The Problem of Evil
Starting this essay, I remind myself of the gravity and difficulty which is set by those two words and their combination, loaded with so much meaning to so many and reaching far beyond anything that could ever be said. Nevertheless, the need to say something will always remain, even if there seems to be no complete or satisfactory answer. At least humanly speaking.
In setting forth the prerequisites for this endeavour, I also acknowledge that I have to say as much as possible through as few as possible, never letting out of sight the picture as large as possible, with as focused features as possible for me to envision. I am not the first one to do this, and certainly not the last.
I have had two great inspirators for this enterprise, both students of Martin Heidegger, the teacher whose muteness was in one hand a great shame for many, but which on the other hand provoked the more to speak up, and in a way, also compensated the shortcomings of the one(s) who had the ability and duty to do so but choose to abstain. These two inspiring students were Hanna Arendt and Hans Jonas.
As you can see, I haven't made my task an easy one at all. These two thinkers have serious arguments on the subject, having made a research much deeper than me and most of us will ever do. And still, I would like to offer my modest point of view, partly based on some other great thinkers who never saw the times of Auschwitz, but who, nevertheless, can lend their helping hand. These will mainly be Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, but also some more recent thinkers, who have consciously spoken about the problem of evil in the light of one of the most horrific of events in the history of humankind.
So, I take this task on myself "with fear and trembling" as did Hans Jonas, saying these words in the spirit of Søren Kierkegaard. I will also state beforehand that there are many points on which I agree with Arendt and Jonas, but there are also some on which I have a rather different view, which of course, I have to back up and explain. Although I feel myself as if in front of a huge mountain, containing indeed the biggest questions humankind has ever asked: Is there God, and if there is, what is He like? What is the meaning of suffering? What are the lessons we have learned from history? And many others.
Thus, Auschwitz is not mere place or event here. Nor is it a symbol of radical evil, but rather a symbol of human suffering as such, suffering in its fullest sense, in its furthest limits. Indeed, we cannot even imagine something more horrible or gruesome. Perhaps only perception of Hell can arouse similar feelings in us. "Purgatory is represented by the Soviet Union's labour camps, where neglect is combined with chaotic forced labour. Hell in the most literal sense was embodied by those types of camp perfected by the Nazis, in which the whole of life was thoroughly and systematically organized with a view to the greatest possible torment."[1]
Besides any metaphysical realm there certainly have been events and phenomenon in history partly similar to Auschwitz. There was a destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, when "the Lord rained down burning sulphur. Thus, He overthrew those cities and the entire plain, including all those living in those cities - and also the vegetation in the land."[2] There is the story of Job. There has been slavery. There was Nagasaki and Hiroshima. But as we said, these examples have only partial similarity to Auschwitz.
Therefore, we ask ourselves, what makes Auschwitz so unique and outstanding in the history of human suffering? "What did Auschwitz add to that which one could always have known about the extent of terrible and horrendous things that humans can do to humans and from times immemorial have done?"[3] I do not argue whether it was the most terrible thing that has ever happened, although it very probably was. The problem is that one can never measure the pain of another person, never feel what he feels, but on given testimonials and facts suppose it was almost unbearable. And despite our helpless attempt, we nevertheless try to see it from the point of view of those who suffered (including also inflictors, seen as victims too).
What made it almost unbearable for them was not "achieved" through mere physical suffering. One of the cruellest and inhuman things one human being can do to the other is through mental torture, through annihilating his dignity as a human being, depriving him of human nature itself: "The camps are meant not only to exterminate people and degrade human beings, but also serve the ghastly experiment of eliminating, under scientifically controlled conditions, spontaneity itself as an expression of human behaviour and transforming the human personality into a mere thing, into something that even animals are not."[4]
These people seem to have lost something essential to their existence: their ability to think and feel. And to loose one's ability to think and feel means to cease to be a human being. This freezing of all human functions is a state where one becomes an "uncomplaining animal", who no longer believes even in his own innocence or any right to beg for clemency. He becomes like a cattle, who readily goes to his slaughter. But not only a cattle. He is made into a mere nothingness: "The radicalism of measures to treat people as if they had never existed and to make them disappear in the literal sense of the word."[5] This is a state of complete oblivion: oblivion of others, of oneself, of all earthly life and even the life after, of the existence as such.
