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179 nine Kant and ‘‘A Theodicy of Protest’’ Elizabeth C. Galbraith Kant’s perceptive account of the innocent and morally righteous sufferer in his 1791 essay ‘‘On the Failure of All Attempted Philosophical Theodicies’’ was the seed that enabled my own theological preoccupation with theodicy to take root. In the first chapter of Kant and Theology: Was Kant a Closet Theologian ? I argued that though Kant is willing to reject traditional theodicies, he still offers his own positive approach to theodicy, one that is consistent with, in fact, integral to, the theology at work in his moral argument for the existence of God. Since publishing Kant and Theology my sense of the theological significance of Kant’s essay on theodicy has been deepened by my own encounter with Holocaust Studies. In this essay I reconsider Kant’s 1791 essay in light of the significant contribution made to the study of theodicy by John Roth. Moreover I propose that Kant’s ‘‘authentic theodicy’’ provides an appropriate framework for building theodicies that do not trivialize innocent suffering or the gross injustices of our world. In his recently revised and reissued essay ‘‘A Theodicy of Protest,’’ John K. Roth offers a harrowing critique of traditional theodicies that, in his opinion, ‘‘have a fatal flaw: they legitimate evil.’’1 Anyone familiar with Roth’s long and Religious Instantiations of Kantian Philosophy 180 distinguished career in Holocaust Studies will be aware of his vehemence against the many ways theodicies are guilty of trivializing innocent suffering. According to Roth, theodicies are concerned with getting God off the hook for the magnitude of evil and suffering in the world, and in the process they usually do harm to the innocent victims of appalling evil, making them at worst guilty of the crimes committed against them, or privy to some grand scheme wherein their appalling suffering is an essential means to a glorious end, one that outweighs the agonies endured en route. Roth’s protest against traditional theodicies is a call away from soft answers that betray the victims of horrendous evil, to real engagement with both innocent suffering and the indefensibility of the magnitude of evil in our world. Thus, he proclaims, ‘‘I protest against philosophies and theologies that do not take the historical particularity of evil seriously enough, even when they claim that evils are horrendous. The Holocaust, genocide, and democide smash and destroy particular persons in ways that scar the world forever.’’2 In one all-encompassing onslaught against traditional theodices, Roth takes issue with what has become known as the ‘‘free-will’’ theodicy, according to which God permits moral evil to exist for the sake of human freedom.3 Moral evil is the price God has to pay for creating humans as free rational beings, capable of making moral choices. One would not be truly free if one were not able to choose evil as well as good. The value of creating free beings capable of choosing the good, and ultimately God, outweighs the cost of moral evil. Thus, God’s gift of freedom is justified, despite its destructive capabilities. In response to this defense, Roth retorts, ‘‘human freedom has been used as God’s defense; in fact it is crucial in God’s offense,’’ since ‘‘our freedom is both too much and too little.’’4 On the one hand, Roth tells us, freedom constitutes an insufficient defense of God because of its paucity. The piercing example of such paucity given by Roth is the story of Sophie, the main character in William Styron’s novel Sophie’s Choice. The novel ‘‘becomes a commentary on the powerlessness of individual freedom as it faces overwhelming forces of social domination.’’5 Sophie’s freedom, or the lack of it, shows ‘‘how pathetic a ‘freewill defense’ for God can be.’’6 As she disembarked from the train that brought her and her children from Warsaw to Auschwitz, an SS official informed Sophie that she could choose one of her children to live. ‘‘I cannot choose’’ Sophie screams, but eventually, so as not to lose both children, lets her daughter go. Though fictional, Roth argues that Sophie’s Choice exempli fies the kinds of ‘‘choiceless choices’’ Holocaust victims faced on a daily basis. It is emblematic of those who have ‘‘too little freedom’’ to fight the forces of evil in our world. And to those audacious enough to suggest that human virtue could not be tested without such harrowing experiences, Roth retorts that...

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