全方位ブログ（少し欲張りか？）

Chapter8c

Suffering in Life 157

Luther King, who directly followed this Jesus as a model by renouncing
possessions and force and showed unmistakable programmatic signs of
Christian action. But I do object to an imitation of Jesus which itself
seeks suffering — up to self-flagellation or a cult of miracles and stigma-
tization (often deceptive) — in order to demonstrate discipleship. I do
not believe in the miracles of Therese of Konnersreuth or those of Padre
Pio, whom I knew personally. Jesus himself did not seek suffering; it was
forced on him. Nor do I believe that human beings are nearest to God
when they suffer. That would make heaven hell.
So if discipleship of the cross means neither adoratio nor identificatio
nor imitatio — what then? Discipleship of the cross means bearing the
suffering that I in particular endure in my own unique situation — in
correspondence (correlatio) to the suffering of Christ.

The cross in one's own life

`If any man would come after me . . . let him take up his cross' (Mark
8.34). So I am not to bear Christ's cross but to take my own cross upon
myself, in accord with him. I am to go my own way in the risk of my
situation and the uncertainty of the future. And each individual has his
or her own way of life and way of suffering. So everyone should take their
own cross upon themselves, which no one knows better than the person
concerned. That includes the acceptance of oneself and one's 'shadow.
Already as a child I understood that everyone must bear the cross
destined for them. My mother told the story of someone who had com-
plained about the cross that had been laid on him. Led by an angel, he
was allowed to look for a new one in a great shop of crosses. But one
seemed to him too heavy and another too light; after much to-ing and
fro-ing he found one in between which seemed to correspond to his
strength. 'You've chosen your cross: the angel said to him. From then on
he bore it with patience.
But there are many who find their cross all too difficult: professional
failures, the incurably ill, those abandoned by their partners . . . A look
at the crucified Jesus may show people in extreme need that they are not
completely lost even when forsaken by fellow human beings and God.
But often there are also simply the constantly recurring efforts of
everyday life which have to be borne patiently: the cross of one's job, of
constant living together, difficult circumstances in life or unpleasant sur-
roundings, all the daily duties, demands, claims, promises ... Today no
one needs to seek suffering like the old ascetics and chastise themselves.

158 What I Believe

For many people it takes enough strength — because of the frequency or
duration this is often more difficult than an individual heroic act to bear
— to endure the customary cross of everyday life.
But we should not just content ourselves with passively bearing the
cross; we should fight suffering wherever possible and use our limited
personal and social possibilities to change the miserable circumstances of
others. In addition, where possible we should assimilate suffering
inwardly. An inner freedom from suffering becomes evident whenever
believers do not allow themselves to be oppressed by distress and oppres-
sion; when in doubt they do not doubt, when in loneliness they do not
feel lost, when in all tribulation they do not lose cheerfulness and in all
defeat are not wiped out.
But human existence remains an event permeated by the cross — by
pain, anxiety, suffering and death. Yet in the light of the cross of Jesus
such existence can take on meaning in discipleship of the cross — if one
accepts it. No cross in the world can contradict the offer of meaning
which is set up in the cross of the one who was raised to life, a sign that
even extreme threat, meaninglessness, nothingness, forsakenness, lone-
liness and emptiness are embraced by God, who is in solidarity with
human beings. So for the believer no way opens up around suffering, but
through suffering. In active indifference to suffering they must be ready
for the fight against suffering and its causes, in the life of the individual
and in human society.

Test question for humanists

I spoke of coping with the negative as the acid test of Christian faith and
non-Christian humanism. Perhaps it has now become clear that in the
light of the crucified Jesus the negative is overcome at a depth that seems
almost impossible for non-Christian humanisms.
I admit that, even if I embark on the way of Jesus and soberly take my
own cross upon myself in everyday life, I can never simply conquer and
remove suffering. But I can withstand it and cope with it in faith. I will
then never be simply oppressed by suffering and in suffering succumb to
despair. If Jesus was not overwhelmed in the extreme suffering of being
forsaken by God and his fellow human beings, then the one who holds
to him in trusting faith will not succumb either. For in faith hope is given
to me that suffering is not simply the definitive, the last thing. My
ultimate hope is for a life without suffering, but this is a life which neither
human society nor I myself will ever bring about. Rather, I may expect

Suffering in Life 159

the fulfilment of this hope from the consummation, from the mysterious
Wholly Other, from my God: all suffering definitively done away with in
eternal life.
In suffering in life, in the negativity of human life, it becomes evident
whether a humanism stands up. I have said time and again that
Christians are no less humanist than any humanists. But — if they under-
stand rightly what being a Christian means, namely being human, truly
human — Christians see human beings and their God, together with
humanity, freedom, justice, life, love, peace and meaning, in the light of
this Jesus who for them is the concrete norm, the Christ. In his light I
can confess a humanism that affirms all that is true, good, beautiful and
human. Even when I was at school I acquired this humanism as the basis
of my universal thought. As a Christian I can profess a truly 'radical'
humanism, which goes to the 'radix, the 'root' of things and is able also
to integrate and cope with what is not true, not good, not beautiful and
not human; not only all that is positive but also all that is negative: even
suffering, guilt, death, meaninglessness.
After 600 pages of fundamental consideration I have summarized this
in my book On Being a Christian in a single sentence, not a word of which
I would want to change now, many decades later.

By following Jesus Christ
men and women in the world of today
can truly humanly live, act, suffer and die:
in happiness and unhappiness, life and death,
sustained by God and helpful to their fellow human beings.

But a sentence from the introduction remains important for me. 'This
book was written, not because the author thinks he is a good Christian,
but because he thinks that being a Christian is a particularly good thing.'
However, in the face of all the burdens and torments of life in this
connection one more fundamental question remains to be answered.

