Continuing our look at Jurgen Moltmann's 1974 work, The Crucified God, with verbatim selections indicated by quotes.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
Russian author served 4 years in a Siberian prison labor camp
"The only way past protest atheism is through a theology of the cross which understands God as the suffering God in the suffering of Christ and which cries out with the godforsaken God, 'My God, why have you forsaken me?' For this theology, God and suffering are no longer contradictions, as in theism and atheism, but God's being is in suffering and the suffering is in God's being itself, because God is love. It takes the 'metaphysical rebellion' up into itself because it recognizes in the cross of Christ a rebellion in metaphysics, or better, a rebellion in God himself: God himself loves and suffers the death of Christ in his love. He is no 'cold heavenly power', nor does he 'tread his way over corpses', but is known as the human God in the crucified Son of Man." (227)
To try and make sense of our world is to grapple with the problem evil and suffering. Moltmann here does not engage the traditional responses to the question, and it can be acknowledged that since the time of Job, many people of faith have come to terms and even come to a place of peace within some of the available theological responses to evil. The text here reflects Moltmann's perspective in which he sees the problem of suffering in the larger context of the crisis of twentieth century theology (Note 1: see Moltmann chapter 1) and explores how a revised look at the nature of God with the cross of Christ at the center of theology can more adequately engage the world of suffering and evil as we find it.
In The Brothers Karamazov, Doestoyevsky expresses a form of the problem of evil through Ivan Karamazov ...
"He tells a story of a poor serf child who hit his master's hunting dog with a stone while he was playing. The master had him seized and the next morning he was hunted and torn to pieces by the master's hounds before his mother's eyes. Ivan says:
'And what sort of harmony is it, if there is a hell? I want to forgive. I want to embrace. I don't want any more suffering. And if the sufferings of children go to make up the sum of sufferings which is necessary for the purchase of truth, then I say beforehand that the entire truth is not worth such a price... I won't want harmony. I don't want it out of the love I bear to mankind. I want to remain with my suffering unavenged. Besides, too high a price has been placed on harmony. We cannot afford to pay so much for admission. And therefore I hasten to return my ticket of admission. And indeed, if I am an honest man, I'm bound to hand it back as soon as possible. This I am doing. It is not God that I do not accept, Alyosha. I merely most respectfully return him the ticket. I accept God, understand that, but I cannot accept the world that he has made.'" (220)
"Here atheism demonstrates itself to be the brother of theism (god of natural theology). It too makes use of logical inference. It too sees the world as the mirror of another, higher being. With just as much justification as that with which theism speaks of God, the highest, best, righteous being, it speaks of the nothingness which manifests itself in all the annihilating experiences of suffering and evil. It is the inescapable antithesis of theism.
But if metaphysical theism disappears, can protest atheism still remain alive? For its protest against injustice and death, does not it need an authority to accuse, because it makes this authority responsible for the state of affairs? ... Camus called this atheism a 'metaphysical rebellion'. It is 'the means by which a man protests against his condition and against the whole of creation. It is metaphysical because it disputes the ends of man and of creation.'" (221)
"According to Camus, the metaphysical rebellion does not derive from Greek tragedy but from the Bible, with its concept of the personal God. 'The history of the rebellion that we experience today is far more that of the descendants of Cain than the pupils of Prometheus. In this sense, it is above all else the God of the Old Testament who sets in motion the energies of the rebellion. Where does this metaphysical rebellion of atheism lead? 'I rebel - therefore we exist,' says Camus. As those who suffer and are revolted at injustice, 'we are', and we are even more than the gods or the God of theism. For these gods are immortal and omnipotent. What kind of poor being is a God who cannot suffer and cannot even die? He is certainly superior to mortal man so long as this man allows suffering and death to come together as a doom over his head. But he is inferior to man if man grasps this suffering and death as his own possibilities and chooses them himself. Where a man accepts and chooses his own death, he raises himself to a freedom which no animal and no god can have." (221-222)
"It is the extreme possibility of protest atheism ... But even apart from this extreme position, which Dostoevsky worked through again and again in The Demons, a God who cannot suffer is poorer than any man. For a God who is incapable of suffering is a being who cannot be involved. Suffering and injustice do not affect him. And because he is so completely insensitive, he cannot be affected or shaken by anything. He cannot weep, for he has no tears. But the one who cannot suffer cannot love either. So he is also a loveless being.... The 'unmoved Mover' is a 'loveless Beloved'. (222)
"A God who is only omnipotent is in himself an incomplete being, for he cannot experience helplessness and powerlessness. Omnipotence can indeed be longed for and worshipped by helpless men, but omnipotence is never loved; it is only feared. What sort of being, then, would be a God who was only 'almighty'? He would be a being without experience, a being without destiny and a being who is loved by no one. A man who experiences helplessness, a man who suffers because he loves, a man who can die, is therefore a richer being than an omnipotent God who cannot suffer, cannot love and cannot die." (223)
However, protest atheism is in error if it divinizes man in place of God, in order to declare him to be the supreme being for man: almighty, righteous, infinite and good. Protest atheism is in error if it supplies a human genre or human society or its vanguard, a humanistic party, with inherited theistic divine predicates, saying that it is immortal, that it is always right, that it grants security and authority, etc. It will only arrive at its own truth if it recognizes man, erring, loving and suffering, unrighteous and protesting against injustice, helpless man, in his humanity, and sees that in his human experiences he is greater than all gods and all divinities and idols." (223)
