God in Pain by Slavoj Zizek

Author:Slavoj Zizek
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781609803698
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2012-07-10T16:00:00+00:00

5

Only a Suffering God Can Save Us

Žižek

The key question about religion today is: Can all religious experiences and practices effectively be contained within the dimension of the conjunction of truth and meaning? The best starting point for such a line of inquiry is the point at which religion itself faces a trauma, a shock which dissolves the link between truth and meaning, a truth so traumatic that it resists being integrated into the universe of meaning. Every theologian sooner or later faces the problem of how to reconcile the existence of God with the fact of the Shoah or some similar excessive evil: How are we to reconcile the existence of an omnipotent and good God with the terrifying suffering of millions of innocents, like the children killed in the gas chambers? Surprisingly (or not), the theological answers build a strange succession of Hegelian triads. Those who want to leave divine sovereignty unimpaired and thus have to attribute to God full responsibility for the Shoah, first offer (1) the “legalistic” sin-and-punishment theory (the Shoah has to be a punishment for the past sins of humanity—or of the Jews themselves); they then pass on to (2) the “moralistic” character-education theory (the Shoah is to be understood along the lines of the story of Job, as the most radical test of our faith in God—if we survive this ordeal, our character will stand firm . . .); finally, they take refuge in a kind of “infinite judgment” which will save the day after all common measure between the Shoah and its meaning breaks down, appealing to (3) the divine mystery theory (wherein facts like the Shoah bear witness to the unfathomable abyss of divine will). In accordance with the Hegelian motto of a redoubled mystery (the mystery God is for us has to be also a mystery for God himself), the truth of this “infinite judgment” can only be to deny God’s full sovereignty and omnipotence.

The next triad is thus proposed by those who, unable to combine the Shoah with God’s omnipotence (how could he have allowed it to happen?), opt for some form of divine limitation: (1) God is directly posited as finite or, at least, contained, not omnipotent, not all-encompassing: he finds himself overwhelmed by the dense inertia of his own creation; (2) this limitation is then reflected back into God himself as his free act: God is self-limited, he voluntarily constrained his power in order to leave the space open for human freedom, so it is we humans who are fully responsible for the evil in the world—in short, phenomena like the Shoah are the ultimate price we have to pay for the divine gift of freedom; (3) finally, self-limitation is externalized, the two moments are posited as autonomous—God is embattled, there is a counter-force or principle of demoniac Evil active in the world (the dualistic solution).

This brings us to the third position which goes beyond the first two (the sovereign God, the finite God): that of a suffering

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