, humanistic Primo Levi writes in one of his latest essays that in the end every man happens to be a Cain.

The denial of the truth that all people do have universal moral instincts is shocking. We may also presume that it has negative effects on public consciousness. The Polish author Rymkiewicz designates Auschwitz in that sense as a cancerous plasma, as one of the factors in this Age of Extremes which fosters moral numbness, either by really destroying moral capacities or by covering off the possibility to be morally reached by suffering (the last mentioned mechanism is corroborated by the 'telecity', the cultural environment of Western Europe and the U.S.: a world as a stream of 'kicks' and forms of 'mediametic' excitement, the effect of which seems to be growing numbness).

So, is the main effect of this critical reconsideration of Western theological 'answers' on Auschwitz intellectual cynicism; just because of the silence of God and the atmosphere of moral numbness (only then and when lightened on a pure experiential level by flashes of unreflected faith)? I'll try to indicate why we can not accept this.

I'll make use of the philosopher of religion Emil Fackenheim. According to him we cannot submit to cynicism (N.B. I have to admit that Fackenheim seems to write almost exclusively for a jewish audience, so when I use the word 'we' it does have something of a larceny). It is even the most impossible possibility. He points at a hidden and yet almost glaring contradiction in the terrible evidence of many survivors: the way they witness the horror, the way even they do charge not only the perpetrators, but more vehemently the bystanders as representatives of the human species, definitely is a scream of protest. Which means that their writing in itself is evidence for a non-cynical world. Fackenheim underlines this point by indicating that the surrender to cynism actually will be a surrender to Hitler. It will be Hitler's posthumous victory. Fackenheim explains the (jewish) reading of the texts of survivors as leading to the awareness of 'the Commanding Voice of Auschwitz'; it's the Voice - we don't know where it is coming from, it's not self-evident the Voice of God - who commands us to face up to contradictions, to endure the conflict of the impossibility and possibility of faith.

However, the question is whether these thoughts consist of more than a moral desire, a sublime, yet unrealistic ideal of a philosopher. The essence of my critique with respect to the christian post-holocaust theologians came down to the objection that they were dealing with Auschwitz on the level of theological theory, also on the level of an abstract appeal to the moral 'ought'. Does this objection also go for Fackenheim? Let's proceed for some moments with his line of thought.

Fackenheim indicates that at first sight morality in the death camps neither was conceivable as something which could be maintained, nor that morality could have a positive personal or social function. That is to say: this observations are correct only when one is inclined to consider morality as dependent on some sort of socialization and personal 'inculturation'. The brute reality simply was that every form of human moral 'pedagogy' and of human culture, simply had to be destroyed. One could even say just like Hannah Arendt that the camps are to be considered as a culmination of the totalitarian laboratory: the ultimate attempt to destroy all conditions for morality: the ultimate goal of the camps was to reduce the convicts to 'beasts'. The only 'logical' conclusion simply has to be that morality as the basis for human behaviour could not and cannot exist in such a hell.

However, there certainly was life and morality manifesting itself, in all kinds of hidden yet effective protest, even in full-fledged armed resistance. And although the last mentioned form - e.g. the jewish fighters of the Warsaw ghetto and insurrections in Auschitz and Sobibor - definitely are forms of an ineffable heroism, less conspicuous and yet very remarkable were all forms of hidden resistance: the 'organizing' of all kinds of things, the practices of a 'market', the bonds of solidarity within a group, the interdependence of individuals, the silent and not-immediately visible forms of obstruction etc. etc. I consider it important that most of these actions - also the openly armed resistance - were not executed on the basis of what we should call hope for a future or better life. Hope in the traditional meaning of the word was not a motive. These actions often were executed while the victims were quite sure that there was no future anymore; for them 'hope' was a word from another planet. When they acted morally, they acted out of utmost sober feelings, which we, afterwards, can only interpret as coming forth of the sentiment of undeniable human dignity. They definitely did not act that way because of some form of basic trust. One could also say that many of these actions could not be related to functional requirements (as simple surviving; although according to many testimonies the convicts who were 'loners', those who excluded themselves out of the social atmosphere where there were moral acts and moral obligations, did not have much chances to survive; morality is also an effective function in survival). And yet there were a-functional examples of moral behaviour. The Hungarian author Imre Kertész, being a survivor, refers in his short novel, Kaddisj for an unborn child, to one of those mysteries of a moral event. At the end of the war, during one of those terrible marches to another camp, fleeing for the Russian armies, the central figure is almost completely weakened by famine and disease. He is unable to walk without help. And he is by chance seperated from his group by a couple of SS-men. In order to survive he absolutely has to eat his ration of food. But it is handed out to the men of his group. And then one of the members of his group, named 'The teacher', a man who could really use an extra ration himself, leaves his group, hastened along the couple of SS-men (who in 'normal' cases should have shot him) and handed the ration of food to the story-teller: one of those mysterious acts which saved his life. There is no 'rationale' for this kind of behaviour, except that it was a moral act.