And this concerns not only the prisoners of Nazi death camps, but also the inflictors and executors. And not only the direct enforcers, but also the byrocrates who, being weak in spirit, became an easy catch for those who were the true designers of this totalitarian nightmare in their crazed imagination. These byrocrates were forced to loose their sanity, their very thinking - if they were to survive in front of the obvious facts. This was called by Hanna Arendt the banality of evil, this evil being a new "virtue" in the new ideology of totali-tarianism, becoming so widespread and "normal", that loosing the capability to discern right from wrong became a norm. The ideal member of such a system was a loyal and impersonal cog in the big byrocratic machinery of Hell. Probably it has always been a rule that most of the evil things done in such a large scale and in such rigorously organised collective form, consisting of millions of cogs, is based on people's loyalty or rather docility to the ruler or any superior as such. The courage to stand up against injustice or evil demands a strong character, a feature not at all characteristic to a member of a totalitarian society.
The very reason why we stated that the enforcers were victims themselves is based on the fact that "totalitarian terror achieved its most terrible triumph" in depriving human person from the ability to choose between good and evil, creating a situation where it is no longer even possible to do any good: "When a man is faced with the alternative of betraying and thus murdering his friends or of sending his wife and children, for whom he is in every sense responsible, to their death; when even suicide would mean the immediate murder of his own family -- how is he to decide? The alternative is no longer between good and evil, but between murder and murder." The border between the murderer and the victim becomes almost invisible and the individuals involved must have gone through a total disruption of conscience and mental breakdown. "The SS implicated concentration camp inmates -- criminals, politicals, Jews -- in their crimes by making them responsible for a large part of the administration, thus confronting them with the hopeless dilemma whether to send their friends to their death, or to help murder other men who happened to be strangers."[6]
And what is even worse is that this system takes away the meaning of life from all of those concerned and are part of this atrocity, replacing it with a constant sense of superfluousness and emptiness: "The manipulators of this system believe in their own superfluousness as much as in that of all others, and the totalitarian murderers are all the more dangerous because they do not care if they themselves are alive or dead, if they ever lived or never were born."[7] This is indeed a statement that has a general application to a new type of murderer (without any totalitarian system behind it), like we see in modern school shootings or in other cruelties done by modern men. I see in their acts a desperate cry from a person who has lost all meaning in life and tries to fill his own emptiness by "liberating" other people from their "empty lives" as well. Wasn't the Nazi mass murder also called "a mercy death"?
But as much as I agree with Hanna Arendt in everything she said about totalitarianism and Auschwitz, there is one question I have to ask. Are we to believe that in these ghastly experiments, in these death laboratories, "where nobody is supposed to know if they are alive or dead, as though they had never been born"[8], the totalitarianism made a total success? Was every single person dehumanized, deprived of all human, including the ability to think and feel? Human reason cannot accept this, nor do the testimonies prove it. It would be too general. There must have been individuals who did not cease to be humans, to think and feel, and to plead for mercy, at least from God. God? We ask this in this total desert, in this absolute solitude: Where was He? Why didn't He help?
This point was also understood by Jonas, who found his duty to answer those who seem to have never found the answer in those camps of Death: "I believed I owed it to those shadows that something like an answer to their long-gone cry to a silent God be not denied to them."[9] And besides those shadows of the past there will also remain those, who even today ask those same questions, who emphasize with all the sufferers and suffering in this unspeakable tragedy. What possible answer could we give to them?
Not long time ago, before Auschwitz, there was a man, who in his own sufferings and trials claimed God to be dead. Could God be a mere invention of human beings after all, and as a mere invention could not possibly interfere with human destinies or help those in deepest need? And even if God was not a mere concept, can we hope to understand Him as a real object with theoretical reason after Auschwitz, as even Kant found this attempt to be "doomed to failure", even if he found "these non-objects to be the highest objects of all"[10] What kind of rational answer is there for those who still believe in God?