How does one hold on?

I am often asked, 'How have you held on?' Now it takes a great deal to
hold on, and I would never condemn anyone who no longer had suffi-
cient strength to do this. One needs good health, physical and mental,
also a touch of humour and even a 'happy-go-lucky' attitude, above all
friends who do not desert one in the hour of need, people who help to

160 What I Believe

bear everything, even in trivial everyday matters. One cannot hold on
alone.
But how does one maintain health of body and mind, humour and
trust in people? An infinite amount could be said about that. I would
simply mention what seems decisive to me, what in any case would
support me and for me would be the final foundation for holding on
even when everything else breaks, if for some reason I lost all sense of
humour, if I was entangled in the deepest guilt, if all success abandoned
me, if I also perhaps lost my good health and even trust in other people.
So what does it ultimately come down to in the life of a Christian?
That is the question. What is decisive? Success, achievements? No, even
if only success counts in our achievement society and everyone loves
success and nothing is as successful as success. For me as a Christian in
the end not everything depends on success. I am not concerned always
to be proved right, to impose myself, to find approval for my views. I
need not justify myself to my closer surroundings, to society, to any
authorities, indeed even to myself.
Of course I will not a priori renounce success, or denigrate achieve-
ments. But I should be aware that human beings are more than their
jobs, their work or the role that they have to play, and that while achieve-
ments are important they are not decisive. So I should achieve things,
fight for my convictions, persuade others, seek their assent. But it is not
achievements I can demonstrate that matter, however important they
may be in daily life, in my job, even in the church.
Am I not also capable of mistakes, serious mistakes? Who would want
to dispute that? But the second dimension of this message becomes
evident in the fact that the Christian is concerned with neither successes
nor mistakes. Even failure and defeat can take on another status for my
life.
In the end something else is decisive and that is that even in limit
situations, even in the greatest distress and guilt I do not despair, that I
never despair, never. Or to put it in a positive way, that I always and
unshakably maintain trust, an unshakable, unconditional and believing
trust or trusting faith in God's grace.
That is what was decisive for Abraham and the patriarchs of Israel:
`Abraham believed God and that was counted for him as righteousness'
(Romans 4.3). This trusting faith was also decisive for Mary and the first
disciples: 'Blessed is she who has believed' (Luke 1.45). It is what Peter, so
congenial yet so faint-hearted, learned as he walked on the water in trust,
despite the storm and the waves, with his gaze fixed on Jesus. This trust

Suffering in Life 161

is what ultimately the apostle Paul hammered into his fellow Christians:
`that we are not justified by our achievements, but are justified by faith'
(Galatians 2.16; Romans 3.28).
That means, through unconditional trust in the gracious and merciful
God. Here Paul understood most deeply what Jesus was concerned with
and what had found expression in his message, in the parables of the
Prodigal Son, the Pharisee and the Publican, the workers in the vineyard.
Here he grasped what Jesus was concerned with in his teaching, fighting,
working and suffering and finally in his death. It is the crucified Jesus for
whom, hanging on the cross, there were no more achievements and
successes and who had to regard his labours as failure that Paul puts
before his eyes and the eyes of us all, justified solely by God, his Father
and our Father. So he saw in the crucified Jesus that human beings are
justified by trusting faith alone, which gives them a great freedom.

The great freedom

`For freedom Christ has freed us' (Galatians 5.1). That does not mean
the 'little' freedom, which in any case is limited in many ways, freedom
of the will, the physiological processes of which are being investigated by
more recent brain research, but which we take for granted in everyday life
in ourselves and others. Even criminal law begins from it when it speaks
of 'guilt': in our understanding of the law an action or a decision is 'free'
when the one who acts could have acted otherwise or not acted at all.
This is the 'great' freedom that human beings can keep even when in
chains. Fundamentally it is my inner freedom, not setting my heart on
false gods, even on the gods of power, money, career, sport, sex or
whatever, but on a true God as he has shown his face in Jesus of Nazareth.
And because my heart depends on the one infinite God, I am and remain
free over and against all finite, relative values, goods, powers and author-
ities. In the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus' ethical demands are
collected together in short sayings and groups of sayings, Jesus calls the
individual to obedience to God, and precisely in this way to become free
for his or her neighbours.
But above all commandments, all behaviour decent or mistaken,
stands the good and merciful God. And for this God we are always more
than our role — as professional persons, scientists, businessmen, politi-
cians, housewives. We remain affirmed even when the roles end in old age
and merely living becomes a struggle.
As for me, I am before God as I am now — I remain valuable,


162 What I Believe

important, accepted. And this is the case even when I no longer find con-
firmation by work, when I can no longer shine before others by any
achievements. Even when I become old and sick I am accepted, indeed
loved, even when I am no longer 'productive.
As a theologian and Christian I want to be like the great Protestant
theologian Karl Barth who — as he once told me — when standing before
his divine judge at the end would not point to his 'collected works, indeed
not even to his 'good intentions' in justification, but with empty hands
would find only one thing appropriate to say: 'God be merciful to me,
poor sinner.'
So from beginning to end I put my trust in God's grace. But isn't that
quintessentially Protestant? I think that it is quintessentially evangelical,
i.e. in keeping with the gospel, and basically I have only spelt out the
meaning of a scriptural text (which today sounds rather patriarchal):
`When you have done all that is required of you then say: We are no more
than servants, we have done what it was our duty to do' (Luke 17.10).
Moreover, because all that is quintessentially evangelical, it is also
quintessentially catholic, as we confess in the great Catholic hymn of
praise Te Deum Laudamus: 'In te, Domine, speravi: non confundar in
aeternum — In you, Lord, have I trusted, I shall never be put to shame.' On
the basis of this trust that supports me, my anxiety about life diminishes
and my courage and joy in life increase. That is the basis for a real art of
living.

