Theology After Auschwitz: A Critical Analysis of Second Generation Post-Holocaust German Theology (book chapter trans. from German, 2001) (original) (raw)

Christian Ethics and the Holocaust: A Dialogue with Post-Auschwitz Judaism

Theological Studies, 1988

T HIS PRESENTATION is a modest attempt to confront some overarching ethical issues emerging from the Holocaust and from contemporary Jewry's reflection on that "orienting experience," as Irving Greenberg has termed it. Throughout this essay "ethics" and "morality" are used interchangeably, even though they have often been distinguished in the past on the basis of their grounding (philosophy for ethics, Scripture/ theology for morality). Both terms involve fundamental orientation as well as more specific principles and applications. The exploration I am about to undertake will focus almost exclusively on ethics or morality as basic life-orientation, even though towards the end, in treating issues such as power, I will move towards the specific considerations. The contention of the essay throughout is that the experience of the Holocaust has profoundly altered the very basis for morality in our time. I have addressed aspects of the question in other writings. 1 I am also acutely aware that one of the profoundest ethical challenges facing the Christian Church after the Holocaust is its own credibility as a moral voice. While subscribing to the view held by a number of Jewish and Christian scholars that the principal parents of the Holocaust are to be found in modern secular philosophies which were at their core also anti-Christian, there remains little doubt that traditional preaching and teaching in the churches constituted an indispensable seedbed for the success of the Nazi effort. The point needs to be made, and made strongly, that if Christianity wishes to enter the general discussion of morality after the Holocaust, it can do so authentically only if it seriously commits itself to a full and final purge of all remaining anti-Semitism in its theology, catechetics, and liturgy, and if it is willing to submit its World War II record to a thorough scrutiny by respected scholars. Likewise, Christianity will need

Good news" after Auschwitz ? : Christian faith within a post-Holocaust world

2001

Many argue that Christians must address their own culpability in the destruction of Europe's Jewry. If post-Holocaust Christians only lament Christianity's sin the tradition will be ultimately left with little to say and no credibility. Post-Holocaust Christians must emphasize positive differences that Christianity can make, including: -- Repentant honesty about Christianity's anti-Jewish history-- New appreciation for the Jewish origins of Christianity, the Jewish identity of Jesus, and the continuing vitality of the Jewish people and their traditions-- Welcome liberation from liturgies and biblical interpretations that promote harmful Christian exclusivism

From Post Holocaust Theology to Post Holocaustic Theologies Fabiano Soares20191113 106486 1lz53l

From Post Holocaust Theology to Post Holocaustic Theologies Fabiano Soares20191113 106486 1lz53l, 2019

It is a very brief essay that aims to show a coherent legitimate Post-Holocaustic Theology heritage on Modern Theologies, such as Feminist/Womanist and Black/Indigenous Theologies, not only by means of Theological Dialog but in an existential level, being, in some cases easy to call all the Theologies that pledge for a responsible ecclesiastic answer from the Churchs towards suffering groups - Holocaustic Theologies! It uses Post-Holocaust Theological bases to produce dialog tools.

History, Holocaust, and Revelation: Beyond the Barthian Limits

Theology Today, 2005

of it by the pious mind shows it to be 'the greatest and most general revelation of the deepest and holiest.' 2 Given that this issue was evidently 'in the air' right throughout the nineteenth century, it is perhaps not surprising that the old Thomistic concept of 'natural theology' which allows for divine revelation to be mediated through the created order, was dogmatised by the First Vatican Council in 1870. More recently, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Dietrich Ritschl, Delwin Brown and, to a lesser extent Stanley Hauerwas, have entered the argument. 3 But perhaps the most memorable single event in the history of the debate was the correspondence between Karl Barth and Emil Brunner in 1934. At a time when Nazism was claiming revelatory significance for itself, Brunner dangerously suggested that 'the task of our theological generation is to find a way back to a legitimate natural theology.' Barth's vehement Nein!, which built upon the utter rejection of natural theology that had been decreed in the Barmen Declaration a few months earlier and which shattered forever his friendship with Brunner, highlighted the divisiveness of this issue as never before. 4 But whereas Barth may well have been right in his day it is, in fact, the results of Nazism, as seen in the Holocaust, that provide the chief challenge to his views. In the light (or, perhaps, the shadow) of the Shoah, it is incumbent upon the Church now to decide how matters of history can become ingredient to the process of theology. There is no going back behind the Holocaust, and so Church doctrine must take account of what has been, arguably, as deep a rupture to Christian thought as the Destruction of the Temple was to Judaism. This paper thus intends to take the matter beyond