Title
A Postmodern Response to Suffering After Auschwitz
Document Type
Contribution to Book
Publication Date
2003
Abstract
There is heated debate over theodicy among post-Holocaust, feminist, and liberation theologians, whose concerns center on the social causes of suffering and its alleviation. These contextual thinkers encourage strategies of survival and resistance to suffering. Theologically speaking, they validate protest and questioning of God, as opposed to theistic explanation.1 While theodicy justifies suffering as good or purposeful, thus defending God's goodness to creatures, contextual thinkers' attention to social and political factors exposes massive and pervasive suffering in history that reveals weaknesses in theodicy justifications. Whether the focus is on Holocaust victims, women, or the poor, contextual theologians find it immoral to declare that suffering is punishment for sin or spiritually enriching. There is a consensus that severe, socially caused suffering is neither just nor redemptive.
Editor
Sarah K. Pinnock
Publisher
Trinity Press International
City
Harrisburg
ISBN
9781563384042
Repository Citation
Pinnock, S. K. (2003). A postmodern response to suffering after Auschwitz. In S. K. Pinnock (Ed.), The theology of Dorothee Soelle (pp. 129-144). Trinity Press International.
Publication Information
The Theology of Dorothee Soelle