Ｃｈａｐｔｅｒ８ｂ

150 What I Believe

`omnipotence, too, must not be understood to mean that an 'absolute'
holder of power, detached, untouched by anything, guides, does or could
do anything. But on the other hand God's power may not simply be
replaced by impotence, nor his wisdom with folly. That would no longer
be the God of the Bible.
So it remains my conviction that a monstrous reality such as
Auschwitz, but also the thousands of deaths caused by a tsunami or an
earthquake, cannot be 'dealt with' by such bold speculations. Muslims,
who are rightly even more concerned with God's transcendence, make
ironic critical commentaries on such 'condescending, 'merciful' images
of God. And the christology which is often used excessively for the image
of God proves to be particularly prone to criticism. I may not avoid
another question.

A crucified God?

After the Second World War, with reference to a remark of Dietrich Bon-
hoeffer, Christian theologians have often attempted to cope with the
problem of suffering by assuming a 'suffering God'. God is said to be
`impotent and weak in the world' and precisely in this way, only in this
way, is he with us and helps us: only the 'suffering God' can help. In view
of the Holocaust some have concluded from this that the 'inexpressible
suffering of the six million is also the voice of the suffering God. Yet
others have even thought that the problem of suffering can be coped with
in an extremely speculative way by a divine history of suffering which is
played out between God and God, even by God against God, within the
Trinity (of Father, Son and Spirit). But all this is without reference to the
Hebrew Bible or the New Testament.
An attentive reader of the Bible will hardly understand these specula-
tions, which culminate in a humbling of God. Karl Rahner once rightly
said to me, 'Why should it be better for me if things are going badly even
with God himself?' According to the New Testament the man Jesus, the
Son of God, cries to God his Father because he believes that he has been
abandoned in the depths of his suffering. But nowhere does God cry to
God, nowhere is God himself weak, impotent, suffering, crucified or even
dead. If we identify human suffering so closely with that of God that
there is even a suffering of God, if the cry of human beings becomes the
cry of God, then we would really have to make human sin (say the crimes
of the SS thugs) God's sin.
A 'crucified God, then? I cannot agree with this thesis of Christian

Suffering in Life 151

theologians. I prefer to follow the New Testament and the Hebrew Bible
and not Gnostic—kabbalistic speculations. In the cross of Christ the one
who has been crucified is not the God, ho theos, who throughout the New
Testament is the Father, Deus Pater Omnipotens. How otherwise could
the crucified Jesus have been able to cry to God in his godforsakenness,
`My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' (Mark 15.34f.)? No,
according to the New Testament, what takes place here is not a 'specula-
tive Good Friday' (as Hegel put it), 'a reversal, a 'mortal leap' of God
himself. Despite the tempting voice in Elie Wiesel's famous Auschwitz
story of the young man on the gallows, it is not God who hangs on the
cross but God's 'anointed, his 'Christ, the Son of Man, God's 'Son.
To put it a different way, the words often spoken to children, 'The good
God hangs here, are not right. For the great Christian tradition, the cross,
is not the symbol of the 'suffering, 'crying' God or even 'the symbol of
God suffering the distress of death, but the symbol of the human being
suffering the distress of death. An unbiblical cpatripassianism; the view
that God the Father himself suffered, was rightly condemned by the
church at an early stage. And if Jewish theology likewise rightly protests
against a sadistic, cruel view of God according to which a bloodthirsty
God required the sacrifice of his son, so Christian theology hopefully
protests no less emphatically against a masochistic understanding of God
according to which a weak God has to torment himself through suffering
and death to resurrection if he is not to suffer for ever. It is here that the
deepest distinction between Jesus the Christ and Buddha the Enlightened
becomes evident.

The Enlightened and the Crucified

We get a view of the decisive difference only if we venture to put side by
side the figure of the smiling Buddha, sitting on a lotus flower, and that
of the suffering Jesus, nailed to the cross. Only from this historical per-
spective can the far more comprehensive significance of the Buddha for
Buddhists and the Christ for the Christians be rightly understood.
I have often in Japan and South East Asia nodded my head in respect
to a statue of Buddha before whom the Buddhists prostrate themselves.
Through his enlightenment the Buddha Gautama entered Nirvana —
already accessible in this life — and after that lived as the 'Awakened,
Enlightened, for decades, until he finally entered the final nirvana,
parirnirvana, through an unspectacular death. He lived, though not
without pain and suffering, cheerfully and seriously, harmonious and

152 What I Believe

successful, finally respected by the mighty. His teaching spread and the
number of his disciples grew tremendously. He died at the great age of 80
from food poisoning, but he died peacefully, surrounded by his disciples.
All over the world even now the statues of this Buddha announce his
repose, his clarity, his peace, his deep harmony, indeed his cheerfulness.
I can understand how for many Asians the Buddha represents the more
sympathetic figure.
How different is the man from Nazareth! His is a history of suffering
which includes arrest, flogging and finally execution in the cruellest, most
shameful form, at the age of only 30. Nothing sorted out and completed
marks this life. It remains a fragment, a torso. Is it a fiasco? At any rate
there is no trace of success during his lifetime; according to the accounts
we have this man dies slandered, vilified and cursed. His is a lonely end
in the utmost torment, avoided by his mother and his family, forsaken by
his disciples and followers, evidently forgotten by his God. The very last
thing we hear of him is his cry on the cross. Here is the image of the
suffering human being — a heavy burden for Buddhists and indeed
sensitive Christians — from thenceforward irreplaceable.
Truly this is one who suffers, who does not radiate compassion but
himself invokes compassion, who does not rest in himself but totally sur-
renders himself. So in this way, according to the Christian understanding,
as the one who suffers in self-surrender and love this Jesus differs from
the Buddha, the benevolent, the compassionate. And he also differs
unmistakably from all the many gods and divinized founders of religions,
from all religious geniuses and gurus, heroes and Caesars of world history
as being the one who suffers, who is executed, who is crucified. But does
all that mean that there is no answer to the question of suffering?

