Dimienne asked:

What theological questions were raised by the experience of the Holocaust and what attempts have
been made to resolve them?

============

The problem of the existence of evil and how to reconcile it with God's (supposed) qualities as good
and all loving, omnipotent and intervening has been around for a long time and very many answers
trying to harmoniously incorporate them into justification have been proposed. For example: that evil
is the result of human beings use of there (God given) freewill and that for God to change that would
be to change the special status of humans. That Evil is not really evil, but part of some divine master
plan to test the faithful, that evil is a punishment for our sins. None of these are very convincing from
a philosophical point of view and many have concluded that evil is a proof against the existence of
God. After the Holocaust these issues were raised again with a new urgency and with a justifiable
indignation. Many writers and witnesses to the Holocaust joining Nietzsche in affirming the Death of
God. And that after the Holocaust all human endeavour, activity and production must be carried out in
its shadow such that "No statement, theological or otherwise should be made that would not be
credible in the presence of burning children" (Greenberg).

But what questions does the Holocaust forces us to consider? Can we any new questions, questions
unique to the Holocaust, or unique in that they would not have been asked if the Holocaust had not
happened, but questions that impress on us now and demand to be reckoned with? One question is
has the relation between God and humanity as a whole undergone revolution? Can we anymore bow
down and worship God, can we think of God as a father and we as children after the Holocaust or
have the children grow up such that they are in a position to question the Father?

Of course there are questions Jews (specifically and believers generally) have to face; Has the
nature of the covenant changed, has God simply abandoned his chosen people? Leading on from
this we can ask if the nature of religious vocation has changed, Is the impetus on God to agree to our
conditions now, or is a voluntary renewal of the covenant a more ethical pact a more trusting
endeavour in the face of the Holocaust? I don't think I am equipped to answer such questions, but
there is a kind of question more suited to a philosopher: it is whether we have really ever had a
conception of God as God? Or was the God that died in the death camps only merely an illusion of
God created by humans?

What I mean is that talk of God as supremely powerful, as guardian, as all loving is an
anthropomorphism a God made in the image of man. The perfect man, a fully extended version of
man's self-image, This was the God that died and deservedly so along with the death of the image of
man himself. If it is correct to say that the Holocaust forces us change every aspect of human
existence, so that it will not happen again, this means humanity must rethink what it is to be human,
not as free, independent, self-contained and whole unto itself, but as dependent, fragile, responsible.
It also means that maybe the God who died in Auschwitz was not the real God, but a God that
humanity projected: God as the perfect being. But as I have said previously in these pages (to save
repeating myself try a search for the other answers), maybe Being and God don't go together. Rather
than being that entity that has Being in abundance the most real being, maybe God is the most
delicate entity, exiting not as a thing, not as the biggest and best but as the fleeting and contingent
relation between humans who care for one another. What this implies is that God of philosophy and
theology and pre-Holocaust humanity is a fiction and a useless fiction after the Holocaust. It is not
God's existence that we need to be convinced of since God is outside the realms of being and
not-being. And therefore was in no position to physically stop all the children burning. The question
becomes inappropriate, it is the wrong question to ask, even if it's hard to realise that, because then
the psychological safety net disappears.

What we need to be concerned with is the little goodness that is made possible by recognising that
other people as special and needing our help, maybe that's where God lives, such that even in the
death camps God was still alive?

A good collection to view is: Holocaust religious and philosophical implications. Edited J.K.Roth &
M.Berenbaum

Brian Tee

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