Holocaust Theology for Christians & Jews (Book Notes:The Wrath of Jonah)
In The Wrath of Jonah: The Crisis of Religious Nationalism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Rosemary Radford Ruether and Herman J. Ruether write:
For Jews, the central theological question posed by the Holocaust is theodicy — the question of divine justice, or whatever it is possible to speak of a just God working in history after the Holocaust. The question for Christianity arises from Christian culpability for almost two millennia of anti-Semitism, which fed the hatred and indifference that made the Holocaust in “Christian” Europe possible.
If Jews, or some Jews, ask about the silence of God, the failure of God to act to save his people, Christians must ask about the silence of “man,” specifically Christians, who not only failed to act to save their Jewish neighbors, but, in many cases, aided and abetted the violence.
Jews have been asking these questions about themselves and their religion ever since the World War II ended. Christians, though, haven’t been asking such questions very much — on the contrary, they seem to have invested a lot of time and effort into denying that there is anything at all to examine. Christians have repeatedly tried to argue that Christian churches were an organized resistance to Hitler and Nazi policies. The truth, however, is just the opposite.
Christians weren’t simply silent in the face of the Holocaust, they actively participated in it at every level. Christian leaders praised Hitler as a gift from God to lead the German people against the evils of godless communism. Christian churches turned over records of Jews who converted to Christianity. Churches refused to marry Jews with Aryans. Christian leaders worked to incorporate Nazi doctrine into Christian teachings.
Christians, both as individuals and their institutions, have a lot to answer for — but hardly anyone is even asking any questions, much less trying to formulate reasonable answers. Christians try to say that you will know a person but their “fruits,” but the fruits of modern Christianity leave a lot to be desired.
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Comments
Lumping all Christians together and condemning an entire people is as unfair and wrong as what Hitler did to the Jews, et al.
Too few Christian, but certainly not all, realize that Christianity is a Jewish religion.
Christianity is the realization that Messiah has come and gentiles are brought into the tribe of Israel and granted the same Grace as are Jews.
What Satan wrought through his minions called Nazi’s was a horrible, horrible obscenity; that many who thought themselves Christians participated on the wrong side is even worse.
I was not yet born until a decade later, and I was born a Jew (and raised an atheist.) I have since realized the reality of Y’shua as Messiah.
But even had I been born into a Christian family, I’d be no more responsible for the actions and inactions of the “Christians” in Germany and Poland than for the actions of the slave traders in early America merely because I am not black.
1. Who has done so?
2. Are you really going to argue that lumping all members of a group together and generalizing about them is just as bad as murdering six million members of a group? Prejudice is as bad as murder?