This is the question Hans Jonas also tried to answer: "As Kant granted to the practical reason what he denied to the theoretical, so may we allow the force of a unique and shattering experience a voice in the question of what "is the matter" with God."[11] We should not forget the prerequisite Jonas himself gave for his attempt as being a work of "frankly speculative theology". "It is theology in the garb of a theodicy, and theodicy not so much as a question but as an answer, an answer that seems to exonerate God from being responsible for the evil in the world, and thus for Auschwitz."[12]
It is important to understand that for Jonas the understandability of God comes before everything else. This is the crucial aspect we have to keep in mind about his approach. "The understandability of God is a guiding principle for Jonas. It is in the face of this criterion that talk of God has to prove itself. This is where it has its forensic element, based on reason."[13] Although this understandability is not seen as a complete comprehension, but nevertheless we still have to "be able to understand God, not entirely of course, but to some extent... If God, however, is to be understandable (in certain ways or to a certain extent) – and this is something we must adhere to – then his goodness must be compatible with the existence of evil, which it can only be if he is not omnipotent."[14]
So, Jonas sacrifices the omnipotence of God to keep his understandability. He is treating here the old theological question about the compatibility of God's omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence: "We can have divine omnipotence together with divine goodness only at the price of complete divine inscrutability... More generally speaking, the three attributes ... absolute goodness, absolute power, and understandability, stand in such a relationship that any combination of two of them excludes the third."[15] Augustine asked the same question about the compatibility of God's goodness, absolute power and existence of evil: "Either God is not able to abolish evil or not willing; if he is not able then he is not all-powerful; if he is not willing then he is not all-good."[16] Thus, arriving almost at the same conclusion that there might be a possibility that God is not all-powerful.
On the other hand, Thomas Aquinas argued that God’s goodness is infinitely different from human goodness (although both have points of correspondence). According to Thomas, God allows evil and suffering to exist as a part of his greater plan of love. His goodness and love are different from our understanding of these notions. Evil and suffering are in a way necessary for the achievement of God’s greater plan, which we may not understand: "This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that he should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good."[17]
Now we come to the crucial point of this essay. In the light of the last argument by Thomas Aquinas there seems to be something that we as mere human beings could never possibly understand about Auschwitz. Or in other words, we can never fully grasp the meaning of it as being God's "infinite goodness" manifested in such cruelties and unspeakable suffering. Our reason protests: why would it be necessary for those millions of innocent victims to suffer such torments in body and soul? Augustine explains: "But as for the good things of this life, and its ills, God has willed that these should be common to both [good and wicked men]; that we might not too eagerly covet the things which wicked men are seen equally to enjoy, nor shrink with an unseemly fear from the ills which even good men often suffer. (---) the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked."[18]
Thus, the extreme suffering such as in Auschwitz seems to be but a trial, where men are put to test. The good ones become better and the bad ones become worse. There cannot be a ground between, based on mere selfish reasons like protecting the welfare of one's family or providing for one's personal interests such as successful career, self-gratification or praise, making the average person into a killer (or even mass murderer). He will necessarily have to become objectively wicked, even if subjectively his evilness is banal, committed by him as a non-thinking person such as Eichmann, whose conscience was frozen in the process. These are only mitigating circumstances or aspects of his guilt. Evil remains evil. The victims didn't suffer less because of something he felt or did not feel between the cosy and comfortable walls of his office. Suffering will remain suffering.
"And thus, it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while the good pray and praise. So, material a difference does it make, not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them. For, stirred up with the same movement, mud exhales a horrible stench, and ointment emits a fragrant odor." We ask ourselves, is it really possible that there were "righteous", as also mentioned by Jonas, in such extreme circumstances, where even God seems to have abandoned his children and his flock. Could there have been somebody who in those death factories was actually praising God? This is the question already asked in the story of Job.
"Suddenly there was a commotion in the ranks. The unexpected, the unbelievable happened. A small, frail prisoner had broken ranks and stepped forward confronting Fritsch. So stunned were the guards at this infringement of the usual protocol that Fritsch himself reached for his pistol.
"Halt!" he gasped. "What do you want?"
Fr. Maximilian looked serenely into the face of Fritsch as the guards moved in. "Please, Herr Commandant, I would like to take the place of that man. I would like to die in his place."
Fritsch demanded, "Who is this man? What is it all about?"
Fr. Kolbe replied, "I am a Catholic priest and I want to take his place. He has a wife and family."
"Are you crazy?" snapped Fritsch.