The insoluble riddle of theodicy

Life is suffering. That is the deep insight of Buddhism that one can also
affirm as a Christian. By that I mean suffering in the broadest sense, all
the negative elements that burden our life. Life is also suffering in our
day, and even with the best technology and medicine, with effective psy-
chotherapy and all the social reforms, people have not succeeded in
simply abolishing suffering. The old illnesses are followed by new ones,
former abuses by modern ones, physical illnesses by psychological ones
. . . And everyone can find themselves in situations in which they ask
themselves a question that cannot be answered. For decades I have
studied all past attempts at theodicy, at justifying God, in philosophy and


Suffering in Life 153

theology. And I have arrived at the clear conviction that there is no
theoretical answer to the problem of theodicy.
That does not make a basic attitude of faith impossible. So I can and
must say this, especially in response to the horror of the Holocaust:
if God exists, then God was also in Auschwitz! Believers of different
religions and confessions prayed to God even in this factory of death. In
their suffering and dying they maintained that despite everything, God
lives. But there remains no answer to the question: how could God be in
Auschwitz without preventing Auschwitz?
Despite all pious apologetic it has to be soberly conceded that anyone
who as a theologian wants to get behind the mystery which is the mystery
of God will at best only find his own projected wishes or his own theo-
logical construct. At this extreme point, on this most difficult question,
a theology of silence seems more appropriate. 'If I knew Him I would be
He' is an old Jewish saying. And some Jewish theologians who in the face
of all suffering prefer to dispense with a last justification of God, simply
quote the terse word of scripture which follows the account of the death
of the two sons of Aaron killed by God's fire: 'And Aaron was silent'
(Leviticus 10.3).
None of the great spirits of humanity whom I studied — neither
Augustine, nor Thomas nor Calvin, neither Leibniz nor Hegel nor Karl
Barth — solved the fundamental problem. In 1791 Immanuel Kant wrote
`On the failures of all philosophical attempts at theodicy' when in Paris
people were thinking of deposing God and replacing him with the
goddess Reason. But conversely I would like to ask the atheists: Does
reason, indeed atheism, offer the solution, an atheism that sees its
ultimate support in Auschwitz? Is Auschwitz the rock of atheism? Then
the question presses in on me: Does atheism explain the world better?
The world's grandeur and its misery? Does unbelief explain the world as
it is now? And may unbelief take its comfort from unmerited, incompre-
hensible, meaningless suffering? Doesn't all unbelieving reason have its
limit at such suffering? Anti-theology here is no better than theology.
So it is my insight, which has grown up over many years and to which
I have so far found no convincing alternative, that suffering — excessive,
unmerited, meaningless suffering, both individual and collective —
cannot be understood theoretically but at best can be endured practically.
For Christians and Jews there is only a practical answer to the question
of suffering. And if one asks about their practical attitude, Jews and
Christians point to different traditions, yet ones that hang together.
In the utmost suffering Jews, but also Christians, have in view the

154 What I Believe

figure of Job — from the biblical didactic narrative of the fifth to second
pre-Christian centuries. This innocent man, who lost his possessions, his
family and his health, a beggar inflicted with leprosy, complains to God
and rejects all the arguments to justify God that his friends produce for
him in a long conversation. He has shown that human beings need not
simply accept suffering, they need not spare God. They may rebel,
protest, revolt against a God who seems to be cruel, capricious and sly. It
is finally conceded to Job that he has spoken rightly before God. But this
is not the end of the story; finally Job is given everything back again.
The suffering human being cannot get behind the mystery of the
counsel and plan of the Creator for the world. The riddle of suffering
and evil cannot be violently broken open with the keys of reason. The
darkness of suffering and evil cannot be changed to light by psychologiz-
ing or philosophizing or moralizing. The theodicy of Job's friends, who
attempted to carry through the justification of God with their logical
arguments, has failed. But the theodicy of Job itself, which attempted
with its self-justification to achieve the justification of God indirectly,
has also failed. And yet in the end it seems appropriate for people to put
unshakable, unconditional trust in God in spite of everything. They may
protest, but that should not be their last word.
For Christians — and why not also for Jews? — in extreme suffering,
beyond the (ultimately fictitious) figure of Job there appears the truly
historical figure of the suffering and dying 'servant of God, the man of
sorrows from Nazareth. As an American Jewish woman once explained
to me, the way in which he is delivered up, flogged and mocked, his long
dying on the cross, has anticipated the thrice-fearful experience of the
victims of the Holocaust, namely that all-permeating experience that one
has been forsaken by all people, that one is even robbed of humanity,
that one can be abandoned even by God.
The first Christians took a great deal of trouble to interpret Jesus'
shameful death as a saving death. They used juridical categories: Jesus'
death as proclaiming the sinner righteous. Or cultic concepts and images:
Jesus' death as representation, sacrifice, sanctification. Or even financial
terms: Jesus' death as the payment of a ransom. And finally even military
terms: Jesus' death as a weapon against evil powers. This diversity of
biblical interpretations leaves every coming generation much freedom
for interpretation. There has been a unitary theory of the cross only since
the Middle Ages. But this doctrine of satisfaction put forward by Anselm
of Canterbury (died 1109), who wanted to prove with logical strictness
that the sacrifice of the Son of God on the cross was to assuage the wrath

Suffering in Life 155

of God the Father, has found increasing contradiction. In other publica-
tions I have criticized the evidence in the history of dogma. It is manifest
that in the 2000 years of Christianity the cross of Christ has been the
occasion for many misunderstandings.

