Part Six: The Holocaust and the Silence of God
33. The Theological Responses — Honest Assessment
The Christian Statement
Several theological responses to the Holocaust have been developed within Jewish thought. The disciple should know them and engage them honestly.
Response 1: Punishment for Sin
Some traditional Orthodox voices have argued that the Holocaust was divine punishment for Jewish assimilation, secularization, or abandonment of Torah. This response is morally monstrous and has been rejected by the overwhelming majority of Jewish thinkers, including Orthodox ones. The six million included the most devout Jews in Europe. The argument requires the murder of children to be justified by the sins of adults. It is not a response. It is a theological failure.
Response 2: Hester Panim — The Hidden Face
The concept of Hester Panim — the hiding of God's face — is rooted in Deuteronomy 31:17–18 and the lament Psalms. God sometimes hides His face, and human beings experience the withdrawal of His presence as abandonment. This response is more honest than the punishment response because it does not justify the suffering. It names it as a moment of divine hiddenness while maintaining that hiddenness is not absence.
Response 3: Post-Holocaust Theology — God Cannot or Will Not Prevent Evil
Thinkers like Richard Rubenstein argued that the Holocaust made traditional Jewish theism impossible. Rubenstein did not become an atheist; he developed a form of paganism. Others, like Irving Greenberg, argued that after the Holocaust, Jewish theology could no longer demand unconditional faith and must allow for conditional covenant — a voluntary covenant, entered freely, without the coercion of divine command.
The Christian Engagement
The Christian response does not dismiss any of these. It adds the cross. The God of the cross is not the God who has always remained at a safe distance from human suffering and is now being asked to justify His absence at Auschwitz. He is the God who entered the worst of human suffering in His own body. The question "where were you?" is answered not by a theological explanation but by a crucified man. That is not a complete answer to the Holocaust. But it is not no answer.