"I would like to die in his place," the priest repeated. "I’m old, and sick... I can barely work. I’m of no use to anyone anymore. This man is young and strong, and he has a wife and family... I have no one.
"Accepted."
Prisoner 16670 was added to the list of those condemned to death. That evening, as the sun set in a fiery ball, witnesses agreed that they had never seen such a magnificent sunset. The priest, who as a boy was offered the red crown of martyrdom, was about to consummate his last "Mass" in the liturgical red of the martyrs.
The sacrificial death of Father Kolbe, who once said, "Only love is creative," made a great impression on the minds and hearts of the other prisoners. There was so little love of neighbour in that living hell of Auschwitz that no one would think of sharing his meager ration of bread with another prisoner as Kolbe frequently did, let alone give his life up for a total stranger. "Greater love than this no man has, than to give his life for his friend."[19] One of the witnesses states unequivocally that, "the sacrifice of Father Maximilian saved the lives of many of the inmates," for the SS officers, "touched, in spite of themselves, didn’t mistreat or kill as many." Former prisoners of Auschwitz readily agree that from that time on the hardships in the camp were somewhat mitigated."[20]
We see here a man doing something unusual, surpassing the usual human conduct. Weren't the inmates, these living corpses supposed to be reduced to mere bundles of reactions? Weren't there supposed to be no one to answer those shadows helplessly pleading for mercy to God? Wasn't God supposed to be mute and silent? Wasn't He supposed to be far away, involved with greater things than the little meaningless lives and sufferings of little human beings? Wasn't the scaffold of Auschwitz just a punishment from the justice of God? Wasn't Auschwitz called a land of living corpses envying even the dead?
Jonas speaks about suffering God, about caring God. Although he himself warned his Tübingen audience against getting his myth mixed up with the Christian connotations implied in it: "It [his myth] does not, like the Christian expression ‘the suffering God,’ speak of a unique act in which the Deity, at a certain moment in time and for the express purpose of the redemption of humanity, send part of itself into a certain situation characterized by suffering. Rather, in his view the almost incarnate relationship of God to the world had been a relationship full of suffering on the part of God "from creation onwards."[21] In his opinion God did not suffer because he became a man, as Christians believe, but as a Creator, sacrificing his absolute power for the sake of his creation, becoming thus vulnerable, temporized and silent.
No doubt Jonas's speculative myth would change the whole theology and metaphysics. Everything would have to be rewritten and rethought. But Jonas develops his myth into something even more: "In the enjoining correspondence with his colleague, Jonas depicts the adventure of God of getting involved in the world and its history by using a Christian notion, and in conversing with his Christian partner he does not shy away from speaking of a "total incarnation" or of the "full risk" or "sacrifice of the incarnation." He even tolerated his myth being labelled a "non-trinitarian myth of incarnation."[22] This idea of non-trinitarian incarnation is extremely intriguing. In spite of his protests to see any conformity between his personal Jewish myth and Christian understanding of God, I see here a rather interesting development of thinking.
Being a Jew, he did not believe in a trinitarian God, but rather in a God of the Old Testament, who in the Jewish tradition, was rather a God of Justice and Revenge; a somewhat distant and cold God, who did not care about some minor things, such as the fears and sorrows of a single human being. As the horror of Auschwitz seemed to be unconformable even with a punishing and revenging God, exceeding all imaginable justice, he needed another answer. It was not enough for him to sacrifice the omnipotence of God after Auschwitz – he needed more "human", compassionate and merciful God. He echoed the inconsolable plaint of every Jew torn by the sufferings of their people. He needed to console himself and his people with a God who cared, who had pity on his people, who would not abandon them. He needed a similar God to that of Christians, even if he implicitly abstained from believing in the trinitarian God. "His myth speaks implicitly of a suffering God as well as a developing and a caring God. The biblical "idea of divine majesty" only at first sight contradicts the notion of the suffering God, for the Hebrew Bible is certainly capable of describing quite eloquently the grief, remorse, and disappointment God experiences with regard to humans and in particular with regard to his chosen people."[23]
There is still another common point of Jonas's myth and Christian understanding concerning the righteous of which Jonas speaks in reference to the question of God's omnipotence: "To expect that the good Lord might now and again break his self-imposed rule of exercising extreme restraint in imposing his power, and might intervene with a miraculous rescue. But no such miracle occurred; throughout the years of the Auschwitz slaughter, God remained silent. The miracles that occurred were the work of human beings alone: the acts of bravery of those individual, mostly nameless "righteous among the nation."[24] These righteous seem to take the power of God on their shoulders and carry it on, becoming his heirs and emanation: "Having given himself wholly to the becoming world, God has no more to give, it is our turn now to give to him." They have a task to continue the work of the omnipotent God in keeping the world in its existence: "This could well be the secret of the unknown "thirty-six righteous ones" who, according to Jewish teaching, the world will never be without, in order to safeguard its continued existence."[25]
These holy men mediate the metaphysical realm to this world, making up for the injustices of humanity and appeasing the justice of God. "In the thirty-six righteous ones, a transcendence wholly hidden in immanence manifests itself as "holiness," a holiness that "is capable of offsetting immeasurable guilt, of settling the debt run up by a whole generation, and of saving the peace of the invisible realm. Auschwitz, in Jonas’s thought, is the place where the notion of a God who has restricted himself fails; it is also the place where, from the ashes of this failed notion of God, God’s inscrutable transcendence appears in the form of holiness in the figures of the righteous one."[26] This understanding is not far from the Christian understanding of suffering God.
