Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

StMor 44 (2006) 93-120BRUNO HIDBER C.SS.R.EVIL: QUESTIONING AND CHALLENGINGTHEOLOGY AGAIN AND AGAINEvil’s radical challenge to theologyEvil should not exist. Yet it does. That is the fundamentalparadox. The presence of evil as such needs no demonstration.Rather, insofar as it is present in an atrocious and disturbingmanner in our experience in so many varied forms which shouldnot exist, evil imposes itself directly. But it imposes itself mostly ina confusing and disorienting way. In the face of evil, the humanperson experiences above all his (her) limits. These limits meanthat we will never be able happily to achieve the good we wouldlike to achieve, because an array of insufficiencies and weaknessesstands in the way of achieving what ought to be achieved andof reaching the goal that we recognize as just and true. The simplefact of wanting to achieve this good does not make us capable ofdoing so by ourselves. Saint Paul profoundly bears witness to thiswhen he exclaims: “For I do not do the good I want, but I do theevil I do not want” (Rom 7:19).Paul is thus pointing to the fact that the person who doesevil is also the victim of evil. This relationship between the doerand the victim of evil seems to be as old as the history ofhumanity. And yet it has taken on new dimensions in our time,which makes the question of evil appear even more complex.One new dimension is that our world has become both moreglobal and less comprehensible to us at the same time. Evil, inour time, has taken a kind of “qualitative leap” toward the negative,of which Auschwitz has become the symbol. This involvesnew demands on theology. The abysmal evil of our time bringsthe limits of theological discourse more clearly into sight. Atthe same time, the need only increases for a meaningful theologicalvocabulary about God and his salvation even in the faceof such evil. Alongside the need for a theological vocabularyarises also a need for compassionate sensibility.