The cross misunderstood

Many Christians have evidently lost a sense of what a provocation the
message that salvation was given by a crucified man still represents for
non-Christians, not just for Buddhists but also for Muslims. Otherwise in
2009 a German cardinal and a Protestant church leader would not have
rejected a shared inter-religious award with Navid Kermani, a highly-
respected Muslim writer and Islamic scholar from Iran who was born in
Germany, because he had criticized the depiction of the crucified Christ as
`blasphemy and idolatry:
The two theologically educated Christians should have recalled that
the apostle Paul had already termed the message of the cross a 'scandal
for the Jews' and 'folly for the Greeks' (1 Corinthians 1.23). To the
Romans the message that a crucified man brought salvation seemed to
be a simple dumb-ass message, expressed by the first pictorial depiction
of the crucified Jesus: a graffito scratched in the third century on the
Palatine, the imperial precinct in Rome. The one suffering on the cross,
given an ass's head, has underneath a kneeling figure and the inscription
Alexamenos worships his god: So this is a mocking crucifix.
I admit that in my study and living room there is a beautiful Greek
icon of Christ, but there is no crucified figure. Why? Because I share the
restraint of the first Christians. In the first three centuries Jesus was
depicted as a youthful 'good shepherd' without a beard. The two earliest
depictions of the crucified Jesus come only from the fifth century: Christ
in the form not of one who suffers but of one who conquers or prays. It
was late Gothic art, at the end of the Middle Ages, that first made the
suffering of the crucified Jesus the dominant theme. The most shocking
depiction is that of Mathias Grunewald in Colmar on the eve of the
Reformation, which I have often looked at there — and the unique
spiritualized depiction of the risen Christ connected with it.
In the present, I think one should deal in a more differentiated way
with the shameful death of Jesus on the cross, both out of intercultural
sensitivity and against the background of the negative experiences of
history. Unfortunately I cannot overlook the fact that appalling actions
were performed in church history in the name of the cross. When

156 What I Believe

Christianity took power in the Roman empire under Emperor Constan-
tine with this sign, the cross of Christ, which was originally a sign of
salvation and peace, increasingly became a sign of war and victory, above
all for soldiers, statesmen and inquisitors. The Crusades and persecutions
of heretics in the Middle Ages were horrendous, and no less evil are the
campaigns of the American 'Crusaders' in the twenty-first century in Iraq
and in Afghanistan, who in killing thousands likewise thought that they
had God on their side.
Unfortunately the concept of 'discipleship of the cross' has also fallen
into disrepute. Some pious people are responsible for the fact that
`creeping to the cross' today means giving in, not trusting anything,
surrendering, diligently holding out one's neck. And bearing one's cross
likewise for many people means humbling oneself, enduring passively,
crawling away, not daring to do much while inwardly seething.
So the cross is not just a sign of warriors and those in power but also
of weaklings and moral cowards. This fact already repelled the young
Nietzsche. It is far removed from Jesus, the fearless and bold young man
who was finally executed, and his message as we now have it from the
New Testament. But there are three more subtle misunderstandings of
the preaching of the cross in Christianity that have a negative effect on
practice today and from which I want to dissociate myself.
I do not understand discipleship of the cross as cultic worship. I have
nothing against a veneration of the cross in accordance with the gospel,
for example in the Good Friday liturgy. But I do object to the thoughtless
sign of the cross as a gesture of blessing, repeated thousands of times
especially by those in office. And as for visual images, in the first Christian
millennium up to late Gothic, as I have said, people hesitated to depict
the crucified Jesus. We have got used to this depiction now but we should
guard against a cheap commercialization by a clever devotional industry.
Nor do I understand discipleship of the cross as mystical identifica-
tion. Again, I have nothing against the serious mysticism of suffering and
the cross that arose in the Middle Ages with Francis of Assisi or the
Spanish mystics. But I do object to an identification with the 'suffering
of the One' that lacks a sense of distance and respect for the cross. It is
particularly painful that Roman hierarchs, who bear the cross on their
chests, in pompous ceremonies have recently been exchanging the tradi-
tional shepherd's staff that they carry before them for a crucifix, as if they
themselves were a kind of second Christ.
Finally, I do not understand discipleship of the cross as literal
imitation. I have respect for great figures such as Leo Tolstoy and Martin

chapter 8

文字データ


Chapter 8

Suffering in Life

I cry to you and you do not answer me;
I stand and you do not heed me.
You have turned cruel to me.
Job 30.20f.

A way of life with joy in life and meaning in life — but not without
suffering in life.
During all the decades of my life I have hardly ever been seriously ill.
But fate would have it that I am writing the first stages of this chapter
towards the end of a week in the Tubingen University Clinic — a small
routine operation that need not worry me. But at the same time this is
an opportunity to reflect again on suffering, this dark basic theme of life,
not so much in the medical context, where I am receiving the best
possible care, as in a theological context, where an answer is especially
hard to give — in the face of the higher authority before whom one brings
one's life.

A fundamental question: Why do I suffer?

Like every human being I have had a good measure of suffering, but
more mental than physical. I have experienced crises in life, larger and
smaller — some of them can be read about in my memoirs. I have had
experiences of failure; I have often been left in the lurch by people who
seemed to be my friends. And I know anxiety, above all at being alone,
anxiety at losing people who are dear and important to me. 'Why do I
suffer? That is the rock of atheism; the writer Georg Buchner makes one
of the figures in his play Dan ton's Death say. Yes, why do I suffer, why is
it I who suffer, why now, why in this way? That is a question asked by
believers and unbelievers.

