Beyond Theodicy: Jewish and Christian Continental Thinkers Respond to the Holocaust

5 FAITH AS HOPE IN HISTORY Ernst Bloch and Political Post-Holocaust Theology

65 5 Faith as Hope in History Ernst Bloch and Political Post-Holocaust Theology ERNST BLOCH IS A SECULAR Jewish philosopher and a major representative of warm stream Marxism. Bloch’s most influential work, the threevolume Principle of Hope, interprets traditional Jewish and Christian hopes as congruent with Marxist ones. He considers religious faith as centrally concerned with the gravity of suffering and injustice. Faith in God is congruent with “political” hope for the alleviation of suffering in history and is antithetical to the optimism of theodicy. Bloch’s affirmation of the political dimensions of faith was influential on German Christian theology in the late 1960s and contributed to the rise of Latin American liberation theology.1 Congruencies between the positions of Bloch and Metz will be traced in chapter 6, while the impact of Bloch’s thought on the political theology of Protestant thinker Jürgen Moltmann is discussed in the last section of this chapter. For both Christian thinkers, Bloch’s perspective on history and hope prompts them to seek alternatives to theoretical theodicy. S U F F E R I N G I N H I S T O R Y : A G A I N S T T E L E O L O G I C A L T H E O D I C Y Bloch’s rejection of theodicy rests on his objections to what he calls the “crude materialism” of orthodox Marxism and the determinism of Hegel’s philosophy of history taken up by scientific Marxists. Bloch does not abandon the Marxian view that there are dialectical contradictions between modes of production and social relations between classes, which erupt in history to create massive political change. But he considers dialectical methodology as a tool for the study of the connections between economic, social, and political factors retrospectively. It does not lead to certainty 66 BEYOND THEODICY regarding communism as the real telos of history. Bloch limits the scope and application of dialectics to history by asserting that dialectical logic does not encompass the past exhaustively. Hegel holds that all suffering in history has reason because all history is pervaded by dialectical logic. In contrast, Bloch insists that some events in history are “irrational” outbursts. Suffering and contradictions in history are not always resolved in the Aufhebung (mediation ) of the past, where its inadequacies are overcome and its achievements somehow preserved. Bloch observes that massive collective suffering crashes through the picture of history as having a logical, teleological development. To prove his point, Bloch cites examples of so-called antihistorical events, by definition, events that bear no apparent logical connection to the achievement of an ideal just society. The Holocaust is a primary example; others selected from history are the Peloponnesian Wars, the rule of Nero, and the Thirty Years’ War. Bloch declares that “all these apparently satanic outbursts belong to the dragon of the final abyss, not to the furthering of history” (PH I 310). Applied to the Holocaust, Hegelian theodicy is appalling . His passionate rejection of theodicy after Auschwitz is apparent in his statement: “To take the most hideous example, Hitler was by no stretch of the imagination the negation bringing socialism to final victory” (PH I 114). In denying a seamless logic to history, such massive events of suffering are not counted as necessary building blocks. The claim that “the future is open” is a catchphrase of Bloch’s philosophy (PH I 208). Bloch refuses to legitimate knowledge of the end of history. Like Kant, Bloch considers the rational idea of justice in history as an ideal that is an aim of human hope, but is not an item of speculative or scientific knowledge. Theodicy for Bloch is epistemically an impossibility. Bloch rejects both orthodox Marxist and Hegelian theodicies, not only because of their epistemic claims, but because they are insensitive to the moral scandal of suffering. He objects to the instrumental justification of suffering either as the necessary by-product of economic conditions that will lead to Marx’s communist utopia, or as necessary for achieving Hegel’s Absolute. Bloch also rejects Hegel’s holistic, theistic justification of suffering based on God’s self-manifestation in every stage of history. However, Bloch does not deny that suffering can have “use” in history in selective cases. Indeed he admits that the proletariat’s suffering is one such instance. For Bloch observes that “misery, once it realizes its causes, becomes the revolutionary lever...