Then, later in the book, he started to lose faith in God. He saw Jews Thrown in the crematorium. “A prayer to this God in whom
And if God is God, why is He letting us suffer?” (1) The lifelong quest for answers to these questions shaped his theology
The much debated issue of Theodicy has perplexed Christians for many centuries and nowhere does it become more prevalent than when looking at the events of the Holocaust. In this period of mass horror, many Jewish people began to question how a loving and mighty God could allow these atrocious events to play out. Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Holocaust, wrote about his personal experience along with his testimony to how he questioned God’s presence in all of the evil he witnessed firsthand. One of the first times Elie Wiesel begins to question God is after he and his father arrive at the Birkenau concentration camp. As they are being marched in a line they look around to see men throwing babies into a pit of fire, burning them alive.
Throughout the Narrative of Frederick Douglass, Douglass develops an image between true and false Christianity. Douglass demonstrates his point in the opening argument by calling the former “the Christianity of Christ” and the latter “the Christianity of this land.” Douglass describes the ordeal that slaveholders’ Christianity is not a given evidence of natural goodness, but an artificial state of self-righteous brutality. To tackle this variation, Douglass states a common indifference between what is known as the charitable, peaceful beliefs of Christianity and the negative of violence from the immoral actions in which slaveholders bring. The character that is described as a good example for this theme is Thomas Auld.
His struggles became particularly evident when he witnessed the hanging of the pipel, what he saw that day rattled his faith to its core. Subsequently, he felt abandoned by his God, “What does Your grandeur mean, Master of the Universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and this misery?”(p.66), “Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless Him?” (p.67). Furthermore, he wondered why God would allow such suffering and remained silent in the face of evil.
When Antonio first accepted the Catholic god in the form of the Eucharist, he “received him gladly” and waited for the “thousand questions” that “ pushed through” his “mind” to be answered. Even though Antonio waited for the answers “the Voice . . did not answer” (Anaya, 221). Anaya’s use of diction in this excerpt, developed the mood that, Antonio was disappointed in the Catholic god. Moreover, the quote depicted how Antonio did not get any answers to questions which haunted him for so long.
In the first few chapters of the book, Wiesel frequently talks about his faith. He said that he lived to worship and that his faith was important to him. Wiesel writes, “Why did I pray… why did I live? Why did I breathe?” (Wiesel 4).
Elie soon stopped praying, talking, and studying about God. “ For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to silent. What was there to thank Him for?”
This is knowledge which grants eternal happiness and meaning cannot be philosophized by the castaway; it must arrive in the form of news, which is the Absolute Paradox. By faith, this news must be heard and heeded. The Christian faith is neither knowledge nor science nor a “miraculous favor which allows one to… believe the impossible” (146). Faith is a form of communication from God, which is delivered by an apostle whose message, while transcendental and paradoxical, is believable and necessary. Jesus, who comes to bring news across the seas does so with authority and steadfastness to the point of martyrdom.
Faith is such an important part of life. It is the drive, the motive to live, to breathe, to feel. When faith is lost, so is the reason to exist; life is lost in oblivion. Faith is a truly powerful weapon and as the story of Eliezer 's life during the Holocaust is played out through this book, a first-hand perspective is gained of what someone can do to cause questioning of faith and how people respond, whether by strengthening faith or losing it entirely. Eliezer is hit with every hard trial imaginable within a year of his life and eventually withers and hardens into this completely new person than the boy he was when he first stepped into that cattle car expelling him from Sighet, his home, and life.
Throughout the “Narrative of Fredrick Douglass”, Douglass develops an image between true and false Christianity. Douglass elaborates his point in the opening appendix, calling the former “the Christianity of Christ” and the latter “the Christianity of this land.” Douglass describes the ordeal that slaveholders’ Christianity is not a given evidence of natural goodness, but an artificial state of self-righteous brutality. To tackle this distinction, Douglass states a basic contradiction between the charitable, peaceful beliefs of Christianity and the violence from the immoral actions of slaveholders. The character that is described as a good example for this theme is Thomas Auld.
I feel that this analogy may suggest the different outcomes of faith within the four scenarios, or acknowledges the essence of the sacrifice itself, in which Abraham is forgoing his earthy relationship with his son Isaac, in order for him to be closer to god. Faith remains an ever-present feature, as Kierkegaard present a story of faith, yet it is not of genuine faith, thus I felt that he was using Abraham’s story to guide the audience to a better understanding of what true faith is. In the eulogy from Abraham, the symbolic relationship between the hero and the poet highlight the overcoming of the possibility of despair. This finds the poet preserving the memory of the hero through “recollection”.
Throughout the course of conducting a close reading on a section of Kierkegaard’s book ‘Fear and Trembling’, titled: ‘Is There Such a Thing as Teleological Suspension of the Ethical?’ ; one may be led to understand Kierkegaard’s views on such themes as: the paradox that is faith, the story of Abraham, and the possibility of one transcending what Kierkegaard terms, ‘The Ethical’. This reading is aimed at distinguishing Kierkegaard’s concept of the ethical behavior and expectations of man, with the higher demands of honorable callings. Kierkegaard writes of the example of Abraham’s potential sacrifice of his son Isaac to show that there can be a conflict between universal rules of the ethical sphere and abstract religious expectations.
St. Augustine thrust into the Church many thoughts that, so to speak, fertilize the deposit of faith which has not yet come to full fruition. So great are the complexity, the richness, the amplitude of the literary and intellectual patrimony bestowed to us by Augustine, wherein nuances abound and even self-contradictions appear, that we cannot fully exhaust his incredible resourcefulness. He was paradoxically, a cumbersome inheritance to the Middle Ages. The task of this period of history was to put order into all that Augustine had bequeathed to the Church; this was both a difficult and problematic task during the first few centuries that followed the foreign invasions of Europe. Fortunately (for Divine Providence guarded jealousy this great
Introduction The encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus (John 3) offered divergent biblical interpretations with regards to the development of Christian baptism. There have been dissimilar interpretations for and against a reference to Christian baptism in John 3. Basically, the paper seeks to explore the encounter in John 3 and its importance for the understanding of Christian baptism. Though the paper affirms references and exact meaning to Christian baptism as presented in John 3, there will also be a presentation of arguments against such assertions.
