Recherche – Detailansicht
Ausgabe: | April/2021 |
Spalte: | 340-342 |
Kategorie: | Systematische Theologie: Dogmatik |
Autor/Hrsg.: | Rosenau, Hartmut |
Titel/Untertitel: | Der Anstoß des Glaubens. Das Theodizeeproblem und seine möglichen Lösungen. |
Verlag: | Münster u. a.: LIT Verlag 2020. 188 S. = Herausforderung Theodizee. Transdiziplinäre Studien, 5. Kart. EUR 29,90. ISBN 9783643141880. |
Rezensent: | Paul Silas Peterson |
Hartmut Rosenau has provided a very impressive and truly unique theological and philosophical engagement with the problem of evil, one which deserves a close study from theologians and phi-losophers of religion. In the first chapter, R. establishes (with scholarly references to virtually all the major voices in the contempor-ary and historical discourse on theodicy) a highly differentiated theory of the necessity of an argumentatively established theodicy (beyond the postulate of mystery or the mere specification of the problem) based upon an overarching anthropological framework, itself defined with the essential given factors of self-, world- and God-relation. The second chapter is a topically organized intellectual historical treatment of the problem (especially as it relates to the divine attributes) from antiquity to the present. He employs an impressive knowledge of the theological and philosophical tradi-tion of Western thought on this issue, often highlighting (some-times with the help of Kant) what he sees as unsatisfactory claims, circular arguments (such as Leibniz’s »inner inconsistencies«) and aporias, while pointing to a troubling shift after Spinoza (in whose system »a deliverance from evil is not necessary«, 60) to apersonal or transpersonal views of God (which Tillich later adopted). This chapter also includes a theological reflection on Job, drawing upon Kierkegaard, and one on the Book of Revelation, as well as a deep en-gagement with the new theologies in the post-Holocaust era. The third chapter focuses on Bonhoeffer’s contribution to the theolog-ical reflection about the problem of evil and suffering: God cannot be justified by humanity; God rather justifies humanity. This is no solution to the problem itself but rather a reflective and respectful orbiting around the issue (»Umkreisen«, 85). With Bonhoeffer, our world is not the best of all worlds; our world is rather entirely dependent upon God in its origin and destiny, and is thus good. The justice of God is to be seen in the divine forgiving of sins; and only a suffering God (in the death and resurrection of Jesus) can help. In the fourth chapter, the absolute identity of Schelling’s (slightly modified) Plotinian mystical philosophy is analyzed, in which both spirit and matter have their final resolution and simultaneous originality (and according to which God comes, »kommt«, to himself in and through humanity, 105). The essence of human freedom entails the possibility of the realization of good or evil. While real-ized evil is not willed by God, God does unconsciously enable it, and even solicits it by producing finite freedoms. God also provides a place for it, not as privation of being but as a realized possibility within the ground of divine being, even if this place, this ground, is itself not God in the utmost divine existence. In the fifth chapter, R. addresses existential-anthropological criteria for a solution to the theodicy-problem. An interpretation of the creation narrative along these lines is provided before R. links this to Schelling’s ground and existence ontology. The biblical-Christian conception of reality entails a view of human beings as free creatures capable of good and evil, in which »sin« (here understood in the sense of symbolic representation of creaturely human finitude) is a conceptual determination of humanity as the reverse side of the image of God. In this, R. moves toward his fundamental conception of theodicy. It is rooted in anthropology (also articulated with Schiller’s game theory) but outlined in a broader Christian and biblical understanding of reality. Although he occasionally rejects the free will de-fense in the book (as in most contemporary German philosophical theology, Anselm’s De Concordia is not addressed), R.’s basic argument is a brilliantly modified version of it (in the tenor of Schelling, Schiller, Bonhoeffer and post-modern anthropologies). Human identity is »not determined, but open and ambivalent« (138). The strongest arguments for the free will defense use precisely these terms (which permit wide variations on the ontological status of evil, and which do not necessarily contradict the doctrine of justification or divine attributes). The sixth chapter addresses the dogmatic theological realm implied in his system, and thus the on-tological status of evil. God is understood to be the necessary con-di-tion of the possibility of evil; but in the interpretations of the theoretical meanings of evil (which may or may not be necessary, or singular, as he argues emphasizing situationality), among other things, following createdness, »finite freedom« (157) is also ad-dressed. In the concluding arguments R. turns to the (often ignor-ed) ethical implications of a theodicy, drawing especially on Bonhoeffer’s critique of Kantian ethics in a call for risk-taking, responsibility and an indicative (rather than imperative) orientation of discursivity in moral thought. R. argues that theodicy can only be, in the end, a justification of our faith and not a justification of God (167). This links into his earlier rejection of a »bird’s eye view« which would be »generally applicable« (11) in this matter. Every answer to this issue is only »situational« and »perspectively« possible, indeed from the »inner-perspective of a given religious, philosophical or world-view understanding of reality« (11). Likewise, in a footnote (one of the many scholarly footnotes) at a decisive turning point, R. argues that there is ultimately no difference in terms of abstractness or concreteness between philosophical or theological theodicies. As he argues, neither is superior to the other, nor can one be privileged above the other (11, nt. 10). R.’s philosophical theology is a wonderful example of the application of this fundamentally synthetic method. Yet can the classical biblical reflections on evil, grasped in faith, which one may summarize as a logically possible but unnecessary consequence of originally good, intrinsically valuable, divinely given (in the best of all possible worlds, as that it was created by a necessary, supremely good, wise and powerful being, see Job) but misused human freedom (which would have been less good and beautiful, had it been originally created without this possibility of misuse, see Gen. 1–3; Ps. 8) and »satanic« (in the semantically manifold sense as in the original Hebrew) forces (in both cases, and in accordance with the fundamental essence of freedom, permitted, see Rom. 1:24, but not divinely willed), which may also prove the virtue of the just (see Job) or punish sin (Lam. 3:38–42), and which will ultimately be overcome in the already unfolding divine redemption (see Is. 25:8; Lam. 3:55–58; Ez. 37:1–28; 1 Cor. 15:54–57; Rev. 21:4; 22:2), be also simultaneously or subsequently established sola ratione? Furthermore, is not the consolation of faith itself minimized by rescinding the very ancient claim to universality (even if this claim itself may not belong to the first of the first things of theology)? Perhaps the answer lies in the concrete definition of the permeability of these discourses, which R. also affirms in a limited sense (15).