144

Suffering in Life 145

The question hardly arises if I believe in an unalterable and unfath-
omable destiny or in a monistic mysticism in which everything is one.
Nor does the question arise for me if conversely in a dualistic religion —
such as the ancient Persian and later Manichean religion — I attribute all
evil to a second, evil primal power alongside the good God.
But in the face of all the suffering and evil in this world, anyone who
believes in a living good God is confronted with a riddle that from earliest
times throughout human history has been put as a loud or soft question,
as a bitter or weary complaint, indeed as an indignant and cynical
enquiry. Why hasn't God prevented evil? As far back as 300 BCE the Greek
philosopher Epicurus posed this question to religion. And in the Enlight-
enment the French rationalist Pierre Bayle gave it a classic formulation
which has been repeated countless times to the present day: 'Why has
God not prevented evil?'

Either God cannot: then he is not really omnipotent.
Or he will not: in that case he is not good, just and holy.
Or he cannot and will not: in which case he is powerless and hostile.
Or he can and will: but then why all the evil in this world?

Christian theology's answers, from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas, have
never completely satisfied me, answers such as: evil has no substance of
its own but is merely a lack of good; it does not presuppose an efficient
cause but only a deficient cause. That is said by a church teacher,
Augustine, a former adherent of Manichaeism, a belief which thinks
dualistically. He passed on to all Latin theology the pernicious idea of an
original sin transmitted by sexual intercourse, which makes sexuality
a priori appear as a demonic, evil power. Mustn't one find another way
of taking the negative force of evil seriously?
By contrast Thomas Aquinas formulated a clear answer in three brief
clauses: `nec vult, nec non vult, sed permittit'.

・God does not will evil: he is infinitely good, just and holy.
・But God does not not will evil: otherwise there would in fact be no
wickedness in the world.
・However, God allows evil. He allows evil to educate us and punish us.

But wisely though it is formulated, in the end of the day this solution
does not convince me either.

146 　What I Believe

Justifying God in the face of suffering?

The theologian, jurist, historian and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz grappled with Pierre Bayle's argument. To him the world owes
the term `theo-dicy, justification of God. His work published in 1710
rapidly became a classic: Essais de théodicé sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté
de l'homme et l'origine du mal (An attempt at a justification of God. On
the goodness of God, human freedom and the origin of evil').
Leibniz was realistic enough not to belittle the manifold suffering and
evil in the world. For him the world is by no means perfect, by no means
simply good. Rather, he distinguishes three kinds of evil:

metaphysical ill or the limitations of being. This is grounded in
human finitude;
physical ill or pain. This is given with human corporeality;
moral ill or evil. This exists because of human freedom.

Moreover the present creation is by no means perfect. For Leibniz it is
only the best of all possible worlds. A world without sin and suffering
and thus also without human freedom would not be a priori better. God
allows evil for the sake of harmony and the whole.
Leibniz's Theodicy became the textbook for educated Europe. But the
enthusiasm for the best of all possible worlds was fundamentally
destroyed fifty years later by the earthquake in Lisbon on 1 November
1755, All Saints' Day, with the death of tens of thousands. It was then
easy for Voltaire to make Leibniz's theology look ridiculous in his philo-
sophical novel Candide, or Optimism (1759).
And in 1791 Immanuel Kant wrote a work on theodicy with the strik-
ingly cool title: 'On the failures of all philosophical attempts at theodicy'.
If one doesn't get on so easily in the face of the sharp logic and compre-
hensive system of Leibniz's theodicy, in the concrete individual instance,
in a quite specific illness, a professional or human fiasco, in disloyalty or
treachery or in death — such a theodicy is no real comfort for someone
despairing in suffering. Arguing in such a skilful intellectual way is like
giving a lecture on food chemistry and nutrition to the hungry and
thirsty.
On the other hand chain smokers should not complain to God
because of lung cancer or emphysema. Often we are too little aware how
much harm human beings constantly do themselves, not least through
their moral failures, from hatred and envy between neighbours or

Suffering in Life 147

colleagues at work to wars between races and nations. But we also know
how much suffering human beings bear completely innocently. Above
all the undeserved suffering of children cannot be justified by any
argument. What is the freedom given by God to human beings if it leads
to such monstrosity? Because of it, as is well known, Dostoievsky's Ivan
Karamazov wants to give back his 'entry tickets' to creation. Albert
Camus' doctor in The Plague, Dr Rieux, grounds his 'No' to God in the
experience of children dying on their sickbeds. And then there is the
tremendous suffering that famines and natural catastrophes bring to
hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
During my years-long studies on Judaism (completed in 1991 with
my book Judaism, ET 1992) I had to grapple with a new dimension of
suffering. In the so-called 'permissive' twentieth century humankind has
experienced evil to an unprecedented degree: the totalitarian state and
the industrialization of murder in the Shoah. And there the question
arises yet again with quite different urgency: how could God allow
something like this? It has taken me many years to find an answer to this
that convinces me.

The dialectic of suffering in God himself?