Let us have a closer look at the Christian tradition. Thomas Aquinas says that God loves man just "as if man were the god of God himself, and without him he could not be happy."[27] This seems to contradict the concept of God's self-sufficiency. Being God, he cannot possibly need us, nor does he need us to be happy. His name “El Shaddai”, God all-sufficient[28], signifies this attribute. Being the great “I Am”,[29] God’s existence is not dependent on anything or anyone, nor does he need anything or anyone. But here we see something that in our logic cannot fit with our idea of God. But could there be something impossible for an almighty God? "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. "[30] So it follows that because of his immense love for us, as his creation, he does something that we do not understand: "We are bold to say it, God is out of himself by reason of his immense love."[31] After the fall of man from the Garden of Eden God will say: "But no," said the Lord, "I will not lose man; straightway let there be found a Redeemer Who may satisfy My justice in behalf of man, and so rescue him from the hands of his enemies and from the eternal death due to him."[32]
This is the beginning of the story of Incarnation and revelation of God's inner life as that of a trinitarian God. Bernard of Clairvaux, last of the Church Fathers, has a beautiful vision of a debate between God's mercy and justice: "And here St. Bernard, in his contemplations on this subject, imagines a struggle to ensue between the justice and the mercy of God. Justice says: "I no longer exist if Adam be not punished; I perish if Adam die not." Mercy, on the other hand, says: "I am lost if man be not pardoned; I perish if he does not obtain forgiveness." In this contest the Lord decides, that in order to deliver man, guilty of death, some innocent one must die: "Let one die Who is no debtor to death."[33]
And now there opens a scenery of the inner life of God, like that of a family, where different members have different roles and tasks, but nevertheless are equal in majesty as being the same God. Bernard of Clairvaux continues: "On earth, there was not one innocent. "Since, therefore," says the Eternal Father, "amongst men there is none who can satisfy My justice, let him come forward who will go to redeem man." The Angels, the Cherubim, the Seraphim, all are silent, not one replies; one voice alone is heard, that of the Eternal Word Who says, Lo, here I am; send Me.[34] "Father," says the Only-begotten Son, "Thy majesty being infinite, and having been injured by man, cannot be fittingly satisfied by an Angel, who is purely a creature; and though Thou mightest the satisfaction of an Angel, reflect that, in spite of so great benefits, bestowed on man, in spite of so many promises and threats, We have not yet been able to gain his love, because he is not yet aware of the love We bear him. If We would oblige him without fail to love Us, what better occasion can We find than that, in order to redeem him, I, Thy Son, should go upon earth, should there assume human flesh, and pay by my death the penalty due him. In this manner Thy justice is fully satisfied, and at the same time man is thoroughly convinced of Our love!"[35]
Here we see the exact situation where humankind was before the Incarnation: man is not yet aware of the love God has for him. It is also indeed the situation that still exists for every Jew not believing in Incarnation of the trinitarian God, feeling the lack of love that in every way would console him, give him hope and faith, especially amidst the horrors of Auschwitz.
