Ethics and Theology After the Holocaust

Book excerpt: The Holocaust casts a heavy shadow over the twenty-first century. The Nazi extermination camps radically call into question the very foundations of Christianity, modernity and the postmodern world. This book challenges and critically reconstructs ethics and theology by bearing witness to the victims, as well as shining a light on the perpetrators and bystanders, thus providing the basis for a renewed Christian understanding of good and evil for our time. The result is a comprehensive and interdisciplinary post-Holocaust ethics and theology, charting questions at the heart of a new synthesis: our concepts of God, the human person and the (post)modern world, as well as our understanding of ecology, politics, education, sacred texts, Christology, interreligious dialogue, forgiveness and reconciliation and eschatology. The central idea running through the twenty-one chapters of this volume is that the commandment "not to grand posthumous victories to Hitler" is an ongoing and often demanding task that calls for complexity, compassion and renewed commitment to transcendence in all and everything.