“Theodicy after Auschwitz and the Reality of God”

Gottschalk, Stephen. “Theodicy after Auschwitz and the Reality of God.” Union Seminary Quarterly Review XLI, no. 3 & 4 (1987): 77–99. 

Gottschalk challenges both classical theodicy and process theology that argue “God and evil both exist in the same sense in fact and as fact” (79). He argues that “the status of evil as unchallengeable fact must again be brought into question” (80). Rather, in his interpretation of Mary Baker Eddy’s work, Gottschalk claims that the “question of evil could only be answered at the existential level of the demonstration of the sovereignty of God” (85). Eddy’s defense of the goodness and omnipotence of God rests on the nature of God in contrast to human perceptions of the human experience: “God [sic. actual quote is ‘Good’] is not, cannot be, the author of experimental sins” (84, Science and Health, 230). The logic of God, wherever it led, was a radical but rational challenge to the evidence of the senses. And its result was the practical transformation of the situation. Gottschalk challenges Barth’s critique on Eddy’s view of sickness as ‘imagination,’ with Eddy’s view that it was part of the human condition. Mortality itself, as an alienation from God, is a denial of God, and Eddy’s remedy seeks the ‘Word made flesh’—what is palpable and perceptible to human understanding.

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ISSN: 2371-963X
Print ISSN: 0362-1545

See also annotation: 

“Christian Science (Szientismus)” by Karl Holl