""But think," answered the Heavenly Father---"think, O My Son, that in taking upon Thyself the burden of man's satisfaction, Thou wilt have to lead a life full of sufferings!" "No matter," replied the Son: "Lo, here I am, send Me." "Think that Thou wilt have to be born in a cave, the shelter of the beasts of the field; thence Thou must flee into Egypt whilst an infant, to escape the hands of those very men who, even from Thy ten-derest infancy, will seek to take away Thy life." "It matters not: Lo, here I am, send Me." "Think that, on Thy return to Palestine, Thou shalt lead a life most arduous, most despicable, passing Thy days as a simple boy in a carpenter's shop." "It matters not: Lo, here I am, send Me." "Think that when Thou goest forth to preach and manifest Thyself. Thou wilt have, indeed, a few, to follow Thee; the greater part will despise Thee and call Thee impostor, magician, fool, Samaritan; and, finally, they will persecute Thee to such a pass that they will make Thee die shamefully on a gibbet by dint of torments." "No matter: Lo, here I am, send Me."
This is the suffering God. It has so much common with Jonas's myth, where God "annihilates" himself, empties himself from his majesty for the sake of his human children, becoming their brother and friend: "Greater love than this no man has, than to give his life for his friend."[36] God himself becomes the righteous one as understood by Jonas, who as "a transcendence wholly hidden in immanence manifests itself as "holiness," a holiness that "is capable of offsetting immeasurable guilt, of settling the debt run up by a whole generation, and of saving the peace of the invisible realm (---) from the ashes of this failed notion of God, God’s inscrutable transcendence appears in the form of holiness in the figure of the righteous one".
So, by becoming man (like Jonas's becoming God) God takes on his shoulders all the sufferings of humankind and pays for the dept for man's indifference, for his evilness and imperfection so that the loving relation between God and man be restored. He pays this through the cruellest of deaths, preceded by agony in the garden of Gethsemane: "And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground."[37] We can only imagine what made him sweat blood and plead to his Father for mercy. How terrible must have been the sight of all those sufferings he foresaw in his mind, which he himself had to go through in order to make up for the sins of every human ever lived and yet to come. He must have also seen all human sufferings men had to suffer yet at places like Auschwitz and through his own suffering united himself with them. He did it deliberately for the sake of his immense love for them. He offered himself as a replacement as did Maximilian Kolbe, offering himself so that his fellow men could live.
It is also a Christian understanding that men can also unite themselves in their sufferings to the suffering of incarnated God, as he united himself with us. This is a unique union. So that even after his death, resurrection and ascension to Heaven, he would still in a mystical way continue to live and act through his human nature on earth, i.e. men who are united to him in suffering. He continues to shine, to work miracles and to give hope to men through his righteous ones, full of love and compassion towards their fellow men, even amidst the most horrid suffering that humankind has ever known.
"As the heavy door slammed shut on the condemned, some began to sob. One of the heartless SS jailers sneered, "You will dry up like tulips." The Nazi jailers soon realized, however, that this time things would be different. Whereas, in the past, howling and curses reverberated from the starvation bunkers like a scene of the damned in hell, this time the condemned prisoners did not curse and tear at each other, but sang and prayed. Soon the condemned in the other cells joined in the singing of hymns to Our Lady. What had formerly been a place of torment and bedlam became a place of divine worship. As if in choir, they answered one another from cell to cell with prayers. A holy saintly priest was with them to share their suffering, to counsel and encourage."[38]
Auschwitz has a twofold meaning. Firstly it is something that should awaken in us a deep and supernatural love for the other human beings and have empathy wherever and whenever we see suffering. And this concerns not only Auschwitz but all the times and places, all conditions and situations. Suffering is essential to human being, but as a human being our task is to reduce others' suffering when ever we can. "Better to suffer injustice than to commit it", or in other words, better to suffer for the good of fellow men, being this way part of God's love and goodness. Secondly it is a trial where our faith, our love for God is put to test.
