Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

EVIL: QUESTIONING AND CHALLENGING THEOLOGY AGAIN AND AGAIN 113theology to become silent, because it gives witness simply by itsexistence to the fact that this world with its injustice and evilcannot be the ultimate reality. Horckheimer affirms that theologyis the expression of a yearning, of the yearning that theassassin cannot triumph over his innocent victim. 48The problem and the scandal of evil do not cry out against,but rather for the existence of a God. Only an instance beyondevil, greater and more powerful than any of evil’s depths ofatrocity, only an omnipotent and good God can keep alive thehope that the assassin truly will not triumph over the victim,that instead, goodness and justice will triumph over every evil.Thomas Aquinas has pushed the dynamic of this line of thoughtall the way to its logical conclusion by overturning the affirmationthat the existence of evil would be an argument against theexistence of God with the assertion: “quia malum est, deus est”(“because there is evil, there is God”). 49 Such hope becomesconcrete, if God not only exists, but acts in the world and inhuman history.Theology must therefore speak of God precisely in the faceof evil if theology wants to respond to the hope that is offeredto man, according to 1 Pet 3: 15: “In your hearts reverenceChrist as Lord. Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you”. Itmust speak of God in the face of evil because of man, becauseof his dignity and because of his destiny. It must speak of Godin the face of evil because of God Himself, because of His holyname and because of His being. For theology to remain silentin the face of this challenge and this scandal would be to betrayits raison d’être.48Max Horckheimer, Die Sehnsucht nach dem ganz Anderen (Hamburg:Furche, 1970), 61-62.The Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski moves in the same direction.He writes: „Dostoyeveski’s famous dictum, ‘If there is no God,everything is permissible,’ is valid not only as a moral rule, but also as anepistemological principle. This means that the legitimate use of the concept‘truth’ or the belief that ‚truth’ may even be justifiably predicated of ourknowledge is possible only on the assumption of an absolute Mind.“Kolakowski, Religion – If there is no God ... On God, the Devil, Sin and otherWorries of the so-called Philosophy of Religion (New York: Oxford, 1982), 82.49St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, III, 71.