At the end of my studies in Rome I sought the solution to the riddle of
suffering not with Thomas Aquinas and Leibniz, but in another
direction. Already in Rome I had been enthused by the philosophy of
Hegel, and immediately after the early completion of my theological
dissertation on Karl Barth I began a philosophical dissertation at the
Sorbonne in Paris on Hegel's christology, a christology which culminates
in a 'speculative Good Friday:
Hegel had discovered dialectic, development in opposites — statement
(`thesis'), counter-statement (`antithesis') and reconciliation (`synthesis')
— as not only a rhythm of thought but as a necessary rhythm of the
universe as manifested in nature and in history, indeed of the Absolute,
God himself. So it seemed to me one could also solve the riddle of
suffering in this way: 'that the human, finite, frail, weak, negative are
themselves a divine element, that this negative is in God himself; that
finitude, the negative, i.e. otherness is not outside God and as otherness
does not prevent unity with God' (Philosophie der Religion, II, p. 172).
So according to Hegel God's destiny was itself fulfilled in the painful
fate of Christ and in his death the death of God and at the same time the
death of death is fulfilled: 'God has died, God is dead — this is the most

148 What I Believe

fearful thought, namely that all that is eternal, all that is true is not, that
negation itself is in God; the greatest pain, the feeling of complete
lostness, giving up all that is higher, is bound up with this. However,
things do not stop here but now a change takes place. God receives
himself in this process and this is only the death of death. God comes to
life again and thus there is a turn to the opposite' (II, p. 167).
How should I still complain at my suffering and death if God's destiny
is reflected in me? In joy at this discovery while I was in Rome, I
composed a short account of the dialectic of the properties of God and
presented it to my dogmatics professor. He had no objections to it, but
didn't really know what to make of it. As I couldn't complete my philo-
sophical dissertation in Paris because of my call to the chair of funda-
mental theology in Tubingen, I later revised the whole manuscript twice
more and finally published it in the Hegel anniversary year 1970 under
the title The Incarnation of God: Prolegomena to a Future Christology. I still
get angry when looking through the book yet again I see what infinite
trouble I took in studying the history of the dogma of Christ in the early
church and in mediaeval theology, and how little those who are fond of
presenting themselves as guardians of orthodoxy have ever bothered with
these questions. But in the last edition I put all my learned investigations
into the history of dogma at the end of the book as an excursus. For in
the meantime something else had struck me.
In studying the most recent exegetical literature, especially research
into the historical Jesus, it had become clear to me that like Hegel one
cannot identify the fate of Jesus with the fate of God himself. I had to see
that this christology 'from above, as also advocated by Karl Barth and
Karl Rahner, as it were hangs in the air without a christology 'from below'
based on the concrete Jesus of history. Twenty years later Karl-Josef
Kuschel worked out this shift in my christological thinking in his mon-
umental investigation Born Before All Time? The Dispute over Christian
Origins (1990, ET 1992). Of course with Hegel I still wanted to under-
stand God as a living God who, unlike the rigid God of Greek meta-
physics, moves, changes, undergoes a history, a God who does not persist
in himself above the world but who emerges from himself, empties
himself.
But if one starts from the historical Jesus of Nazareth one can in no
way identify his suffering and dying with the dying of God. After all,
with him the 'Son' of God and not God the Father himself died. Rather,
the Son is raised from the dead by God, his Father, and taken into his
eternal life. But in Hegel's philosophy of religion God himself of

Suffering in Life 149

necessity moves almost automatically from death to life again in a
dialectical reversal.

God's impotence in the face of the Holocaust
The Holocaust, the systematic murder of 6,000,000 Jews and an
estimated 500,000 Sinti and gypsies, this event of unique human
brutality, brings the question of God and suffering to a nadir hitherto
unattained. I remember the gripping address given in 1984 by the Jewish
philosopher Hans Jonas, who was driven by the Nazis from Germany
and whose mother was murdered in Auschwitz, at the University of
Tubingen on 'The Concept of God after Auschwitz'. Instead of starting
from God's majesty, his answer began with the suffering of God since the
creation of the world and instead of God's omnipotence he talked of
God's impotence. God was silent in Auschwitz and did not intervene 'not
because he did not want to, but because he could not. With this answer
Hans Jonas put himself in the tradition of Jewish mysticism, the
Kabbalah, which already in God's creation saw a 'contraction' (Hebrew
zimzum), a voluntary withdrawal and self-limitation of God. Is that a
satisfying answer, for Jews, for Christians?
With all due respect to Hans Jonas, to whom we are also indebted for
his extremely important book Das Prinzip Verantwortung (`The Principle
of Responsibility'), in my reservations about this solution I see myself
endorsed by theologians such as Louis Jacobs and Joseph Soloveitchik.
That God has to concentrate himself in human fashion, contract, in order
to give existence and essence, time and space, to another alongside him
seems to rob God of his infinity, eternity and perfection — always main-
tained in the great Jewish—Christian tradition. The finite cannot a priori
limit the infinite, indeed even an infinite universe could not limit the
infinite God who is in all things. It would be better to understand the
creation as an 'unfolding of God' (Nicholas of Cusa, explicatio Dei) than
as a limitation of God.
In the face of Auschwitz (and of other twentieth-century horrors such
as the Gulag Archipelago and Hiroshima) post-modern understandings
of God by Jews and Christians seem to me to correspond in two
important points: on the one hand both Jews and Christians reject an
uninvolved, unhistorical, cruel God without compassion who does not
suffer, and on the other they both believe in a God who is nevertheless
present in a hidden way, truly taking part in history, merciful, indeed
sharing in suffering. From this it seems to me to follow that God's

Ｒｙｕさん専用のスレッドです

　このスレッドにコメントして頂だければ、私の知識でお答えできることは何なりとお答えします。

アッシジ

アッシジ市内



アッシジ市内



アッシジ市内




アッシジ市内の軽食屋
昼には少し早いのでレストランはまだ開いていなかったが、この店だけはチーズくらいなら食べさせてくれたので、これで昼の代わりにしたが、結構うまかった。これで10ユーロ程度だった。



アッシジ駅

ピティリアーノ

ピティリアーノ市内
　車で案内して貰い、ガイドが土地に人に聞いた話だとピティリアーノからオルビエートへの公共交通機関はないとのことだった。ただし、ローマからピティリアーノへの交通機関はあるので、ここから先へ行く人は殆どいないと言うことらしい。オルビエートほどではないが、結構大きな街だけど非常にアクセスの悪い街と言うことらしい。



