Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

110 BRUNO HIDBERTheology’s tendency toward silence becomes particularlyclear when it is dealing with the evil of suffering. The Germantheologian Hermann-Otto Pesch writes in this vein in hisattempt to explain Christian faith from an ecumenical perspective:Christianity will ultimately renounce any attempt to “explain”this suffering or to demonstrate that it is “endowed with meaning”or “logic.” It can naturally elaborate theories, make observations onthe origins and perhaps even on the future benefit of suffering.Some Christians have continued to do so up until the very recentpast. Whoever proposes such a thing can continue to do so eventoday, but he must be careful not to impose such theories, even“religious” theories, on other people, on fellow Christians in thename of faith. Generally speaking, it seems that in our day as werecognize the immeasurable and inexplicable amount of evil that issuffered innocently in our world, our desire for such explanationshas passed. It is no surprise today that we are so gratified by thefact that even such pessimistic books as Job or Ecclesiastes, bookswhich so movingly unmask all the explanations of suffering in theworld as myopic, make up part of the Church’s sacred books. 42Again in the same vein, theologian and Cardinal KarlLehmann observes:What has become problematic is not the attempt to shedsome light upon and give meaning to suffering in a personal andexistential way, as much as how people continually try on theirown – however happily or erroneously – to make, in effect, a newtheological systematic arrangement, which inevitably gives theimpression of having no respect whatever for suffering and ultimatelyof offering only an abstract compassion. 43Armin Kreiner, Gott im Leid. Zur Stichhaltigkeit der Theodizeeargumente(Freiburg:Herder 1997), 15-78.42Otto H. Pesch, “Die neue Schöpfung,“ in Feiner/Vischer, editors,Neues Glaubensbuch (Freiburg-Zürich: Herder-Theol. Verlag Zürich, 1973),315-316.43Karl Lehmann, Jesus Christus ist auferstanden (Freiburg: Herder,1975), 29.