Holocaust and Theology - Can the Two Co-Exist?

The Holocaust creates an ocean of questions but very few answers. When one tries to explain the Holocaust, one is confronted with answering the unanswerable. How can one answer or explain the deaths of 6,000,000 souls, including 1.5 million children under the age of fourteen? It is beyond difficult; it is impossible.

The Holocaust is especially difficult for Christians. There were many "Righteous Gentiles" such as Corrie ten Boom who protected, defended, and even suffered for their actions of protecting European Jews during World War II. However, there were many more "Christians" who were at best apathetic and at worst collaborators with the Nazis, who were bent on Jewish genocide.

As difficult as the reality of the Holocaust is for Christian theologians to answer, imagine the emotional, spiritual and psychological angst Jewish scholars and theologians go through in attempting to find resolution to the death of their families and friends. Daniel Cohn-Sherbok in 1989 attempted to find some answers to this question in his book, Holocaust Theology. He examined the views of eight Jewish scholars who speculated on a wide variety of answers to the Shoah and the death of six million European Jews.

The views of these scholars range from blaming the Jews of Europe for their lack of religious observance (i.e., punishment of God) to Richard Rubinstein's declaration that the idea of a Holy God is to believe in nothing more than "Holy Nothingness." The most interesting view illustrated by Cohn-Sherbok's book was the idea that the victims of the Holocaust represented the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53.

Therefore, if Jewish scholars cannot agree on a meaning for the Holocaust, can Christians even hope to find answers to this unimaginable but very real horror of the 20th century? On one level, probably not. On another level, however, this does not excuse believers in Jesus from not only finding answers but also attempting to offer hope in the midst of darkness.

Many Christians try to reconcile the Holocaust by ignoring the spiritual need of the Jewish people. They prefer to live in a world which states that there are two ways to God - one for the Jewish people and one for the rest of the world. This route allows Christians to ease their conscience regarding the Holocaust; however, it does not answer the reality of John 14:6 and Acts 4:12 that proclaim there is no other way to God and heaven except through the blood of Messiah Jesus.

The aberrant theology of dual covenantalism is not the answer to the Holocaust. The only answer is to affirm the theology that a loving God sent His only son (Jesus) for the sins of the whole world. Through this theological understanding, we all can realize that while the Holocaust is a blight which can never be erased. It does not, however, have to overwhelm the world into new apathy. Christians must instead be even more motivated to tell those for whom the Gospel was first intended that God is more powerful than the horrors of the Shoah.