ピティリアーノ市内



ピティリアーノ市内



ピティリアーノ市内



ピティリアーノ市内



ピティリアーノ市内　昼食を取ったレストラン
ガイドの知り合いとのことで１０ユーロばかり勘定を負けてくれた



レストラン内部


ピティリアーノ市内

オルビエート

オルビエート遠景



オルビエートのホテル



オルビエートのホテル



オルビエート市内



オルビエート市内



オルビエート市内



オルビエート市内



オルビエート市内　バール店内の飾り



オルビエート市内



オルビエート市内



オルビエート市内



オルビエート市内

チビタ/バニレッジョ

　チビタに案内してくれたチンツィア（チビタ出身とのことであった）



　チビタ遠景（大雨になったのでしばらく車で雨宿りしていた）



　チビタ遠景



　チビタ遠景



　チビタ遠景



　チビタ　大きな地震が1000年に1回程度あり、その都度周囲が崩れてくるので、今は永住している人は10に程度しか以内との事であり、殆どは土産物屋らしい。しかし、夏はドイツ人が空き家を借りるので3000人くらいの人口になるとのことである。



　城壁内の民家



　この家は次の地震で崩れるか？



　

パニカーレ

　ホテルから見たパニカーレ城壁



　ホテルからトラメジーノ湖を望む景色１



　ホテルからトラメジーノ湖を望む景色２



　ホテルからトラメジーノ湖を望む景色３



　城壁内の民家



　城壁入り口



　城壁を利用した観光案内所（2日間いたけど閉まっていた）



　城壁の内側部分



　民家の入り口



　城壁内の道路



　民家の中庭



　城壁内の通路



　城壁内のホテル（ここに泊まったわけではないが）



　城壁内の教会内部（人がいなかったので遠慮なくストロボをたいて取った）



　泊まったホテル（城壁の外にある）



　夕暮れのトラメジーノ湖



　夜の城壁内通路



　パニカーレの銀行（手前のガラスドアが開くと一人だけは入り、内側のガラスドアが開いたら中には入れる構造になっている。銀行ギャング防止のようであるが）



　パニカーレの地図



　

ペルージャからパニカーレ

　列車でペルージャに着いて、バスの案内所でパニカーレ行きのバスの時刻とバスの発着場所を聞いたら、時間を教えてくれ、場所はあっちだという。あっちと言ったってどこだか分からないが、言葉が通じないので指さす方に行ってみた。バス停とおぼしきところで回りの人に聞いてみたが知らないという。発車時刻になった時に来たバスの運転手に聞いたら、発着場所を教えてくれたが、そのときは既にパニカーレに向かうバスは出て行くところだった。

　1時間後にもあるが、待つのも馬鹿馬鹿しいので、列車で行くことにして駅に戻り、キアンキアーノ温泉までの切符を買ってトラメジーノ湖沿いの線路をトコトコと走っていった。途中、terontala cortonaと言う駅で乗り換えてキアンキアーノ温泉に着いた。この町は多少大きな街だったのでＴＣを両替しようと銀行に行ったらなにやらコンピュータで調べており、3時頃来てくれと言う。それまで待てないので両替はあきらめた。

　有名観光地巡りなら日本円から現地通貨の両替、ＴＣから現地通貨の両替もできるが、この様な田舎ばかり回る旅だと、両替所そのものがなく、ＴＣも使えない。しかも以前はＴＣの両替に手数料が必要なかったが最近は盗難が多いので、3％位の手数料を取るそうである。既に持っているＴＣはこのままとして、今後は両替は利用しないようにしよう。因みに、成田でユーロＴＣをユーロ現金に換えようと思ったら、円に戻してからでないとできないと言う。それじゃ二重に為替手数料が掛かるので馬鹿馬鹿しいので止めた。

　いろいろ調べたが、クレジットカードのキャッシングをして、帰国後直ぐに返済するのが1番為替手数料が掛からなくて具合がよいことがわかった。

　キアンキアーノ駅でタクシーに英語で話しかけたが全く通じないのでイタリア語でパニカーレまで入ってくれと言ったら簡単に通じた。イタリアは何処でもそうだが、庶民は英語などヨーロッパの辺境の国の言葉など何処へ行っても殆ど通じない。もっともこれはイタリアだけでなくドイツでも同じで、どちらの国も英語で通じるときはよほど運がよいという事である。ドイツではバリッとしたスーツを着ている男性に聞けば大体英語は通じるが、イタリアは英語が通じる人を探すのは至難の業である。

　タクシーに乗って山道を登ることしばし、やっとホテルに着いたが、呼び鈴を押せど、ドアを叩けど、誰も出てこない。そこで仕方がないのでこのホテルと同系列のレストランがあるので運転手が気を利かせてそこへ回って交渉してくれ、やっとホテルに入ることができた。こんな交渉はバスで来て自力でやるとなると気が遠くなる作業であり、タクシーで来て良かったと思った。

　ホテルでは夕食はドウすると聞かれ、何処で食べても良いが、自分たちのレストランで食べるならスペシャルディナーを用意すると言うから、何処で食べても同じであるから、そのレストランを予約すると夜の8時からだという。それまでパニカーレ村を見物し、やがて雷雨になったので一眠りして、夜の8時にレストランに行って夕食を食べた。スペシャルディナーと言うからさぞかし素晴らしい料理が出るのかと思ったが、あまり代わり映えしない料理だった。でも、店はかなり広く､大勢の客が入っていたが、この村は小さなホテルが2軒ほどしかないのに大勢の客はどこから来るのだろう。

　夕食の代金は翌日の朝食と共に後で貰うからと言うので、その日はそのままホテルに帰った。