"Max Horkheimer once expressed the quintessence of his critical theory in the remark: 'The longing that the murderer should not triumph over his innocent victim.' Horkheimer has thought through this longing and righteousness in his critical theory of capitalist society, and has also drawn attention to the injustice of the societies which call themselves Marxist... He has criticized the religious idols of religion, and also the idols and the totalization which have appeared in capitalism, in nationalism and in established Marxism as true images of earlier religious idols. His critical theory of society takes over the productive criticism of the present state of affairs which was expressed in earlier times in faith in a heavenly judge'. His 'longing for the wholly other' is the longing for the righteousness of God in the world. Were this longing not there, suffering for unrighteousness and evil would not be an unquenchable sorrow." (223-224)
"Horkheimer has never given the name 'God' to 'the wholly other', a formula from early dialectic theology. Rather, his critical theory is based on the presupposition that we do not know what God is... In his critical theory he challenges both traditional theism and its brother, traditional atheism. There is no theistic answer to the question of suffering and injustice, but far less is there any atheistic possibility of avoiding this question and being content with the world. It is impossible to be content with one's own possibilities, which are always limited. So Horkheimer uses the formula of 'longing for the wholly other', which hovers between theism and atheism." (224)
"In Horkheimer we find a protesting faith which takes us beyond the crude opposition of theism and atheism. "in view of the suffering in this world, in view of the injustice, it is impossible to believe the dogma of the existence of an omnipotent and all-gracious God,' he says against optimistic theism. In view of the suffering in this world, in view of the injustice, however, it is also impossible not to hope for truth and righteousness and that which provides them. That must be said on the other side. For radical criticism of the here and now it is impossible without a desire for the wholly other. Without the idea of truth and that which provides it, there is no knowledge of its opposite, the forsakenness of men." (225)
"If innocent suffering puts the idea of a righteous God in question, so conversely longing for the righteousness of the wholly other puts suffering in question and makes it conscious sorrow. It makes consciousness of sorrow a protest against suffering. Sorrow is a special feeling in general suffering. It takes upon itself the freedom to see suffering as something special and to protest against it." (225)
"If we call the sting in the question unde malum? (whence evil?), God, then conversely the sting in the question an Deus sit? (does God exist) is suffering.
Cosmological theism answers this double question with a justification of this world as God's world. In so doing it passes over the history of the suffering of this world. Either it must be tolerated, or it will be compensated for by the second world in heaven. This answer is idolatry.
Traditional atheism seeks to take the ground from under the question of God prompted by suffering. "The simplest answer: there is not God,' said Volatire. Stendhal's bon mot, for which Nietzsche envied him, is more refined: 'The only excuse for God would be for him not to exist.' Here the non-existence of God is made into an excuse for him in view of an unsuccessful creation. That is atheism as a theodicy.
A radical theology of the cross cannot give any theistic answer to the question of the dying Christ. Were it to do so it would no longer be taking Jesus' dying cry to God seriously. The God of theism cannot have abandoned him, and in his forsakenness he cannot have cried out to a non-existent God." (225)
"Critical theology and critical theory meet in the framework of open questions, the question of suffering which cannot be answered and the question of righteousness which cannot be surrendered. (226)
"Crude atheism for which this world is everything is as superficial as the theism which claims to prove the existence of God from the reality of this world. Protest atheism points beyond both God and suffering, suffering and God, sets them one against the other and becomes an atheistic protest against injustice 'for God's sake'. In the context of the question which sets God and suffering over against each other, a God who sits enthroned in heaven in a glory that no one can share is unacceptable even for theology. Equally so, a grief which only affects man externally and does not seize him and change him in his very person does not do it justice... Before it can talk of the significance of the history of Christ's suffering for the history of the world's suffering, Christian theology must have faced the intrinsic problem of the history of Christ's suffering and have understood God's being in the godforsakenness of Christ. Only when Christian theology has recognized what took place between Jesus and his Father on the cross can it speak of the significance of this God for those who suffer and protest at the history of the world." (226-227)
"The only way past protest atheism is through a theology of the cross which understands God as the suffering God in the suffering of Christ and which cries out with the godforsaken God, 'My God, why have you forsaken me?' For this theology, God and suffering are no longer contradictions, as in theism and atheism, but God's being is in suffering and the suffering is in God's being itself, because God is love. It takes the 'metaphysical rebellion' up into itself because it recognizes in the cross of Christ a rebellion in metaphysics, or better, a rebellion in God himself: God himself loves and suffers the death of Christ in his love. He is no 'cold heavenly power', nor does he 'tread his way over corpses', but is known as the human God in the crucified Son of Man." (227)
Note 1: See blog post: Moltmann - The Crucified God, 2: 20th Century Crisis of Theology, June 20, 2019
Quotations from:
The Crucified God. Jurgen Moltmann. New York: Harper & Row, 1974.
Image Credit: Wikipedia
Fyodor Dostoevsky, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyodor_Dostoevsky
Jews at Auschwitz, May 1944, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_victims