We could also refer to two impressive books on the death camps: Terrence des Pres, The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps (1976) and Tzvetan Todorov, Face à l'extrême (1994²). Both authors assert that the literature of survivors also refers to an ineradicable morality, which then and when manifests itself in that world of horror. 'Life in the death camps' apparently falsifies the popular conviction that human beings are wild beasts when the varnish of civilization is removed. Not at every moment, and certainly not in every individual, conscience can be an effective means for orienting behaviour, even in a situation of horror. A possible conclusion is that this observation points to the enormous importance of moral education and to the determining influence on moral behaviour by public civcilization.

So Fackenheim elucidates the opinion that even in the camps there was some sort of a basic human experience, which indicates that despair or cynism did not necessarily prevail. Eventually we may say that the notion of foundational human trust does not play a role anymore. It is not able to be helpful in explaining human behaviour. The possibility of the actual meaning of human dignity however is not eradicated. That's why we eventually may have some sort of hope.

The uncanny gift of hope

However, what kind of strange hope will that be? I think that the American theologian David Tracy once coined the appropriate words. He refers to 'the uncanny gift of hope'. We may have hope, sure. But after Auschwitz the source of that hope will forever be tainted by ambiguity and uncertainty. We even are not able to be certain whether the divine source of this hope will be in the last resort a comforting and peaceful one. Let me indicate the reasons why I use Tracy's words in this respect.

I think it appropriate to assume that the horror of this 'Age of Extremes' has to wake up the biblical intuitions on the fearful aspects of God. I consider Blumenthal's efforts, although not convincing, yet worthwhile with respect to his intentions. In my view it's time to rethink for instance the dangerous aspects of the Presence of God. For instance: the story of Moses and the burning bush does not tell us only that God is an ineffable God who finds the ground of being in Himself. The image of the burning bush also tells us, that where fire will destroy human flesh, fire is indicating on a human scale the way God chooses to be present.

There is more to say. The source of our hope cannot be otherwise than uncanny, simply because in our days this source is shaped by victims and survivors; and we may be sure that a lot of survivors in the last resort have to be considered as deadly wounded victims too (if we consider the desperate way of 'liberated' life authors like Améry, Borowski and Levi were leading; if we think also of the despair of many survivors). That simply is uncanny because we don't know how so much mental suffering could be the source of our hope (Moreover, let's think of the delicateness of the task to relate our hope to the survivors: how to do that without making use of other man's misery?).

Our hope does have an uncanny source too, because it must be continuously accompanied by distrust and suspicion, at least of all en-comopassing theological and quasi-religious projects.

And of course our hope does have uncanny traits, because she can't be simple and straightforward anymore. Christian hope very often was related to the societal context, to the so-called civilization. Our western society definitely is very civilized, but also fragmented and differentiated: we may have some fear that chances will grow that this fragmented society will allow analogies of the dark places of the nazi-time; places which function as canals of derivation for agression and murderousness.

To conclude with: especiallly with respect to the western theologicical tradition this hope will be an uncanny gift, because we can't anymore rely in a simple and straightforward way on the ever protecting fatherhood of God. We'll have to wait for new images of God.

Amsterdam, January 21, 1997

The English pages of the Bezinningscentrum (including other articles by Anton van Harskamp): English site

Comments are welcome: a.van.harskamp@mdw.vu.nl