In an answer to Bishop Klaus Hemmerle who spoke about God’s defencelessness as a process of self-denial which reaches the point where he can do nothing but ask humans for their love, Levinas replied: "After what happened at Auschwitz, it sometimes seems to me to mean that the good Lord is asking for a kind of love that holds no element of promise. That is how I think of it: the meaning of Auschwitz is a form of suffering and of believing quite without any promise in return."[39] This is a very interesting point from Levinas, even if he could not understand the necessity for such a love which God is asking of men. Perhaps it demands a supernatural faith and selfless love against the reason to see through what is mere human. Perhaps Kantian practical reason is capable for this, but not certainly the theoretical or speculative. So the existence of evil and suffering in the world is necessary in order "that the human spirit may be proved, and that it may be manifested with what fortitude of pious trust, and with how unmercenary a love, it cleaves to God."[40]
"The Passion (of the incarnated God) not only moves us to have faith and hope in God but also motivates us to a grateful love for God by realizing the depth of His love for us.[41] Salvation is not complete, Thomas Aquinas said, without our learning to love as God loves. In Christ's death we are not simply pardoned of our sins but we are given a reason in our gratitude to devote our whole hearts to God an internal transformation in us brought about by God's great love in offering up His Son. Nothing could have been more valuable to God than His own Son. Christ's suffering shows us how to love."[42] In the same way as God suffered for us in his Passion to prove his love for us, we have to suffer for him in our gardens of Gethsemane and our Calvaries, as in Auschwitz, to prove our love for him. So that the union of love between creation and the Creator, between men and God could be complete and perfect.
[1]Hanna Arendt, Totalitarianism, p. 126.
[2] Genesis 19:13, 23-25
[3]Hans Jonas, The Concept of God after Auschwitz: A Jewish Voice, p. 2.
[4]Hanna Arendt, Totalitarianism, p. 119.
[5]Ibid. p. 124
[6]Hanna Arendt, Partisan Review
[7]Hanna Arendt, The Concentration Camps, 762.
[8]Ibid. p. 125
[9]Hans Jonas, The Concept of God after Auschwitz: A Jewish Voice, p. 1.
[10]Ibid. p.1.
[11]Ibid. p.2.
[12] Hans Hermann Henrix, Powerlessness of God? A Critical Appraisal of Hans Jonas’s Idea of God after Auschwitz
[13]Ibid.
[14]Hans Jonas, The Concept of God after Auschwitz: A Jewish Voice, 38f.
[15]Ibid.
[16]Augustine, Confessions.
[17]Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Ia, q. 2, a. 3 ad 1.
[18]Augustine, City of God, 1.8-9.
[19] John 15:13
[20] Brother Francis Mary, F. I. Maximilian Kolbe, Saint For Our Times.
[21] Hans Hermann Henrix, Powerlessness of God? A Critical Appraisal of Hans Jonas’s Idea of God after Auschwitz.
[22] H. Jonas, Zwischen Nichts und Ewigkeit. Drei Aufsätze zur Lehre vom Menschen. Göttingen 1963, 63-72; Jonas's using of the term of incarnation: 68.69.70.71.
[23] Hans Hermann Henrix, Powerlessness of God? A Critical Appraisal of Hans Jonas’s Idea of God after Auschwitz.
[24]Hans Jonas, The Concept of God after Auschwitz: A Jewish Voice.
[25]Ibid.
[26] Hans Hermann Henrix, Powerlessness of God? A Critical Appraisal of Hans Jonas’s Idea of God after Auschwitz.
[27] Thomas Aquinas, Opusc. 63. c.7.
[28] Gen. 17:1, 2
[29]Ex. 3:14
[30] Isaiah 55:8-9
[31]Gregory of Nazianzen, De Div. Nom. c.4.
[32] Alphonsus Liguori, The incarnation, birth, and infancy of Jesus Christ, or, The mysteries of the faith (1886), p.15.
[33]Ibid. p.15-16.
[34] "Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me." Is. 6:8.
[35] Alphonsus Liguori, The incarnation, birth, and infancy of Jesus Christ, or, The mysteries of the faith (1886), p.16.
[36]John 15:13.
[37]Luke 22:44.
[38] Brother Francis Mary, F. I. Maximilian Kolbe, Saint For Our Times.
[39] Hans Hermann Henrix, Powerlessness of God? A Critical Appraisal of Hans Jonas’s Idea of God after Auschwitz.
[40] Augustine, City of God, 1.8-9
[41] Romans 5:8
[42] Michal Hunt, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas on the suffering and death of Jesus.
